The review below illustrates the power and shortcomings of Revenge of the Sith very well. Here are some of my own revelations.
Firstly it has great energy most of the time, and is the visual feast we have come to expect. There is a lot of insightful intelligence in the Star Wars idea, in terms of how fates govern peoples lives (or seem to), in terms of the duality of power, and in the use of technology, and its inexorable advance which also makes it difficult to control.
The Emperor symbolises that 'unnaturalness' of power and technology going out of control, and the glee and glut with which he uses it reminds us of our own tendencies to go to war, to make machines and to meddle with our own biology (stem cells as one example).
Some of the subtle wisdom Lucas brings to these films is that nature is superior to what is artificial or machine-like), and humility (Yoda), and of course friendship across all sorts of boundaries.
One of the best lines in the movie was Palpatine calling Yoda: "My little green friend."
Obi Wan's response to Annnakin's: "You're either with me, or you're my enemey."
"The Jedi do not deal in absolutes." (or words to that effect). This is a powerful statement because it shows that the Jedi have risen beyond Duality, beyond seeing the world as either this or that, either Padme's white innocence, or Darth Vader's blackness, either machine or clone, either the one way or the other. Between two opposites, there is usually a narrow path that leads away from disunity towards natural harmony and systems that can thrive. It is the same subject discussed in A Beautiful Mind, where Nash approaches Game Theory by going beyond each person's pursuit of the best result for themselves, but seeking instead for a combination of the best result for themselves and the group, which is often the same thing. This is a powerfully useful and necessary philosophy in our world today.
Palpatine also uses a truism: "All who have power fear losing it."
Obi Wan comes out as the epitomy of what we know and love and have enjoyed so immensely in these movies. There is an old world charm, a timeless mixture of skill and groundedness that is sorely lacking in our world today.
R2D2 also emerges as a very enterprising fellow in this movie. In one scene R2 brilliantly dispatches two droids while the Jedi are off rescuing the Chancellor.
I agree with the reviewer below that I didn't really feel it was 'shown' how Skywalker goes to the Dark Side. His anger at not being made a 'master', and the quickness and manner in which he accedes to the tutelage of the Emperor are not very credible.
I guessed that he would rebel against Obi Wan, that his damaged ego would be driven by jealousy and jiltedness to go up against first Obi Wan and and then the Jedi. I am not alone in these musings. I've seen on some forums, Star Wars fans have suggested this as a possible plot as well (meaning it seems most rational and plausible), and this may have come off as a more believable plot device than the one Lucas used. After all, there is even some friendly rivalry in the later episodes between Han Solo and Luke Skywalker, over Leia, and squabbling over beautiful girls is commonplace, and leads many of us to the Dark Side (temporarily one hopes), so why not Annakin?
Lucas does use this tack for a few seconds in this last episode, just before Obi Wan and Annakin duel, and so one could say he left this as the last straw that broke the camels back. But he does not use it to underpin the process, and we're left to wonder what does. A bad temper? Aggressiveness?
Lucas would probably argue that Annakin was playing with power, and simply wanted to be the Highest Power, to, insodoing insure safety and stability for his family - something sorely lacking in his own experience.
But the general feeling comes across, of conflictedness, of being lost and troubled and confused, and these mixed up in ambition and talent, and undone by triggers and impulsive sensitivities. I do feel though that our interest and knowledge of these sagas allows us to quickly let go of some of these inconsistencies, and then put the story together ourselves.
The quiet moments of this film resonated the most. The electric blue sparking off Yoda's face, the lonely pining of one lover for another across the gulf of a city, the defeated retiring quietly into their separate lives for more training and contemplation.
The tremendous compliment in that is here the storyteller has conjured up a world that we have employed deeply into our own imaginations. That's an exceedingly rare and powerful achievement, and also one that may, in some way at least, begin to swing the consciousness of the world towards the Greater Good, and elicit ideas for the here and now. We may begin to see how not to use power and technology, particularly at a time when the Empire of our world is about to endure an Energy Crisis, and the ensuing battle with both Separatists (terrorists) and what it considers rogue nations.
Some writers today suggest that the Force is dangerously out of balance on earth, and that these converging crises will soon bring us out in the open, away from TV and movies into real world conflicts, through globalisation all will be infected with it, and all tribes on this planet will battle for energy and water and survival. Perhaps we will be like extras, and characters at last running around the real effects of mayhem of what seems like a Star Wars movie. Will our TV/Movie education at last be fulfilledin life? Could be!
I've personally often felt that popular culture needs a set of beliefs or principles to entertain and inspire them. Star Wars has the singular honor of doing this best in all of movie history.
My rating: 4 stars out of a possible 5.
Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith
Reviewed by Owen Gleiberman
Something wicked this way comes.
Having spent two scattershot blockbusters whetting our appetite for the fall of Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen), George Lucas makes it easy to experience Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith as a rush of deliverance — even if the movie itself doesn't fully deliver. From the opening space-combat sequence, in which Anakin and his mentor, Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor), dodge an onslaught of fireballs and enemy craft so dense that the two might be threading their fighters through needles, you can feel Lucas' boyish engagement in the galactic universe he's created. The Jedi Knights are on a mission to rescue Supreme Chancellor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid), who has been kidnapped, and already there are hints of the conflict to come. As the two are attacked by spidery buzz droids, Anakin tries to shoot them off of Obi-Wan's ship, an act of headstrong aggression that makes you think, ''With friends like this...''
Unlike The Phantom Menace or Attack of the Clones, Revenge of the Sith unfolds with a fury of consequence. There are rousing lightsaber duels, like the one in which the skull-faced General Grievous wields four sabers at once. Yoda, with his twinkly scowl of purpose, has become such a crowd-pleasing action figure that when he coughs up solemn syntactical howlers like ''A prophecy that misread could have been'' — well, forgive him almost you can. The madly detailed cityscapes raise eye candy to a dimension of comic-book awe, though I confess I miss the nearly tactile thrills generated by the original Star Wars films. Lucas' digital imagery allows for whizzy, swirling layers of technological hyperactivity, yet its lacquered gleam is just artificial enough that when a panoramic window gets smashed during a battle in the Jedi chamber, my reaction was to think, ''Gee, how will they find replacement glass that big?''
Petulant and morose, with a slightly slurry delivery, Christensen plays Anakin as if locked in a private adolescent snit fit. As political infighting rages between the forces of the Empire and the Jedi (who are portrayed — in a pointed parallel with our own wartime climate — as under-siege liberals fighting ostracism), Anakin is torn between two father figures: the honorable Obi-Wan and the ambiguous Palpatine, played by McDiarmid with the jaunty menace of a corporate seducer. Of course, this is really the story of how Anakin outgrows his need for masters altogether, becoming a ''dark father'' himself. Darth Vader, with his fascist armor and his morbid cosmic boom of a voice, was always an image of malevolent manhood, even if he is the emperor's lackey. Since Christensen has never come close to that level of gravitas, we're eager to see how Anakin the testy apprentice, the surly, conflicted boy, will emerge, corrupted, from the shell of his innocence.
He does and he doesn't. Anakin's journey to the Dark Side is sparked by half a dozen different motivations, none of them entirely convincing. He has a nightmare that his pregnant bride, Padmé (Natalie Portman), is going to die in childbirth, and Palpatine exploits this premonition by promising Anakin that the Dark Side will give him power over life and death. But since the ''Hold me like you did by the lake on Naboo!'' love scenes are embarrassments of cheesy acting and cheesier dialogue, they have the unfortunate effect of hinging Anakin's descent on the worst moments in the entire series.
Anakin's instincts may be noble, but when he's chosen to be a member of the Jedi Council and yet denied the title of Master, the omission inflames his rage, a development that rings jarringly false. Anakin's appointment is an unexpected honor for a young Jedi: Why would he suddenly be up in arms about not receiving the ultimate rank as well? In case that conflict doesn't do it for you, he's also been asked to spy on Palpatine, which softens him up to believe the lie that the Jedi are hatching a conspiracy.
All of this is so talky and abstract, however, that Anakin's gathering storm seems hokey from the start, a function of the fact that it's simply time for him to begin getting mad. The trouble with Revenge of the Sith is that we're never really shown what we're told about endlessly: Anakin succumbing to the temptations of power. He sulks a lot, with a bead of resentment in his eye, but his actions never take that crucial turn toward the destructive narcissism of Darth Vader. The audience has to work to make sense of his journey, but what we're really doing is putting together the script that George Lucas didn't, quite.
Beneath Anakin's slipshod motives, one senses a failure of will on Lucas' part. The Star Wars series divided the world into Good and Evil in a way that Hollywood, by the 1970s, had forgotten. But Lucas, in his by-now reflexive populism, wants to turn Anakin into Darth Vader without risking any loss of sympathy for him. The one figure in Revenge of the Sith who taps the true spirit of Star Wars is Ewan McGregor: With his beautiful light, clipped delivery, he plays Alec Guinness' playfulness, making Obi-Wan a marvel of benevolent moxie. It's certainly fun to see Darth Vader's black armor snap into place (though couldn't they have waited until Anakin's burned skin stopped smoking?), but by the end of Revenge of the Sith, it would be a mistake to confuse Lucas' tidy game of connect-the-episodes with the elemental pleasure of the series at its best: pop storytelling done effortlessly, ushering the audience into the darkness and the light.
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