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Synopsis:
With the galaxy in the throes of the devastating Clone Wars, Anakin Skywalker is finding it increasingly difficult to live a duel life as both a Jedi Knight and a secret husband to Padme. What's more, he is plagued by visions of her death. Preying on this fear, the evil Chancellor Palpatine begins to manipulate Anakin, tempting him with the knowledge that the dark side of the force might hold the key to Padme's salvation. When Palpatine finally reveals that he is the Sith lord that the Jedi have been so desperately seeking, Anakin is faced with the ultimate test of resolve: will he strike at the heart of evil, or will his selfish love for Padme make him turn against every principle for which he stands?
Review:
The dark side of the force definitely brings out the best in George Lucas. "The Empire Strikes Back" (from way back in 1980) is generally accepted as the best of the first three movies, and "Revenge of the Sith" is easily the best of the prequels.
The nub of the movie's success is in Lucas's much improved script, no doubt heavily reworked after the tirade of abuse heaped on the first two films. Gone are the umpteen competing sub-plots that confused even the most dedicated of fans. In their place we have something approaching a compelling narrative - a young man with huge potential is tempted by an evil he does not comprehend.
That said, in the world of Star Wars acting was never meant to be more than window dressing for the epic sequences - dogfights between vast galactic space fleets, pitched battles between strangely coloured aliens and desperate lightsabre duels between the forces of good and evil. Sure we want it to be believable, even endearing, but we don't want it to get in the way of the action.
And of action there is plenty. The battle scenes are bigger, the settings more lavish and the scale altogether more impressive. Lucas seems to have spent the extra time between episodes on cramming even more exquisitely rendered detail into every frame of "Revenge of the Sith" than he did in the previous films. In some of the action sequences there is so much detail flashing by that you almost feel guilty not being able to pay adequate attention to all of it.
In fact this is one of the main problems with the film - sensory overload. So many of the sequences could have been more effective if their staging had been better handled. Instead Lucas tends to throw everything he's got at the screen and hope he impresses the hell out of us. Lucas has never been the most gifted of directors. Of the original trilogy, Lucas only directed the first film, arguably the weakest of the three. Then, after a 20 year break from directing any kind of feature films, he returned to oversee all three of the prequels. At least after two warm-up films he seems to be getting the hang of directing again - but he's still no Spielberg.
Fans of the original series may be disappointed by the brevity of cameos by old favourites like C3PO, R2D2 and Chewbacca, but this is made up in part by some great scenes with Master Yoda. Thankfully Lucas seems to have taken the hint and the nauseating Jar Jar Binks remains almost entirely absent from the film.
Is it worth watching? Absolutely - both for fans and casual theatregoers. No project with this amount of love, money, blood, sweat and tears lavished on it should be missed. It may be as deeply flawed as its tragic hero, but it as irresistible as the dark energy that draws him to his eventual doom.
- By Alistair Fairweather
