The end of the beginning

Rating: 7/10 (5 October 2008)

Of the three prequels this is probably the best although it does suffer from George's addiction to CGI special effects, it seems that because it is possible to have hundreds of ships in a battle he has to have hundreds even though it just looks cluttered. It also suffers some what because we know what has to happen as this is a link between the prequels and Star Wars; Obi-Wan and Yoda have to survive and Anakin has to become Darth Vader, this of course is unavoidable.
The story itself is exciting enough featuring plenty of light sabre fights, the realisation that Chancellor Palpatine is in fact the Sith lord Darth Sidious and the clone army turning on the Jedi and killing most of them.
The film starts with Obi Wan and Anakin having to rescue the chancellor from the evil Count Dooku and his droid henchman General Grievous. Once Anakin has beaten and disarmed Dooku the chancellor tells him to kill him as he is too dangerous, this Anakin does after some hesitation. As a "reward" for this the chancellor asks Anakin to be his representative on the council, he accepts the offer but is offended when the council refuse to make him a Jedi Master. While this is going on he is troubled by dreams about Padmé dying in child birth thus he becomes drawn to the chancellor when he tell him that it is possible to use the dark side of the force to prevent death. He isn't totally taken in though as when Palpatine makes it clear that he is a Sith lord he reports back to Jedi Master Mace Windu who goes to confront the Chancellor. Anakin interrupts them when it appears that Palpatine has been defeated and Windu is going to kill him, Anakin protects the chancellor who is in fact far from defeated, he kills Windu and Anakin realises he has made a mistake, strangely at this point it only takes a few words from Palpatine to get Anakin to switch allegiances and help Palpatine slaughter the Jedi so he can over through the republic and create his empire.
The new emperor dispatches Anakin, now the Sith lord Darth Vader, to volcanic planet of Mustafar to kill his previous allies. Padmé follows him when she hears from Obi Wan what he has done, she confronts him and begs him to stop what he is doing so they can live a quiet life together, he however refuses saying he will overthrow the emperor so the two of them can rule the galaxy together. She is horrified at this and when Obi Wan appears from her ship, which he had stowed away on, Vader thinks Padmé has betrayed him and uses the force to choke her. This leads to the climactic battle between Vader and Obi-Wan which is inter-cut with a simultaneous battle between Yoda and the emperor. It isn't giving too much away to say that Vader ends up badly maimed and burn and the emperor beats Yoda who manages to escape. The film ends with the birth of Luke and Leah and the "rebirth" of Anakin as the black-helmeted Darth Vader we know from the original films.
If you watched the first to prequels I'm sure you'll enjoy this too although some scenes may be a bit frightening for younger viewers. As with the other prequels the dialogue was pretty hammy so even quality actors like Ewan McGregor can't make it sound good. The way many of the battles took place at the same time as others and we kept switching between them was frustrating, instead of increasing the excitement it seemed to reduce it. Ian McDiarmid comes off best as he clearly knows he is playing a pantomime villain and acts accordingly, an option not really available to those playing the heroes of the story. Like the other prequels I think it would have been better if George had just written the basic story then got somebody else to write the screenplay with better dialogue and somebody else to direct who was more interested in actors than "cool" CGI.