A movie of some note and intrigue

Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith

2005

It will be very difficult to do this movie justice. In this final episode in the George Lucas’ Star Wars prequels, Lucas puts together and completes the story in a slam dunk manner. I must admit, I was very surprised by how good this film turned out to be. In many ways, at least in my mind, this film redeems Lucas for his failings as a director, and his failings in the director’s cuts of his original trilogy.

In this film, the seduction and fall of Anakin Skywalker is played out, and he descends to become the Darth Vader we will know (and do know) in Star Wars episodes IV-VI. We also see how Emperor Palpatine comes to power, how the Republic is dismantled, how the Jedi are massacred, and how the clone war comes to an end. Quite frankly, it was almost too much, even for a 140 minute movie.

It is probably for this reason that the movie glosses over the deaths of the Jedi Order, which was actually anti-climatic. This oversight, as well as some other negative aspects in the film are worth noting right away. The biggest weakness in the film is the casting of Hayden Christensen as Anakin Skywalker. His performance is only tolerable when he isn’t speaking. This is coupled with a less than stellar performance by Natalie Portman, who portrays Padme, the mother of Luke Skywalker and Leia, makes for some mind numbing scenes of dialogue between the two.

Fortunately this movie had a number of strong performances, including Ewan McGregor’s portrayal of Obi-Wan Kenobi and Ian McDiarmid as Emperor Palpatine. There are other notable performances too, including Samuel L. Jackson’s "Mace Windu," which is underutilized, and a surprisingly strong cast of extras and bit players.

Acting was clearly the weakness of "Revenge of the Sith." Despite that, it still makes par, and is overshadowed in my mind to how strong everything else in the movie is done. The biggest success of this film has to be the computer animation. The movie moves seamlessly from blue screen to computer animation to live action. One would be hard-pressed to show a more successful use of special effects. Only the Lord of the Rings trilogy rivals in the special effects arena.

This film also has a strong showing in action sequences. The final climatic battles are some of the best martial arts sequences one is ever going to find. One sequence is between Darth Vader and Obi-Wan Kenobi, the other is between Yoda and Emperor Palpatine. Both are a credit to George Lucas. As far as I can remember, and I’ve seen a lot of films, there has never been as good a sword fighting sequence as the one in this movie between Vader and Kenobi. I was personally in awe as I was watching.

There is a lot I’m not mentioning, but look for the character development of R2D2, who has a number of great action sequences. Note how Lucas actually completes the story for us, covering up potential problems in the timeline. I can’t say enough, see this film.