Proof that bluescreen is no substitute for good acting and direction.

Rating: 3/10 (21 July 2006)

28 years ago a young, worried-looking George Lucas was sweating it out in the Tunisia desert trying to make his dream film become a reality. It was a film he had thought about for years, believed in passionately and finally a studio had funded him. Everyone thought he was crazy, but somehow a miracle happened in that desert and the film became a sublime, epic work of sheer imagination, a fantasy spanning the galaxy and showing the human qualities of courage and adventure.
So why were the original Star Wars films so much better? the planets, creatures, technologies, cityscapes are still here in the new films courtesy of the best visual artists money can buy. There are several reasons, Lucas is incapable of writing a political thriller with political decisions happening in offices, meeting rooms, or parliaments. It takes a great scriptwriter to do that and George has never been that. But, the main difference has to be the acting. Comparing the two trilogies makes you realise how brilliant the original acting was, Hammil, Ford, Fisher, Guiness (and not forgetting Anthony Daniels and James Earl Jones), acted their socks off making us absolutely believe in the fictional Galaxy long, long ago (And they've never had the recognition they deserve: Annie Hall won the Oscar but its much easier for a New Yorker to make believe he lives in New York and has ordinary problems than to make us believe he is an alien bounty hunter, fleeing from an evil dictatorship). Really as an acting ensemble, the original films work extremely well, each actor getting the right amount of attention, all of them shooting sparks off each other, each fitting a necessary role. If you watch the first trilogy there's hardly a single line you cringe at or think, "that should have been done better". And it's not just the script, Harrison Ford famously said "George, you can write this sh*t but you sure as hell can't say it". But through effort and talent the actors did say their lines and really made us believe them. And that quote is revealing in other ways, it shows that Lucas was not regarded as a God, the actors had a healthy disrespect, they could make their own decisions on how to say their lines, develop their characters. Now Lucas makes the films with his own money, he has absolute discretion on every aspect of production and the blue-screen technology gives him still more control. These days there is no one to pull him up like Harrison Ford did, and no doubt his studio did. I don't know this but I'm pretty sure Lucas has over-directed Revenge, telling the actors how to say their lines, breaking their spirit in order to produce the hideously wooden performances. I even saw an interview with Ewen McGregor where he complained along these lines. It's extremely rare to hear an actor doing anything less than gushing over director, producer, fellow actors etc (or they wont get hired again), McGregor did not do so directly, but his discontent was clear.
In the first trilogy, Lucas was like Luke Skywalker, flying by the seat of his pants against all the odds. Now, he's like the evil emperor with live or death power over every aspect of life crushing actors in his way. No one dares to contradict him, tell him his script stinks, the story makes no sense, with so many loose ends, characters introduced and dropped, and his direction is heavy handed. In a way, it's quite refreshing to see that no amount of blue-screen can make up for actors who suit their parts well, like and trust each other and their director and have the freedom to create their own characters without being stifled by over-direction.
Specific problems
* Grevious is the worst baddie I've seen. He's introduced to great fanfare then easily defeated by Obi Wan and made to look a fool. And why does he cough? should we not be informed?
* Why the fake kidnapping of Palpatine?
* Samuel Jackson's comatose response to Palpatine being a Sith lord. I've seen better acting in a school nativity, lowest moment of Jackson's career.