Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith

I’m not going to bother with not revealing spoilers since I’m probably the only person in the world who has only just now watched Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. I’d have to agree with most that Revenge of the Sith is one of the better Star Wars movies… although I think Star Wars has grown into a much greater mythology than the quality of the movies themselves would indicate.

This isn’t to say that I didn’t enjoy the movie. I thought it was a good ending to the first 3 eps, a marked improvement over Eps 1 and Ep 2, and the action was brisk. However, I am by nature a rather critical person and I tend to focus on the worse aspects of a movie.

One of those glaring bad aspects is the acting. However, maybe the bad acting isn’t really bad, because it’s almost like an intrinsic part of the Star Wars charm. Star Wars is a blend of camp (bad acting, muppets) and dead-serious subjects (the slide of democracy into dictatorship, the destruction of an entire planet’s population, fighting for freedom, the temptation of evil for the cause of good). Also, Hayden Christensen’s acting improves by magnitudes after he transforms from Anakin Skywalker to Darth Vader. He still delivers his lines in Star Wars’s wooden style, but at least he’s got the crazy eyes.

Brisk action is in general a good thing, but it does create some really abrupt changes. For instance, how does Anakin Skywalker go from “I will have you arrested” to Palatine one moment to “YOU ARE MY MASTER” the next? One moment: tortured hero trying to do the right thing but feeling continually frustrated. The next moment: badass Darth Vader killing everyone without remorse. The most glaring abrupt transition is in Obi-Wan Kenobi’s relationship to Anakin Skywalker. In their climactic duel, one moment, Obi-Wan Kenobi begs Anakin to not engage in a suicidal attack. The next moment, when Anakin lies defeated, Obi-Wan gives a short farewell speech and then just leaves his pupil. Not even an attempt to help his pupil, whom just a minute before, he was telling NOT to attack.

That’s probably the major disappointment in the lightsaber duel, and perhaps a side-effect of the focus of action rather than of character interaction in these tech-savvy times. The main appeal of Star Wars lightsaber duels, in my opinion, has always been in the characters, rather than in the action. Ep 1 was when Obi-Wan Kenobi came into his own. Ep IV had his sacrifice to help Luke come into his own. Ep 5 showed the connection between Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker, and thus showed us Darth Vader as a tragic villain rather than as just a bad guy. Ep 6 had Luke skirting the Dark Side but refusing to give in (in contrast to his father, and hence the happy ending to 6 rather than the dark ending to 3). Ep 3’s sudden ending to the duel takes away from the character charm of the fight. However, it was still a decent fight, and in any case, it had more character than Ep 2’s fight, where there was no underlying tension, just a brawl. Another problem with Ep 2’s duel is that after seeing Count Dooku stand toe to toe with YODA, the legendary jedi master, it’s a little unconvincing to see him get owned so fast in EP 3’s duel.

One of the better aspects of this movie is that what's usually considered "good" (love) is what pushes Anakin to the Dark Side (because only the Sith Lord promises a way for Anakin to save his wife from death). I thought that was a good element of ambiguity, showing that the world isn't just black and white.

Overall, I liked Revenge of the Sith. It’s definitely much darker than the previous movies, and darkness is an automatic plus. Conflict is what builds drama. Yet, Sith isn’t complete darkness, either. It contains enough hope to make Episode IV a smooth follow-up to it.