It's Paradise Lost-in-Space--And You Won't Care About Any of Them

Rating: 3/10 (31 May 2005)

If you've seen the documentaries on the three-DVD release of the first three films, then you know that Lucas invested a lot of time researching the works of Joseph Campbell, the great 20th-century folklorist who was responsible for the concept of the monomyth, among other Jungian interpretations of human legend. As such, Lucas' failure to achieve even the most rudimentary tasks of tragedy in this film (which--by all accounts--is staged, presented and deserves to be an epic tragedy--Paradise Lost-in-Space) is utterly confounding, considering the attention he obviously gave in the attempt to make this film conform to those archetypal themes. To begin with, he does not clearly establish Anakin's greatness. There's a big battle at the beginning, and he does some heroic things, but there is no real sense that he is "bigger than life" as such a character must be. How can his fall be great unless we see how far he has to fall? Lucas half-heartedly attempts to "tell" us that in the brief banter between Obi Wan and Anakin when they arrive back at the Senate, but he fails in the attempt. Also, there is very little to make the audience feel that his love for Padme is so intense that he is willing to do anything to save her--or that his pride is so great that he's willing to use that as an excuse to sell his soul. Sure, we know his mother died, and he killed all of the sandpeople in his anger, but we're left to assume that this is in some way related to his feelings for Padme because Lucas devotes no screen time to showing us this in any tangible way. Furthermore, it is a complete mystery how the senator can actually be Darth Sidious and the Jedi are in such a cloud about that, and perhaps most confounding of all, why Lucas didn't even imply that such a powerful being might have been plotting all along to do so; wouldn't it make sense that he's the one causing Anakin's nightmares? Why not imply that? As a result, Sidious' seduction of Anakin seems like an afterthought--sort of a "Well, Count Dooku's dead. Who's gonna be my new gopher?" As such, the audience has no connection with Anakin that allows us to feel his struggle. Why??? Nothing changed when Sidious slaughtered Mace Windu. Why Anakin would keep Windu from killing Sidious because of the Jedi code one minute and kneel and pledge himself to the dark side the next minute is completely unjustified--not to mention the fact that he is then immediately capable of going to the Jedi temple and slaughtering children without a second thought. Because there is no justification for his fall, the "slaughter of the innocents" (another archetypal theme) isn't loaded with any emotional force--we don't really care. We don't care that Padme dies of a broken heart, we don't care that Vader screams "NO!" when he finds out, we just don't care because Lucas doesn't give us any human facet to the story to grab hold of on an emotional level. The most emotionally-delivered line of the movie comes from Obi Wan who, after cutting off Anakin's legs, says, "I loved you like a brother." He has tears in his eyes, but he just watches Anakin slide down close enough to the lava to catch fire--but then doesn't bother to put him out of his misery. Yeh, that's a brother for ya.
This film had great special effects and there was such great potential to the story. Lucas needed someone to help with the script, and it would've helped to have had a director capable of directing actors. He needed what Wes Anderson is always capable of pulling off (when Owen Wilson is co-writing, that is), which is that ability to suddenly, and very subtly, make you feel the humanity of his characters. Lucas had every chance to break our hearts and he never did it. That is the great failure of this film.