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

DIRECTOR: George Lucas

CAST: Ewan McGregor, Hayden Christensen, Natalie Portman, Ian McDiarmid, Samuel L. Jackson, Frank Oz (voice), Peter Mayhew, Anthony Daniels, Kenny Baker, Jimmy Smits, Christopher Lee

REVIEW:

As Darth Vader once solemnly intoned to Obi-Wan Kenobi in 1977’s A New Hope, the circle is complete. George Lucas has brought things full circle by closing out his prequel trilogy that began with 1999’s The Phantom Menace. To this end, Revenge of the Sith is probably the strongest of the prequel movies; the flaws of Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones, while not absent, feel less conspicuous. Revenge of the Sith is a flawed but frequently rollicking and—-as is inevitable for anyone who knows where things are fated to end up—-an increasingly dark and emotionally bruising experience.

We open with a titanic space battle over the skies of Coruscant, in the midst of which Jedi Knights and war heroes Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) and Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen) are on a daring rescue mission to save Chancellor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid), who has been kidnapped by the droid commander General Grievous (voiced by Matthew Woods) to lure them into a rematch with Count Dooku (Christopher Lee). It’s all a set-up, but the Jedi don’t know it at the time. After this whiz bang opening, we settle down into political intrigues. Anakin’s forbidden secret wife Senator Padme Amidala (Natalie Portman) is pregnant, which threatens to expose their clandestine love affair. Anakin is also being plagued by nightmares of Padme dying in childbirth, nightmares which threaten to bring his angst to a breaking point. Tension is brewing between the Chancellor and the Jedi Council who view him with deep mistrust, particularly Yoda (Frank Oz) and Mace Windu (Samuel L. Jackson), especially when Palpatine appoints Anakin as his personal representative on the Council. To this end, they assign Anakin to spy on Palpatine, a task Anakin does not take to enthusiastically. Meanwhile, Obi-Wan is dispatched to hunt down Grievous while, back on Coruscant, Palpatine makes his move on Kenobi’s troubled apprentice.

Revenge of the Sith opens with some of the whiz-bang derring-do that we expect from Star Wars, with Anakin and Obi-Wan swapping banter while fighting a space battle, having a duel with Count Dooku, and confronting General Grievous, but afterwards there’s a bit of down time with political intrigues and a sense of ominous building tension. There’s more action later, including a chase and fight between Obi-Wan and General Grievous, and a climactic battle royale crosscutting between two championship prize fights: Obi-Wan versus Anakin, and Yoda versus the Emperor, but the film’s tone grows grimmer as it goes along. This is not a happy story, and even the victories are tinged with a sense of hollowness. There’s a little catharsis at the end, but it’s bittersweet (and arguably more bitter than sweet). This is a dark movie, and even its few lighthearted moments come under a cloud of grim expectations. We know at least the gist of what’s going to happen, and the closer it gets, the weightier the sense of encroaching dread. There’s a low comic relief quotient. Jar Jar Binks (Ahmed Best) is relegated to a cameo. C-3PO (Anthony Daniels) and R2-D2 (Kenny Baker) have none of the over-the-top silliness of their antics in the droid factory in Attack of the Clones. Some of the dialogue between Anakin and Padme is still awkward, but these scenes are mercifully short so it’s less glaring, and they serve their purpose of illustrating Anakin’s increasing paranoia about losing his wife just as he did his mother. Overall, Anakin’s arc resembles a Greek or Shakespearean tragedy: a man who attains the power he desires only after sacrificing everything dear to him, including his own soul. The bitter irony in Anakin’s situation is that by embracing the Dark Side of the Force, he becomes trapped in a self-fulfilling prophecy wherein he loses the very thing he seeks to protect.

There aren’t a lot of “surprise twists” in Revenge of the Sith. We already know the outline of what happens. Anakin Skywalker is seduced to the Dark Side of the Force and becomes Darth Vader, along the way fighting a duel with his former master Obi-Wan. Chancellor Palpatine reveals himself as Darth Sidious and transitions the Republic into the Galactic Empire. The Jedi are exterminated. Obi-Wan and Yoda go into exile on different planets. The infant twins Luke and Leia are adopted into the hands of Owen and Beru (Joel Edgerton and Bonnie Piesse) and Bail Organa (Jimmy Smits). The key is that, after Star Wars fans could only imagine it for decades, these events now come to life. The jigsaw puzzle comes together. Especially in the third act, things click into place nudging us closer to A New Hope (although the events of that film still lie approximately twenty years into the future from where we leave off here). Chewbacca (Peter Mayhew) has a walk-on appearance. Tarkin and the Death Star make closing cameos. Some ship designs more closely resemble Star Destroyers and TIE-fighters. The opening duel, with a young prospective new apprentice battling the elder Sith Lord in front of a seated Palpatine (in a swivel chair, no less) bears an unsubtle visual resemblance to the one between Luke and Vader in Return of the Jedi. We see the Tantive IV, the same ship Darth Vader is chasing at the beginning of A New Hope, looking exactly the same as it did in 1977. Genevieve O’Reilly filmed material as a young Mon Mothma (the eventual leader of the Rebel Alliance, played by Caroline Blakiston in Return of the Jedi), but they ended up as deleted scenes. The most goosebump-inducing moment is likely to be when we see the Darth Vader mask slide into place and hear James Earl Jones’ voice for the “first” time. The way two scenes of “death” and “birth” (the latter in more ways than one) are intercut also offers one of the film’s most uncompromising emotional kicks to the teeth. Not all eyes will be dry by the film’s end.

While it’s a stronger motion picture than its predecessors—-mostly because the stakes are far higher—-Revenge of the Sith does not escape some of their flaws. Anakin pledging himself to the Dark Side feels abrupt (Hayden Christensen’s questionable acting abilities don’t help) and truth be told, he still often comes across as whiny and petulant. Sometimes it’s frustrating what the prequels chose to focus on and what they skimmed over, skipping ahead three years from Attack of the Clones to Revenge of the Sith and giving us only the beginning and end of the Clone Wars, leaving us feeling like some of Anakin’s arc of becoming a war hero is only referenced instead of shown. So too is the ostensibly close mentor-pupil relationship between Anakin and Palpatine; we’ve never seen them spend any substantial time together until now, making things feel less well-established than they might otherwise have been (the later seven-season Clone Wars animated series, despite its kiddie-friendly tone, does a lot to fill in these gaps and gives us a more heroic and mature characterization of Anakin, although this also has the effect of feeling like he’s devolved again if one comes into Revenge of the Sith after watching the show). Seemingly feeling the pressure of decades of building fan expectations, Lucas goes over-the-top trying to make the inevitable Obi-Wan versus Anakins showdown the most epic duel ever; by the time they’re swinging back-and-forth over a river of lava, it gets a little silly. Of the several villains onhand, Count Dooku gets a walk-on appearance and is swiftly disposed of, and the new addition General Grievous (voiced by Lucasfilm sound engineer Matthew Woods, apparently a last-minute replacement after Gary Oldman was unable to participate due to union rules) is a little goofy and underexplained. Our “big bad”, Chancellor Palpatine/Darth Sidious, spends the first half of the movie being a snaky, insinuating cajoler and then, as soon as he reveals himself, turns into a one-note cackling villain with as much subtlety as the Wicked Witch of the West. Sometimes Lucas’ overindulgence shows through; it feels a little silly to see characters like Yoda and Palpatine flipping around like video game character.

One of the things weakening the impact of Anakin’s turn to the Dark Side is that his actor Hayden Christensen is not always up to the task of conveying his extreme character arc. Christensen’s most convincing moments are his physical ones; he looks the part and moves great with a lightsaber, but his line deliveries continue to be often stilted and unconvincing. Christensen’s best acting moment apart from his fight scenes is a wordless one where he and Portman share a longing gaze across the cityscape. Ewan McGregor (looking and sounding more like Alec Guinness as he goes along) is more steady; in fact, McGregor arguably gives the most reliable performance of the prequel trilogy. Natalie Portman gets to do some actual acting, especially in the third act, although her screentime is more limited than in the previous two episodes. Ian McDiarmid gets bumped-up screentime as Palpatine hooks his manipulative claws into Anakin, though—-truth be told—-he devolves into a scenery-chewing ham in the second half. Samuel L. Jackson gets to get up off his Jedi Council seat and have another fight scene. Jimmy Smits, who had a small role in Attack of the Clones, has a slightly expanded one here. Christopher Lee returns, though his screentime is sadly brief.

Overall, while Revenge of the Sith does not escape the flaws of the prequel trilogy, they feel less egregious this time. The stakes are higher and so are the film’s high points. Most importantly, after 28 years of waiting, Lucas has brought the six-episode Star Wars saga to completion. Fans can now watch Episodes I-VI without interruption. While Star Wars would go on with tie-in supplemental material, the main decades-long “Skywalker Saga” has come full circle. To that end, Revenge of the Sith is a mostly satisfying climax point.

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