basic misunderstanding of evil

Rating: 2/10 (30 May 2005)

Don't see Star Wars, at least not at the theater. I'm not going to see another Star Wars film at the theater again.
Sure the special effects are better than ever (although in closeups, I liked Yoda better as a puppet). And the pacing is good. And Ian McDiamid brings believability to the role of the evil emperor. Jar Jar gets no lines! And sure, the dumb stuff is back, like sounds in space, or air-resistance in space, or hyper-crowded skies in space (or The Force) are all there, but they don't detract.
The previous Star Wars, The Phantom Menace, was goofy and didn't seem to take itself too seriously. I liked it, despite the lame lines and occasionally lame acting. This one is goofy and takes itself very, very seriously. Too seriously. I have no idea why it's been accepted so well. My main disappointment is drawn from the utterly unconvincing transformation of Anakin into Darth Vader. The rest of my comments utterly give away the main plot elements, but they're not much of a surprise as the story unfolds: Anakin is a bit vain. He's obviously more powerful than, say, Obi-Wan; he's saved his master's life nine or ten times. And he's secretly married to Padmé and she's pregnant (with Luke and Leia). OK. He has a vision that she's going to die in childbirth (in the future they can fly through space, but childbirth must be almost as difficult as ever?) The evil emperor tells him he can save her through a dark side power (and rather than searching for a way to overcome the surely peculiar circumstances that might lead to dying in childbirth, Anakin just accepts that me must be able to revive her after she's dead or something like that?) After a bit of hesitation, Anakin pledges himself completely to the emperor, and starts killing Jedi left and right, including the little children Jedi-in-training (referred to as younglings...over and over again).
It's as if, from the first Jedi he injures (and thus inadvertently allows the emperor to immediately kill) in order to save the emperor's life, thereby preserving the emperor's possible knowledge on how to keep his wife from dying), he immediately becomes just about the most evil person possible. I just couldn't accept the completeness of the flip over to the evil side. Even in the Star Wars role-playing game, you can't turn completely evil by a single evil act (yep, I played it through TWICE...mild embarrassment).
And that's the one thing you can't screw with in any story. You can make everything utterly goofy, have occasional internal inconsistencies, but your main characters must be true to themselves. People fall in love for crazy reasons. They even kill for crazy reasons. But they don't become ongoing mass murderers in one jump.
What was I hoping for? Better. I mean, Vader fights Obi-Wan at the end (and suddenly Obi-Wan is much more powerful?) and loses for some reason, and nearly gets burned up by molten lava (and Obi-Wan leaves Vader for dead). Hey. It would have been pretty cool to have that fight earlier. It would have been more believable if Anakin didn't immediately pledge to the emperor but hesitated, and was nevertheless hunted down by Obi-Wan, if Anakin was holding back his power when fighting his former master and AFTER he suffers so much for holding back, Vader finally goes all the over to the dark side. That might not have convinced me completely, but it would have been more believable than what we got. But nope, he's goes from vain and somewhat selfish to totally evil in one jump. He's even already to kill his wife! Padmé because she and Obi-Wan flew in her ship to see him (in the end, she dies of a broken heart just after childbirth).
And what about Yoda. In a long battle, Yoda almost kills the emperor, but suddenly gives up, never to try again. Obi-Wan beat Vader once, but he sees no reason to ever challenge Vader again and finish the job? A whole planet gets blown up because of that in episode 4.
The best thing in the movie was the, quite funny line, when Vader asks Obi-Wan to join him, then says something like: If you won't join me, then you're against me! (like George Bush told the world). Obi-Wan replies that anyone who believes in such absolutes can only be evil. Hah! I laughed. But even that was crap. Such black-and-white for-me-or-against-me attitudes can simply be due to stupidity.
Perhaps reviewers were kind to the movie because of its vague similarity to modern American politics and George Bush's use of a war to scare people into giving him more power (only traitors don't support the president during a war!) And although it's good to get the message out that supporting your leader isn't always the moral thing to do, wow, I just don't think very many Bush supporters will see any resemblance between the emperor and George Bush...mostly because there isn't much resemblance unless you invent it yourself.
Maybe I'm prejudiced against a movie whose central premise revolves around romantic love being a conduit for evil. Sure, it happens. But people don't just one day decide to be totally evil. If great love drew someone into an act of evil, that wouldn't wipe out all the good in them (or push the good into supreme dormancy until episode 6).
I don't like the "strong emotion leads to evil" attitude of the film. Hayden Christensen didn't convince me of his character's reality; I'm not sure any actor could have with that role. Tom Cruise does an excellent portrayal of a good-looking evil guy in Collateral. I'll never forget that movie for good (and chilling) reasons. I'll never forget Star Wars III either, but not for good reasons. 2 out of 10.