Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith: The same execrable dialogue and nonstop action of the first two prequels, but with a little more interest since I was curious how the wildly different worlds of the prequels and the original trilogy fit together. That connection, covered largely in the final fifteen minutes of the film, was done fairly well but still left quite a few loose ends and contradictions. But that’s par for the course in this movie – much of Anakin’s transition to the Dark Side was contradictory and unprompted. I was also baffled by the fact that the Jedi Council, whose skills border on telepathy, failed to notice such corruption in their very ranks.
The acting was almost uniformly bland, with one shining exception: Ewan McGregor. Not only did he make the stilted dialogue sound almost natural, he alone appeared to belong in the same universe as the original trilogy. I think he kept a Ouija board in his trailer to channel Sir Alec Guinness.
There was quite a bit of action in this one – too much, really. The lightsaber fights were amazing but so frequent they got a bit tedious. I guess I’m supposed to say something about the special effects, but when everything is computer generated it ceases to be very impressive. There were several scenes, both action-packed and otherwise, that seemed to do nothing but show off the pretty scenery and could definitely have been cut.
It wasn’t a horrible movie but “best of the prequels” isn’t very high praise either. I wish they had done Episodes 7-9 instead, because all these films did was shrink the Star Wars universe with unlikely connections. I didn’t like the Anakin/C3PO connection of Phantom Menace or the Boba Fett/stormtrooper connection of Attack of the Clones, and I don’t like the Yoda/Chewbacca connection of Revenge of the Sith. It’s gratuitous fan-pleasing and messes up the storyline. Still, I’m glad I saw this movie because, well, it’s Star Wars. Now hopefully it can all be put to rest and the fans can go back to their RPGs and fanfics without worrying about George Lucas messing everything up again.
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