OK, so movie reviews aren’t generally our focus, nor do I expect that they ever will be. However, from time to time a biggie comes along and ought to be reviewed for the sake of completeness. One such film is
Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, which just opened 2 days ago. To be succinct, I enjoyed the film very much, and I’d even go so far as to say that the only Star Wars movie I would think of as “better” is The Empire Strikes Back.
I don’t want to give anything away, but there are certain things we already know in advance. We know that Anakin goes all dark side and becomes Darth Vader. We know that Palpatine becomes the emperor. We
know that Luke and Leia are born and separated, and we know that Obi Wan and Yoda, the last two remaining Jedi, go into hiding to wait for a better time to overthrow the emperor.
What we generally don’t know are all the particulars of the situation, and this movie does a pretty good job of showing them to us. Unlike Episodes I and I,I the acting is decent (though not anything incredible; to be fair, there has yet to be a Star Wars movie with truly good acting) and the story moves along at a fairly brisk pace. If I would have any complaint at all it’s that it moves along sometimes too quickly, not giving us or the characters adequate time to reflect on or understand the situations as they happen. Of course, there’s the
view that if Anakin had a chance to think about what the hell he was doing he wouldn’t have turned to the Dark Side to begin with, and that’s certainly a valid point.
Like the previous films, the special effects are gorgeous, though some of the designs (the “concert” attended by the Emperor and Anakin is a good example) are a little cheezy, amounting to little more than gigantic primitive models with gorgeous textures moving about in semi-interesting patterns on the screen. The Lightsaber battles are numerous and well done, though none really stand out as amazingly better than any other. None of them suck, however, and that’s certainly something to be grateful about.
Some of the imagery (some of it merely suggested, in fact) is disturbing and really highlights that Anakin has indeed fallen to the Dark Side. A perfect example is when he goes to the Jedi Temple and slaughters all the Jedi children. Unfortunately we don’t get to see the actual slaughter, just the moments leading up to and following it. I do say that with disappointment, because I was actually looking forward to seeing children massacred on screen, but I guess the suggestion of such will have to do. Unfortunately what was less entertaining was the manner in which Anakin crossed over. Watch it and see.
All in all, I’d give the new Star Wars 3 out of 4 stars. The acting could have been better, but as Episodes I and II showed us, it could also have been much, much worse.
