Okay, there are spoilers ahead. If you haven’t seen the movie yet, skip the rest of this review. All I’ll give away is the obvious: everyone you don’t see in the original trilogy dies here. Horribly. This isn’t a fun movie, but yes, it’s worth seeing if you have any interest in Star Wars.
You’ve been warned.
Of course, it opens with a huge space-battle. Like so many other things in the prequels, it looks great, but in context, it doesn’t serve any real purpose, and there’s no sense of urgency or risk. Seriously, cut out the whole battle/rescue sequence, and the plot doesn’t falter a bit. It’s just there as a huge, loud and confusing overture. Count Dooku shows up, and promptly gets cut down by Anakin. Again, no emotional investment whatsoever. No,”you cut off my hand, now it’s payback,” no witty banter from the Count, just a flashy lightsaber battle and off with his head. Then a daring escape, more exploding stuff, and cut.
As a lifelong Star Wars fan, I never thought I’d say this, but I’m sick of lightsaber duels. They’re just not exciting after the 20th time or so.
After the opening, we get alot of political allegory shoved down our throats. Then comes the Anakin/Padme moment. Just when you think the love story’s a bit better than last time around, they come up with this chestnut of dialogue:
“You’re so beautiful.”
“That’s only because I’m so in love.”
“No, it’s because I’m so in love with you.”
…and there were audible groans in the theater. For a second, I hoped that a chunk of the theater roof would collapse on top of me, just to lessen the pain. Serioulsy, Lucas can’t write something like this to save his life. Han and Leia were great in Empire because the actors didn’t need to say everything out loud.
Padme tells Anakin she’s pregnant, and he has a nightmare that tells him she’ll die in childbirth. This becomes Anakin’s spur and flaw for the rest of the movie–he wants to prevent Padme from dying like his mother did. This is where it gets interesting.
Ian McDarmid absolutely steals the show in the first half. As the conniving, manipulative and sinister Palpatine, he actually seems to relish every piece of dialogue he’s fed, even the horrible stuff, and he pulls it off brilliantly. He plays off Anakin’s fears and suspicions and does a brilliant job of turning him away from the Jedi.
What’s odd about this is that Lucas, who traditionally dwells in a fairytale land of absolute good/evil polarity, seems willing to embrace a great deal of ambiguity. Palpatine argues that the Jedi are elitist and power-hungry. Darn straight. He describes the way of the Sith as just another “point of view” (the same argument Obi-Wan used to justify lying to Luke in the original trilogy), and he’s right there, too. Anakin finds himself ripped from the light/dark dichotomy, and his confusion is very well-played and believable. Stuck in the middle of this, Anakin has a choice between the Jedi, who offer rebukes and condescencion, or Palpatine, who offers real power and the ability to save those he loves.
This simmers for a bit, then Obi-Wan fights a surly asthmatic droid named General Greivous. This is fairly interesting, and Obi-Wan’s lizard-back ride through the underground caverns of the planet shows that ILM has done a MUCH better job of integrating their CGI. Everything’s great until Greivous sprouts four arms and turns into the lightsaber-lawnmower-of-death. He and Obi-Wan fight for a bit, and separated from his lightsaber, he actually uses a blaster to finish off the General. He looks at it, and just before throwing it to the ground, he snarls, “how…uncivilized.” Like McDairmid, Ewan McGregor appears to have settled amiably into his role. He gets a few such nice quips in early on, and later in the movie, his acting carries several scenes that would have otherwise fallen flat.
Anyhow, the Jedi council finally gets on the stick and goes after Palpatine, at which point he drops cover and slaughters the lot of them with ease. Samuel L. Jackson’s character, who has finally been given something to do, is the last holdout, and the fight is quite exciting. Just as Jackson’s about to deliver the coup-de-grace, Anakin makes his choice, and in defending Palpatine he seals Jackson’s fate. He pledges his new allegiance to the Sith, and is sent out with a battalion of clone troopers to purge the Jedi Temple.
At this point, Palpatine, who’s pretty much dropped the pretense of normality, goes before the Senate and announces himself Emperor “in the name of security and stability.” Oh great. Padme (who’s really done nothing in this movie but sit around her apartment and mope) opines, “so this is how liberty dies–to thunderous applause.” Had she done anything to prevent it, her words could have carried some real weight, but the ferocious, self-willed Senator (and mother to Leia) that we got to know in the first two movies is shuffled off to the sidelines here.
At this point, it gets really disturbing, and the movie finally starts to evoke some emotion. Anakin marches into the temple at the head of a platoon and slaughters everyting in sight, even the children. Palpatine sends out a transmission to the clone troops coded Order 66, which causes the troops to turn on the very Jedi who were leading them just moments before.
This is one of the great things about the Star Wars universe. As the focus shifts from one planet to the next with Jedi getting mowed down by their own soldiers (accompanied by a great John Williams dirge), it’s actually heart-rending. None of these guys have spoken a more than a few words of dialogue, and you don’t really know any of them, but for some reason, it comes across as horribly tragic. Watching future Stormtroopers fire into the prone and lifeless body of a nameless female Jedi, I found myself thinking, and this is how it happens, and I was actually moved for the first time in the prequels.
The only ones who survive are Obi-Wan and Yoda, who double back to Coruscant to confront what’s happened. Yoda throws down with Palpatine, and though it’s fun to see him use the Force to throw the guards around like rag-dolls, the fight just isn’t very interesting. We’ve seen it before, and it could have been shorter. Yoda gets out, and Obi-Wan runs off to confront Anakin in Mordor…I mean Mustafar.
This is it, gang. We’ve known for years from the novelization of A New Hope that Anakin falls into a lava pit after a fight with Obi-Wan, and now we see how it happens.
Anakin goes to Mustafar to finish off the Separatist leaders who are in exile there and close off the loose ends. Nute Gunray’s sniveling demise is particularly satisfying. After being told by Obi-Wan that Anakin’s turned sides, Padme rushes to meet him, and Obi-Wan stows away on her ship. She finds Anakin and realizes that he’s changed beyond help, and when Obi-Wan shows up, Anakin does the old trachea-tickle that he made so famous as Darth Vader, and she falls, seemingly dead, to the ground.
There’s a big duel, which like the others, gets a bit long and convoluted. Had the two simply fought on a bride or a cliffside, this would have been satisfying, but no, Lucas has to make it a special-effects extravaganza. They fight on a series of collapsing platforms and finally, on a raft floating in the lava. Go figure. Anyhow, Obi-Wan tells Anakin, “don’t try it, I’ve got the high ground (literally),” but Anakin tries anyway, and he loses several limbs for it. His body catches on fire, and Obi-Wan gives him a somewhat convincing and emotional lecture, then leaves.
The scene where he’s reconstructed as Darth Vader is pretty damned disturbing. We see the charred remains of Anakin twitching and screaming as the medical droids cut away at him, then the armor is applied. There’s a great POV shot as the mask descends, and for a moment, the audience can see the world through that mask. It’s disturbing, and it gives a certain resonance to the character we’ve seen in the original trilogy.
After this, the mood is completely botched. He’s shackled to a table, and when the Emperor tells him he’s killed Padme, he sceams a very unconvincing “Noooo!” and lurches around (I swear) like a b-movie Frankenstein for several seconds. Dammit.
Of course, Padme’s not dead yet, and she lives just long enough to deliver Luke and Leia. She names them and tells Obi-Wan that there’s still good in Anakin, then dies (I am not kidding–the medical droid says it) of a broken heart. Dammit.
In one of the closing moments, Obi-Wan, who has chosen the life of exile on Tatooine, delivers Luke to a young Beru and Owen, and my heart lurched. Here it was, Owen, posed just like we’ll see Luke in twenty years staring off into the twin Tatooine sunset.
So, overall, the movie’s something of a mess, just like the other two. The big difference here is that Episode III actually tries for an emotional connection, and sometimes gets it. Actually, if this were the only prequel Lucas had done, I’d be perfectly happy. While the other two seemed to be trudging along, there’s a real sense of urgency here, and it plays well. Is it as good as say, Empire? Heck, no, but it’s got moments when it actually feels like Star Wars, and that itself is enough.