| STAR WARS: EPISODE
III Revenge of the Sith |
 2005 - USA
Director: George
Lucas - Reviewed by Vickie 
I got a little misty when this movie started. When the Star Wars
logo exploded onto the screen, accompanied by John Williams
much-beloved score and slowly vanishing introductory text, I felt a
distinct lump in my throat. Suddenly, I was a little kid again, and the
promise of a trip into a galaxy far, far away made my heart beat a bit
faster. But that was also mixed with a kind of sentimentality and
melancholy because here, at last, was the final installment in a nearly
30-year-old journey that, like so many others, I’d grown up loving.
Mixed emotions is also a fitting description for my overall take on the film because, while it had many parts that were absolutely fantastic, it also suffered from more than its share of weak points and mild disappointments. Linda and I have talked before about how to review films when we’re really and truly not sure how to rate them. Since this one teetered between five and six slices for the longest time, I opted to use our last-ditch formula and simply lay out the good stuff vs. the not-so-good stuff. The story itself is a straightforward one (and one that has been highly anticipated by every Star Wars fan on the planet): Revenge of the Sith basically chronicles the descent into the Dark Side of the Force by one Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen), and his eventual rebirth as über-villain Darth Vader. Along the way, there’s Anakin’s budding friendship with, and Dark-Side tutelage from, supremely evil Chancellor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid); Anakin’s weird, all-consuming relationship with his new wife, Padmé (Natalie Portman); and Anakin’s rebellious rejection of Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) and the Jedi way of life amid separatist rebellion and a whole army of pesky clone droids. Among the things I loved are the following… Excellent, excellent light-sabre battles, especially those involving combatants utilizing multiple sabres. Excellent art direction. Excellent, varied planetary backdrops depending on where the players finds themselves. Excellent sense of overall tone (darkness, foreboding, evil, heartbreak, obsession, etc.). Exxxxcellent villain, in the form of McDiarmid’s masterfully creepy Palpatine. Excellent use of Yoda, who gets more cheers than anyone else in the film. And a most excellent final 20 minutes. Among the things I didn’t love so much are the following… Hayden Christensen’s greasy, matted hairdo and his complete lack of chemistry with a supremely wooden Natalie Portman. Their “romance” is supposed to be a core element of the story, but it is so remarkably unconvincing and leaden that it actually made many audience members chuckle at scenes that were clearly intended to be serious or touching. That, in turn, chips away at some of the emotional content. Also, too many CGI characters. We get it, George Lucas—you possess the technology to create hundreds and hundreds of fancy-schmancy digital beings, but why overpopulate the movie with them when you have so many otherwise kick-ass real people in your cast who are edited down to nothing or just left to stand around, twiddling their thumbs? (Blink and you’ll miss Oscar-nominee Keisha Castle-Hughes in a second-long cameo as a mute Queen of Naboo.) Along the same lines, why make a big deal about having Wookies in this film and then totally shortchange them? Save for a few brief shots of marauding furballs and one token line to identify Chewbacca, the Wookies didn’t get as much screen time as I thought they might. The movie has a running of time of two hours and 20 minutes, but it still feels rushed. When Peter Jackson can churn out LOTR epics that clock in closer to three hours and still have audiences turn up in droves, why not spread out the action and pack a little more meat into Sith? For the Big, Final Chapter, I figure film fans would gleefully sit through at least another half hour, which might have allowed for a little more breathing room. Then again, maybe if some of those CGI battle scenes had been trimmed, we might have had more time for story and a little less redundant action. I mean, how many times do we need to see a droid being destroyed? After the first 100 or so, it gets kind of old. I think part of my issue with Sith stems from my lofty expectations. I wanted it to leave me overwhelmed, to reduce me to an exhausted lump of satisfaction, to make me weep copious tears at its conclusion. And, to some extent, it succeeded. Just not quite as much as I’d hoped. [See Scott's reviews of Star
Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace and Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones] |
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