Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith

United States, 2005
Directed by George Lucas

Revenge of the Sith begins at breakneck speed. Right off the bat, there's an enormous space battle, droid fights, heroes dangling from dizzying heights, a lightsaber duel, the death of a major villain and the introduction of a new one, and the crash landing of a huge spaceship - all within the opening 25 minutes! Revenge of the Sith announces the Return of the Lucas, and this exhilarating opening sequence is him throwing down the gauntlet; enough with the dithering of the previous episodes, this time it's for real.

The next two hours don't disappoint, despite undeniable flaws. Though the special effects are beautifully rendered for the most part and have aged well (in fact, the 10 year old CGI of Sith is more convincing than the effects in this year's Avengers 2 and Jurassic World), they are used excessively. The unneeded digital effects become distracting at points, like when Count Dooku flips over a balcony and is noticeably replaced by a plasticine CGI figure. Wouldn't a stunt double have looked more natural? And, sure, there are still snatches of cringe-inducing dialogue - in particular a mercifully brief romantic scene between Anakin and Padme early on in the film, an unwelcome stowaway from the disastrous Naboo section of Attack of the Clones that embarrassingly clings to Revenge of the Sith like toilet paper to a shoe.

Yet these are mere nitpicks in the grand scheme of the film. The main handicap of Revenge of the Sith is that it's preceded by The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones. Since they failed to set up the characters in compelling ways, Sith has to fight an uphill battle to give the climax of their story the power and emotion it needs. I wholeheartedly love Revenge of the Sith, but it's impossible not to imagine the masterpiece it could have been if the preceding episodes had laid a solid foundation for it to build upon.

But lamenting the Revenge of the Sith that could have been is ultimately pointless - the Revenge of the Sith we got is awesome, flaws and all. It is an astonishing upgrade from episodes I and II, and a highly entertaining, full-blooded epic on its own terms. I believe this is the story Lucas wanted to tell all along - the birth of Darth Vader, the fall of the Jedi, and the rise of the Empire. His storytelling is reinvigorated, with an emotional and thematic coherency previously missing.

Anakin Skywalker is no longer a teenage Padawan but a full-fledged Jedi Knight, and the more mature Anakin is a better fit for Hayden Christensen as an actor. Anakin is finally believable as a powerful Jedi and a basically good but misguided man. Christensen's line readings remain flat, but the grating whininess is gone, and he has a strong physical presence that expresses Anakin's grief and fury when he turns to the Dark Side. Padme remains frustratingly nebulous but Natalie Portman does what she can with the character, finally emoting like things matter. One brief scene, late in the film, makes Anakin and Padme's connection more palpable than anything previous. Anakin is standing in the empty Jedi Temple, in a dark moment of crisis, while Padme waits nervously alone in their apartment. Sensing each other and the turmoil to come, they stare across the Coruscant skyline in the direction of the other, as a plaintive female voice wails eerily on the soundtrack. With confidently atmospheric direction and spot-on silent acting, this moment tells us more about the love of Anakin and Padme than the entirety of Attack of the Clones.

Once again, Ewan McGregor is an engaging Obi-Wan - but MVP easily goes to Ian McDiarmid as Palpatine. As his true colors show themselves, Palpatine transforms from a serpentine charmer to a cackling, grotesque creature - McDiarmid holds nothing back, putting all the campy menace he can into every sneer and guttural croak. He strikes a perfect balance between cartoonish wickedness and sincere menace. His relationship with Anakin is the most well-developed in the film. Palpatine clearly senses Anakin's weakness - his anger over perceived patronizing from Obi-Wan and the Jedi, his egoism and desire for power, and his fear of losing Padme - and exploits them. Palpatine adjusts to whatever role will best manipulate Anakin, beginning as a confidante and father figure to gain his trust, acting as helpless victim to drive Anakin to terrible action, and finally becoming his master, the newly christened Darth Vader utterly in his grasp (though 'christened' is hardly the word for this dreadful rebirth).

With Anakin's turning to the Dark Side, Revenge of the Sith becomes unflinchingly dark. In its story, Sith draws from more than the science fiction serials which inspired the saga, but also Greek tragedy, Wagnerian opera, gothic horror, and real-world fascist regimes. Palpatine's political machinations and takeover are clearly modeled off the rise of Hitler; a series of shots showing Anakin and the Stormtroopers marching on the Jedi Temple visually alludes to goose-stepping Nazi soldiers. One sequence, which cuts between the murder of Separatist leaders and the Senate cheering the formation of the Empire, was inspired by nothing less than the baptism / assassination sequence from The Godfather.

George Lucas clearly has grandiose ambitions for this story, and Sith lives up to them. Whatever his failings as a screenwriter and director of actors, Lucas has a unique genius for visual storytelling - a talent on full display in Revenge of the Sith. Many images are electric, charged with mythic power. Take the above still - a quiet moment where the vulture-like Palpatine reaches down and caresses the maimed, near-death Darth Vader. The image is all the more unsettling for its perverse tenderness, a hellish vision of paternal affection.

But for all its despair and gloom, Revenge of the Sith is too exciting to be too terrible of a downer. The spectacle of it is exhilarating, with Sith delivering all the lightsaber duels and wild alien creatures a Star Wars fan could hope for. It's also very violent, and by far the most badass Star Wars episode of all. Plentiful moments will inspire fist-pumping glee from action fans like myself. I'm especially fond of the Wooikees swinging into battle Tarzan-style, of little Yoda beheading and lightsaber-skewering any Stormtroopers who dare to mess with him, and the villainous General Grievous revealing his four lightsaber-wielding arms. Grievous is one of Sith's most bizarre, fun creations, a spidery, towering fiend who is part organic and part machine. His duel with Obi-Wan and his spectacular fiery death are particularly memorable; Grievous is also a clever shadow of the future Darth Vader - more machine than man, and ultimately a puppet of Palpatine. The action highlight of Revenge of the Sith, and the high point of the film in general, is the duel between Anakin and Obi-Wan. The furious fight choreography and apocalyptic setting give this battle between brothers the intensity it deserves.

The final scenes of Sith are perfect. The Frankenstein-like rise of Darth Vader. A return to Tattooine, with that familiar John Williams theme. It gives me chills. I can't imagine a better lead-in to the original films.

Revenge of the Sith singlehandedly justifies the existence of the prequel trilogy. It turns Anakin / Darth Vader into the main figure of the whole saga, and makes elements of the original films even more powerful - such as Vader's duel with Obi-Wan in Star Wars and his redemption in Return of the Jedi. It's a great film, worthy of being placed alongside the originals.

Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones

United States, 2002
Directed by George Lucas

In my mind, Attack of the Clones has long held the title of the worst Star Wars film. On this recent viewing, I was surprised to find my opinion change. For all its failings - and oh, there are plenty of them - I prefer Attack of the Clones to The Phantom Menace, and not only because Jar-Jar has been demoted to a cameo appearance.

There's no doubt, however, that Attack of the Clones is guilty of some of the same storytelling crimes as The Phantom Menace, and commits several disastrous new ones. There is still stiff dialogue and failed attempts at humor. The politics still take up too much screen time, without impressing on viewers a sense of their urgency or importance. CGI is still overused - and while the special effects have aged more gracefully than those in The Phantom Menace, the digital universe of the Star Wars prequels is simply not as engaging as the tangible sets and effects of the originals.

Yet the major failing of Attack of the Clones, and the unavoidable reason why I'd considered it the worst in the saga, is its two main characters: Anakin Skywalker and Padme Amidala. As individual characters and a romantic couple, they are painfully unconvincing. Hayden Christensen gives one of the worst performances I've ever seen in a big budget movie. It's astonishing how dreadful his Anakin is - I don't think he has a single convincing line reading. He is perpetually pouty, and never sympathetic or engaging. Natalie Portman as Padme looks bored and embarrassed - like she'd rather be anywhere other than in this film saying these ridiculous lines, in these ridiculous outfits, with her creepy co-star.

"Creepy" may sound harsh, but, really...

...yikes. That stare is surely intended as "intense romantic longing" but looks more like "unhinged rapist". But apparently Senator / former Queen Amidala likes the stalker-ish attentions of her petulant sociopathic teenage bodyguard, as they soon fall madly in love. Or, at least, Attack of the Clones desperately tries to convince us they are madly in love, despite the utter lack of chemistry between them; Anakin's seductive monologues (like this gem) are thoroughly repulsive and Padme has all the charisma of a plank of wood. Their romantic scenes are so poorly written that they make you wonder if Stephanie Meyer's secret first job was a ghost writer for George Lucas. The embarrassing love scenes would be forgivable if they were placed sparingly throughout the film, but that isn't the case. Attack of the Clones comes to a screeching halt for a lengthy second act that is mostly taken up with their Passionate Love Affair, with all of its awkward flirtation, tormented fireside confessions, and frolics amongst gigantic Nabooan pig beasts.

The main sin of the Star Wars prequels is their failure to make Anakin Skywalker an involving character. He is the central figure of the trilogy, perhaps the entire saga - his rise, fall, and redemption span all six films. Yet he's not the magnetic personality he should be; he's downright unlikable. Signs of his eventual turn to the Dark Side appear in Attack of the Clones, but they don't resonate because we never believed his goodness in the first place. Anakin doesn't seem like a good man struggling with inner darkness, but a whiny brat whose violent outbursts are mere temper tantrums. 

Anakin has a botched character arc, but Padme isn't even given one. She is devoid of a personality - or, more accurately, she fits the persona any particular scene requires of her. She's a canny politician, then a sexy warrior, then a damsel in distress; there is no consistency to her character. When Anakin confesses that he slaughtered an entire village of sandpeople in a fit of rage - a terrible genocidal act, whether or not they had killed his mother - Padme reacts with mild concern, like Anakin had just stubbed his toe and not gone on a murderous rampage. No way that would be the reaction of a righteous politician. Padme's vagueness makes me miss Leia, who even in her most undignified moments - like, for instance, choking an enormous slug to death while wearing a bikini loincloth - had the dignity of an actual personality.

On the bright side, Ewan McGregor is much improved since his last stint as Obi-Wan Kenobi. He is the only actor who knows how to handle George Lucas's clunky dialogue, with a tongue-in-cheek levity. McGregor is a fun, engaging presence, which Attack of the Clones sorely needs.

So, on the level of characterization and storytelling, Attack of the Clones is largely a disaster. But it works far, far better as pure spectacle. Perhaps George Lucas was rusty during the making of The Phantom Menace - after all, he had not directed a film for 22 years, since the original Star Wars. With Attack of the Clones he remembered how to direct an exciting adventure.

A thrilling chase scene through Coruscant opens the film on a strong note. The effects have aged very well and Coruscant finally comes alive as an interesting world - an enormous, glittering maze of a city, with politicians and the wealthy living in spacious tower-top apartments and the multi-species masses thriving in a neon underworld below. Most of Attack of the Clones's following set pieces and new worlds are just as fun. 

In an intriguing scene, Obi-Wan visits a stormy ocean planet inhabited by willowy, ambiguous beings who live in sterile, bulbous halls perched above the waters. Under mysterious orders previously unknown to the Jedi, they have been growing a clone army for the Republic. Obi-Wan meets the model for the clones, the shady bounty hunter Jango Fett, who does not appreciate the intrusion of this snooping Jedi. Their ensuing fistfight is pretty terrific, an atmospheric brawl in the pouring rain with a believable physicality to every blow - the following chase through an asteroid field is also a good deal of fun.

But the best is saved for the end - the last act of Attack of the Clones is packed full of good stuff. Our heroes find themselves in a dire situation - prisoners in an ancient Rome-style execution, for the entertainment of an arena full of humanoid termite aliens. Three hungry beasties descend on them - one a giant turquoise crab-spider, one a fleshy red rhino, one a grinning feline creature. It's a sequence that Edgar Rice Burroughs could have cooked up for his John Carter of Mars books. In the nick of time, a horde of Jedi appear to save our heroes - a diverse squadron of warriors, their blue and green lightsabers flashing to life all around the desert arena. This moment is nerd nirvana, and George Lucas at his best. His genius lies in how he synthesizes decades of Hollywood epics, pulp fiction serials and classic sci-fi stories into worlds of his own creation that are equally original and familiar, outlandish and comfortable.

Not all the action scenes work as well - one sequence in a droid factory is far too silly, especially the unfunny slapstick of the bastardized prequel version of C3PO - but on the whole, Attack of the Clones excels as imaginative, exciting sci-fi spectacle. Yes, you have to endure a lot of dreck to reach the good parts, but the high points offer enough of that Star Wars magic to make the overall film worth it.

Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999)

United States, 1999
Directed by George Lucas

It's difficult to know how to review a Star Wars film. They are among the most widely-seen, beloved, and (in the case of the prequel trilogy) notorious films of all-time. There is so much hype and passionately held opinions surrounding these movies that it seems impossible to view them separate from their cultural influence, as stand alone stories. But I'll give it my best shot.

Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace begins a new prequel trilogy, one that is strikingly different than the original Star Wars trilogy. The original films very closely follow the Hero's Journey template outlined by Joseph Campbell. The Hero's Journey begins with an ordinary man with an unexceptional life - like Luke the farmer on Tatooine. Our hero hears a call to adventure and is taken under the wing of a mentor, Obi-Wan Kenobi. He then crosses the threshold into a whole new world and is thrust into a grand battle of good versus evil, the Rebel Alliance against the evil Galactic Empire. After being severely tested and tempted, he defeats the forces of evil and restores peace and balance to his world. The prequel films are an equally archetypal and classical form of storytelling, the tragedy. Our tragic hero is Anakin Skywalker, Luke's father. He is a man who rises to greatness as a Jedi Knight, but falls to the Dark Side and is transformed into Darth Vader. Anakin fits the model of the tragic hero outlined by Aristotle - he is a basically good man whose fall comes about not by vice or depravity, but character flaws and errors of judgment that lead to destruction. The Phantom Menace is the beginning of this tragic tale - Anakin Skywalker is an innocent child just discovering his great powers, and the Galactic Republic is experiencing the first stirrings of dissent that will lead to war and the formation of the Galactic Empire.

Considering the darker and more complex nature of its story, you would expect The Phantom Menace to be a more nuanced or adult Star Wars. Yet The Phantom Menace is actually the most child-oriented, lighthearted film of the entire saga. In itself, this is not really a problem - after all, Anakin is still an innocent child in The Phantom Menace, the characters have little sense of the tragedy to come, and good storytelling accessible for any age is all too rare. But in execution The Phantom Menace is bizarrely at odds with itself. The simplistic characters, declarative and nuance-free dialogue, and goofy slapstick humor place The Phantom Menace firmly in "kiddie movie" territory. But the plot centers around an intergalactic trade blockade that is actually a front for the future Emperor Palpatine to secure power, and the discovery of the boy who will become Darth Vader and kill two of the film's major characters, Padme and Obi-Wan. I'm not claiming that George Lucas shouldn't have tried to make The Phantom Menace fun or accessible in the face of its dark subject matter - of course he should have, it's Star Wars. But The Phantom Menace never strikes a good balance. Dry political discussions are followed by manic slapstick action sequences, making for an unpleasantly schizophrenic experience. I'm not sure whether George Lucas vastly misunderstood his own story, or was making a misguided attempt at appealing to children out of commercial concerns and in the process alienated many adults. Either way, The Phantom Menace is a disappointing missed opportunity - an elemental story rich with potential, told in a broken, awkward way.

The poor storytelling extends to the characters, who are uninteresting at best and at worst...um, we'll get to that in a minute.

Let's start with Anakin Skywalker himself. Bringing Anakin to life would be no easy task for a writer or child actor. He is just a young boy, but one who must show potential for greatness - for good and for evil. But Anakin in The Phantom Menace is a complete failure of a character, like the star of a cornball 90s kid movie anachronistically plopped into an epic space opera. It wouldn't be fair to put the blame on Jake Lloyd, just a kid who was likely acting as he was directed to. But, sadly, he never convinces on any level, leaving a vapid blank space where an engaging main character should be. Since the core of the prequel trilogy is Anakin's transformation, this is a big problem.

Bland characters are the norm in The Phantom Menace. Talented actors like Natalie Portman and Ewan McGregor are adrift playing personality-free ciphers. Jedi master Qui-Gon Jinn is the most engaging, due to Liam Neeson's authoritative screen presence, but is just as poorly written as the rest. An invaluable ingredient of the original trilogy's success was the characters - Han Solo, Leia, Luke and the rest of the crew had vibrant individual personalities, and delightful chemistry when put together. The protagonists of The Phantom Menace are wooden and dull, never giving us a reason to care. But they're nothing compared to this...

...the unholy monstrosity known as Jar-Jar Binks. Everything about Jar-Jar is off-putting. Starting with his design - the lanky body, the yellow cat eyes perched on crab-like stalks, the duck bill with incongruous human teeth - he is intended to be the lovably goofy comic relief, but is too much an uncanny nightmare of a creation to be anything but unnerving. His personality is even worse than his appearance - he is a screeching idiot who destroys all in his path, tagging along with the heroes for no discernible reason. Even if he had attempted to do so, Mr. Lucas could not have concocted a more perfectly obnoxious character than Jar-Jar. Every minute of his screen-time (which add up to a mercilessly large number, considering his unimportance to the narrative) is painful.

The Phantom Menace mishandles the Star Wars mythology just as much as it botches the characters; which is, perhaps, an even more crushing disappointment. The Star Wars universe is expanded very little, or only in uninspired directions. The new worlds lack the lived-in, authentic creativity of the various planets in the originals - Naboo looks like a fantasy world screensaver and Coruscant is just a bland futuristic cityscape. The Jedi Order never is as awe-inspiring as it should be - they seem less like mystical warriors and a force for good, and more like dull, humorless bureaucrats. And the introduction of midichlorians - "microscopic life-forms that reside within the cells of all living things and communicate with the Force" - is an unwelcome, mystique-deflating explanation of how the Force works. The mysterious spirituality of the Force is what made it so awesome in the first place!

The amount of time The Phantom Menace spends explaining Trade Federations, blockades, peace treaties and the Galactic Senate, without making clear what's actually at stake or why any of it matters, is baffling. The political turmoil of the Republic, and the sinister scheming of Palpatine behind the conflict, could have been gripping if told coherently and with an appropriate sense of dread and tension, but in The Phantom Menace all the plotting is relayed through tedious, confusing exposition dumps.

Yet there are bright spots amid the gloom. Brief moments of The Phantom Menace tap into the gleeful excitement that is classic Star Wars - where pulpy, old-school science fiction meets grand, mythic storytelling. The clear highlight of the film is at the end, when Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon fight Darth Maul. Although Darth Maul has limited screentime he is the most memorable figure of The Phantom Menace, with his tattooed body, demonic horns, and that double-sided lightsaber, which every 10 year old boy thought was the coolest thing ever. They battle in an enormous metallic hall that looks like a set from Metropolis, as operatic singing blares on the soundtrack. In a few minutes there is stirring heroism and tragedy, and the type of exhilaration that only the best high fantasy can provide. A shame that the film surrounding that terrific scene is so lifeless.