Revenge of the Sith

(Warning! Spoilers included)

I saw Revenge of the Sith yesterday and actually enjoyed it. I even enjoyed it quite a lot. I doubt that I’ll ever be as taken with a movie as I was by a New Hope and pity all those who didn’t get the effect of the Imperial Star Destroyer as an introduction to what cinema is capable of. I had fairly low expectations of this. Flatulent Menace was dreadful – though I must be honest & say I stopped hating it after a while. Reducing the force from a mystical energy field to a parasitic infection being something even worse, IMHO, than Jar-Jar Binks. I’m not even going to bother talking about how ill conceived he was.

Attack of the Clones was much better. Much, much better. I was disappointed to see the beginning of a pandering to fans by putting in an origin story for Boba Fett. I can tolerate it but I still think it’s only there because fans made so much of Vader’s seeming deference to Fett during Empire. Let’s get this straight people; Fett got to answer back on the bridge of the Executor because he was the only character. The other bounty hunters were extras and props. Needing to have everything explained to you and connected is a sad fan-boy trait that you need to get a grip of. Learn to enjoy and appreciate a bit of mystery.

There’s a lot of really good stuff in RotS. We finally get to see a proper space battle where the capital ships do something other than just float in space. Full-on broadsides (though we’ll ignore the shells being ejected from the breaches of energy weapons between shots), gun-decks, explosive decompression. Fighters firing at the big ships having no effect and getting twatted for their insolence. All the stuff that should have been in the Battle of Endor but wasn’t. I mean an A-Wing taking out a super Star Destroyer? Puhlease!

Don’t listen to the reviews that dismiss Hayden Christensen & Natalie Portman’s performances. They are well measured and delivered and it’s not their fault George writes such clunky dialogue. Obi-Wan & Anakin’s banter is much more natural than before and goes some way towards restoring the humour bypass Episodes 1&2 suffered. Ian McDiarmid is superb as the Emperor. I’ve had the good fortune to see him on stage and was thrilled to see him finally get the chance to show some of that talent in a Star Wars movie. I wonder how many people will connect that he made Anakin? The whole ‘virgin birth’ thing that got ignored in Episode 1 having its resolution in a way that even Anakin doesn’t seem to recognise.

There are problems with it, but they’re mostly pretty minor. At the end 3PO gets a memory (called mind) wipe to protect the twins’ identity and where they’ve been sent, but Artoo doesn’t. Why? Can’t the sith get something to translate an astromech’s beeps? There are a lot of the usual crap physics screw-ups. During the aforementioned space battle, the ship our heroes are aboard rescuing Palpatine gets damaged and pitches forward. Everyone and everything on the ship fall forward, staying that way until the ship is levelled off again. Why’s this a problem? The ships have artificial gravity. This will mean that it doesn’t matter which way the ship orients itself the floor will always be 'down'. Worse, when the ship is brought back under control the lift shaft they’re all sliding down seems to still have the same direction of gravity it had when they were falling. Oh, and if you’re standing still and someone sprays oil over your feet you do not immediately begin to slide around like a bad slapstick routine. Do look out for the continuity error during the Anakin/Obi-Wan fight where Ben is suddenly & inexplicably holding Anakin's lightsabre in one shot. It's in the trailer, so you don't even have to see the movie for this one.

Anakin has a bit of a problem when Palpatine orders him to execute Count Dooku, but accepts it, does it and – despite a wee whinge about it not being the Jedi code – says no more about it and is not angry with Palpatine for giving the order. Later, when asked by Obi-Wan & the council to spy on Palpatine, he completely goes off on one because, yes, it’s against the Jedi code. This is a big part of his motivation for going to the dark side. Added to his odd conviction that Padme is going to die in childbirth and somehow decides that the dark side can save her. Even when he doesn’t get the information from the Emperor, he doesn’t get angry with him.

That brings me to my biggest problem with it. When Padme has given birth she just dies for no apparent reason. She doesn’t have a difficult birth, she hasn’t suffered a lot of damage from Anakin’s force-choke and the medics even say there’s nothing physically wrong with her. She just loses the will to live. When she dies there is no effort made to revive her, not even by Obi-Wan who we saw trying to save her in Anakin’s vision of her death. Hardly the strong, independent woman she’s been shown as up until now. Her husband turned evil and died so she just drops dead? Come on, George. More damage from the force-choke and she wills herself to live to see her children born, yes. She just abandons them? No. Remember Luke & Leia’s conversation about their mother in Jedi? Leia remembers her mother, which gives the impression that she went into hiding with her. That makes things even better. Padme goes into hiding, damaged by the force choke, perhaps, but never really gets over Anakin’s betrayal and dies young. But no, we have to have the entire plot resolved. No looses threads because it seems we’re too thick to figure out something like that happening between Episodes 3 & 4. Given that there’s to be a TV show set in that period it could have been resolved there. Character development has never been a forte of Mr Lucas’. Witness allowing Greedo to fire first. In the original this scene shows Han to be ruthless and determined and at a point where he might possibly have become a villain, but is redeemed by his meeting with the heroes. Luke’s heroism and his love for Leia putting him on the straight & narrow. Now he’s an out and out hero from the get-go and a less interesting character because of it.

Speaking of changing things previously established might I quote Yoda? “A Jedi uses the force for knowledge and defence. Never for attack.” All the Jedi use the force to throw things at opponents, knock them off high places & smash them into walls. It seems, too, that Obi-Wan has decided that having the high ground in a lightsabre fight is an automatic win. He's on a slope up from Anakin and when the latter tries to jump over him he gets his arm & a leg cut off. How come Darth Maul never managed that? Or does it only count when a Jedi is the one above his opponent? I was thoroughly uncomfortable with Obi-Wan just standing watching the, now basket-case, Anakin sliding into the lava & bursting into flames.

And just how fast is hyperspace travel? Palpatine fights Yoda (who gives up & runs away for no apparent reason) on Coruscant & then becomes aware that 'Lord Vader is in danger.' Since the impression is that these two duels are roughly simultaneous how can Plapatine get to the volcano planet in the Outer Rim before Anakin - who now needs a walking iron lung to keep him alive - dies? And when they're re-assembling him why does he get no treatment for his burns? Don't they have bacta? Or even anaesthetic? Have prosthetics advanced so far that just clipping them to his stumps is sufficient?

You'll have seen the shot of the Death Star under construction. I hoped there was to be an impression of time having passed, but there isn't. Are we now to believe that they took twenty years to build Mk I, but got the 10 times larger Mk II done in three years?

There’s far too much reliance on CGI some of it quite poorly done. The wookies are repeated very obviously in their big appearance (The whole wookie thread is a waste of time, by the way.) and things are done just because they can be not because they advance the plot or make things better. For example, why use cg to put a couple of clone troopers behind Anakin & Obi-Wan when it must have been easier and cheaper to put guys in suits there instead? There’s a dreadful shot on Coruscant where the characters seem to glide above the surface they’re walking on. This is, IMO, the big problem with CGI in general. There’s always a failure of interaction between the computer images and the real world. I’ve even seen examples where computer images don’t seem to interact properly where different houses have done the elements. Even Artoo gets the CGI treatment allowing him to take on super battle droids and catch a com-link thrown to him by Anakin. (Didn’t he have one built in by Jedi?)

I know, I know; I’m sounding negative. Put it this way, though: this time I care enough to talk about it. The last two weren’t worth the effort.

One thing I did notice, though, was a seeming reference to contemporary politics, especially American foreign policy. Some very interesting comments about how democracy is won or lost and having the villain quote Dubya’s infamous ‘You’re either with us or against us.’ statement had me wondering if George was making a wee stand.