After dazzling a generation of audiences, creating
perhaps the most famous motion picture franchise in the history of the medium,
influencing a great many other filmmakers, adding numerous catch phrases and
iconic figures to the culture, and of course after immeasurable quantities of
hype and hope, George Lucas has finally concluded the Star Wars saga.
Episode III — Revenge of the Sith, as experienced Star
Warriors know, actually precedes the trilogy that began the whole enterprise,
explaining the events and people who occupy the foreground of the first film,
which was actually the fourth chapter in the whole story, and its two sequels, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. (Got that?)
Except for the most passionate fans and the
get-a-life crowd that camps outside theaters for months to see the flick, Revenge of the Sith, sadly, attains only
perhaps a fractionally larger artistic success than the first two episodes, but
remains pretty much the same old story, full of the same characters in one
guise or another, and preaching the same tired ideas.
The picture opens with the familiar stirring music,
while the long prose crawl disappearing into the stars informs us of the
Balkanized political situation of the galactic government, torn apart by armed
combat among Separatists, Siths, Jedi Knights, and who knows, perhaps even
Christian Conservatives, with the necessary mention of the ideological struggle
between the Empire and the Rebels. Those complications, of course, really serve
as the excuse for the two essential subjects of the entire saga — numerous
action scenes displaying a dazzling array of special effects and numerous
static conversations in which characters exchange plangent platitudes.
Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen), a young and
greatly gifted Jedi Knight, undergoes what seems an endless internal struggle
between our old friends, the Force and the Dark Side, advised on one hand by
the Jedi Masters, Yoda and Mace Windu (Samuel L. Jackson), and on the other by
Supreme Galactic Chancellor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid), ostensibly a good guy
but actually a complete Sith. The troubled young Jedi succumbs to the lure of
the Dark Side, partially in the belief that it will help him save his wife
Padmé from death in childbirth, and enrolls in the ranks of the rebels who want
to overthrow the existing government and impose dictatorial tyranny on the
galaxy.
In keeping with the palpably increasing pretension
of the Star Wars saga, Anakin’s
temptation to seize power echoes such works as Julius Caesar and Macbeth,
while his subsequent actions recall both the Bible and Paradise Lost. He carries out a slaughter of the innocents, for
example, and fights an epic light saber battle with his mentor Obi-Wan Kenobi
across what looks very like the flaming floors of Hell. His Satanic choice
transforms him from the handsome, noble knight to the maimed and disfigured
Darth Vader, encased in black armor, breathing like an artificial respirator
and talking like James Earl Jones.
In explaining the origins of the characters who
appeared in the first trilogy, so that the end of this picture neatly dovetails
with the beginning of the original Star
Wars, the movie also demonstrates George Lucas’s continuing preoccupation
with the sophomoric theology and murky mythologizing of the previous episodes.
Neither the fiddling around with ancient stories nor
the prattling about Big Ideas, however, prevents him from exploiting the full
panoply of special effects that enliven the saga and provide its chief appeal. Revenge of the Sith shows all the required
set pieces — fencing with light sabers, star fighter combat in space, some
nasty beasts, a really terrific collection of mechanical monsters and vehicles,
and a vicious general leading the bad Droids, a wonderfully consumptive
collection of spare parts who coughs like Greta Garbo in Camille.
After all the clanking machinery collapses and the
last star fighter whooshes off into the dark emptiness of space and Yoda
intones his last Germanic syntactic inversion, however, Revenge of the Sith ends up essentially repeating the plots and
characters of the five movies that came before.
Whether through his dedication to technical
wizardry, his overlong study of Joseph Campbell, or simple fatigue, George
Lucas obviously cannot draw decent performances from his actors, even the good
ones, and cannot write characters who resemble human beings or dialogue that
sounds remotely like normal speech. Revenge
of the Sith ultimately collapses under the weight of its own mechanism and
banality, a lame conclusion to a saga that began with great originality and
grand exuberance.
Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith (PG-13), opens Thursday,
May 19, at Brockport Strand, Canandaigua Theatres, Culver Ridge Cinemas,
Cinemark Tinseltown, Geneseo Theatres, Greece Ridge 12, Pittsford Cinema.
This article appears in May 18-24, 2005.
