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Revenge of the Sith: Review and Discussion
Okay after having five days to chew over the movie, after seeing a matinee screening on the Friday afternoon, I can say that I honestly enjoyed RotS but thought that in a lot of ways it was a horrendous film.
Hayden seemed to have improved a little as an actor; McGregor seemed more comfortable in his role, while ILM did a fabulous job of giving Yoda something of a character.
Nevertheless, despite a few subtle tweaks to the overall process the film still is poorly made in almost every way other than basic visual and sound design.
As an aside, it is telling that the scene I liked best in the film was the dialogue free montage just before the Mace and Palpatine Confrontation.
My biggest problem is that there is a jarring quality that seems to be a result of Lucas foolhardily trying to bridge the gap between what he does best, campy high adventure, and doing what he feels his fans want, high art with light sabres and twi’leks.
The end result is that you get scenes which have a nicely nuanced touch such as the opera scene, book ended by Obi Wan riding around on a green dragon bird fighting a robo gimp….
Now I am not saying that twatting robo gimps doesn’t make an amusing film, it just seems that this film needed to pick one style and stick with it. It was either campy adventure or dark brooding adult drama; both on their own would have been fine, the two mixed together creates a bastard movie that defies logic in ways that Don Murphy could only dream of.
My main problem I suppose is that Ian Mcdiarmid instead of being the messianic figure who would dominate every scene he was in through his sheer acting ability instead employed a campaign of vicious scenery chewing, quite a feat when the scenery was almost all generated by some geek over at ILM.
“Forgot the darkness have you. Balance the violence shall surely bring to this movie franchise”
In a word, No.
If I want violence I will go and watch, Ichi the Killer or some asinine snuff flick called ‘Mitsy Gets Nailed to the Door’. However, I do not expect the unique selling point of a family film being the fact that many people die in cruel and unusual ways. In this movie limbs are separated at an incredible rate and we are subjected to main characters being beheaded, electrocuted, exploded, shot to death, and at least two of the main characters actually combusting.
The violence is something of a grey area really, as a jaded Asian film fan it bounced off my bloodthirsty hide, but the audience I was with who were largely made up of children were quite visibly distressed by the end of the film.
In the end, I am perhaps being a little harsh. Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith is a far better movie than its immediate predecessors. Nevertheless, the fact remains that half way through the film I was spending most of my time laughing, internally so as not to ruin the movie for others, at a movie that was supposed to be all about loss and suffering.
Once again I return to the Ian who while playing Palpatine delivers a deliciously nuanced performance, the sly smile during the legend of Darth Plaugeis is class, transmutes into a hideously over the top caricature after been given a slight does of force lighting….. apparently Force Lighting is the Sith equivalent of Speed because as soon as he feels the volts the emperor does not stop juddering around like a mad man….. Even cackling like a triumphantly delirious maniac as he hangs for dear life off of a senate platform.
I also find it rather embarrassing that I was only entertained by Samuel L Jackson's, one of my favourite contemporary actors, when he was being electrocuted to death such was the power of Mace Windus mundanity.
The thing of note about RotS is that my problems are all nitpicks which took me out of the film. Calling Hayden and Natalie Portman wooden for their acting scenes is slightly unfair; wood at least has some aesthetic depth. Nevertheless, aside from the romance scenes I actually thought they were passable. The real problems lies in logic defying moments such as the empire creating itself within days of the emperor coming to power, seeing the traditional Empire commanders and a near completed death star was very weird, and the entire high ground issue……
“ha ha motherfucker! You may be a better swordsman than me, but I am now in a position raised a few feet above your position, as such I am unbeatable”
The problem is that if you watch Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith with even a modicum of filmic intelligence you will be deeply disappointed largely due to the fact it contains so many ‘what the fuck was that about’ moments it is hard to actually concentrate on the movie at hand.
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