Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith

By Marie Sandland

A long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away… well, 1970s Hollywood to be precise, George Lucas was considered to be one of the ‘movie brats’ - along with Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg, these young(ish) film directors were hailed as the new guard of modern film making. It’s interesting to see how their careers have panned out since. Scorsese remains the most artistic of the four, more successful critically than commercially; Coppola peaked in the late '70s with Apocalypse Now; Spielberg became the most financially successful director of all time and Lucas directed not so much a film as a phenomenon: Star Wars smashed all box office records and set the tone for two and a half decades of summer blockbusters. After making Star Wars: A New Hope, Lucas promptly retired from directing for 22 years, preferring to develop his special effects company, Industrial Light and Magic.

He returned in 1999 with the first of three prequels to the original Star Wars trilogy, The Phantom Menace, which was savaged by critics and fans alike for the turgid plot based around the thrilling issues of trade routes and taxation, as well as introducing the most irritating and hated character in the history of cinema: Jar Jar Binks. Of course this didn’t affect the box office takings, making as it did $922,380,000 worldwide. The next prequel, Attack of the Clones was also criticised for a tiresome romantic plot and the introduction of the wooden Hayden Christiensen as the man who will be Vader. The stakes were high on the third and final film of the trilogy. Would Lucas deliver the darker, more action-packed film he promised us?

I wasn’t disappointed with Revenge of the Sith, but that is because my expectations were so low. It is a marked improvement on its two predecessors, but again, those films were so utterly dire it’s hardly much of a recommendation. The story is darker, there’s much more action, with some impressive battles and major irritants like Jar Jar Binks are happily absent (well, we see Jar Jar but thankfully don’t hear him). Unlike Phantom and Clones, the villain of the piece has a decent amount of screen time, and Ian McDiarmid’s scenery-chewing Chancellor Palpatine steals the show. No longer concerned with intergalactic tax disputes or forbidden romance, the plot finally centres on the real meat of this trilogy: how Anakin Skywalker became Darth Vader.

Unfortunately, this film has some very major shortcomings. While it would be unreasonable to expect Oscar-worthy standards of acting in a space adventure saga like this, Lucas might want to bear in mind that however impressive your CGI effects are, the film will flat if your actors aren’t up to the job. Ewan McGregor’s Alec Guinness impression becomes increasingly irksome; Natalie Portman’s Padmé is one of the dullest, most insipid heroines I’ve ever seen, especially in comparison to Carrie Fisher’s performance as Padmé’s ballsy screen daughter, Princess Leia; Samuel L. Jackson and Jimmy Smits are instantly forgettable as Mace Windu and Bail Organa. Worst of all is Hayden Christensen as Anakin Skywalker. In Attack of the Clones he struggled with the role of petulant trainee Jedi, when all he had to do was pout and occasionally look vengeful. In this film he is required to be evil, and he attempts to pull this off by frowning and pouting a bit more. Perhaps he thinks this will make up for his inability to deliver his lines in anything but a staccato monotone voice. Christiensen is quite possibly the worst actor ever to grace the screen and I would be surprised if he got a role on an American daytime soap after this performance. He should start rehearsing the line ‘Would you like fries with that?’ as I think he’ll be using that a lot soon.

It is of course unfair to place all of the blame on one actor. That this film doesn’t hold a candle to the rip-roaring space adventures that were the original Star Wars series is down to a buttock-clenchingly awful script by George Lucas himself. When I heard lines like:

“You’re so beautiful.”
“That’s only because I’m so in love.”
“No, it’s because I’m so in love with you.”
I was reminded of Harrison Ford telling Lucas, “George, you can type this shit but you sure can’t say it”. If only someone else had the guts to point that out this time round. There’s something dreadfully po-faced about this script, every scene and every character is imbued with a humourless solemnity as if it were a tragedy of Shakespearian proportions. What’s most unforgivable is that Lucas even botches the ‘birth’ of the Darth Vader with his trademark clunky dialogue and truly appalling direction.

The new Star Wars series not only compares unfavourably to the '70s/'80s classic series, but very recently we’ve had another fantasy epic with The Lord of the Rings trilogy, and those films were done with a good deal more humour, panache, better actors and much more of a human touch. But all such criticism is redundant as Revenge of the Sith looks set to be a commercial success, and with the unavoidable merchandising it would seem that the Lucas empire will be striking back for some time to come.

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