Here we are; the conclusion of the Star Wars prequel trilogy.What was supposed to be the epic adventures of Anakin Skywalker has so far ended up starting as a story about space bureaucracy for kids, then suddenly turned into an absolutely confused (and ultra dull) mess of a film.Now we’re at the third part, the film in a trilogy that normally is the epic culmination of all that came before, the point at which all plots bear fruit, all struggles are at their most desperate point, and all the stakes are at their highest. Yet The Phantom Menace was something of a standalone adventure, and god only knows what the unifying thread in Attack of the Clones was, so there isn’t much that we’ve ‘building up to’ per say. Still, Episode II did at least end with the start of the legendary Clone Wars, so we have that much to go on.
THIS MEANS WAR!
The good news is that unlike Attack of the Clones, this movie wastes no time in putting the wars in Star Wars. The film starts with an absolutely massive space battle above the planet Coruscant. The battle might be a little too big, with way too many things being thrown on screen at once, but after the snore fest that was Episode II, I’ll take it!
A space battle isn’t all we open with; our heroes Anakin and Obi Wan get right to a saber duel with Dooku, who is promptly removed from the story along with his head. It’s almost like Lucas was making a conscious effort to listen to fan feedback; an uninteresting dark Jedi is killed off within minutes, we waste no time with aimless political babble, we get a sword fight soon as the adventure begins, and star ships are shooting each other. This might actually be the first honestly enjoyable film in the prequels! The biggest problems with this opening are either issues that every single Star Wars movie has (terrible dialogue and poor acting), or are fairly technical things (questionable visual direction with the aforementioned space battle).
Remember though; this is part three in a trilogy that begins with The Phantom Menace and continues through Attack of the Clones. It is a movie about the start of the darkest days in the Star Wars universe. Which is to say; good things will not last, and all your joy will be reduced to ashes. What will now follow will be some of the best and some of the very worst of these three episodes.
Filing a Grievance
While the space battle and saber duel are going on, we are introduced to the new primary antagonist (one for each movie!); a coughing cyborg
warlord named Grievous. There’s no point in even pointing and laughing at that name by now. We’ve gone through Darth Sidious, Darth Maul, Count Dooku and Mace Windu. Amazingly, Grievous doesn’t even sound so bad compared to all that. What is a little jarring is that, unless you’ve been watching the Clone Wars CGI cartoon, you’d have no idea who this proverbial mustache twirling tin can is, much less why you should take him seriously. To the films credit, he is at least introduced before the halfway mark (unlike Dooku), so we get a -chance- to start caring. Unlike the previous (mis)adventure, we get a look at who the a villain is, and know at this early point who everyone is going to be up against. Well, partially at least. The real bad guy of the piece is already known to all, and to the movies credit, it’s stopped even trying to pretend that we don’t all know it.
Getting back to the situation; Grievous escapes after things start to get out of hand, tanking his own star ship to cause as much damage as possible while we bails out. This leaves Anakin, Palpatine and an unconscious Obi-Wan in the middle of a crashing ship, which brought to mind perhaps one of the most unique levels in FPS gaming (The Falling Ship).Though executed with as much emotion as a hibernating bear, the scene does point to the rapport between Skywalker and Kenobi, the former of whom ignores the commands of his supposed friend Palpatine and declares that either all three of them leave or none of them do. It’s one of many such moments that should have been in Episode II instead of the mountain of rubbish we got instead.
This is also, incidentally, the one episode in which we really get to see the legendary piloting skills of Skywalker; besides the movies opening, we also find him (crash) landing the falling vessel, managing to actually mitigating the potential damage.
Which is all to say; he is not an incompetent, whiny brat this time. Oh, he’s still a whiny brat, but at least he’s doing things that somewhat line up with the legend. fittingly, however, the crashing of the ship is where things start to fall apart, and the excellence of this opening act begins to get undone.
Meanwhile, on Planet Babble…
While Palpatine is reunited with the Senate, Anakin and Padme steal a moment away from the crowd. We learn that she’s pregnant, and that they are still keeping their relationship a secret from everyone, fearing the Jedi Council’s disapproval. For the first and only time in this entire trilogy, Anakin’s reaction to something involving her seems convincing (what sorcery is this?!). He looks startled and even a bit tense when he hears of the pregnancy, and actually takes a moment to think of it in a more positive light.
And now we come to where things begin to fall apart.
The first reminder of the awkward plot comes along with Grevious taking a Skype call from Palpatine, this time back in his gothic bath robe. I’m not sure if this is intentional or not, but I almost get the impression that Robot Chicken here doesn’t know the Sith Lord is the guy he was holding hostage on his ship. If that is the case, I guess we know why he’s on the loosing side of the war so far…
We also head back to the super awkward romance scenes of Attack of the Clones, with Anakin and Padme exchanging attempts at sweet nothings, and the unfortunate jumping point for his inevitable fall to the dark side.
See, the fall is not his rage killings of the Sand People, it’s not his anger over having been a child slave (which is never mentioned in this entire trilogy), it’s not his anger over the war, and its only in small part his jealousy of Obi-Wan. The real reason for his fall turns out to be a dream in which Padme dies in child birth, and his desperation in seeking a way to stop it. It’s not quite stated just yet, but revelation here does make it a good place to mention it. We’ll get into the holes this presents later. First….
MORE SKULDUGGERY!
Palpatine pulls strings and has Anakin placed on the Jedi Council as a spy. The Jedi in turn accept and ask Anakin to spy on the Chancellor. We go through a lot of back and forth from here, with both sides making very strange cases for themselves.
Palpatine outright talks about how the Sith and Jedi are the same. He even invokes Sith Lords by name…and yet in all this, Anakin remains oblivious to him being the current Dark Lord. Meanwhile, young Skywalker keeps venting about the Jedi Council for reasons that are either petty, or simply never discussed.
Props do need to be given, however, for the very…unique… opera that the chancellor is sitting in on. It’s another example of how Lucas, for all his faults with writing dialogue or a trouble with maintaining a tonal consistency, still had a great eye for unique visuals.
On the subject of visuals, we get a brief look at the wookie home world of Kaashyk, where a major battle is just coming underway. Soon after, we’re taken to a place that looks suspiciously like the world from the end of Episode II, where -another- battle is about to begin, along with a….saber duel?
Wow, this movie is really making up for the slow pace of the previous one. in fact, so far everything that made the movie hard to watch had more to do with it being the unfortunate followup to two crummy movies.
…well, so far.
“I’m angry! Angry at you! Because I’m angry!”
The longer the movie goes on, the worse the dialogue gets, particularly in all scenes involving Anakin. It’s a combination of the script writing and his own acting (or just terrible direction). Just about every segment he stars in starts to inspire rapid face palming, not to mention mass cringing. Although the movie certainly improved on its prequels by leaps and bounds when it comes to actually being an action movie, it’s still just as bad when the story kicks in.
That tale can pretty much be summed up as “Anakin turns to the dark side because he’s always angry, all the time.” It’s hard to even understand what he’s so mad about most of the time; he just keeps throwing tantrums at the second word anyone says in a sentence. I don’t think Palpatine needed the force to sense his anger at all. By the end of it, even with the whole “Padme’s life is in danger” thing, it just seems like Anakin rage-quit the Jedi Order because he didn’t get a promotion, making him less “Dark Lord of the Galaxy” and more “angry online gamer in an RP community”.
The saving grace here is that the plot is -very- straightforward compared to the preceding two films, which is why I’ve not touched on the moment-to-moment stuff as much. All that needs to be said is that there’s some cool action for most of the film, between which there’s lame story stuff. It only really becomes a major problem by act III…
“You have been cordially invited to join The Dark Side”
Eventually, Palpatine comes on a bit too strong with his Dark Side Sales Pitch, and Anakin FINALLY puts two and two together, realizing his friend is indeed a Sith Lord. He does the semi-sensible thing and reports it to the Jedi Masters, who try and fail to take out Darth Sidious. Failing mostly because Anakin comes in and, convinced he needs Sidious to save Padme, takes out Mace Windu’s sword arm. Why he is so convinced that neither modern medicine nor anyone in the Jedi Order can help instead of the Devil himself is never explored. Probably just as well, because that might mean more dialogue…
Not that a lack of dialogue is doing much to save the plot. Aside from the oddly framed fall itself, Anakins ‘acts of darkness’ all come across as the character trying too hard. Despite this being a film in which he goes on a literal rampage, The Empire Strikes Back remains the darkest story in the series, with Vader’s habit of choking those who disappoint him carrying far more gravity than his killing “younglings” in this episode.
In fact, the weight of the bad guys winning at all is almost non-existent. Yes, the Sith are evil and willing to do evil things, but frankly, from The Phantom Menace till now, we have seen the Republic being ineffective at just about anything it did, even before Palpatine got into office. By the end of this film, he promises- and honestly, seems to deliver- a far more secure future, with little to no evidence of why his vision will actually hurt anyone besides the Jedi. Again, contrast this with the very first Star Wars film, in which we see the Empire casually destroy entire worlds just to prove a point. We get proof positive that they need to be taken out ASAP. Here, it just seems like it doesn’t matter much whose in charge.
Even the creation of Darth Vader himself comes off as weak, and not just because of the infamous “NOOOOOO!!!!”. He simply doesn’t earn his place as the Black Knight. He gets turned into that not because of the depths of his evil, nor because he was such a legendary foe that even death could not keep him from the world. He gets turned into a cyborg death machine because he was an incompetent, whiny brat from start to finish of the adventure.
Which is all to say…
That about sums up the prequel movies in general; nobody earns their place as a legend, no incident stays with you as a historic moment, and no one moment feels especially important for the story. There is never a “I am your father!” moment in this entire trilogy, and no real surprise twists. Except, perhaps, that Anakin Skywalker really was not all old Ben Kenobi cracked him up to be….
With all of that said, Revenge of the Sith is undoubtedly the best of the prequel trilogy. Yes, it has all the same writing problems of The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones, but that’s largely because it has to wrap up the story started by those two. I can’t help but wonder if things might have been different if it did not have to tie itself up in the tangled mess those two films started. It’s not quite enough to redeem the prequel trilogy, but it is the least embarrassing to watch.
So, there we have! The end of the origin saga! At long last we can move on to more exciting times with…..
….damn it.
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