An excellent recovery in the series and the only prequel to Star Wars IV: A New Hope

Rating: 8/10 (13 May 2005)

"Twenty eight years, I worked it out" said the guy next to me as we sat and waiting for the movie to start. For those of us who saw, and loved, the original Star Wars trilogy this has been a long wait, and the journey over the past few years an extremely disappointing one. So when the music began and those famous words appeared, my excitement and expectations could not have been any higher.
Firstly, let me pitch where my review is coming from. I did love the original Star Wars, and I thought that Episode I was awful, it should have been just twenty minutes of a real movie, and the excellent baddie of Darth Maul should have been made much more of. Episode II, for me, didn't fair much better, and if you asked me now what I liked, I find it hard to remember much other than the closing scene.
The words appeared and the scrolling tomes with the music booming and the camera panned down through the stars...
The first twenty to thirty minutes had me really worried. I thought that this was going to turn out to be another Clones, with huge battles and every droid or non-human creature that was encountered spoke with a stupid childlike voice. Excuse me for one moment, if I'm going to build an army of robots, or even just a few to maintain a space ship I'm going to make absolutely sure that they have decent voices that wouldn't cause my troops to shoot them in the face after days of space travel. Anyway, my worries grew, and my expectations fell through to the floor.
That soon changed though. The movie picks up pace, brings together the crucial parts of the story that let you see exactly where it's going and set various events in motion to produce some stunningly satisfying moments. All except for one that is, one crucial pay off moment is done so badly and looks so wrong it ruined it for me. There are some exceptionally cheesy moments too, and these tend to be at the points where various strands of the story are brought together and a revelation or pay off moment is about to come.
However, for the most part the movie builds the darkness in Anakin slowly, and you are shown the gradual change of him moving from the light to the dark side. You can actually see how hard some of the decisions are that he faces in order to walk his path, and there are decisions, not just one moment of a choice. What you also see is that his decisions are not clear cut, they are hard and torturous, it pains him to travel to the dark path. You also see just how brutal and evil the dark side is, but also that even the Sith believe, in their own ways, that what they are doing is for the good of the Galaxy. You actually have some understandings of their motives and the light and dark are not the polar opposites you may have once thought.
The acting range is huge here. Both the Emporer and Anakin are played superbly by Ian McDiarmid and Hayden Christensen, despite the odd cheesy piece of dialogue, whereas Ewan McGregor does feel like he tries too hard to be Alec Guinness and seems stifled and restrained in his more human moments. For me the two baddies are by far the best acted, along with that of Yoda. Despite being funny in his previous fight scene of Episode II, in this movie he really is the flag carrier for the Jedi and his scenes are huge stealers. This time you believe he's the strongest Jedi.
I can't go without talking of the battle scenes. They are amazing, the effects and the CGI work is truly stunning, and Lucas and his team have really excelled here. The huge swooping scenes, scale of battles and ships, camera movement through the CGI, etc. it's a wonderful sight to behold, and this time it doesn't overtake the story. Even the Jedi fighting scenes are a huge improvement, there are more, they seem slicker and involve the use of more powers. The fight scenes with General Grevious are superb, only bettered by the final battles of the Jedi masters.
Okay so what did I think of the movie? Well, after those twenty eight years it has a lot to live up to. It has to complete the circle and bring the audience who grew up with the originals right back to that point, it also had to cater for those new generations that Lucas had pulled in with his kiddies Episode I and teens Episode II. Most importantly though, he had to get the adults back. For me, he's done it. Yes, there are faults, and there are some key scenes that are destroyed but there are some amazingly strong ones.
The scene where Anakin looks out across the city to Padme's palace, and she looks back towards the Jedi temple, is surprisingly strong, and perfectly positioned. The decisions and actions have led to this point and now Anakin faces his toughest choice, and the movie reflects this. It's perfectly timed, it carries the weight of the movie and the tipping point is reached, the decision made. You can feel the tension and the heartache in those moments, and then C3PO walks in. At least he doesn't say anything. It's at moments like this you can see the brilliance in these movies and in Lucas, but now and again something brings it down, although thankfully this really does stop in the latter half of the movie and it just gets darker and darker, and bleaker and bleaker.