Well, this is it. The Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith review.

Okay, I'll admit that I'm not sure how to review a film that I've been waiting literally 22 years for. I thought Episode I was the movie I'd been waiting for, but we all know how that turned out, don't we? Then I figured Episode II would be the one. It was more on the right track, but that damn "love story" brought everything back down to reality. So I pinned my hopes on Episode III. Did I make the right choice? Kind of...

This time? Lucas got a lot right, but he still got a lot wrong. I really enjoyed the first 30 minutes and the last 45 minutes, but I had serious problems with a lot of it in between. It hurts, because, honestly, after waiting so long for this film, to see a lot of things that could have been fixed so easily go unfixed just bugs the hell out of me. Strap in, kids. This is gonna be a long one. I am going to be forced to give spoilers for the film because I can't really give an in-depth analysis without giving a lot away. You really should read this only after you've seen the movie, because we all know my review isn't going to make you go see it or not go see it. You've likely already made that decision. So don't even consider this a review. Consider it a critique with a number grade at the end.


SPOILERS FOLLOW, SO GO AWAY IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE DANG MOVIE YET.


I wanted to love Revenge of the Sith, and my feelings conflict the more I think about it. There's parts of this film that I love just as much as anything in the original films. There's also parts I really hate, but you know what? The parts I hated were still better than the stuff I hated in the other prequels. The problem I have is that the movie is so fast-paced and has so much momentum, that some characters get the short end of the stick. I have simple edits (and some not-so-simple edits) that could have changed the tone of scenes for what I consider to be the better.

First of all, the stuff with the Wookiees was completely unnecessary. It was simple fanboy pandering, which didn't advance the story in any way. Story-wise, all it did was make sure Yoda wasn't at the Jedi Temple during the slaughter. That's it. I can't believe that Lucas cut out and condensed storylines of other characters to make room for a few pointless battle scenes on Kashyyk. Padme suffers the worst from the cuts. She has about three scenes where she isn't sitting on the couch in her apartment. If we're supposed to care that Anakin is willing to destroy the Jedi and pretty much the entire Republic in order to gain the knowledge necessary to save her life, she needs to actually do something other than look pouty. Instead of any development for her, we get an extended cameo from Chewbacca in its place. We also get a battle that means nothing to us, because really, we've seen all of this enough times now.

Second, despite Samuel L. Jackson's claims to the contrary, Mace Windu goes out like a bitch. I'm sorry, but he does. He's able to best Palpatine in a lightsaber duel, but Anakin interferes at the wrong time and, of course, makes the wrong choice, allowing Palpatine to kill Windu. This is strictly a personal thing, but if you want me to care when someone dies, you don't show it in a long shot with him flung a mile away from the camera. You have him drop right there on that ledge. This gives added weight to what Anakin has just done. This also gives him the opportunity to debate, to give more of the, "oh god, what have I just done," reaction that he first exhibits. When there's a body in the room that he's just had a hand in killing, it makes it a lot tougher to atone for. Instead the scene plays out like this...

Anakin: "Oh crap, what have I done?"
Palpatine: "Sucks to be him. Become my apprentice so you can save your wife."
* Anakin hesitates for about 3 seconds or so *
Anakin: "Okay, I'll be your apprentice even though I narked on you to Windu five minutes ago. I'm evil now and I'm gonna go kill me some children."

Even a few more lines of dialogue there, with Palpatine convincing him to turn, after Anakin wavers for a bit would have sealed the deal for me. Even showing Anakin realizing he's got no other choice at this point would work. Instead it felt rushed, even if it is something that's been building since his mother's death in Episode II. Putting more dialogue in would have added maybe 60 seconds to the scene, but had so much more impact.

My single biggest problem, though, lies in this... You know what made the lightsaber battles in the original trilogy so great? It wasn't the moves they used, it was what was said between the characters who were fighting. I could recite just about everything said during both of the Luke/Vader fights in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi (some of which reappears in slightly altered form at moments in Revenge of the Sith). I know, it's dorky to know that stuff, but stay with me for a minute here. I could ask you to recite me some lines of dialogue from any of the fights in Episode III, but you won't be able to because the dialogue is so far secondary to the fight choreography. This is a problem shared by all the prequels, sadly. This is what hurt the inevitable Anakin/Obi Wan fight for me. The impact is diminished severely by the fact that Obi Wan has given up on redeeming Anakin before the fight has even begun. What this turns the fight into is one big eye-candy sequence with emotional resonance that creeps in only after Obi Wan has defeated Anakin. What we get is essentially a video game sequence with ever-increasingly dangerous locales and some cheap-looking green-screen effects. If the fight had played out with Obi Wan trying to bring Anakin back from the dark side, pleading with him, begging him to come back to help restore the Republic and Anakin ultimately rebuking him, it would have made the final moments that much more poignant. At least Obi Wan does show some emotion once he's incapacitated Anakin (and Anakin has gotten incredibly messed up in the process). Still, the impact would have been so much greater if they hadn't been essentially mute throughout the battle.

Despite these shortcomings, I will say this -- the wrapup scenes that tie everything to the original trilogy were absolutely fantastic. Maybe it's pure nostalgia, but those made me want to pop in Episode IV immediately after getting home. The final shot of the film, showing Owen and Beru Lars holding an infant Luke Skywalker with the binary sunset and Luke's theme in the background was the most affecting thing in the movie for me, short of the opening fanfare (which I'm sure will continue to give me chills every single time I see it for the rest of my life). Leia's theme playing with Bail Organa first shows her to his wife was wonderful. Padme's funeral hit the perfect notes. Lucas really knew what he was doing here, as did John Williams.

The only scene of the final minutes that didn't quite do it for me was Vader's Frankenstein moment, in which he stumbles out of his constraints exactly like the Frankenstein monster, then screams a very cheesy "NOOOOOOOO!" after learning that Padme is dead. To me, this was even more jarring than Luke's scream in the first Special Edition of The Empire Strikes Back (that thankfully got removed in the DVD release). It took a lot of the audience out of the film, right along with me, because I distinctly heard a few chuckles after it happened. Let's hope Lucas has the foresight to change this when he redoes the movie for the super-duper 3-D holographic edition on BluRay in 2007, since the rest of Vader's "birth" (especially the POV shot of the mask coming down) was just about perfect.

I know it sounds like I'm being really hard on this movie. I did like at least half of it, though. Maybe even more than half. Those were just some of the things that really bothered me and could have been fixed quite easily without changing the pacing of the movie at all.

Stuff I liked? I thought the Anakin/Dooku fight was played exactly how it should have been played. There are those who will complain that it's over too quickly, but I was happy to get some actual banter during a fight, as well as a very important payoff at the end. I could have done without the R2D2 comic relief, granted, but everything in that familiar-looking (think Return of the Jedi) observation deck was terrific. So was the ensuing elevator escape.

Well, General Grievous. I will note here that I knew NOTHING about Grievous going into this film, so I had some confusion as to his coughing and odd chicken-walk. I'm sure I'm not the only one. I was later told that a lot of this is explained during the Clone Wars cartoon. He's an interesting character, but he's introduced too late in the series to have any real impact for me. Still, he's quite the neat visual, and his fight with Obi Wan is entertaining and imaginative.

The scene where Palpatine tells the story of Darth Plaguieus (sp?) is among the best scenes in any of the Star Wars movies, right up there with "I am your father" and Han going into carbon freeze. The entire scene was genius, and showed exactly how good Palpatine was at manipulating everyone to get what he wanted. It also showed just how good Ian McDiarmid is. The dude stole the movie from everybody. He's not quite as good once he's caked in makeup and looking like the Emperor we recognize from the originals, but what he does in the early scenes is pretty amazing, walking the line between dramatic and hammy and knowing exactly when to pull back. He even makes you like the guy and you see why he's really the villain of the films, not Darth Vader. He's easily the best character in the film.

Despite my complaints, I will watch this again, definitely. The parts I enjoyed, I enjoyed enough to watch them over and over whenever the DVD comes out. I will look at Vader as more of a tragic, heartbroken figure (and a guy who got completely suckered by Palpatine) now when watching the originals, and it's interesting to rethink my whole position of spoiling the end of The Empire Strikes Back. At first I hoped that Vader's identity would be left ambiguous, so as not to ruin that film. Of course, seeing the new film makes that point completely moot, and would have robbed it of all the emotional release that occurs. Now I think that the new twist for kids watching these films for the first time is that if they watch them in chronological order, they don't know that the guy who's set up to be the hero of the piece turns into the big bad boogieman halfway through. They did give a good sense of Anakin not giving in at first, and give you enough hope that maybe he'll come back to the light side by then end of the movie. I can see that making a difference in how kids would view it. I'll still have them watch 4-6, then 1-3, though.

The final score? 3 stars out of 4. God, how I wish I could give it more, and actually did the more I thought about it. I originally started with a 2.5, but the power of that last 45 minutes was too much to overlook. This is easily the best of the prequels, and just might be better than Return of the Jedi, which gave in to cuteness far too often for its own good. This movie makes the entire Luke/Vader/Emperor scenes in that movie that much better, though. I guess we'll see what my rankings are once I've seen this one a few more times.

This really marks the end of an era for me. There just aren't any other movies I'd be willing to see at midnight or take a day off from work just to see. This is it. Not sure how I feel about that just yet...