Star Wars Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith (2005)

You have to give George Lucas credit: While brazenly serving his audience a steaming plate of excrement, he’s found the secret for getting them to smile and ask for seconds. But what else should we expect from a “creative mind” who owes much of his success to Akira Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress and a too-good-to-be-true relationship with Steven Spielberg? In this, the final chapter in his Star Wars saga (I hope), Lucas serves up the crap early and often, but we just keep shoveling it down our throats like a bunch of entertainment-starved idiots.

By now, you’re probably well aware of the basic premise, as the Star Wars franchise is one of the most successful in the history of film–despite the studio’s ludicrous claim that Return of the Jedi never turned a profit. We all know that Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen) will become the evil Darth Vader and father Luke and Leia. We also know that Yoda (voiced by Frank Oz) and Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) will live to fight another day. In fact, we pretty much know everything that will happen, but there’s still a certain magical attraction to actually seeing it play out on the screen. It’s too bad that Lucas has no idea what to do with a film of this magnitude, handling it with all the skill of a novice director working on an after school special.

I’ll at least credit him with a steady hand during the action sequences. While so many modern directors seem obsessed with rapid edits and shaky camerawork, Lucas constructs the scenes like an old pro, giving us plenty of wide shots in order to fully appreciate the action on the screen. Whether it’s one of the film’s many lightsaber duels or a high-speed space battle, the audience never gets confused as to who’s doing what. Lucas also gets in the occasional iconic shot, such as when a newly-dubbed Darth Vader leads troops into the Jedi temple; even the most jaded fan should get goosebumps during that one.

Unfortunately, that’s about the only positive thing I can say about Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. While Lucas the director is hovering around average (or slightly below), Lucas the screenwriter is embarrassingly awful. Ewan McGregor is saddled with an endless series of one-liners designed to make children and fanboys giggle, and the radiant Padme Amidala (Natalie Portman) is forced to mope about her apartment and stare longingly out the window. After beheading an unarmed opponent, Anakin thoughtfully remarks, “I shouldn’t have done that.” And Padme gets really deep while watching Chancellor Palpatine announce the formation of the Galactic Empire – “So this is how liberty dies…with thunderous applause.” Mark Twain it ain’t.

And don’t even get me started on how the supposedly wise Jedi knights are portrayed. They make blunder after blunder, constantly zigging when they should’ve zagged. Instead of helping Anakin fight off the influence of the Dark Side, their suspicions only manage to drive him headlong into its clutches. Way to go, guys. Frankly, watching most of them get killed off was surprisingly satisfying.

The acting in Revenge of the Sith matches the quality of the script, with almost every performance in the film being less-than-impressive. If I didn’t know better, I’d say the scenes were done in one take, with the actors reading their dialogue for the very first time. It’s that bad, especially the robotic performance of Hayden Christensen. Vader is supposed the be the greatest cinematic villain of all time. After watching this film, I’ll eternally think of him as a petulant young man with a bad boy haircut. I’m also convinced that Ian McDiarmid and Samuel L. Jackson had a side bet on who could overact the most. It’s a tough call as to who won, but it certainly wasn’t the audience.

After having waded though the previous two films (The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones), I really wasn’t expecting much in the way of character depth or dialogue. But despite that fact, Star Wars seems to have a strange magnetic pull over the viewing public. It’s like the Superbowl of cinema: Even if the participating teams aren’t that compelling, there’s always the hope of a competitive game. In the case of Revenge of the Sith, it was a blowout.