Not great, but a nice conclusion to the series

Rating: 6/10 (27 October 2005)

One could spend a whole day going over the reasons why The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones were such train-wrecks, but one of the most obvious problems was George Lucas's basic reason for making them. Instead of existing in their own right, these movies were made to set up a story that had already been told, filling in the gaps of the complicated back-story. For all of the noisy effort and expense put into them, Episode I and II seemed perfunctory, as if Lucas was making them basically just for the sake of symmetry. Episode III benefits from the start from having a real sense of direction and purpose. The story of how Anakin Skywalker was corrupted and became Darth Vader is much more interesting than wars between obscure alien races with bizarre names. In the weeks before the movie came out, rumors were floating around the Internet that the playwright Tom Stoppard had done an uncredited re-write of the dialogue. If this is true, then I can see why Stoppard wouldn't go out of his way to associate himself with the script. Like Episodes 1 and 2, the acting and dialogue are sometimes atrocious, and rarely less than stiff. Hayden Christansen, who plays Anakin, comes off as particularly inept, but since almost no one manages to give a really decent performance, perhaps most of the blame should be placed on the shoulders of George Lucas, who obviously doesn't really understand how to work with actors. Lucas's attempts at lacing Revenge with political undertones are as muddled as the Jedi philosophy, which is particularly incoherent in this installment. At one point we are told that only Sith think in terms of black and white, which might have been meant as a jab at Bush but comes off as nonsensical in the context of the Manichean system on which all of the films are based. And if the Jedi are supposed to let their emotions guide them, then why is Anakin warned that passion will lead him to the Sith? For anyone who hasn't already caught on, this movie will provide conclusive proof that Lucas, whatever his merits as a filmmaker, should not be taken as a great philosopher. I don't think that should at all be held against him; what bothers me is that he tries to include philosophical points in the Star Wars films anyway. For all these faults, I found Revenge of the Sith, on the whole, to be a satisfactory conclusion to the series. It succeeds where it is supposed to: as a spectacle and an origin story for Darth Vader. Lucas kills off Count Dooku too quickly, considering that Christopher Lee is maybe the only non-digitally generated actor who seems comfortable in this trilogy, but the future Emperor proves to be an effective villain; his methods of seducing Anakin to the dark side of the force are considerably more subtle than those he uses on Luke (which basically consist of saying over and over again, "Embrace your hatred and you will come under my power!") Where the movie really takes off, however, is when Anakin, caught in a confrontation between the Chancellor and the Jedi leaders, finally does turn to the Dark Side, beginning with a Godfather baptism- style massacre of the Jedi across the galaxy. At last Lucas has delivered an action scene where we have a real emotional stake in what happens. He concluded The Phantom Menace with a technically well-filmed light-saber duel that nonetheless fell flat dramatically because the participants had no personal grudge against each other but just happened to be on opposing sides. The moment where Yoda turns the tables on his would-be assassins is almost satisfying enough to make up for this dull climax. By now it's a meaningless cliché to praise something for being "dark," but these scenes have a real dramatic intensity that the new trilogy had been lacking. Lucas, however, goes a little too far in his desire to be "dark" when, in one of the most talked-about moments in this sequence, Anakin decides to kill a whole group of children in a Jedi training school. The scene ends before he actually does anything, but it's still a pretty bold scene for the series that also introduced Jar Jar Binks to the world. Maybe a little too bold; the scene comes early on in Anakin's conversion to evil and too quickly pushes him beyond the pale. Of course I knew, as did almost everyone in the theater that night, that Anakin was going to turn into the incarnation of evil, but Lucas should have made this change from asshole to evil incarnate at least a little more gradual. As it is, the long-awaited confrontation between Anakin and Obi-Wan lacks some the power it should have had, since there's not even the possibility that Obi-Wan can pull his student back from the Dark Side. Lucas does a fair job of setting everything up for the real first movie, even managing to explain the presence of R2-D2 and C3-PO, which in Phantom struck me as a cheap, crowd-pleasing sop to the fans. The series' storyline is still riddled with holes, but that shouldn't bother anyone who has realized by now that Lucas never had a real overarching plan, but has really just been winging it for over a quarter of a century. But for all of my misgivings about the Star Wars series in general and this entry in particular, I couldn't help but be moved at Sith's conclusion as familiar images appeared- of Tatooine's twin suns, of the druids in the gleaming white halls of a spaceship, and of Darth Vader standing menacingly on the command deck of his battleship- bringing the story full circle.