Revenge of the Sith Review

So I've seen the movie twice now: the very first showing at midnight, and again the following evening on opening night. My initial gut reaction: good but not great. I mean I didn't really expect great, although I did allow myself to hope that it might be at least better than the other two prequels, given the positive press it was getting before it came out. After seeing it the first time, I was ready to give it a reasonably happy, adrenaline- and sleep deprivation-induced thumbs-up, but after talking it through for a bit with Josh and Adrienne, I realized that there were a number of things that had irritated the hell out of me about the movie, and made the experience less than great. After the second viewing, I felt pretty much the same way: I appreciated the good things even more, and caught a few more good things that I'd missed, but I was even yet more irritated at the dumb stuff.

Here's the main thing I realized that I had a problem with, and (disclaimer!) it's from a writers point of view. Let me see if I can articulate this clearly:

ROTS was poorly written.

I know, if you've seen it (not to mention Episodes I and II), there's no big surprise here. To use a couple of metaphors, George Lucas is good at creating the forest, but not so good at the trees. His story is like a zombie: it has strong bones, but the meat on them is inconsistent: sometimes thin where it should be thick, sometimes missing in places, sometimes falling apart. It's barely able to shamble forward without completely falling down. In other words, as a writer (I'm not even getting into commenting on his directorial skills; I don't feel qualified to criticize except to say I suspect that someone else might have done a better job) he's a great big-picture idea guy, but he's not so good at the details of actually crafting a story. Especially in this third installment, where it's so important to bring together/wrap up all the characters and plot points that people already know have to happen (because we've seen the sequels already), I feel like George had a good outline for how to get from point A to point B to point C, but when it came time for actually crafting the dialogue and exposition for how to get those characters and situations to happen, he failed to make the audience a) believe in and b) care about the way it happened. So, I think this is a case of a writer having good native talent and a solid idea, but not the craft to back it up. (Of course, if he had been a better director, he might have been able to compensate for some of the poor writing--as happened with The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. But I said I wasn't going to comment on his directorial skills and so I won't.) I definitely sympathize--I have this problem myself, in my own writing. I know where I want each scene to go in order to advance the plot, and the overall emotional journeys I want the characters to take, but the actual getting there often requires a lot of work and yes, craft in order to make it believable. Now, George is writing a space opera, I understand that, and the genre certainly isn't known much for subtle character development or anything like that, but that's still no excuse for laughably bad dialogue and inconsistent or inexplicable character behavior. No matter how much whiz bang action or special effect-y goodness you scatter around to distract me, if the characters' behavior, motivations and interactions don't ring emotionally true and consistent to me, I don't buy the story. The original movies were satisfying even though (or perhaps because?) they often dealt in familiar stereotypes (whether drawn from Westerns, samurai dramas, old time radio, or "good vs evil" mythology with a dash of the good ol' Campbellian mythological hero's quest). The new movies just never quite felt like as much was at stake. In getting more complicated by adding in all the various subplots, they got more boring and less believable. But they didn't necessarily have to be that way--in the hands of a better writer (and director) they might have worked. I know, I know, easy to criticize, hard to do: but George did do it with the original trilogy (mostly), so I think we fans were reasonable in at least hoping (if not expecting) that he'd do it again. As fans, we had to work too hard to justify all the leaps of logic and emotional believability (for example, see Josh's excellent theory about how Anakin's "miraculous virgin birth" was because he was literally created by the Sith as a secret uber-weapon against the Jedi)--we shouldn't have to do that.

Ok, that's my forest rant. Now on to the trees--a fangirl's admittedly incomplete and generally whiny, self-indulgent list of ROTS pros and cons (in no particular order):

Pros:
-the first 20 minutes or so of the movie were incredible. Visually stunning, entertaining snappy dialogue, exciting action. Why couldn't the whole movie be like this? (Actually, I take that back--one of my main complaints was that the movie was just way too ADHD and never slowed down enough to let the viewer take a breath, except for the cheesy romance scenes, and those had their own problems. But I digress.)
-R2-D2 is teh roxxor. I mean seriously, that little droid is the underappreciated hero of *all* the movies, not just the prequels. How dare Obi-wan and Anakin make fun of him? R2 is my hero.
-Lots of good lightsaber action. I loves me those glowy swords. Although the novelty of watching Yoda bounce around like a frickin' green flea on steroids has worn off. Sorry, George.
-Plenty of cool and creative new aliens, creatures, vehicles and planets, in the grand old Star Wars tradition of innovation and visual envelope-pushing. I especially loved the look of Coruscant (it was pretty cool in Ep II as well) and the brief glimpse of whatever that neato planet with all the huge flowers was where the clone troopers mowed down one of the female Jedi. I also liked the planet where Obi-wan tracked down General Grievous (ok, I'm not *such* a big geek that I already remember the names of all the new environments and aliens. Bite me.), with the cool bark-faced aliens and the awesome screechy lizard thingy that Obi-wan gets to ride.
-Being so familiar with the original trilogy, I actually appreciated all the continuity hookups. For example, when Obi-wan picks up Anakin's lightsaber after their climactic battle and takes it away with him (so *that's* how Luke gets it!), or when the command is given to have C3PO's memory wiped.
-Ewan McGregor. I think he is one of the shining stars of this new trilogy, at least as far as acting goes. He's one of the few actors in the film(s) that never (ok, rarely) sounds cheesy, and always seems believable. I gained a whole new appreciation for/understanding of Obi-wan as a character. Ian McDiarmid did a bang-up job too, despite having to deliver some truly flinchable dialogue.
-The computer animation for Yoda looked great this time, close to Gollum-quality. I found myself totally believing his "realness" and his interaction with other characters was seamless.
-Speaking of Yoda, I loved how he just tossed those two red-draped Imperial guards out of the way when he confronted Sidious. Go, little green guy, go.
-I really did love the moment when the infamous Darth Vader mask is being lowered onto Anakin's face, and not only do we suddenly realize what the world will look like through Vader's eyes, but also we get one last shot of his face, where we see his eyes widen in what looks like panic, fear, and the awful realization of what he's committing himself to. That part felt really emotionally true and well done.

Cons:
-My God, a good 80% of the dialogue in this movie was truly awful, either in the way it was written or in the way it was delivered (I blame the writer for the first, and the director for the second--oh wait, since they were the same person, there were no "checks and balances" to make this problem any better. Too bad.)
-Too much, too fast. There were too many plotlines to keep track of, and none of them got much development. And there was an almost gratuitous, "look at the cool stuff we designer types can do down here at ILM" feeling to the overabundance of new planets, new aliens, and new tech. The action didn't have a chance to build up any tension before our attention was wrenched away to the next thing, and the next thing, and the next thing. By the time we got halfway through the movie, I felt kind of yanked around ("look over here! Shiny! Now over here! Isn't this cool! Now look at this!") and overstimulated.
-The relationship between Anakin and Padme has about as much spark as a cold blast of foam from a fire extinguisher. We're supposed to believe that Anakin is so incredibly crazy in love with Padme that he'd give up his entire life (not to mention his honor and soul) to save her from possible harm, and we're supposed to believe that Padme is so crazy in love with Anakin that she literally loses the will to live when he turns to the dark side and oh yeah, tries to strangle her in a jealous fit (news flash! You cannot *actually* die from a broken heart, girlfriend, come *on*), but I just could not bring myself to get past the *incredibly* cheesy and poorly written dialogue to believe that they actually had intense emotions for each other. I thought their romance scenes were bad in Episode II, but this movie actually made me LAUGH OUT LOUD at some of the horrendous dialogue (and delivery) they came out with. I have to say I blame both the writing *and* the directing here, rather than poor Natalie Portman and Hayden Christensen. It would be hard to rise above that much crap.
-And speaking of Padme, she was pretty much the only female character with lines in the whole frickin' movie. (Yeah, there were a couple female Jedi, in the background, big whoop. Oh yeah, and I guess we saw Senator Organa's wife, and Beru. Whoo.) And she turned into a boring, whiny, wimpy girly stereotype. Ugh! At least in the other two movies, she had a chance to be independent, tough and active and kick some ass, even though she was (un)dressed up and paraded around as eye candy for all the geek boys out there (and I'm ok with that...I mean hello, Leia in Jabba's palace. 'Nuff said.) I especially resented how she was almost fetishistically used to make us realllllly believe that Anakin was truly turned to the dark side (it wasn't enough for Anakin to so cruelly mistreat a gorgeous, perkily dressed space-babe, she had to be pregnant too--the fiend!).
-General Grievous. Ok, I know that all the cool kids already know about him from the Clone Wars cartoon, but to me he just made no frickin' sense. A droid who coughs? Huh? It wasn't until Obi-wan finally offed him that I realized he must be some sort of cyborg part-organic, part-droid thingy. But hey, if you can replace pretty much every other part of his body besides his head and his heart, why not just go whole hog and give the damn guy a new trachea? Sheesh. And while we're at it, what's with making that vulnerable heart part so, well, vulnerable? I mean really, if that was me getting the new droid body, I'd pretty much require the builder to put extra fabulous shielding around my tender organic bits. Duh. And finally, if you're going to set up a bad-ass droid villain who can super-spin four, count 'em FOUR lightsabers at a time, could you at least not make him so ridiculously easy to take out? He barely starts to feel like a threat by the time Obi-wan wipes him out. From a writer's point of view, if you don't make a big bad character seem threatening, we the audience are unable to identify with the good guy and therefore don't really care when the good guy takes him out.
-Samuel Jackson. The man is a great actor, I know he is, but in this movie? I couldn't bring myself to believe in him as a Jedi master, no matter how hard I tried to suspend my disbelief. I had a problem with him in the earlier movies too, but he had more to do in this one.
-That whole scene where Anakin finally accepts Sidious as his new master? Way, way too quick and unbelievable. This is the big explanatory payoff scene, the first part of what IMHO should be the crux of this movie (the second being Anakin's breakdown and fight with Obi-wan on the volcano planet), and emotionally, it just didn't work. This was the part where I think George had the biggest problem with the trees--you could tell he had set up the outline ("so, you see, Anakin lost his mother and now he is deathly afraid to lose Padme, so he'll sell his soul and turn to the dark side in order to save her, plus he's not so thrilled with all those demanding Jedi who don't give him what he thinks he deserves anyway") but when it came down to how to actually write the scene(s) that will make the outline plot believable, he stumbled. Badly. I think there was supposed to be this feeling of seduction, but there was too much telling ("I know the Chancellor is your friend, but you're too close to him, Anakin."), not showing. We needed to watch Anakin fall under the Chancellor's spell, not just be told that he had. And I have to say, Anakin was awfully quick to switch sides. His "what have I done?" rang totally hollow to me, and his apparently easy acceptance of Palpatine's command to go kill all the Jedi, including all the cute little children, was baffling. (Because they're enemies of the Republic and of peace? Puhleeze.) We never actually saw Anakin go through any sort of internal doubt/struggle or remorse or anything, not even numbness--he just all of a sudden got all mean and evil. His emotional reaction was more believable after he revenge-slaughtered a bunch of sandpeople in Episode II than after wiping out all his former friends and colleagues. I mean come on, wouldn't he have at least a twinge of "gee what a pity it is that I have to kill you all, even if it is for a larger cause?" As Josh has pointed out, Anakin never was built up enough as a sympathetic character (let alone as a hero) for me to really feel like it was any sort of tragedy when he turned to the dark side. He was just this whiny, proud, jealous, arrogant kid who might have been brave and talented, but certainly not disciplined or thoughtful or caring enough to come off as true hero-material. And if he wasn't a hero, then it wasn't a tragedy when he went all evil. It was inevitable. And therefore boring.
-Why the hell did Obi-wan cut off 3 out of 4 of Anakin's limbs (why not all 4? Just so George could get the cool visual of Anakin's horribly burned up body dragging itself up the pile o' dirt with his robot hand? Weak!) and watch Anakin burn, but *not* finish the job and at least give him the mercy of killing him? I know it couldn't have been an easy thing to watch, but duh. They can do some pretty great things with droids and cyborg implants these days, Obi-wan must know that.
-Are you seriously telling me that on a planet like Coruscant and at a time in the future with their level of medical technology, Padme wouldn't have had an ultrasound or its equivalent and learned the fact that she was carrying twins before they were born? And while we're on the subject (and yes, having just given birth perhaps I'm a wee bit sensitive about this), the birth scene was *totally* unbelievable, not least because hello, even in our day and age women don't lie down on a table in order to have our babies. And if they were doing a fancy schmancy technologically advanced c-section, why was Padme grimacing and groaning like she was actually in labor? She *so* didn't look like a woman in labor. *This* was the best George could do for what birth looks like in the future? Please. And those newborns? Pretty humongous considering that they were twins and that she supposedly wasn't full term yet. (Not to mention miraculously clean when they came out, methinks.)
-Wookies and Kashyyk (or however you spell that): totally gratuitous and unnecessary, since not much ever even happened there. While it was vaguely cool to see Chewbacca, and of course the world itself was beautifully realized, I have to say: who cares? Too much information overload.
-Hitting us over the head with the Darth Vader/Frankenstein comparison wasn't particularly appealing. And the "nooooooooooo" scream just made me laugh, instead of giving me a sense of mingled pity, horror and tragedy that I think George was (or should've been) aiming for.

Ok, I'm exhausted. This turned out to be far more than the brief review I thought I was writing. I guess once I get on a good rant, it's hard to stop. I'll go lay down with a cool cloth on my forehead now.