SITH: Right letters, wrong order.

Rating: 6/10 (19 May 2005)

Lucas' last visit to Planet Hype is a disappointing affair and provides final proof that his obsession with digital effects and the possibilities they allow has, in a disturbing parallel with his ill fated on screen protagonist, blinded him to whats really important - the storytelling fundamentals. Having now seen the third and final Star Wars prequel I'm as confused as ever by the hysteria it's generated, especially in light of the hyperbole that has followed this film into cinemas, not least by those whom have actually SEEN it. Inital reviews have been overwhelmingly positive with comments like "Lucas recaptures the old magic" and endless variations on old chestnuts like "a worthy addition to the Star Wara saga" and "wonderful storytelling". I'm here to tell you this is nonsense. Revenge of the Sith may be better than its two predecessors but contrary to what you may have read it doesn't address any of the fundamental flaws that mired those films nor can it claim to be a success in its own right as it fails to adequately resolve the series back story satisfactorily. Once again you have a movie in which two years are allocated for visual effects but comparatively little time is spent on character direction or the screenplay. Consequently Sith is doomed before a single pixel has been generated because no volume of visual splendour can touch up those performances or that dialogue. Lucas may think these things are unimportant, in fact he's on record as having described dialogue (astonishingly) as just another sound effect, seemingly having forgotten that audience's relate to and invest in characters not rendered spaceships and lightsaber noises. The acting here is uniformly atrocious with good actors like Ewan McGregor and Natalie Portman looking as though they were terrified of the camera and loathe to speak the plodding words that have been forced into their mouths. Mimimalist direction plays a part sure but the actors themselves should take some responsibility for every cringe inducing moment. The stilted, slow delivery and the lack of any verifiable emotion serves only to blunt the impact of the stories various moments of 'high drama'. Helen Keller would have made a more communicative Annakin Skywalker than Hayden Christensen. Ian MaDarmid makes the best of the material but even he, this time having been tantalisingly placed at the forefront of proceedings, veers from effective hamming to simple embarrassment on a few occasions. A tighter plot is nevertheless laden with botched plot points and continuity errors. The Jedi purge for example comes at the execution (no pun intended) of the Emperor's "order 66" which turns the cloned troopers on their Jedi masters. Fine but why hasn't this order been alluded to previously? A hint, a passing reference, a mention in Episode II, anything would have done but nothing until the moment itself?! Equally the double whammy of the Jedi's immortality via the force and Padme's death are poorly and thoughtlessly handled. Padme, taking her lead from the audience, apparently dies having 'lost the will to live', otherwise in perfect health. A midwife-droid tells Obi-Wan that he can't explain her condition which would be OK if there were any possibility the question may be answered later but with IV, V and VI in the can we now know it will never be addressed. Why set up a plot point you can't deal with? Utterly ridiculous. If Lucas is telling us she died of a broken heart he's officially and finally broken mine. The Jedi's immortality is also a fudge. Yoda tells Obi-Wan he must use his time in exile to gain the ability from no less than Qui-Gon. Assuming you accept that this has any internal story logic you might want to ask why or rather Qui the great man hasn't appeared to Obi-Wan previously, why just Yoda? In any event we now know why Yoda and Kenobi can do it, how you may ask, did Annakin learn? Palpatine made no mention of a Sith lord having the ability to bring THEMSELVES back from the dead. In fact the inconsistencies go on and on from Leia having memories of the mother she met for all of five seconds to the Death Star's embryonic appearance at the end prompting the question of just how long they actually take to build. Return of the Jedi suggests the turnover time is a great deal less than 20 years but why let what you've already established get in the way of a good story? Speaking of that story the devil is once again in the detail and if you look closely you can see him sticking two fingers up at you throughout the running time. The Jedi are still mirth inducingly slow to see the bleedin' obvious and as most of them are about as charismatic as plant life it's difficult to feel sympathy when they're brutally slain. So Star Wars in finally all over and so too I think, is its reputation. Millions felt it belonged to them but one man knew they were wrong and brutally proved it. This 2nd set of films was intended to broaden and deepen the series' mythology but in fact its betrayed the source of its own success, namely its fans, by replacing the dynamism, adventure and memorable characters of those films with self-important and ill-conceived prequels which have weakened the series overall and tarnished the older episodes by locking them into a back story with little or no emotive resonance. What you're left with then, when all the hype and related nonsense finally fritters away, is a six act movie in which the first act is unwatchable, the second is patchy but poor and the third ups the tempo but makes a mess of its promise. It's all very well telling people it gets better in the second 7 hours but seriously, who's going to want to watch a movie like that? Over to you world.