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Thoughts On Star Wars - Revenge of the Sith

Posted on May 23, 2005
Filed Under Personal Posts |

So I’ve landed in San Jose, booked into a lovely Travelodge room, and it’s about Eight Thirty Pacific time. Irrespective of the fact my body’s now been on the go for 23 hours, I need to find something to do for three hours to get myself fully into the timezone. So a short walk into town, and I pass a cinema that’s showing Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith. In digital format. Why not, I thought, and I can grab a hot dog for a quick snack as well.

Two Hours Pass.

George Lucas should have left the directing to someone else, the actors are all over the shop. The big “you were my brother” scene from Ewan McGregor’s Obi Wan Kenobi (he’s still above me in Google for “Ewan” dammit!) had McGregor just the right side of going over the top - as it should be for a Sci-Fi ‘B-Movie,’ but a previous scene which should have had a heck of a lot more impact (namely the one where McGregor’s Kenobi watches Hayden Christensen’s Anakin Skywalker slaughter the Jedi via security cam, had no emotional kick at all. McGregor looked like he was doing a read through in the green room, rather than one of the key scenes in the mythology-lite Star Wars saga.

There are untold scenes that were just so hit and miss in character direction. I didn�t believe in the quandary that Skywalker had while having to decide to support Mace Windu or the Chancellor. There was no way to connect to the tragedy in that or other scenes. As Vader’s helmet descends to blot out Skywalker’s life, there was a tiny moment of horror, and that’s about the only time in the whole film I felt for any of the characters.

A good character director should have been able to pull an amazing tradgey out of this story. My emotions should have been all over the shop. I’ve been worried that RotS would be a ‘get to the point we all know by numbers’ film. Romeo and Juliet opens with “this is how it ends.” So does “Moulin Rouge.” Heck, a good director should have me crying my eyes out with tragedy even if I know it’s about to happen. Even the opening to “Finding Nemo” had me welling up - while I felt manipulated there, I would rather that than the emotionless cgi Lucas put on display here.

Last week’s Doctor Who (”Fathers Day”) had a simple premise. Rose’s father has to die to repair time. The audience are clued into this after about 5 minutes. But for 40 minutes we cry, hoping it won�t happen, but knowing it will. And when it does, it’s a big kleenex moment. This should have been the story of RotS.

But it looks nice, will sell bucket loads of toys, and people will build their own stories around it, ignoring how bad the film was. Lucas has pulled off the bluff of being a great director and scriptwriter. For that, congratulations. But RotS was a decidedly average film.

Roll on Serenity.