It was good. Not as terrible as the bad reviews suggested, not as great as the rave reviews said. Just… pretty good. It started badly, with the rather comical ‘War!’ and probably the dullest and worst thought-out space fight in the series. Things pick up after that, get a little dull in the middle, but coast along nicely to the nicely climactic ending. I actually rather like Lucas’ pompous and overblown dialogue, in much the same way as I enjoy reading Lord of the Rings. Of course, a Han Solo’s cynicism is much missed, but the presentation of the film was not something I disliked: bombastic score, hammy acting and beautiful CG cohered well in the grand gesture of space opera. What was lacking was the story.
First, we are expected to swallow a huge jump in the plot and a new antagonist, the uninteresting coughing android General Grievous. To be honest, his whole plotline should have been cut – and the fact that he’s obviously a far better design than Darth Vader (whose big buttons and Frankenstein walk, along with some terrible lines asking about Padme then going ‘Nooo!’ really didn’t inspire much awe) makes you wonder why they didn’t use the technology to better effect – but then, the same can be asked of super-powered R2. Why, however, they didn’t use Dooku as the main antagonist rather than unceremoniously dispatching him at the beginning I don’t know. Then we get to the meat: why Anakin turns to the dark side. Well,the reason’s pretty half-arsed. He has some premonitions about Padme dying so embraces Palpatine’s teachings in order to save her, but of course becomes so twisted that he ends up being the cause of her death. Pretty flimsy, and the transition is hardly sensitively portrayed, tortured or even very interesting. Lucas even throws in some cute Jedi kiddies for him to butcher, just to show how BAD he is.
At the end of the film, the loose ends are supposed to be tied up. Luke and Leia are born and taken away when Padme dies (leaving the question, of course, of how Leia knows her ‘real mother’ in Return of the Jedi, but I suppose it’s the power of the Force or something). Obi Wan Kinobe goes to watch over Luke, changing his name to Ben Kinobe (’cos no-one would EVER guess!). Yoda fails to kill the Emperor, but for some reason, doesn’t show his Jedi spirit by going back and trying to kill the Sith lord again, but runs off to a swamp. Wimp! We also find out in a throwaway bit of dialogue that dead Qui-Gon found out a way to make Jedi into ghosts, which Kinobe and Yoda must learn in order for the original trilogy to make sense – and find the time to tell Vader, presumably. C3PO’s memory is wiped, for no reason, oh, and Chewbacca seems to be very important in the Wookie hierarchy, of course, because every random character in the original trilogy seems to somehow tie in with the story of the Empire’s ephemeral rise to power, which seems to have been taken up almost entirely by taking two decades to build a Death Star.
The biggest gripe I had was that at a time when Anakin needed to be shown the power of the dark side, Mace Windu overpowered Darth Sidious. Yes, he also needed to act vulnerable so that Anakin would be forced to make the choice to intervene, but frankly, if I was Anakin I’d’ve just thought that the Dark Side was clearly rather pathetic (not like Vader ever learns the lightning trick anyway). It would have worked if Windu and Sidious were well-matched, then Anakin comes in, distracting Sidious and allowing Windu to get the upper hand. As it was, it just seemed that the Dark Side is rather pathetic. And the worst thing is that I’m pretty sure it was only because Samuel L Jackson just wanted to look cool. Dramatically, it just didn’t work as it should have.
For all this, though, it’s a fun action movie and worth seeing for its fireworks and the satisfaction of seeing Yoda casually take out two guards with a sweep of the hand. But really, it is nothing, nothing to Episodes IV and V.
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