Movie Notes: Star Wars Episode 3: Revenge Of The Sith

August 31st, 2009

= 4 stars

Starring Ewan McGregor, Hayden Christiansen, Natalie Portman
Directed by George Lucas

Synopsis

With the Clone Wars raging for three years, Jedi knights Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) and Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christiansen) are dispatched to free Chancellor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid), held captive by the robotic General Grievous.

The Good

• Ian McDiarmid turns in a key performance that pushes the film into worth-seeing territory. After being essentially a support character in the past two prequels, here he lets the Sith freak-flag fly, with scene-stealing nasty behavior that links up to the evil-personified Emperor of Return Of The Jedi. Key is the opera scene where he manipulates and preys on the immature emotions of Anakin, and also his confrontation with Mace Windu where he fakes helplessness to get Anakin to attack his fellow Jedi. I also love his twisted lightsaber style with bizarre facial expressions. It’s fairly cool that one old dude sitting in an opera box telling a creepy story eventually outsmarts all the Jedi and sneakily takes control of an entire galaxy.
• After two movies of noodling, we finally get the Star Wars backstory we’ve waited decades for: Obi Wan’s lightsaber battle with Anakin and his turn to the dark side. While some of the jumping-about is a bit over the top, the emotions are there, and when Obi Wan nearly kills his friend, Lucas doesn’t hold back from showing how Anakin became physically disfigured, requiring placement in the Frankenstein-like Darth Vader outfit.
• Links up to the original trilogy in interesting ways and puts a different spin on old material: Senator Bail Organa takes custody of Leia aboard the same ship that would eventually be swallowed up by the star destroyer at the start of A New Hope. The original trilogy’s mysterious villain Darth Vader becomes a sympathetic character, finally redeemed at the end of Return Of The Jedi. Some skillful special effects, surely using the original trilogy as reference, make this film flow surprisingly well into the other films made decades prior.

The Bad

• As with Attack Of The Clones, a lot of the lovey-dovey stuff between Padme and Anakin is difficult to accept and often painful. Therefore, his turn to the dark side still fails to convince. I blame this on direction and also the screenplay. I wish the love story between Padme and Anakin could be taken more seriously in this installment, and a big reason why it can’t be, is memory of the immature, puppy-dog stuff from the previous installment.
• A few head-scratchingly off moments: old Palpatine running around the failing battle cruiser, the ridiculous lizard beast Obi Wan rides, the Wookie’s Tarzan yell (having Yoda know Chewbacca was totally unnecessary), and lastly — Darth Vader screaming “Noooooooooooooooooo!”

Conclusion

Despite my complaints above, Revenge Of The Sith is the best of the prequels, providing moments I had wanted to see ever since the prequel trilogy was announced. It largely achieves its goals of linking up with the original trilogy and telling the Darth Vader back story. Very key is a manipulative performance by Ian McDiarmid that sells the evil lurking beneath all six movies. It occasionally left me wanting more - meaning, a return to the previous two movies to fix their relative crappiness.

IMDB: Revenge Of The Sith
Wikipedia: Revenge Of The Sith
Rotten Tomatoes: Revenge Of The Sith