Disinsterested directing, poor acting, great effects

Rating: 4/10 (20 December 2007)

Now all the prequels have been made and seen. So how do they stack up? A New Hope was certainly a winner. The moderate pace, solid acting and intriguing action that you could follow clearly all combined seamlessly. Interestingly, that was topped by Empire Strikes Back which provided not only an intriguing story, more solid acting and terrific contrasts of atmosphere; it also was a magnificent dramatic "second act" which captivated audiences. Return of the Jedi slid back down a little, but was still a strong film and was a fairly good wind up.
Then the prequels followed. The Phantom Menace was, in retrospect, the best of the prequels. However, no loyal star wars fan would have thought that when they first walked out of the cinema. They assumed the best was yet to come. Phantom somehow managed to recapture the "feel" and magic of the previous star wars and this has a lot to do with the director paying strong attention to the acting and providing patient, yet intriguing, story telling.
The dramatic step down came with Attack of the Clones. The story was more or less filling in space and story between Phantom and Sith. Christiansen, unfortunately, was dreafully miscast and I put that down to Lucas being determined to cast unknowns (like he did in the first three) and hopefully launch some careers. The acting was absolutely woeful and it was the first time we saw the director being notably disinterested in creating a film where the performances and plotting matched the special effects..
Since most of the acting was done in front of blue screens, the director needed to be even more proactive in getting the best out of the cast. But instead, I would bet that lucas was happy filming for 20-30 minutes until the quality of the acting was passable, then he ran off with the film stock and spent the rest of the day with the special effects guys to polish it up to perfection. Moreover, key moments in the film (such as Anakin finding his mother and then killing her captors, Padme and Anakin falling in love) were dreadfully acted and it felt as if the star wars magic was fading rapidly. The film dramatically redeemed itself by throwing Yoda into a light saber fight at the end, but take that out of the film and what do you think now?
Then Revenge of the Sith. The one we were waiting for. The opening was terrific, action packed adventure. But beyond that, it fell back and became a mixture of poor acting, poor scripting and disinterested directing. The scenes with Anakin and Padme were unwatchable. Even Samuel L Jackson looked lost in many sequences and his acting seemed poor and his character ultimately came off as under developed. The Empire/Palpatine stole the show in the end, but I would say that it had more to do with his ability as an actor rather than Lucas as a director. Even the reliable Ewan McGreggor stumbled a few times. The scene where Obi Wan looks at the security video and discovers Anakin killed the Jedi was some of the worst acting he's churned out in his career. This clearly demonstrates how Lucas was just interested in getting the scene over and done with, rather than polishing every facet of the film and making it credible.
The grand double fight scenes (Palpatine/Yoda and Anakin/Obi-Wan) were not really that good at all. Too much fast camera work and as a result, it was difficult to work out who was doing what. Often it seemed to be just a mess of light sabers flying around in all directions. The way Obi Wan defeated Anakin was fairly meek, as was Yoda's acceptance of defeat. But in any case, I felt that the IDEA of having this double-fight sequence at the end was unimaginative, somewhat childish and ultimately unsatisfying.
In fact, the whole film was deeply unsatisfying all round and in the end, I agreed with Darth Vader's dramatic "Noooooooo....." (even though that was probably the most unwatchable moment of all six Star Wars films).
Lucas didn't clearly plot out a great story for Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith, instead just filling in the missing links with obvious story and dialog. Importantly, I thought that Vader turning to the dark side to save Padme was relatively ill-conceived as well. Lucas would have been better advised to not make the prequels at all or, instead, to spend more time rewriting his first attempt at the prequels until it was sufficiently good enough on paper. If he wanted to be the director as well, he needed to have shown more interest and dedication to bringing the performances, plotting and credibility up to scratch. Like i said early, he seemed to have a done a pretty good job with Phantom Menace. But the two that followed are not worthy of a place in the "Star Wars" series.