Lucas "Strikes Back" with "Sith"

Rating: 8/10 (22 May 2005)

Congratulations to George Lucas and the cast and crew of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith for finally bringing to us fans the prequel that we have been waiting for during the past 6 years. Revenge of the Sith is not only a significantly better movie when compared to Episodes I and II, but it also stacks up well with the movies of the old trilogy, and provides a wonderful bridge between the lackluster Attack of the Clones and A New Hope.
Sure, I have my bones to pick with "ROTS," but I'll get to that in time. What deserves commending is first and foremost Hayden Christensen's believable and passionate portrayal of Anakin Skywalker's fall to the dark side. Despite being given horrifically weak lines to read, his delivery of them was convincing and dramatic. What's more, he was able to make the audience sympathize with Anakin Skywalker, to make them understand why he did what he did -- a difficult task to accomplish when playing such a cruel character. Also worthy of praise was the overdue chemistry between Ewan MacGregor and Christensen, which did not fully blossom until the middle of this third installment of the new trilogy. The relationship between these two men connects the audience to the picture and makes the climax all the more heart-wrenchingly powerful. Finally, the method of story-telling in ROTS was at its best throughout. Instead of long, tedious scenes as were those in I and II, George Lucas cut some scenes to almost under one minute long, and yet still managed to tell a complete and detailed story in a not-too-fast-paced manner. The frequent parallelisms drawn to the old trilogy were a very nice touch that had been mostly missing from the earlier installments.
However, this was not -- although it may sound like I think it was -- a flawless movie. It had problems, and not just a few, but that's all I'll touch on for now. Once again, George Lucas seemed to have skipped about 10 edits in the screen writing process and this resulted in weak, ineffective lines of dialogue that even Academy-award nominated actors and actresses (i.e. Natalie Portman) struggled to make sound coherent. We were plagued once again with lines like (SPOILER WARNING) "From my point of view, the Jedi are evil," and "-I have wonderful news, I'm pregnant. -That's wonderful," or even Ewan MacGregor's over-acted shouting of the line "I am on the side of democracy!" Also, while Hayden Christensen did do a nearly perfect job in his portrayal of Skywalker/Vader, I found his motives for turning to the dark side -- the whole premise of the movie -- to be questionable. It seemed like far too sudden a fall, and in a span of about 10 minutes, the Separatists were goners, the Republic had given way to the Empire, every Jedi save 2 or 3 was massacred, and Anakin had become Vader. All of this development required slightly more time merely because of the significance to the overall plot of the saga. There were out-of-place scenes that were forced into the movie for questionable reasons. The battle on Kashyyk could easily have been cut, as it was of no importance except to give Chewbacca two final grunts on screen, and, frankly, General Grievous could have been completely eliminated from the entire movie and his loss would hardly have been felt. He's the second coming of Darth Maul and ROTS' mistake character, ala Jar Jar Binks.
Despite these trivial flaws, the movie had far more upside than downside, and amounted into the best -- by leaps and bounds -- installment in the new trilogy, and perhaps the finest Star Wars movie in 25 years. Worth a trip to the movies, and it'll make you want to see the old trilogy right afterwards. You may just want to see it a second time, even if you're not a die-hard fan. I know I do, and I'm not.