***1/2 (out of ****)
Starring Ewan McGregor, Hayden Christensen, Natalie Portman, Ian McDiarmid, Frank Oz, Jimmy Smits, Samuel L. Jackson, Kenny Baker, Peter Mayhew, Keisha Castle-Hughes, and Christopher Lee
Directed & written by George Lucas
2005
140 min PG13
“Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith” is a series of magnificent setpieces and images connected by a great sense of foreboding and scenes of clumsy dialogue. That’s dogged the “Star Wars” prequels every step of the way. Creator George Lucas began the prequels with a list of things he needed to accomplish in order to tie everything new together with everything old. We have the most fun when he strays from his cosmic to-do list and the least fun when he seems intent on appeasing dateless fanboys with his perfect circle. The product of the former intent is the enjoyable “The Phantom Menace” and most of “Revenge’s” best interludes. The latter leads to the tedious “Attack of the Clones” and the stretch near “Revenge’s” end when we feel Lucas having to take care of vast, dramatically unnecessary bits of business. Do we really need to see Luke and Leia being named? No, we can figure that out just fine.
The big draw of the “Star Wars” films—their “main character,” if you will—has never been a person or a thing, but has always been the universe in which they are set. Now that universe far, far away is back in a big way, in all the ominous colors of Halloween: orange, black, and neon green. It’s not just a backdrop where disconnected characters can yammer and yammer, like in “Episode II: Attack of the Clones,” but a thrilling, bustling playground, where they can climb and jump and fight. All the “Star Wars” films have been teeming with life, details, and little throwaway visual treats. In the week before “Revenge’s” release, I was surprised by how much I was looking forward to returning to that far-off galaxy, and I was not disappointed.
The tone of “Revenge of the Sith” is something wonderful: it is a tragic melodrama, whose sadness will haunt you for days, yet it is not above poking fun at itself. Everything is so grim, yet the movie is exuberant instead of plodding. I was so engaged that I wanted to re-watch “Episodes IV, V,” and “VI” just to confirm that everything turns out okay. What playthings we are for the gods, who will grant us joy only after the deaths of hundreds of thousands! Lucas tells the dark arc of Anakin Skywalker in shadows, silhouettes, and some of his most conscientious direction. Even the sword battles seem more artful; we focus on the blur of the combatants’ light sabers and the human shapes they create, and there is beauty in watching two beams swing at each other from a great distance. Plenty of limbs are lopped off in the course of “Revenge of the Sith” because, if you had a sword whose blade was a laser beam, this would probably happen to you a lot too.
Yet “Revenge of the Sith” is also an immensely silly movie, and I mean that in a good way. Phrases like “War!” and “Evil is everywhere!” appear in the opening crawl. Darth Vader gets to clench his fists and bellow “Noooo!!” Androids are forever speaking in goofy voices and taking part in Keaton-esque slapstick routines that you’ll miss if you blink. Villains have names like “Plagus,” “Maul,” “Sidious,” and “Grievous,” who is probably the first robot in movie history to have asthma. After someone is put in the harshest hurt locker since “Passion of the Christ,” his wife asks “is he alright?” People in “Star Wars” relish saying stupid things at inopportune moments; next to “is he alright?” the best line is “it’s a volcanic moon—you’ll be safe there!” I laughed a lot with this movie. For all the dark imagery and use of “Revenge” in the title, “Episode III” has a bounding, endearing tone. In a weird, gloomy sort of way, it is both winsome and tragic, exactly what a movie like, say, “Constantine” is missing.
All “Star Wars” movies have been silly with straight faces. In his 1977 review of the original film, Roger Ebert refers to the villains as a cross between “Nazis and sorcerers.” These movies are sugar-fueled explosions of Saturday morning mayhem, where gaping plot holes and logic problems—answered by equally illogical responses—only serve to make the experience more charming. Why is it that the heavies speak with English accents when no one else does? Why does Princess Leia never miss? Why does Padme’s chief bodyguard in “Episode I” say absolutely nothing positive, only uttering comments like “this is not a fight we can win?” Where do all those pilots come from at the end of “A New Hope” when we’ve just seen all but three of them blown to smithereens? And, of course, why do we hear so many exciting whooshing, ka-blammo noises when we all know you can’t hear anything in outer space? (Actually, I know the official “Star Wars” answer to this quandary, and it is priceless.) A running gag in the whole series, now truly glorified for the first time, is how many different wipes Lucas can use to go from scene to scene: left to right, right to left, a circle, a square, a whole bunch of little squares, four rectangles, etc.
As for the talking that dragged down “Attack of the Clones”…thankfully, there’s not too much of it. Lucas has a hold of some great ideas about politics and about how we all face the inner struggle of good and evil. What he has is much more interesting than the simplistic “we’re good, they’re not, let’s kill ‘em all” approach of “Lord of the Rings.” But he is unable to find a way to convey those ideas in a dramatically interesting fashion, or at least in a way that’s even close to the level of his space battles, chases, swordfights, and so on. But “Revenge of the Sith” manages to sidestep the blah-blah-blah most of the time. To paraphrase Anakin Skywalker on his road to madness, there is “more action and less deliberation.”
“Revenge of the Sith” hits the ground running. We start immediately with a rescue mission that is equal parts space battle, swordfight, and slapstick. We weave in and out of metal titans doing battle in the sky above the city-planet, then we scurry through the innards of a spaceship where constantly shifting gravity causes elevator shafts to turn into hallways. Robots slip on oil, slap each other around, and duck for cover when they’re too loud. The giant weapons blasting away from one ship to the next turn out to be glorified WWII-style cannon updated for the future, still firing only one shot at a time, still ejecting spent cartridges when they’re done. Recently I saw a drawing from the early 1900s in which robots are pushing plows; in real life, tractors were created instead, but Lucas knows how much more Rube Goldberg delight there is in seeing a robot with a hoe.
Our fighting tour of the galaxy also includes a volcano planet, where we watch rock- and bridge-built structures collapse into the lava. A man drags himself out of molten burning hell, screaming “I hate you!” to an old friend-turned-enemy. Then it’s off for an impossible but beautiful moon in which asteroids seem to hover only a few dozen yards from the surface. Other major locations include the deep pits of a mining world, populated by nosferatu, with lauchpads and terraces built of dinosaur bones. Then there’s the jungle planet where we rejoin our old friends the Wookee. Creepiest of all are two simultaneous sequences, one in which robots give new body parts to a screaming, disfigured man in a dungeon, another in which sterile white androids deliver twin babies.
Page two of "Revenge of the Sith." Back to home.