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May 29, 2005

Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith

Yes, I’m at least a week late in posting this. I’m sure we’ll all learn to live with the shame, but I wanted to go see the film a second time before I posted a review, and since I haven’t posted anything in the better part of a month, I figured I could take the time. To business, then.

After 28 years and billions of dollars in merchandise, the final chapter in George Lucas’ epic tale has finally reached the silver screen. “Revenge of the Sith” closes the loop between the original trilogy and the first two prequels, finally setting down the details of how the fantastically talented Jedi Anakin Skywalker succumbed to the dark side and became the Sith lord Darth Vader. (And is there a better measure of how thoroughly Star Wars has infected our culture than the fact my spellchecker doesn’t think ‘Darth Vader’ is misspelled?) After the first two prequels, I went into “Sith” with significantly reduced expectations. While I own the first two on DVD and enjoy certain parts of each, “The Phantom Menace” in particular has so many bad parts that it’s difficult not to just skip ahead to “Duel of the Fates.”

I’m pleased to report that “Sith” outstrips both “Menace” and “Attack of the Clones.” As a stand alone film, “Sith” is well done, providing heaping servings of what Lucas does best: fights, chases, and special effects. As part of the larger “Star Wars” saga, “Sith” accomplishes its major goal quite well, albeit with no small number of plot holes to the larger storyline. If you’re looking to be entertained with a film that is decidedly grim, you will be quite pleased with “Sith.”

Warning: the rest of the review is packed with spoilers.

Lucas kicks us off in media res with Obi-Wan and Anakin attempting to rescue Chancellor Palpatine from Count Dooku and General Grievous. This scene is nearly perfect, opening with a flyby of a proto-Star Destroyer that seems so realistic the audience may get a touch of vertigo, then segueing into a display of Anakin’s talents as a pilot before climaxing with a series of duels against droids, Dooku, and Grievous. The scene is at its best when Palpatine goads Anakin into killing the disabled Count Dooku, taking Anakin another small step down the line towards the dark side by playing on his natural desire for vengeance against the man who took his lower arm. The scene intentionally echoes a similar moment near the end of “Return of the Jedi” when the Emperor urges Luke to kill Vader, helping to highlight the differences between Luke and his father. The scene’s only weaknesses are a slapstick routine with R2D2 and several battle droids (if you were making droids for combat, wouldn’t you give them a menacing voice rather than the hapless/stupid voices they have in the prequels?) and a moment of dialogue between Obi-Wan and Anakin complaining that they shouldn’t have gotten themselves into a particular mess. The second flaw is apparently supposed to evoke buddy-cop type films, but it fails miserably and detracts from an otherwise excellent opening to the film.

Much like the other two prequels, Lucas starts strong and fades in the middle. Once the Chancellor has been rescued, the film meanders between scenes which genuinely advance the plot and scenes that could easily have been cut to good effect. I say this because Anakin’s path to the dark side falls off the rails at the moment of truth, where a little more time to develop his fall could easily have been found by eliminating the sidebars.

In particular the decision to send Yoda to Kashyyyk could and should have been left on the cutting room floor. We’re told that the Jedi cannot afford to let Kashyyyk fall and so Yoda takes a battalion of clone troopers to the planet to ensure the Republic holds it. Yet Yoda plays no part whatever in the ensuing battle, unlike the other Jedi who lead their clone troopers into battle with their lightsabers flashing. The Jedi could simply have sent the battalion of clone troopers to Kashyyyk and had the same result. Worse, the battle of Kashyyyk is nothing but an excuse to see a Wookie army and a brief glimpse of Chewbacca; after we’re told that the Republic must hold Kashyyyk, the battle is perfunctory and irrelevant to the larger plot. I understand Lucas’ desire to finally use the Wookies he’d hoped to bring into “Return of the Jedi,” but someone should have told him that when you’re making a movie, wanting to see something cool is not sufficient reason to put something into the plot.

To a lesser extent, Obi-Wan’s battle with General Grievous could have been trimmed as well. I understand that Grievous is built up as a major villain in the “Clone Wars” animated shorts, but since much of the audience hasn’t seen those, his importance is markedly reduced. The General’s use of four lightsabers is cool, and it would have been fun to see a bit more dueling between him and Obi-Wan before Obi-Wan dispatches him, but the long chase and eventual defeat of Grievous take too long for a villain with such limited screen time. This time would have been better used for plot development or the final duel between Anakin and Obi-Wan.

Anakin’s slide to the dark side is actually remarkably well done right up until the moment of truth. His initial duel with Count Dooku is won only when he draws on his fear and anger, and he rides that anger to kill Dooku after he is defeated. Palpatine takes advantage of Anakin’s premonition of Padme’s death by hinting that the dark side can actually allow its practitioners to defeat death. By appointing Anakin to the Jedi Council Palpatine forces the Council to anger Anakin by accepting him without granting him the rank of Master, driving a wedge between Anakin and his fellow Jedi. Even when he reveals himself to Anakin as the Sith lord the Jedi have been searching for, Palpatine is careful to remind Anakin that the powers offered by the dark side may be the only way to save Padme. Anakin’s inner duel as Mace Windu battles Palpatine is the perfect climax to Anakin’s turn to the dark side, and his decision to prevent Windu from killing Palpatine is reasonable and easy for the audience to buy (although one does wonder why he removes Windu’s arm rather than simply blocking his saber). But Anakin’s final jump is too far, too fast.

After Windu’s death, Anakin is shocked and dismayed by his actions, and he clearly doesn’t know what to do. Palpatine then tells him he must become his apprentice and, voila, suddenly Anakin is Darth Vader. It’s simply too great a turn, particularly when Anakin then leads clone troopers into the Jedi temple and proceeds to slaughter every Jedi in the place to include the children. Anakin’s conversion would have been more believable had Palpatine continued his seduction a bit longer. All it would have taken was a lesser assignment first, with Palpatine insisting that the Jedi are the true evil and that Anakin is needed to protect the Republic against them. A lightsaber battle between Anakin and another Jedi Master with Palpatine goading Anakin to let his anger take over until he succumbed to the dark side would have better explained Anakin’s decision to join the Sith and could have easily been added by trimming some of the less useful scenes mentioned above. As it is, Anakin goes from shock at the realization he’s helped to kill a Jedi Master to a willing Sith in ~30 seconds, a difficult transition to buy regardless of his prior actions.

Once Anakin accepts the mantle of Vader, however, the story picks up again and stays strong through the finish. Yoda’s battle with Palpatine is appropriately epic, although I think the contention that the light side of the force is ultimately a match for the dark side would be more believable had Palpatine needed some help to defeat Yoda. As it is, it’s hard to dispute the possibility that the dark side truly is the path to more power than what is available to those who restrict themselves to the light side. Be that as it may, Yoda’s duel with Palpatine is a sidebar next to Obi-Wan’s long-awaited fight with Anakin.

I don’t know if there’s much George Lucas could have done with this fight that could live up to the millions of imaginations that have considered it to date. Since “Star Wars” in 1978, fans have considered just what might have happened between Obi-Wan and Anakin, and while no two imaginations were likely to have the same thoughts, the grandeur of the duel had to be a constant. Against those imaginations, Lucas did about as well as could be expected. Anakin and Obi-Wan go at it hammer and tongs across the surface of a planet almost completely covered with magma, culminating in a duel virtually on the magma itself. The only flaws with the climactic duel are a lack of conversation and Obi-Wan’s silly remarks about the high ground, which are properly dismissed here. The battle's emotional content is somewhat lacking until after Obi-Wan defeats Anakin, at which point Kenobi's grief and sorrow make for a powerful denouement to the battle.

And the actual denouement is quite dark, with Anakin's burnt and battered remains locked into his Vader outfit and Padme giving birth to Luke and Leia only to die moments later. Vader's "Nooooooo" tantrum is iffy at best, but the moment when he is locked into the mask makes it bearable. And the close, with Beru bringing the baby Luke to the berm where she and Owen look at it while Tatooine's moons rise in the background is a marvelously evocative close.

Bottom line, it is well worth seeing on the big screen, and I think it will rank as the third best of the six films (5,4,3,6,2,1). And yet I still end feeling decidedly disappointed.

Like many people my age, I grew up with Star Wars. I watched the first three on the big screen when they first came out, I read much of the ancillary material, and I knew the Star Wars Universe. Lucas had 16 years to put together the prequels, knowing that they should match the originals, and it’s clear he either didn't care or didn't bother. I'm not sure which would be worse. Why doesn't Obi-Wan remember C-3PO and R2D2 in “A New Hope”? Why does Owen Lars despise Kenobi? Why does Obi-Wan claim that Owen thought Anakin shouldn’t have gotten involved in the Clone Wars when they barely knew one another? Why does Leia claim to remember her real mother when Padme died in childbirth? The list goes on and on, and while the questions don’t necessarily destroy the connection, they are a jarring reminder that the two trilogies are really only tangentially related. Yes, the basic characters and events are the same, but much like Frank Herbert’s attempts to extend Dune beyond the original novel, the two trilogies don’t fit together properly. Is that a big deal? That all depends on how anal-retentive you are, I suppose. For me, it makes it hard to watch the movies as a group, because there are too many instances where I’m now pulled out of the story because a character in 4/5/6 references an event in 1/2/3 that didn’t turn out that way when Lucas finally put them on film. That’s sloppy.

Nonetheless, I have no doubt that “Sith” will end up on my DVD shelf and I won’t hesitate to pull it out on a regular basis, even if I end up complaining about certain parts of it. I am reminded of what Bill Veeck once said about baseball: “Baseball must be a great game, because the owner’s haven’t been able to kill it.” In that same vein, Lucas deserves credit for creating a saga so great even his meager directing and writing were unable to destroy it.