Posted on 05/20/2005 6:49:34 AM PDT by Anitius Severinus Boethius
Warning*** In case you didn't pay attention to the title, this review is full of spoilers.
Simply put, this is what the first two movies in this cycle of the Star Wars saga should have been. If the first two had been condensed to one movie and Revenge of the Sith had been expanded to two movies, I would have been thrilled. Alas that was not to be, so we are left with two movies that meandered along a path that has a clear destination until we have to sprint to that destination with little time to spare in the third movie.
(To get it out of the way: no Jar-Jar and the fan base rejoiced!)
I'll hit some highlights before jumping to the meat. Ewan McGregor and Ian McDiarmid were absolutely fantastic. They were able to handle Lucas' clunky dialogue (welcome to Star Wars!) and hamfisted directing as well as Harrison Ford did in the original trilogy. McGregor's dead-on voice and mannerisms of Alec Guinness is nothing short of amazing. The lightsaber fights are magnificent and most of the battle scenes (excluding the opening space battle) shows Lucas has learned from Jackson and Gibson about how battles should be paced and presented. With that over, let's look at the core of the story.
The fall of Anakin, it seemed to me, was already well on it's way by the opening of the movie. The first interaction between Anakin and Palpatine was the execution of Count Dooku. Anakin resists his desire for revenge, but Palpatine commands him to kill him. It is obvious that Palpatine's command overrules Anakin's desire to follow the Jedi code, and that is why I believe that threads of the dark side were already attached to Anakin. Later, as Palpatine continues to reveal himself slowly to Anakin, it seems as if the internal struggle keeps getting shorter and shorter before Anakin succumbs. Eventually, it isn't commands but mere suggestions that Anakin becomes susceptible to. So while some people have said that it was ridiculous how he turned, I think they forget that Palpatine was messing with his mind and slowly ensnaring him. I thought that process was shown pretty well.
The point where he cannot see a return and gives in fully to the dark side is powerful, but not as much as I had hoped. He is responsible in a way for Windu's death, but I think it would have been more powerful if he was the one to have killed Windu. The killing of the younglings was over the top in my opinion. Killing Windu and declaring himself more powerful than any Jedi Master would have been a better way to declare his full turning.
Lucas did provide quite a few surprises along the way, and this, again, is what I had hoped for in the first two movies. The obviously inbred subconscious order to kill the Jedi by the clone troopers explains completely the slavish devotion of the Stormtroopers in the original trilogy. The brazen revelation by Palpatine to Anakin of being a Sith was a little shocking. The order to shut down all the droid armies (which explains their absence later) was a nice way to tie up that loose end. Padme's death and burial where it appears she died before childbirth, Anakin's choking of Padme, and his belief that he killed her resolve lingering questions about the original trilogy. The continuing advances in technology (the proto TIE fighter, the X-wing style fighters, the stylized Star Destroyers, etc.) were a nice touch as well.
Overall, I think Lucas sat down and told the story he wanted to this time, rather than telling the story that would bring us to the story he wanted to tell. If he had just done this in Episodes I and II, we wouldn't have to express shock and relief that III was just as good if not better than IV-VI.
Always thought he was getting a little Wookie on the sly.
A friend of mine wrote the following about charges that this movie is anti-Bush. In addition to what he wrote, I noted that The Phantom Menace came out in '99 and Attack of the Clones came out in '02 (with it having been filmed pre-9/11, pre-Patriot Act.)
Now, on to my friend's observations.....
Yeah, there's been this whole wacky shebang flying around in the media about how "Episode III" is this big crypto-attack on Bush. However, even I, knuckle-dragging, awful, baby-eating hawk that I am, think that this is reading just a tad too much into things. Granted, Lucas DID say something not entirely accurate about how the U.S. supplied Iraq with WMD back while we were helping Saddam fight off his insane idiot-brother country to the immediate east. Fuel-air explosives, while pretty damn destructive, aren't nuclear, nor are they biological, nor are they chemical. "WMD" is pretty much limited to those three varieties of weapons. Yes, we helped bankroll Saddam, but we sure as hell didn't put him in power and we didn't sell him nukes, nerve gas, or anthrax spores.
Alan Dean Foster's novelization of "Star Wars" [from 1976] has a bit in the preface about the steady corruption of the Old Republic and the gradual usurping of control of the galactic government by then-Senator Palpatine. If I recall correctly (unfortunately I don't have my copy handy...), there are some lines in there about how (and I paraphrase here) Palpatine made a power grab, declared himself Emperor, and then shut himself away from the general populace; later, the regular business of running the galaxy fell more and more to the Imperial Moffs and other territorial government officers. Foster's prologue mentions how Palpatine became more of a figurehead, which certainly doesn't jibe with what we know the Emperor to be from subsequent movies, novels, and graphic novels. I don't know how this is reconciled with Lucas's whole canon, though. Perhaps one could interpret the narrative as being at least superficially true---Palpatine was so consumed by his own legacy o f evil that he just pulled strategic strings and aloofly watched galactic affairs from Coruscant, leaving the dirty details to his minions, his fleets, and his stormtroopers.
As for George Lucas and his inspriations from history, I'm not so sure. If I find anything out, I'll give you a holler, however. As you said, the whole Star Wars saga has to do with the nature of power, its capacity to corrupt people and institutions, the capacity to fall into evil while trying to do good, and the ability of people to redeem themselves through correct action and atonement. All of this "'The Revenge of the Sith' is just an awful, terrible attack on President Bush's administration" stuff is over-inflated nonsense. Sure, there are apparently some warm-and-fuzzy, squishy elements to the story (you know, war bad, peace good, all conflict tragic and avoidable if we just love one another, yadda-yadda-yadda), but, come on, Lucas had this basic story arc in mind OVER THIRTY YEARS AGO...
Anakin didn't think he killed her. Just before he tore apart the operating room, he tells Palpatine he "felt" she was alive when he last saw her. Palpatine tells Vader he killed her.
I've wondered about the Hitler's takeover in Germany and the subsequent installation of a fascist government, step by step, over the remnants of the Republic.
Some parallels (?):
1) Hitler's coming to power during a time of crisis and being granted emergency powers.
2) The overthrow of the previous governmental law-and-order apparatus (Jedi) for a force (Clones, SS) loyal to the Furher (Palpatine) during the 'Night of the Long Knives'.
3) One of the characteristics of Fascism to me is the collusion of capitalists (Shindler and others use of cheap Jewish concentration camp labor) with the government to enrich themselves. In Episodes I-III Lucas includes Bankers and Trade Representatives as part of the conspiracy against the Republic. Of course, they are eventually betrayed by Palpatine when they are inconvenient to his larger plans.
Well, he believes it after the Emporer tells him that he killed her in his anger. This explains his obsession with finding Luke at the beginning of ESB. He is so attached to family (his Mother and then his wife), that the idea that he has a son becomes an obsessive fixation for him.
Saw it! Loved it! Plan to see it again.
I would argue that Vaders turn to the dark side started when he was alittle kid. Lucas cut a scene from Esisode I where the kid gets into a fight with a young Greedo. Greedo was apparently claiming that Anikan cheated in the Pod Race. Then Anikan flashes Mace Windu a pretty evil look when the Jedi Council declares that he is too old and will not be a Jedi. Of course I am only half joking.
I really don't think that the turn was that quick. The Emperor was working on Anikan for many years. Playing the Jedi council against the Senator's council and friendship with him. Telling Anikan that he will be the most powerful of Jedi. Boosting his ego.
Plus I think that Anikan was created by the dark side of the force. So he already had it in him. :)
Yeah, if you can get past all the sucky dialogue, the plot is excellent. All the things Anakin did that Yoda told him not to do came back and bit him on the butt in the end. Sidious used all of them...as he used all the weaknesses existing in the Republic...in grand Machiavellian manner to his own benefit in his master plan to grab power.
And the fault doesn't like entirely with Anakin. As Yoda said in Episode I, the Jedi were becoming blind, complacent, and overconfident, unaware of the growing threat of the Dark Side. Their inaction (i.e. when good men do nothing) allowed evil to rise.
If only Lucas could swallow his control freak ego and let someone else write and direct. These three movies would have been the classic tragedy, full of intrigue and subplot.
I don't care about spoilers, so could you let me know if this movie is any more or less violent and "scary" than "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy? My 6 and 10-year-old boys are bugging me about seeing Ep. III; they have both seen all the LOTR movies many times. My gut tells me my older one can handle it, but that it might be too much for the younger. (I do know about the 'younglings' scene. Is it graphic?)
The younglings scene is off screen, so no worries there. The scorched body of Anakin, a decapitation, and a disfiguring attack on one character make this about as violent as an LoTR combat scene and since it if focused on a bit longer probably more "scary" for younger kids.
Thank you. That helps clear things up.
If I may interject -- you may want to see the movie first. There were young kids in front of me and the mother kept looking over nervously during some of the scenes.
When you see it, you'll know what I'm talking about!
I saw it, it wasn't "obvious" unless you were looking for it.
It was obvious as Hell. I went to the show to see "Star Wars" I didn't go to give it a leftwing/rightwing litmus test. But, all of a sudden it jumped out at me. The "You're either against us or with us" phrase, and some dialog about how evil succeeds by grabbing power in all three branches of government. You had to be either brain dead or a left winger not to pick up on it!
Have you considered Hitler and his grab of power? Palpatine takes power much the same way.
Since Lucas uses phrases like "Stormtroopers", duplicates the Nazi uniforms for his Imperial officers, and even uses famous Nazi propaganda films as inspirations for many of the Imperial "moments" 23 years before George W. Bush was elected President, I'm pretty sure that he is comparing Palpatine to Hitler, not Bush.
Unless you are giving in to the DU propaganda and viewing Bush as similar to Hitler, it's obvious that all the political implications are about the only Democracy to switch to a Dictatorship through election in the modern era; Germany in the 30's.
(Since Lucas also is the hands on executive producer of the Indiana Jones series, it should be obvious that Lucas has a deep interest in the Nazis.)
I have to say it was much easier to watch than the previous two. I thought the credibility of the plot took a little bit of a hit. Remember in ROTJ when Luke asks Leia if she remembered her "real" mother? She said she remembered a little of her and how she was beautiful. How could she remeber her real mother if she died at childbirth. She had to be talking of Padme, because the Organas lived till they were blown up on Alderaan by the Death Star (per their biographies on the Star Wars playing cards my son has).
Also, Palpatine tells Vader that Vader killed Padme in his fit of rage. How does Palpatine ever explain the emergence of Luke later on? Vader never asks for an explanation of his lie.
Also at the end of ROTS, the Death Star is under construction. Now there is 20 years between ROTS and A New Hope when the Death Star goes operational. What the heck were Vader and the Emperor doing for 20 years? And after the Death Star was blown up, they were able to start on the second Death Star, which was double the size of the first one, and have it operational in just a few years.
Yeah, I'm being nitpicky. Overall, it was a good film, almost worthy of being in the league of the original trilogy.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.