I've got a bad feeling about this...

Rating: 3/10 (25 May 2005)

I actually heard one reviewer (for whom I have no respect) proclaim that this movie might be the best Star Wars film ever, including the original three. Is that even possible? Or, was it at least the best of the prequels? Or, given the low standards set by the first two parts of the prequel trilogy, could Revenge of the Sith at least not be a disappointment? The answers to those questions is no, no, and no (that last one is tricky, given the double negative). To cut to the chase of this review, I thought this movie was terrible. The worst of the whole bunch. Worse than Attack of the Clones (which I did not like at all), worse than The Phantom Menace (which I didn't mind, and found to be average). Now that I've seen all the prequels, as a moderate fan of the original trilogy, I'm going to pretend that they never happened.
A few reasons why this movie sucked (sucked long and sucked hard): maybe 10% of what we see on the screen, through the whole movie, looks like it existed somewhere on the physical plane we inhabit (i.e., not created on a computer). You know, if I wanted to see that much CGI, I think I would've been better off watching a cartoon. Here's the thing: I'm far past the point where I can be impressed by the graphic abilities of computer artists. I get it, you can create anything. That doesn't make it impressive or interesting in of itself. George Lucas seems have never heard the adage "more is less", or, if he has heard it, spits in the face of it. Instead of focusing on one important detail and using his shot and landscapes to enhance and accentuate it, he fills the shot with as much eye candy as he can, to the point of annoying distraction. I think the goal is to make it so busy and detailed that the geeks will see it dozens of times in the hope of catching everything, but for me, it comes off as a kind of visual masturbation, and a sign of a guy who is far too in love with all his new graphics toys.
The dialogue in this movie very well might be the worst I've ever heard in a movie. Ever. If not the worst, it's definitely in the top five. The acting is stilted and wooden, for which I can't even blame the actors. It's quite apparent that Lucas treats his actors as little more than set pieces, and once they've belted out their pathetic lines, he wants them to get the hell out of the way so he can throw in more cool stuff. In this respect, I think Lucas is a lot like many Star Wars fanatics themselves: he long ago rejected the usefulness and need for human interaction. There's a reason why Yoda and R2-D2 are the most interesting and fully actualised characters in the movie.
Those are just some of the many reasons why Revenge of the Sith sucked. There are more, but to really get into them, I'd have to make this a spoiler-laden review. Instead, I'll forward a theory about why the prequels sucked (a theory that doesn't involve George Lucas' failings as a director or writer, those ones are easy). Here's why the prequels were doomed to fail: they are basically exercises in fleshing out, explaining, and revealing the mythology of Star Wars. Since the release of the original trilogy, a vast and large mythology has been built about the story that was only hinted at in the original movies. There were books, comics, cartoons, video games and more that laid out the back story that lead to "Episode IV". And that's fine. When the prequels came out, it was now time for that back story, the heart of the mythology, to be built.
The problem isn't that it's impossible to live up to the expectations of fans who have been living it for years, the problem is that film is the wrong medium for myth-building. Books, comics, television, these are the mediums to support such an exercise. A movie should be a 2 - 2.5 hour story, not an attempt to justify the existence of a story. The prequels were basically a 7 hour origin story of Darth Vader. Oooooooh, exciting. Vader wasn't even the most interesting character from the original trilogy, he just had the coolest costume.
And the costume is still cool, in fact, the coolest three seconds of Revenge of the Sith is when Anakin puts on the helmet for the first time and breathes. Two bad the other 140 minutes were so painful to watch.