Star Wars: Episode III

-20^th Century Fox (2005)

Summary:

Surprise, Anakin Skywalker is Darth Vader!

My Thoughts:

The epic Star Wars series has finally come to an end. That is, if you don’t count the books, toys, games, cartoons, etc. that will surely keep the franchise alive for many years to come. During my first viewing of Revenge of the Sith I spent most of the time worrying it would suck; thankfully it didn’t. If you’re an obsessive Star Wars freak that wants to hate the movie then Lucas gives you plenty of opportunity to do so. For the rest of us, what we get is a great film. I’m giving everyone a fair warning that this review is an opportunity for me to delve more into the series as a whole, so it’s going to be a long one. Strap yourselves in; we’re going for a ride!

This should be the entire film.

Star Wars Revenge of the Sith starts off with an epic space battle that makes no sense on many scientific levels, just how I like my sci-fi films. It's one of the most fantastic battles in the entire series, but it’s too bad that it’s marred by some silly R2-D2 shenanigans and a rather short length. Revenge begins right after the Clone Wars cartoon series left off so you're starting right in the middle of things. Obi-wan and Anakin are on a mission to rescue the kidnapped Chancellor Palpatine who has been kidnapped by the evil droid General Grievous. If you weren’t part of the whole Lucas hype machine or saw any of the commercials before seeing Revenge you might be a little lost considering Grievous is an enormously important character in Episode III and we are barely introduced to him. If you’ve seen Attack of the Clones you’ll realize that the same thing applies for Count Dooku’s character in that film. Worse yet, the completely freaking awesome version of Grievous seen in the Clone Wars cartoons is coughing in almost every scene he is in because of an event that takes place in that cartoon.

"I just pooped my pants."

Anyway back to the story. Anakin and Obi-wan fight their way through Grievous's ship while R2-D2 does some outdated slapstick. It's pretty dumb considering R2-D2 performs maneuvers you’d never think possible after seeing the classic trilogy. Still, I find some of it actually a relief since the rest of the film is so dark. In the rescue scenes Anakin and Obi-wan work together like an actual team and you can see a brief glimpse of why they consider themselves friends, unlike the poorly executed master/student relationship in Attack of the Clones. By the time they find Palpatine it's lightsaber battling time because Dooku confronts them in one of that villain’s best scenes. Obi-wan is conveniently taken out early in this skirmish. Anakin defeats the Sith by cutting off his hands. God, that’s sweet. The young Jedi Knight holds Dooku at bay with a scissors like hold with two lightsabers while Palpatine orders him to kill Dooku. Dooku looks pretty confused and instead of trying to save his life like you’d think he would, he waits in stunned silence until Anakin gives into his darker urges. Of course, if Dooku would have said anything then the rest of the movie couldn’t have happened the way it did. I love when you can tell how weak of a writer George Lucas is. The heroes attempt to get away with the Chancellor but are caught by Grievous. They manage to get the upper hand yet again and then must pilot a crashing starship onto Coruscant where you get to see A.) Cool firefighter ships, B.) An impossible landing, C.) The heroes taking out an air traffic control tower where I assume no one died, because nobody cared about the incident moments later. I’m guessing the “You’re a big hero now, Anakin” scene MUST take place a few days later because otherwise it wouldn’t make sense at all if there was still remnants of a gigantic space battle overhead with all the senators and the Jedi acting so casual.

Anakin runs off to the shadows where Padme tells him the good news that all young unmarried Jedi don't want to hear, that he knocked her up. The look on his face is classic. You can almost hear him screaming “FUUUUCK!” in his mind, but he handles it quite well by awkwardly stammering about how wonderful it is. I bet he was totally kicking himself because he told Padme that he couldn’t stand the feeling of space condoms. Anyway, one of the lowest points of the film comes not soon after with a scene that harkens back to the absolute abysmal love scenes of Attack of the Clones. The dialogue sounds like something I would have wrote in high school when girls didn’t talk to me:

 Anakin: “You are so beautiful.”

Padme: “It’s only because I’m so in love.”

Anakin: “No, it’s only because I’m so in love with you.”

Last night I had too much to drink, ate an entire pizza before passing out, and when I woke up this morning I vomited. Strangely enough, this dialogue is still more disgusting than what came out of me.

"Useless advice, I give."

The most important motivation for our budding Darth Vader is that he dreams that Padme will die. Anakin does the sensible thing and goes to Yoda for advice. Yoda in turn basically tells him the old Jedi b.s. that you should let go of your feelings and celebrate when someone joins the Force through death. While this is a perfectly understandable point of view, it’s probably the most useless thing Anakin has ever heard in his life. Still in need of comfort, the young Jedi finds himself speaking with Chancellor Palpatine. Palpatine tells him there are “other” means of doing things that the Jedi don’t acknowledge. He also tells Anakin that he wants to appoint him as his representative on the Jedi council. I love the scenes with Palpatine in this film and this one in particular. Ian McDermid portrays the manipulative Sith Lord perfectly. Unfortunately, it makes you realize how poor the rest of the acting has been in the previous outings of the neo-trilogy. Personally, my favorite scene in the whole film is when Palpatine tells Anakin the story of Darth Plagus. It also helps explain that whole Anakin not having a father thing, but it's still not concrete so it leaves at least one mystery left to the Force. (As a side note: Holy crap am I the only one to notice the Twi'like with the big breasts in the hallway before this scene? We’ve come a long way from taping down Cari Fisher’s breasts, Mr. Lucas.)

I suppose this would be awesome if it was onscreen for longer than a second.

Revenge of the Sith swings back into action mode when the Jedi Council decides that Obi-wan should go try to take General Grievous out himself, despite the fact that Grievous has been proven to be pretty good at killing Jedi. Before that though, you are treated to a little reminder of the past when Anakin whines about not being made a Jedi Master when they reluctantly agree to put him on the council. The Jedi then ask him to spy on the Chancellor because they think something is fishy about him. It took them how long to reach this conclusion? Anyway, Yoda goes to help defend the Wookie home world of Kashyyyk where we get an all too brief glimpse at a lot of Wookie goodness. Revenge of the Sith has the Wookie war taking place on a beach when I was under the understanding that Kashyyyk was 100% forest. After I thought about it a little, the change of scenery makes sense for a couple of reasons. Foremost the whole forest thing was done with the Ewoks and that would be too much of a repeat. From a military standpoint it would make sense for the droid army to try and create a landing zone in an open area as opposed to trying to create one in a thick grouping of 200 foot tall trees. Still, it was a little shocking to see that looked just like a level in Star Wars Battlefront.

This clone is so badass I bet he could kill ninjas and pirates at the same time.

I'd like to make a quick note about the clone troopers in this movie: I’m going to admit it. I love the clone troopers. I’ve always been a nut about faceless army guys ever since I saw storm troopers in A New Hope. I don’t know why, but I can’t get enough of the clone troopers. My only contention with these lovable guys is that there are just too many variations of them. As an toy buyer I feel like Lucasfilm was trying to screw me by making every clone trooper in the film look slightly different so they could make clone toy variations forever. The only other thing that bothers me about them is that they are all CGI rendered. Lucasfilm didn’t make any real costumes so when they paste Tamura Morrison’s head on a clone trooper body it sometimes looks so ridiculously fake that it breaks the suspension of disbelief in a couple parts of the film.

On the planet Utapau, Obi-wan meets the Hell Raiser Corduroy Mole people. He decides to bust some droid heads by getting on a giant lizard and riding it cowboy style. Giant lizard? Well, what did you expect? This is a Star Wars! When Obi-Wan finds General Grievous, he jumps down next to him in the midst of almost the entire droid army. Why Obi-Wan went with the super daring move since he has only been see on screen as being ultra conservative in comparison to Anakin's stunts we'll never know. Obi-Wan and Grievous have the battle I was waiting for months for and unfortunately Grievous's extra hands get cut off almost instantaneously before he’s running away. I really like this character, but seriously, he’s nothing like he was in the Clone Wars animated series. Obi-Wan chases him down and kills him with a blaster. Didn’t see that one coming… well I basically did on toy package before the movie release, damn it.

Anakin contends with his growing concern over Padme and his feelings of Jedi inadequacy. At this point you see one of the first signs that Hayden Christensen is really acting, considering in the previous films he displayed the talent of a carrot. It really says something when he makes Natalie Portman look like dead wood in this film. Palpatine plays all of his cards by offering to help Anakin with his dark side knowledge. He plays his part most humbly by simply offering the young Jedi an alternative view in order to help his wife. Anakin must fight his temptation and momentarily succeeds. It’s a sweet moment when Anakin decides to tell the Jedi about him. In a way Palpatine lets him go despite the possible consequences. He’s just that badass.

Mace's Jedi Tip #43: "Take cannon fodder along with you to make you look even better."

Anakin reports what he knows to Mace about Palpatine’s sithy secret. Mace, being the biggest dumbass in the galaxy, thanks Anakin but won’t let him come along for the arrest. Instead taking along some no name alien Jedi (at least not named on screen) to do the job. If there’s one lesson in all of history is that you don’t take red shirts along with you to take down a major villain! There’s some great tension adding scenes while Anakin is forced to wait for everything to go down. Finally, he can’t wait any longer while the one person he thinks can save his wife’s life could be killed. At this point in the film I realized how outstanding John William’s score was compared to his rather ho-hum efforts in the previous two films.

As predicted, Mace’s completely useless Jedi buddies get killed by Palpatine within about five seconds of having their light sabers out. Far be it to me to criticize their fighting styles, but the “getting stabbed quickly and dying” style seems to be a poor choice in this situation. Mace and Palpatine fight it out in a pretty cool saber battle, the only low point is the faces that Palpatine makes, which I can only attribute to his crazy lust for Jedi blood. Killing Jedi is like having sex for this guy. Mace gets the upper hand and holds Palpatine at bay just as Anakin walks in. After Mace decides to off Palpatine once and for all Anakin completes his journey to the dark side by cutting off Mace's arm. This leaves our favorite self proclaimed bad ass open for one hell of a Jedi killing blast of Palpatine’s Force lightning. Mace is then shot out of the window where he probably had some crazy adventure in some prequel themed novel from Del Ray. Palpatine has a Sithgasim while Anakin gets all crunked on evil. Palpatine then uses the scary voice that Paul Atreides uses to convince guys to stab each other and now Anakin is fully in Palpatine’s hands. Here’s one of the best parts of the whole Palpatine plan: He tells Anakin that he really doesn’t have the power over life and death, but if they work together they can discover it. Hah! Who knew that Anakin was such an idiot? Well, I guess everyone who watched Attack of the Clones did.

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