Review: Star Wars Episode III

erikharrison writes "I just watched Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. And it is good. There are lots of things I would like to say about it that I won't, as Slashdot isn't the place. Slashdot is the place to ask two questions, however. 1) How are the special effects and 2)What has Lucas done to the possibly tattered remains of my childhood?" Read on for Harrison's answers to those questions, and for Jamie's quite different impression of the sixth (and final?) Star Wars feature film.

The special effects question is easy: This is quite simply one of the most gorgeous films ever made. Everything is superb. Lucas has an incredible visual sense; he is a truly visual filmmaker, and his images hit home, are beautifully executed, and are technically stunning. Of course, we really and truly expect perfection here from Lucas, so this may not seem like news.

You are deceiving yourself. Lucas has frankly outdone what I thought possible. My jaw was on the floor the entire time.

But what about those tattered remains?

I myself am not a huge Star Wars fan. I enjoy the films, but I wasn't raised on them, didn't see any of them (except Episode II) in the theaters. I was one of those kids who knew Darth Vader was Luke's father before I had heard of Star Wars, because I saw the parodies before I saw the originals.

I will say this now. Episode III proves that "A New Hope" was a mistake. A freak accident of success, because Lucas seems incapable of doing fun action. How he managed to make "A New Hope" a delightful, playful, fundamentally fun movie is beyond me. Because when Episode III starts, it falls flat on its face, continuing the sad attempt in Episode's I and II to make the kind of joyous space opera that, of all six, only "A New Hope" managed to be.

Lucas however, can do myth very, very well. And once Lucas gets around to telling the Myth Of Anakin's Fall, the real story that Episode I and II have been leading to, everything works. Here we have the George Lucas of "The Empire Strikes Back" and "The Return of the Jedi." Hayden Christiansen goes from a pretty (if ineffectual) actor to being the tragic Darth Vader, and you believe. Darth Sidious is the villain that Darth Vader was in the original trilogy. Better perhaps, more sinister. The fall of Anakin is completely and utterly believable. I was shocked. I understood why he fell to the Dark Side. It's called the freakin' Dark Side for goodness sake! How could you freakin' fall?

Because of a tempter. Because of dark dreams. Because of love.

I don't want to spoil anything for those of you who, like me, went in not knowing exactly how it all happened. Some have always known the story, and are just watching it play out; some of us have willfully ignored the spoilers, and waited.

But I will say this for those who do know what happens. When order 66 is given, my breath was taken away. When the final battles occur, I was truly fearful. In other words, he doesn't screw it up.

I'm going to see it again.

Jamie also saw Revenge of the Sith, but it doesn't seem like he saw quite the same film. His thoughts:

I heard it might be good, so I tried to like it. I really did. Revenge of the Sith is one of the worst movies I've seen recently. It's Battlefield Earth bad.

It's not just that when Lucas tries to "do" myth he generates a world populated by generics. Nor is it just that the plot is absurdly thin (the movie exists to showcase the galaxy's most complete betrayal ever, brought on by two dreams and a promise from someone who couldn't be more obviously untrustworthy if he were twirling a mustache).

This movie is terrible first, because Lucas writes unbearable dialogue, especially in romantic scenes. And since the motivator is romantic love, we get a lot of bad lines. Remember "I don't like sand"? Episode III one-ups that. The climactic emotional moment, I swear to God, is a rip-off of Homer Simpson.

And second, Hayden Christensen is a lousy actor. There, I said it. Even with the silly script, Ewan McGregor is fine, and Natalie Portman brings life to a few scenes, but Anakin gets not a single believable moment. Even when all he has to do is look sideways, he's more fake than a losing high school forensics team. He's wooden like community-college Acting 101. I could go on.

Best I can say is that Jar-Jar doesn't speak. The special effects are there, and since they cover every square inch of the screen constantly, you will get many per unit time per dollar. If you like that kind of thing, you're going to go see it anyway, so enjoy.

Thanks go to erikharrison for his take on the movie.

Comments

How does Eps I-III Alter the Viewing of Eps IV-VI?

[Trillian_1138]

I am both a Star Wars geek and a performance/theatre geek, a dangerous combination which leads to over-analysis. Since seeing Episode III earlier today, I've been thinking a lot about how the presentation of Episodes I through III alter Episodes IV-VI. "Star Wars," as a single story told through film (ignoring books/videogames/comics/fan films/etc), now functions in six episodes tied together by numerous characters and over-arcing story threads. So how does this single narrative affect how Episodes IV-VI should be viewed?

For example, one of the great things about Ep. IV-VI was discovering Luke and Leia's relationship and that Vader is their father. The problem is, this only works as a dramatic issue for the audience (obviously it still works for the characters) if the audience doesn't know those things going in. Now, it's not an unreasonable assumption to say that everybody seeing Star Wars (even for the first time) already knows those things. But as an artistic work (granting the "Star Wars" films the status of 'art') Lucas removed a large dramatic moment of the story as a whole. Likewise, the way Lucas has set up the over-arcing 6-ilogy (sexilogy?) now places more emphasis on Anakin Skywalker's rise, fall, and redemption (and in some ways, parallel journeys by Obi-Wan and Yoda) than about the adventures of Luke, Leia, etc in IV-VI.

What does the Slashdot crowd think? Ignoring the actual presentation of Episodes I-III, was the very idea flawed, and does it do damage to the structure of Eps. IV-VI? Does the new over-arcing story cary enough value to disregard the problems it creates? Am I just over-thinking this way too much?
-Trillian

Another great review:

[XanC]

http://www.decentfilms.com/reviews/starwars3.html

The main site has a lot of Star Wars stuff on the front page: http://www.decentfilms.com/index.html

An interesting excerpt:

The problem with Yoda's ethic of detachment is that it's dead contrary to the unabashed humanism with which the whole story ends in Return of the Jedi, where human attachments -- filial loyalty, paternal bonds -- ultimately save the galaxy, destroy the Sith and the Empire, and redeem Anakin' lost soul. Yoda and Obi-Wan consistently counsel Luke (and, in the prequels, Anakin) against the very bonds that finally lead to the triumph of good over evil.

In the end, alas, the Jedi do seem too "narrow" and "dogmatic," not the great sages Lucas presumably wanted them to be. Perhaps the "prophecy of the one who will bring balance to the Force" was misinterpreted after all: Perhaps the prophecy was really fulfilled not by Anakin destroying the Sith order, but by Luke humanizing the Jedi ethic.

Re:Another great review:

[GrouchoMarx]

In the end, alas, the Jedi do seem too "narrow" and "dogmatic," not the great sages Lucas presumably wanted them to be. Perhaps the "prophecy of the one who will bring balance to the Force" was misinterpreted after all: Perhaps the prophecy was really fulfilled not by Anakin destroying the Sith order, but by Luke humanizing the Jedi ethic.

Precisely! One thing that Ep. III touches on (and the DarthSide blog, one of the greatest SW fanfics ever, expands on) is that the Light and Dark side of the Force is NOT "good" and "bad". It's "life exists, let it be" vs "life exists, if you can take it by the horns you can make it a better place". The Jedi had long ago rejected the Dark Side completely on "power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely" grounds. The Sith, a specific small order of Dark Jedi, fully embraced the "control and order" aspect of the Force but were corrupted by it.

Luke, in the final battle with the Emperor and Vader in Ep. VI, is able to use his anger (dark side thing) to defeat Vader, but has the strength of will to pull back and not be tempted and corrupted by the power. (Parallel to Anakin vs. Tyranus, with the same person cheer-leading in both cases.) Why? Because he sees the growing parallel between himself and his father when he cuts off Vader's hand, and he realizes where that path leads. Sidious is about to kill him for it, when Vader (that prophesy dude) realizes what he has become and sacrifices himself to kill Sidious and end the Sith line. He sees that in his son is the true balance in the Force, and ensures that it is not destroyed prematurely.

The Force is already unbalanced with the Jedi, since they eschew the other branch of the Force completely. By bringing it back into balance, the light and dark sides are both recognized and accepted. Not something Mace Windu and Yoda would really have wanted, but but the end, Yoda's ghost seems to have come to terms with it.

My issue with Star Wars is that the overarching story concept (the above, at least as I see it), is AMAZINGLY GOOD! The actual execution is at best spotty, and at worst talks about sand. Still, stuff like the DarthSide blog, the fan stuff, really redeems a lot of it. Lucas has great ideas, but should leave the execution to someone else.

Viewing Order

[XanC]

You can't start at the beginning, because all of the others rely on the introductions in 4. Episode 1 assumes you know what the "force" is, for example, whereas Obi-Wan explains it to us in 4. And many of the twists in the original trilogy are presented neatly and cleanly in the prequels. My current thinking is that the best order is:

4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 6

So that after "Empire", at the end of which Vader reveals he's Luke's father, we take a detour and get to the back-story: where he came from, the source of the Rebellion and the Empire, and his fall to the dark side.

It's all leading up to the climactic finish where the prequels allow us to better appreciate the scope of the triumph: the Sith destroyed, republican government reinstated, and Anakin redeemed.

Dilema with my Young Kids

[syntap]

I have two kids, under age 5. Of course most of us saw the trilogies in the order 4-5-6-1-2-3. When the kids are old enough, should we maintain that order or do we show it to them in 1-2-3-4-5-6 order?

The reason we had to watch it in our order is obvious, but do the benefits we had in watching the films in that order cascade to the younger generations? What order will people watch them in five or ten years from now?

I didn't have high hopes about this but...

[Andrew Aguecheek]

SPOILER WARNING

What annoyed me most was the inconsistancy. There were some moments that linked to the original trillogy rather well - Obi-Wan's "so uncivilised" comment about blasters for instance. But there are other aspects that made no sense.

Chewie and Yoda were apparently aquaintances and yet the Wookie never mentioned this to Han, or if he did, despite the trust between the two of them, Han didn't consider it to be a reason to believe in the Force.

Perhaps more grating however was the death of Padme - it was utterly unnecessary, Vader did not know if she was dead or not and so Palpatine could easily have lied and told him she was. More than that though, it contradicted Leia's recollections in Jedi - where she remembers her "real mother." It has been suggested that she remembers her through the force, but then, why doesn't Luke?

Of course the other irritation with the film was the godawful dialogue. The "no I love you" "no I love you" scenes between Anakin and Padme, Vader lifting his head to the skies and shouting "NOOOOOOO!" Thankfully, Threepio's pun chip does seem to have been removed, and there's a dispute over whether or not Jar Jar spoke at all. (If he did it was only something along the lines of "excuse me")

The effects were great though - aside from the lizard thing.

Re:I didn't have high hopes about this but...

[ghostunit]

If Padme hadn't died, Vader may have been able to feel her presence through the force or something. The real plot hole is that the emperor tells Vader he killed Padme in his rage. When he learns in ep4 that his sons are alive he should have realized that the emperor lied to him, since Padme wouldn't have delivered if he had killed her in Moustafar. And agreed, all the characters included for no reason such as Chewbacca, Jabba and the droids is lame and cause plot holes.

See it dubbed!

[OblongPlatypus]

Spending the year studying in Barcelona, I ended up seeing Episode III dubbed to Spanish, and I truly and sincerely believe this made the experience better.

Most noticeable was the improvement in the scenes with Anakin/Vader, because Jamie is exactly right - Christensen in an awful actor. And much of this awfulness lies in the horribly wooden and monotonous delivery of every single line of dialogue, which means having it replaced by an experienced Spanish voice actor is a real blessing.

But the improvements weren't limited to Anakin's lines, and my theory is that this can be explained by the extreme use of blue/green-screen photography in these films. The actors are used to delivering their lines while at least in some sense being there in the environment of the film's story, and end up floundering when forced to work with the nothingness of a green screen. The voice-actors that do the dubbing, on the other hand, have years and years of experience in putting emotion in their lines without any sort of environment except the recording studio.

Maybe those of you in the right parts of the US can take a trip across the border to Mexico and see it there? Do they even dub films there?

Re:Human physics

[jamie]

Did anyone else notice examples of this?

Yes. Every scene where anyone did anything like that.

Which is to say, most of the movie. In Spiderman 1 and 2 the defying-physics stuff actually worked because it gave Spiderman a kind of half-alien insecty twitch. Every CG actor in Sith, flipping and flying around, just looked CG.

The fight choreography was terrible too. Whether in close quarters or the middle of an empty room, apparently light-saber fights look identical, nothing but big flashy sweeping strokes. Compare to the trailer swordfight in Kill Bill 2, or the bathroom martial arts combat in Unleashed.

Re:Death Star

[BoneFlower]

Possibilities:

That wasn't the Death Star, but a smaller scale prototype device to test out some of the technologies and construction techniques.

It was the Death Star, but due to the newness of the technology involved, it took a great deal of time to construct, much more time than Death Star II, which was simply a somewhat bigger example of the same technology. Real world parralel here- the first time you built a computer, it probably took a lot longer than it would take you now right?

Possible parralel with the Babylon project in Babylon 5- it took them quite some time to get a working station. Perhaps the Death Star was beset by engineering failures and sabotage along the way before they finally got one operational? As mentioned above, new things take longer to build than new examples of old things, simply because it is new. Compound this by running into unexpected engineering or construction failures, or sabotage, and things can take very long indeed.

Palpatine didn't disband the Senate until A New Hope. Presumably, the Senate did have some power over the budget and policy until then- not as much as it used to, but some. To divert funds for such a large secret project would raise lots of questions among fairly powerful individuals. They simply couldn't divert funds to get it done any faster than 15-20 years without tipping off the Senate, which may have still had the authority and/or influence to take down Palpatine, or at least make his rule more difficult. The second Death Star, however, would not be created under those restrictions. Palpatine had unlimited authority by that point, and if he wanted to divert fifty billion credits for a battle station, he could do so and just kill anyone that asked why.

It was the Death Star, but not right after the previous scene- a flash forward scene to the construction project a few years prior to the Battle of Yavin.

The X Factor

[soloport]

I surmize that the real reason for the hideousness of the later episodes is simple: George can't write worth a damn.

Factoid: Lucas's wife Marcia edited American Graffiti and Star Wars; the couple were married from 1969-83.

Remember how the original Star Wars was so different? Mixed with humor and other elements in the dialogue -- seemed to consist of real entertainment.

Too bad Marcia wasn't there to influence all the episodes...

Re:Extremes...

[WaterBreath]

Again, no one in the theator seemed to notice.

I'd guess no one else in the theater cared. Let's face it, if you were so disappointed by episodes 1 and 2, why did you even bother to see 3? Same reason everyone else did: closure. The difference between you and everyone else in the theater though was that you were determined going in that this was going to be a bad movie and you just wanted to get the last few story elements out and be done with it. Going in I was scared it was going to be like ep. 1. But I came out more than relieved. Fully satisfied, one might say.

Personally, I was less than impressed with ep. 1, but I didn't think it was terrible. I thought ep. 2 was better. The romantic scenes were very annoying, because Lucas can't write good emotional dialogue and Hayden Christiansen can't emote realistic emotion (except for whiny discontent). However, I loved everything else about ep. 2. And after seeing ep. 3, I have a new appreciation for the romantic scense. Ep. 3 wouldn't have made any sense at all without them. It's utterly necessary that Anakin actually has a reason for his fear.

Ep. 3 was awesome, IMHO. On par with the first 3. Maybe better just because it was dire, so tragic, and looked so good. Moreso of all three than eps. 4-6 were able to achieve. Plus, it answered so many questions I hadn't even realized I had! Now I know why the Jedi shun emotion and attachment. Now I know why the Sith are so dangerous, and why they can get rational people to support them despite that.

Anyway, like I said, it was awesome. I may have to go see it again in the theater, which I don't do often.

A note or two of my own...

[catdevnull]

Ok. I saw it. I really liked it--it's Star Wars.

There are two things to remember when watching any of these films:

1) They are not Science Fiction
2) They are not the uber-cerebral life-changing movies you thought they were when you were a kid (and they never were).

Ok, those said, I think a pinch or two of salt should be added to your cinematic experience. Sure the dialog is wooden and contrived--if not corny. So is the acting & dialogue on anything found on the Sci-Fi channel, Bab5, Star Trek, Battle Star Galactica. Every one of those shows are cheesy but all the geeks seem to like them anyway. Why should SWEP3 be any different?

Lucas calls them "Space Operas" --and if you're familiar with that genre, you know that opera's stories and motivations require an extended suspension of disbelief. You just go with it.

Because all of the technology and theory in Star Wars isn't really explained, it just happens to take place in a galaxy far, far away, it gets lumped into SciFi genre. SciFi is a bit more satisfying to the "geek" types. But, Star Wars really doesn't quite fit into that category despite it's cover.

Hayden Christianson definitely comes off as a poor actor--or he isn't given very good direction to bring more dimension to his character. How was he in "Shattered Glass"? I think dialog and direction can make or break a good performance. Maybe if Lucas let someone else direct, it might have worked better.

I was blown away by the eye candy and I think it sets up the next film fine. I'm going to overlook some of the incontinuity others are finding just because I have more important things in life to bitch about. Afterall, it's just a movie, isn't it?

If you're a detail-oriented person, you'll probably be very frustrated. If you just like an entertaining, mind-blowing ride through Lucas's world, you'll probably enjoy it.

For whatever my $.02 is worth.

Not bad but hardly great

[pixelgeek]

While this movie wasn't as bad as the previous two prequels the plot and the acting really did little to present a compelling story of a man's descent into evil.

Anakin's path to the Dark Side just isn't believable. He goes from being confused and petulent in the morning to killing little children in the evening? Based on what? Certainly not the limited dialogue and character development we see on screen.

His reasoning for wanting to save Padme isn't explored enough. Hell Lucas could have just been a little more concrete and gien Padme a medical condition that *would* have killed her in childbirth. That would have been more believable than a dream that Aniken has.

The main problem really is that Lucas doesn't have the writing nor the directorial skills to explore this type of emotional material. His actors are always wooden and deliver really badly written lines with flat performances. This movie is no exception and its no surprise that the path from Aniken to Darth vader just isn't believable.

The movie looks nice but Lucas should stick to pulp sci-fi and avoid anything than hints of emotion or depth ...he can't pull it off.

Luke IS the restored balance in the Force

[Pfhorrest]

You've got it down precisely.

Anakin/Vader was the "Chosen One". He returned balance to the Force. First, by eliminating all the Jedi but Obi-wan and Yoda, and all the Sith but Sidious and himself; and then, by killing both Obi-wan and Sidious, while Yoda died of old age and Vader died of his wounds. Thus, both the Jedi and the Sith were destroyed and the conflict between Light and Dark sides settled.

Where Luke is important is not that he is the "Chosen One" who would restore balance to the Force - he IS the restored balance in the Force! Trained by Obi-wan and Yoda, tempted by Sidious and Vader, and then freed of all of them, left with the strength and passion of the Dark Side that almost drove him to become a Sith at the end of RotJ, but with the control and resolve of a Jedi, and the ability to temper those emotions when necessary.

It actually reminds me a lot of the Vulcans and Klingons of Star Trek. The Vulcans are ostensibly the "good guys" on the side of reason and order; the Klingons are ostensibly the "bad guys" on the side of emotion and chaos. But throughout the series it's pretty obvious that the Vulcan's suppression of emotion is not such a great thing, and anyone can easily see how the Klingons' lack of reason is less than ideal. In that series humans are supposed to represent the "happy medium", people who embrace both emotions and reason and can control the both as needed.

And I agree with you wholeheartedly: the themes of this movie, first of Anakin and his unsuccessful struggle to find a path between the extremes of the Jedi and the Sith, and then of Luke and his successul mediation of those extremes, are extremely powerful and touching themes that are common to any person's existence. We are all surrounded by polar choices, few as extreme as these fictional examples, but nevertheless every person must at times mediate disagreements between their reason and their emotions, their personal faith and their agreement with society, the freedom of their actions and the consent of others...

As the old addage says, "all things in moderation", and as we all must struggle to find a suitable moderation between extremes, a well-implemented and convincing portrayal of these themes on an epics scale can be touching to anyone. Unfortunately, it seems that Lucas has failed to implement his story in such a convincing way. I am happy to hold in my mind an abridged version of the tale, and allow my own imagination to fill in the details in more acceptable ways. Perhaps someday this story will be told again, and better; either the Star Wars saga itself or another saga which tells the same essential tale. I certainly hope so.