Star Wars: Episode III: Revenge of the Sith

It's wrong to criticize the Star Wars prequels, went the conventional wisdom, until the entire new trilogy is complete. The logic was that Lucas had set up an elaborate puzzle, and until all the pieces were in place and it could be viewed as a whole, the quality of the puzzle itself was impossible to tell.

It turns out, the opposite was true. Revenge of the Sith isn't so good that it raises the quality level of the other prequels up merely by association. It's so good that it puts those other two movies to shame. It's so good that it feels like a genuine addition to the Star Wars canon, as if there are now four official episodes and two extended, amateurish prologues. Revenge of the Sith is so good, it makes me wish Lucas could start over from the beginning again, having learned a few lessons and gained some much-needed experience. It's so good I'm seriously considering going back at 1:45 am tomorrow morning to see it again digitally projected.



Believe me, no one's more shocked by my enthusiasm than myself. In case you haven't kept up with my reconsiderations of the prior two episodes, you can read them here and here. But I'll save you the time - even after watching them simply as adventure movies, with a good deal of emotional distance between now and the first time I watched the prequels, I still found them disappointing and thin.

But Lucas has really delivered on this final episode. Some of the problems I had with the other prequels remain. There's still wooden dialogue, some of the relationships and problems are needlessly complicated, the chronology doesn't always perfectly link up with the Original Trilogy of films, and there's a marked tendency to play to the fans rather than remaining true to the spirit of the series.

But while these sorts of issues overwhelmed the other two prequels, made them feel disconnected, empty and lame, they're reduced in Revenge of the Sith to minor quibbles. This is, finally, a real epic adventure, well-paced, well-executed, gorgeously realized and full of enough surprise, horror and action to please any fan of the original Star Wars movies. For the first time since Return of the Jedi, Lucas has connected with the elements that made his original films such a hit: wit, personality, style, innovation and imagination.

The film can essentially be broken down into three segments. In the first, we see the Clone Wars brought to an end. Lucas wisely does away with the political intrigue and problematic plotting of this conflict held over from the previous films, and boils the entire war down to one singular event: the capture of the villainous General Greivous, commander of the Separatist Droid Army.

So the opening 45 minutes or so are composed of a breakneck, non-stop chase across the galaxy, with Anakin and Obi-Wan pursuing the half-alien/half-robot Greivous, hoping to kill him and bring the Clone Wars to an end. We get some real actual space battles to kick off the movie, and they are on an unbelievably massive scale. Huge, huge effects sequences, and they look really remarkable.

Greivous himself is a terrific character, far more engaging and larger-than-life than Darth Maul or Count Dooku from the previous films. He weilds four light sabers stolen from murdered Jedi, he speaks in a raspy growl and pauses frequently to indulge his wet hacking cough, and he uses his mechanized body to cover his naked, still-beating humanoid heart. Now this is a villain.

The action scenes involving him are among the best Lucas has ever devised. His undoing by Obi-Wan is brilliantly executed. I loved this section of this film tremendously. Overall, this movie reminds me of Return of the Jedi, with its sprawling, emotional narrative, its flair for the dramatic and its morose sense of weight and anguish. And this section reminds me of the opening of Jedi in Jabba's palace - kind of a self-contained and wonderfully realized action set piece, of a part with but somehow separate from the main storyline of the film.

By the time the Greivous segment was over, I had already enjoyed Sith more than either of the two previous films. But I discovered Lucas was only getting warmed up.

The second, and longest, segment of Sith deals directly with the already-infamous downfall of Anakin Skywalker. His relationship with Palpatine, hinted at in Clones but never explored, blossoms into a kind of dependency. Palpatine has become his friend, his support system, and his mentor. In one of the best-acted and most visually resplendant scenes in any Star Wars film, Palpatine relates to Anakin an old Sith legend, about a Sith lord who discovers the secret of immortality.

The dialogue contains some clues to Anakin's background that will fuel speculation in the fanboy world for years to come, I predict. But more importantly, this is a key link that has never been hinted at in any Star Wars film before. We've been told that the Jedi and the Sith are connected, that they both make use of The Force in different ways, but we've never been invited inside the perspective of evil in the Star Wars universe before this moment.

In the Original Trilogy, it's all pretty simple for Luke. He has many people around to guide him, to tell him what The Emperor and Darth Vader are all about, to warn him about their tricks and traps, about the deceit that's inherent in the Dark Side. But Anakin's never known true evil. The Sith aren't even supposed to exist in his time. They lurk in the shadows, obscured. He's not prepared for the deceptions of Palpatine, and when they come, they come quick and fierce.

But back to the sequence with Palpatine and Anakin. They're in some sort of ballroom on Couruscant, watching some sort of circus-type performance featuring large, gelatinous bubbles with ribbons floating in and out of them. The combination of this incredible background environment, the steely, understated performance by Hayden Christensen and the tremendous work of Ian McDiarmid as Palpatine (who has been the most consistantly positive presence in all three of these movies), some rare eloquence from Lucas' dialogue and a really kickass bit of score from John Williams really sold me on this entire sequence. You feel as if you have really gained some perspective on this fictional reality, that you have truly learned something about what it is to be a Sith and what it is to be a Jedi. Classic classic classic stuff.

Look at that shit-eating grin! Is this guy the true face of evil or what?

Anyway, the third bit of the movie is what pushes it over the top from fun, diverting film in the Star Wars vein to a full-fledged Star Wars movie worthy of mention with the original films. It's when everything just comes apart. It's the Foundation of the Empire.

When you watch these scenes, that morph sublimely into the action and design of the original films, you finally see Lucas' prequel idea come together. He has genuinely managed, with this chapter, to unlock some of that late 70's and early 80's magic and it's a glorious thing to behold.

It's more than just seeing Chewbacca meet Yoda or Obi-Wan holding Baby Luke or what the hell things actually look like on Alderaan, although all those things are part of the fun of that last half hour or so. Episode III actually manages, at key moments, to offer insights into the action of the original movies, to make them seem deeper than they otherwise might have.

I don't want to blow too much, but I'll give you a good example. We come to find out how Obi-Wan manages to re-appear to Luke in Empire Strikes Back, after he has died, and so seeing them connect beyond the grave in the fifth film takes on a greater significance. The mere fact that Lucas has considered Obi-Wan's many sad years in isolation on Tatooine, and how he will pass his lonely days waiting for Luke to mature, indicates the depth on display in this film. This isn't the lazy plotting of Phantom Menace or the chaotic confusion of Clones. Lucas has finally bothered to pick up his story where he left off, and seeing him tinker with his classic films successfully for a change was a tremendous feeling of excitement and relief.

Okay, so the story works a whole lot better. It finally feels like a Star Wars movie - fast-paced, funny, entertaining, intense. Now I'd like to talk about how much better the film looks than the other two prequels, and how some of the art direction and cinematography ranks among the year's very best.

The effects here are less cartoonish and more stylized than in the other two prequels, and benefit from Lucas' clear attempts to link them up with the designs of Episode IV: A New Hope. Obviously, this wasn't easy. With all the technologies of 2005 at his fingertips, Lucas has made these prequels state-of-the-art. A New Hope was state-of-the-art in 1977, but even with his ill-fated CG enhancements of the 90's, the old films still look kind of like old films.

Which, to me, is a large part of their charm. But still, combining the sleek computerized designs of the prequels with the clunky, mechanical, grimy designs of the 70's movie wasn't an easy challenge. I'm astounded at how well Lucas has managed to pull it off. I was delighted by the many small visual and audio references to the original films Lucas managed to fill in. There's Vader's beady, swollen, jaundiced yellow eyes as he suffers, which we'll see again in Return of the Jedi when Luke removes his helmet for the last time. There's the Emperor's puffy, swollen flesh, for which we come to discover the initial cause. Even the spacecraft have been made to resemble and sound more like TIE Fighters and X-Wings.

This isn't just fun, red meat for the fans (although it is!) It reinforces the diabolical nature of The Empire, as opposed to the poorly-structued beurocracy of The Republic. Any Star Wars fan has a kneejerk reaction to hearing a TIE Fighter whizz by in Surround Sound. That's bad news...it lets you know things are really gonna start coming down hard on the heroes.

As for the direction, it's strong. Really strong. Bold, even. Lucas took no chances with composition in the other two prequels, shooting everything in a simplified, direct kind of fashion, like a children's movie. Is there a cool, memorable shot in either Phantom Menace or Attack of the Clones? And not a cool-looking special effect, but a memorable shot. There are tons in Revenge of the Sith.

In that opening space battle, we whirl around zero-gravity and top speed, losing our bearings as Anakin and Obi-Wan's ships veer past massive Star Destroyers. As the Emperor invokes the name Galactic Empre for the first time, we see him from an exceedingly low angle and from behind, thrusting his arms upwards into the Senate Chambers like Charles Foster Kane. Lucas aims frequently for these kind of iconic images during the film, giving its second half the feeling of a colorful graphic novel. The inevitable final showdown between Anakin and Obi-Wan, perched at the side of an erupting volcano, times magma explosions to clashes of the lightsabers. In 10-15 years, that's going to be an exceptionally popular dorm room poster.

So, yeah, this is basically an unqualified rave. How did GL pull this off? I have no idea.

But here's an even more pertinant question - why did he even bother to make 3 movies? Now, don't get me wrong, Episode III is stuffed to overflowing with goodness. It's unrelentingly enjoyable, pausing for prequel-esque bullshit infrequenty. I could imagine Lucas taking some of the material here and inserting it into Episode II in order to make that movie more entertaining overall. Why not get General Greivous in there, for starters. I'd have preferred a scene with him to that idiotic arena battle with the Ray Harryhausen monsters.

But really, these prequels were one good movie stretched out into three, and that still drags the average way way down. I'm sure I'll be enjoying this final chapter for years to come, but it still doesn't make me want to ever sit through Phantom Menace again. I don't know if the goodwill engendered by one unmitigated success is enough to make up for two cinematic disasters in the big picture, but it's good enough for tonight.