Unemotional, unengaging and does not deliver

Rating: 5/10 (28 May 2005)

The first twenty to thirty moments of Episode III consists of very good action yet manages to be extremely boring. I will compare Return of the Jedi with Revenge of the Sith here. In Jedi, the action scenes with Jabba are thrilling. I saw the flick when I was 10 and the moment when Luke springboards off of the platform, catches the lightsaber and goes to town was one of the coolest things I've ever seen (and still is actually.) The Star Wars music was blaring after a tedious setup and I was excited off of my you-know-what. In Revenge of the Sith, the lead up to the fight with Count Dooku, the fight itself and then the other stuff leading up the crash of the disintegrating ship should have been thrilling also but there was next to no music and it just sort of happened. When the ship landed, I just said to myself "That was really, really boring." Christopher Lee is a great resource and they should have used him more. I was pulling for Hayden Christensen but it was painfully obvious early on that he was just way too boring in his role. Playing a young Jedi with few lines and some fight scenes would have better for him but he is just NOT Darth Vader. McDiarmid steals the acting show as Palpatine but his relationship with Anakin is just not evil enough, not for lack of trying on Palpatine's part. Anakin turns to enormous evil because of his wife? She then dies and he continues on being evil? Psychologically it is just lame and does not hold water at all. Lucas contradicts his own Jedi lingo in this a few times also. Obi Wan and Yoda are almost bored after the carnage that Anakin wreaks. Shouldn't they have been sad or crying or something? In the prequel, Jedi are supposed to be unemotional servants yet they keep talking about "Searching out with their feelings?" Luke was emotional in 4, 5 and 6. Shouldn't anybody have cared in Episode III? It's probable that Christensen wasn't given much of a chance to be emotional. The only chances that he gets are toward the end and they are just not enough. Natalie Portmann is also given a tremendous challenge as she has to cry in almost every scene. She gives it a shot but it just isn't enough. The moments with Vader in the suit are nothing. VADER IS THE GUY IN THE SUIT WITH THE VOICE OF JAMES EARL JONES!!! We get that Vader, the real Vader, for about fifteen seconds. The lines that Jones does have bring back the magic so Lucas responds by giving us fifteen seconds of it. That is NOT a payoff. The special effects are great but other that McDiarmid, the actors don't pay off and the script is boring and unemotional to the point of tedium. Shouldn't somebody have cared here?