Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith does exactly what it has to do, no more and no less. It brings each of the characters into place for the real Star Wars to begin by connecting the dots between the two ponderous prequels that preceded it and the magical movies from the late 70’s and early 80’s that started this phenomenon. It does so competently, but doesn’t really add anything new, in my opinion, to the overall saga. Having seen all of the prequels now, I’m not sure that Darth Vader’s backstory was even worth telling.
It’s possible that the problem is larger that the flaws built into George Lucas’ movies. It’s hard to take Vader all that seriously as an icon of evil when he spends so much time on TV these days chopping mop handles with his light saber and ‘force’ choking talking M%26Ms. How seriously could we take Hannibal Lector if he was on TV every commercial break telling us how he likes to eat his Whopper with some fava beans and a nice Chianti? Of course, Star Wars was the movie that created modern movie marketing and merchandizing, so maybe its poetic justice that it gets all the life sucked out of it by being oversold. It hasn’t seemed to hurt the bottom line, but for me it takes all the magic out of the movie.
As for the movie itself, it manages to tell the story of Anakin Skywalker’s descent into darkness competently. Even Hayden Christensen manages to be somewhat convincing as the future dark lord. You certainly sense that the character is more confident and at ease once he has embraced the darkness. But it’s no great performance, not even as marginally chilling as the performance Anthony Hopkins has given in the above mentioned role. I don’t know if Christensen lacks the chops to play truly dark or Lucas lacks the talent to direct truly dark, but for all of the darkness promised in this movie, I just didn’t see it. Even the Emperor seemed like a lightweight compared to what I remembered from Return of the Jedi. Physically both Anakin and Palpatine manage to wreak a lot of havoc, killing one lifeless character after another, but because we don’t really care about these characters it has almost no impact. Much is made of Anakin killing the Jedi Younglings, but every time they talk about it it’s “Anakin killed the younglings.” Nobody says the word “children,” which is the key to the horror of the moment. Lucas, knowing how many children would be in the audience, probably wanted to avoid talking about dead children, but by using a word like ‘youngling’ he detaches his audience from the tragedy and Vader from his darkness.
Anakin’s fall into darkness is convincing enough, if somewhat contrived. The loyalty conflict between serving the Jedi and the legitimate authority of the Chancellor would have been a more interesting story than the nonsense about Padme. Anakin’s visions of her death in childbirth lead him to seek the power over life and death one can gain from the dark side. Apparently in the vast technocracy of Coruscant pre-natal care is unheard of, since Padme didn’t know she was having twins, but it’s hard to imagine that many women die from childbirth in such an advanced society. Lucas gives us this as an excuse to have sympathy for Vader, a reasonable explanation for his fall into darkness. It would have been more interesting to have him choose to defend the Chancellor not because of some dark power the man had over life and death, but because he saw him as the legitimate leader of the government threatened by a Jedi coup. Anakin could’ve fallen on the wrong path thinking he was doing the right thing, which is the way many good people come to be evil. Rather we are given a character that chooses darkness as a means to an end, but a character Lucas still wants us to have sympathy for.
As for Padme, one has to wonder what happened to this character. She went from feisty fighter to pregnant lump. The only reason she’s in this movie is to give Anakin a reason to go dark and to give birth to Luke and Leia in time for them to be in place for Episode IV. After all the things she fought so hard for in the previous movies, you think she would want to stay alive and fight for her children, rather than just give up and die. Yet that is what she does. Other characters are also just part of Lucas’ giant game of connect the dots. One gets the impression that Jimmy Smits’ Bail Organa could’ve been a really interesting character in the prequel trilogy, providing some of the sorely missed Han Solo type charm to the series, but all he’s good for is saving Obi Wan and Yoda and providing a home for the future Princess Leia. Samuel L. Jackson is wasted as Mace Windu, his brief light saber duel with Palpatine is mostly forgettable, and his death was almost laughable. Obi Wan, Yoda and Palpatine are treated better by Lucas’ story, but then they are a vital part of the next three episodes and are not as easily dismissed as poor Padme was.
In terms of action and visuals this movie certainly delivers everything a Star War fan could want. It does a better job of being a Star Wars movie than Attack of the Clones, but still falls shorts, in my opinion, of capturing the magic of the original trilogy. Some critics have said that Episode III is a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions, and it certainly has all of the elements of one, but it’s executed more like a Saturday morning cartoon than one of Shakespeare’s plays. But maybe that’s all that it is, or all Star Wars ever was, a big flashy Saturday morning cartoon.
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