On some level, we always knew how this story was going to end. Anakin Skywalker would ditch his original identity and become the evil Darth Vader. The Jedi would be hunted to the point of extinction forcing Obi-Wan and Yoda into exile. The Galactic Republic would be subverted from within and become the Galactic Empire. We just didn't know quite how it all got to that point.
During recess, we would theorize that it came from a duel between a much younger Vader and Obi-Wan by a volcano. Obi-Wan would leave the defeated Vader for dead leaving him burned by the heat and toxic fumes needing the iconic black armored suit to survive. That was the rumored backstory so seeing those first trailer images of that actually taking place in
Revenge of the Sith brought us all right back to those schoolyard fantasies.
In a sharp contrast to
Attack of the Clones, I was excited for Episode III going as far to skip my last class of the day in high school when it came out on May 15 to catch a showing at the local cinema. It was the movie that we had been promised all along since the announcement of the prequels over six years ago. But did it suck?
Well, yes and no.
It's not hyperbole to say
Revenge of the Sith is the best of the Star Wars prequel trilogy; that's just empirical fact. But make no mistake, it's still a pretty bad movie. I remember people saying that the third
Star Wars prequel was better than some of the weaker installments in the original trilogy and I just kind of nodded silently and walked away in abject horror. Guys, Hayden Christensen's acting didn't magically get any better over the previous three years. And, if anything, he has less chemistry with Portman than he did in Episode II.
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| "You're almost done with these movies forever, Natalie..." |
I do like the big outer space naval battle that kicks off the whole thing but instead of keeping Christopher Lee's Count Dooku, George Lucas decides to expend the
Attack of the Clones antagonist early and replace him with the asthmatic praying mantis cyborg that is General Grievous. Also, General "Grievous"? Was General "This-dude-is-fucking-bad-guy" already taken?
Lucas had never been the strongest screenwriter and I think a lot of the prequels lack of quality is because, by then, he had become a nigh-mythological figure himself surrounded by yes men afraid to give him peer review. What that means is some of the most ham-fisted dialogue slips into the final product ("Anakin, hold like you did on by the lake of Naboo" whispers future Academy Award winner Natalie Portman). What makes it worse is the complete lack of subtlety this time around with moments like when Anakin and Obi-Wan locked in mortal combat.
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| My favorite shot in the film; Kenobi trying to appeal to his friend one last time while Anakin has already literally and figuratively turned his back to him. |
"Anakin, Chancellor Palpatine is evil!"
begs Obi-Wan to his former apprentice.
"From my point of view, the Jedi are evil!" sneers Anakin with all the subtlety of a narrative brick applied straight to the fucking face and with all the energy of a man that has chugged an entire bottle of Nyquil while watching Bob Ross.
Yes, there is finally some emotional content to those fancy hyperkinetic lightsaber fights but the moment we had all been waiting for with Anakin Skywalker becoming Vader is completely undercut with melodramatic cry of defeat from our protagonist turned villain.
The worst offender of all is actually Ian McDiarmid in his final performance as the newly crowned Emperor Palpatine. His line delivery here is perhaps the worst I've ever seen in a big budget action film. It's fine when he's just scheming in the shadows or posing as a respectable leader of the Republic but when he reveals his true colors and takes on the Jedi, I have to walk out of the room because my next instinctive option is to blind and deafen myself forever.
Having gone on that diatribe, let me say that McGregor's performance as Obi-Wan is his best here which is what saves the whole thing as well as the duel on Mustafar. And I get a little misty when Obi-Wan hands off the infant Luke to his aunt and uncle while the familiar
Star Wars theme plays softly in the background. It's little moments like that that remind us that we should be feeling something for these characters.
Lucas was working against a whole world of expectation when he started working on the prequel trilogy in earnest. But what he had created was a trilogy so devoid of emotion and charisma that it put people off of
Star Wars for years. The other side of that is he did open up and introduce the franchise to a whole new generation of fans; without the prequels, there's a whole slew of multimedia from TV shows like
Clone Wars and
Rebels to video games like
Bounty Hunter and
Republic Commando that don't exist and the mythos would be poorer for it. It was inept world-building but it was still fully realized world-building nonetheless. Which makes the next entry's blatant cash grab all the more frustrating.
It's not hyperbole to say Revenge of the Sith is the best of the Star Wars prequel trilogy; that's just empirical fact. But make no mistake, it's still a pretty bad movie. I remember people saying that the third Star Wars prequel was better than some of the weaker installments in the original trilogy and I just kind of nodded silently and walked away in abject horror. Guys, Hayden Christensen's acting didn't magically get any better over the previous three years. And, if anything, he has less chemistry with Portman than he did in Episode II.
Lucas had never been the strongest screenwriter and I think a lot of the prequels lack of quality is because, by then, he had become a nigh-mythological figure himself surrounded by yes men afraid to give him peer review. What that means is some of the most ham-fisted dialogue slips into the final product ("Anakin, hold like you did on by the lake of Naboo" whispers future Academy Award winner Natalie Portman). What makes it worse is the complete lack of subtlety this time around with moments like when Anakin and Obi-Wan locked in mortal combat.
