Nice pictures... but, "Where's the beef???"

Rating: 5/10 (25 May 2005)

I've been reading a lot of other people's reviews on this film, and I have to say I'm completely surprised at the staggering number who thought this film was a success! I suppose this gives credence to the suspicion that people get paid to vote on this site for certain films that have a lot at stake, like Revenge of the Sith does. If the die-hard fans who frequent this and other such websites were to find out that it stunk, then the film would take a financial hit. The truth, however, is that it did stink.
This movie was lacking in one very fundamental area that made the original trilogy special; a human connection between the audience and the characters. Maybe it's unfair to keep comparing the original 3 to the new 3, but it is inevitable. Personally, I think a lot has to do with the fact that special effects have come so far since 1977 that back then, a movie depended more on a good STORY, good CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT, and good ACTING. Now, these elements can be weak, and as long as the movie has a bunch of flashing lights in every scene, the audience of today will be pleased. Can't people see what they're missing? What about the clear characterization of Han Solo? We all know he is the "Fonz" of outer space because he is scripted as that and played that way perfectly by Harrison Ford. And we connected with his performance, because although this story and this character take place "long ago" and "in a galaxy far-far away", he couldn't be more familiar, with his various human short-comings and strong points. The same goes for all the original characters, who all struck a familiar human chord with us, including the robots! In fact, the robots, R2-D2 and C-3PO, were the most wildly popular characters back then, because of their entertaining human bickering and friendship. Lucas had used a dash of Joseph Cambell psychology and a teaspoon of Japanese film history, combined with his vibrant imagination, and he had lightning in a bottle! And we were all greatly enriched for it! Now, with Episode III, we have characters who we can't seem to connect with, and that is why I believe this film, and the whole recent trilogy, falls way short of expectations. Does anyone really care about what happens to Annikin or Padme? Or care about their secret love affair? This terrible lack of interest in the main characters can be explained in one word: "script". Without a good script, great actors look average, and average actors look plain awful. People will complain about the acting in this film, but don't blame the actors! Blame the person who wrote the unbelievable dialog they are spouting! Blame the bad script for not having enough scenes to create a sense of who these people REALLY are, underneath all their flowery language and super abilities! This film had few scenes where people actually had an opportunity TO act, thanks to all the fight scenes and action sequences which make up a majority of the film. How are we supposed to learn about these people and care about their loves, and their lives and their losses, if we never get a chance to CONNECT with them? In "Star Wars", when Luke is sulking about wanting to leave his hum-drum existence behind, we all understood it because it was a familiar human response to an unfulfilled life, something a lot of people could relate to. At the end of "Empire Strikes Back", it still sends a chill up my spine to hear Darth Vader's confession, because we were so wrapped up emotionally, we felt like he was confessing to each and every one of us! Those scripts were so great and well acted, that people had an emotional response to those scenes, and something magical happened; we cared! We cared because we got a chance to, thanks to great scriptwriting. Now, we could care less.
I don't see how anyone could really feel the emotions involved in this story because there never was a chance for the characters personalities to really grow on us. Sure we got a sense that Obi-Wan and Annikin have a buddy-buddy relationship, but more so because we're TOLD that they do, rather than SHOWN. How many times do we actually see them "hanging out", or sharing their inner most thoughts and feelings to each other? How else are we supposed to learn about their friendship and thus care about them as people, rather than just understand that their friendship simply exists? This is true for EVERY SINGLE RELATIONSHIP between characters in this film, with the one exception of Emperor Palpatine and Annikin, whose relationship is the whole focus of the plot of the story and thus needs to be shown. And even THAT is handled clumsily and without enough emotional investment! Ultimately what we are given is a film that is visually stunning, where every scene looks like a beautiful picture of a far away world, but it's a world where we know nothing about the people who live in it. We have good fight scenes, but none that are truly "great", because we don't have any emotional investment in any of the characters fighting, so we just end up pulling for the good guys because we're supposed to. What a terrible disappointment to a promising series! This one has to rank as the worst of the recent three, mostly because it was supposed to redeem Episodes I & II by tying in this new trilogy with the original trilogy. Instead, we are left with an empty sort of "that's it?!?" type of feeling.