The original Star Wars was a story about a poor boy from a farm who discovers that he is a hero. On his quest to defeat the evil empire, he befriends a smuggler, a princess and is mentored by an old man. You don’t get much more archetypal than that. Yet, despite the clichés and obvious lifts from all manner of sources, Star Wars endures as the zenith of great storytelling in film. Why is that? In a logical sense, Star Wars shouldn’t be good; it has the most traditional plot in existence, the most archetypical characters ever and don’t forget the blatant lift of almost every shot. Even the droids’ story was lifted from Akira Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress. The reason Star Wars endures is because it manages to synthesize all those archetypes into a world that has never been seen before. Corny as it may sound, those are the types that capture the imagination, and it just took that extra push. Yet, even being one of the greatest movies ever, the focus of Star Wars was not on the characters, but rather on the struggle between good and evil and the world they inhabit. Don’t get me wrong, by the end of Star Wars, we love all the characters, but that isn’t to say that any of them have any real depth. They’re still just the hero, the rogue, the princess, the mentor and the bad guy. The lack of focus on the characters was quickly rectified with the second installment, The Empire Strikes Back, a film with a much more character-driven narrative.
But that’s all in the past. I’m here to talk about the final live-action Star Wars movie. Revenge of the Sith is the final of the Star Wars prequel trilogy. The general consensus is that the first two prequels are shit. I’m not here to contest that (although, I will maintain that the second’s at least fun in the action sequences), but I am here to show that the lack of characterization and cheesiness of Revenge of the Sith does not ruin the film and that it still has merit.
Let’s take a look at the two primary complaints of Revenge of the Sith. The characters and the effects. Let’s take a look at the characters. Hayden Christensen is bland as always in the role of Anakin. I won’t deny that. Any scene where he and Natalie Portman are alone is a bad scene as far as I’m concerned. Let’s move on to Obi-Wan. Ewan McGregor is a talented actor who has distinguished himself in several other films. The problem here is how he’s trying to emulate Sir Alec Guinness. It’s less obvious here than in the first two prequels, but it is still painfully obvious that he has enormous shoes to fill and should probably try to do his own thing. The one thing I will say about him, though, is that towards the end, I feel the Obi-Wan of the first Star Wars in McGregor. Maybe it’s the desperation in his fight against Anakin or the way he finds his place on Tatooine in the operatic final scene, but I could see this person becoming the Ben Kenobi we met in that first film.
Now, let’s take a look at our primary villains. Count Dookoo is played by Christopher Lee. He’s Christopher Lee and is killed early on. Not much to say about that. Palpatine (played for the fourth time by Ian McDiarmid) is a whole different matter. This guy completely steals the show. He is the embodiment of this film’s big faustian reference. Every scene this guy is in he just completely takes over the film. His sly manipulations of Anakin early on, his big reveal as the Sith Lord, his epic battle with Yoda. This guy is powerful. And crazy. Mostly crazy. Maybe it’s because Ian McDiarmid played the same character years ago in Return of the Jedi, but his performance is by far the strongest. The other notable performance (if you can call it that (and yes, I know I will be hanged shortly after this sentence)) actually comes from the CGI Yoda. Ok, this is a good segway into the next major criticism, so, I’ll try to work that in here.
A huge complaint is the over reliance on computer generated images to create the visual effects. There’s no way to get around it. CGI is everywhere, and either you can accept it for what it is or you can bitch. Ok, that’s not totally fair of me, there is good reason to complain about the CGI. It can seem to be the centerpiece of the film for many people. I would argue, though, that in this movie, yeah, you can tell it’s CG, but if you don’t stop there, it is possible to get past it. For example, there is no way that Yoda could have been a puppet. It just wouldn’t have worked. He’s too busy having an awesome duel with Palpatine. Same with R2-D2. He does too much in this movie to have been a puppet. They make up for it, though, by putting everything they have into the CG models. Yoda comes close to the greatness of the puppet, and they take full advantage of the computer graphics to give Yoda as much personality as is possible. Yeah, it’s not ideal, but if you’re able to get past the special effects, you can find yourself actually on their side a couple of times.
Let me just point out that this is the point that anyone who hates this movie will have stopped. Anyone who dislikes this movie hasn’t been able to look past the CG or the mostly stale characters. That’s totally OK. They are valid complaints. Very VERY valid complaints. Your tolerance for any of those things may vary. Now let me try to explain what I consider to be the most important part.
I won’t try to argue that the original Star Wars had bland characters so it isn’t too bad. That’s not true anyway. Sure they were archetypes, but they weren’t bland. What I mainly want to say is that Star Wars, at least for me, triggered an emotional something in me. This emotional link to the film did not necessarily entirely come from the characters, even if that was a significant part of it. Usually, I’m all about characterization, but here, I’m willing to overlook it in favor of style. The original Star Wars was dripping in style. It occurs to me that George Lucas was doing something similar to what Quentin Tarantino does in pretty much all his films (albeit with better dialog). He was reinterpreting old styles in a new context. In this case, the context was the space opera galaxy far far away. The power in the original trilogy came from its moments and its characters. The power in Revenge of the Sith comes from its moments and its one interesting character. In the original Star Wars, we have the great opening shot. Perhaps the greatest in film history. That opening shot tells you everything about everything. Without analyzing it too much, it sets the start to the saga and establishes beautifully where everything stands. The other two original trilogy films both start in space, and with their own interesting scenes, but they give much more the sense of putting you into the next installment. The opening scene of Revenge of the Sith just straight up puts you into a space battle. If you can’t get past the CGI, you’ve already stopped caring. If you can put up with it, you’re enthralled. The opening of Revenge of the Sith easily matches the space battle of Return of the Jedi in scope, if not in tension. However, it serves its purpose as introducing us to the next installment, and demonstrating the chaos of the clone wars, that we have apparently skipped to the end of. While that opening scene may lack the depth of the first Star Wars, it easily matches the others in the original trilogy. It introduces us to our current conflict and tells us the information we didn’t get in the opening scroll.
Without analyzing every scene individually, I’ll just say that every battle in Revenge of the Sith has its own tension. We know that the Empire is about to rise, and so the desperation and ultimate failure of this resistance works all the more. The battle between Yoda and Palpatine, between Obi-Wan and Anakin, between Yoda and Obi-Wan and the clones. Every battle, even General Greivous to some extent, has some tension. The fall of Anakin lack’s the tragicness that it was going for, but the hope in the final moments of the film mirrors perfectly the scene in the original Star Wars. Maybe because it’s almost the same scene.
When it comes down to it, your opinion on this film is going to be defined by one simple question. Does it feel like Star Wars? This question can be answered rationally or not. I don’t think it is necessary for it to be answered objectively, because the original Star Wars was not objective. By all objective standards, it was uninspired and done a hundred times before. The first Star Wars succeeds because it makes you feel like a kid. It makes you embrace these story bits and the world and the battles. Within every Star Wars fan lies a little kid who freaks the hell out when the Death Star blows up. The original trilogy had a very special feel, at least to me. Revenge of the Sith may not be perfect, but the moments when it recaptured that Star Wars feel, to me, erased its blemishes.
Awkward penguin is the ultimate motivator: if it describes your life you feel affirmed and if it doesn’t you can say “at least I don’t do that.”
Having said that, I totally do this.
I need to stop thinking about Huck Finn.
I have an essay to finish.
I’m gonna go crazy.
If I don’t go crazy tonight.
What?
God dammit.
I need to come up with an idea for a movie.
Shit, I have too many.
I need to write the screenplay.
I need to write all the screenplays.
First I need to finish this essay.
Maybe I should sleep.
I need to finish this essay.
My internet has taken a turn for the stupid.
This essay should probably get done.
Sleep is for the weak.
I just realized how much I hate bad parents. Like, really really loathe. And I don’t hate people. This is here for the records, because I finally found a group of people that I legitimately hate. Even nazis have the decency to have an ideology to loathe instead of the person. GAH. I’m making myself angry.
