Blackmoor Vituperative

Star Wars 6 (aka Episode III: Revenge Of The Sith)

Directed by: George Lucas
Rated: PG-13 (Violence)

Caveat: Reviews are bunk. Trust no one’s opinion but your own.

Susan and I just got back from seeing Revenge Of The Sith, the sixth and (I hope) final Star Wars movie. As you have no doubt heard by now, Star Wars 6 is better than Star Wars 4 and Star Wars 5. It was actually a pretty good movie up until Palpatine’s face turned into a bad rubber Halloween mask. We were buying Palpatine’s whole line: save Padme, defend the Republic, learn powers the Jedi are hiding, we were on board for the whole thing. Dark Side? Great! Where do we sign? And then Palpatine’s face turns into a bad rubber mask. Susan snorted, and I laughed out loud (and I wasn’t the only one). Okay, so the movie had some bumps. But overall, it was pretty good.

One thing which disappointed us was that the costumes in Star Wars 6 were, in comparison to Star Wars 4 and Star Wars 5, rather lackluster. Amidala was pregnant, and wore shapeless dark tents practically the entire time — except when traveling to the lava planet, when she chose to change into a dull brown minidress (!). And she wore a nightgown with strands of pearls that went all the way around her shoulders. How comfortable could that be? She probably wakes up with pearl dents in her biceps. My theory is that her new job as a Senator doesn’t pay as well as being Queen of Naboo, and she’s recycling whatever they let her take with her when she left the palace. I guess it doesn’t help that Natalie Portman spends most the movie crying. The only time I saw any chemistry between her and Hayden Christensen was when Anakin was strangling Padme.

I was also bummed that Aayla Secura (that’s the blue babe in the picture) didn’t get any lines, or even any good scenes. She’s one of the few Jedi that doesn’t wear a damned bathrobe all the time (gee, I wonder why?): I would have really liked to see her in action. Instead, she’s on screen for maybe five seconds, and then gets shot down like Al Leong. Poor Aayla.

Another thing I was disappointed in was that the Jedi still didn’t catch on to the fact that they had been fighting on the side of the bad guys for the last few years. Only Amidala seems to even suspect it. How can they possibly be that stupid? “Hey,” the Chancellor says, “those guys want to leave the Republic. Let’s go attack them!” In what society is it considered reasonable to go shoot at people who simply want to leave? Seriously, what does that remind you of? I’ll tell you what it reminds me of: a street gang, or the mafia. I guess Jedi don’t watch gangster movies.

Susan was horrified that Obi-Wan left Anakin to die while he was still on fire. I figure he was just so overwrought with grief and pain that he wasn’t thinking straight. Or maybe Obi-Wan was happy that Anakin finally had something to whine about. Still, he would have saved everyone a lot of grief if he’d put Anakin out of his misery right then.

But maybe it wouldn’t have mattered if Obi-Wan had killed Anakin. After all, the inconsistencies between the movies make it pretty clear that they do not actually take place in the same universe. Like the Highlander sequels, the various Star Wars sequels share similar settings, similar plot elements, and a few of the characters, but it’s clear that they don’t all share the same history. For example, we know that Leia remembers her mother: she told Luke so. But in Revenge Of The Sith, Leia’s mother dies in childbirth. And of course, in the first movie — the real Star Wars — Luke and Leia weren’t siblings at all, and Darth Vader was not Luke’s father. So it’s clear that the sequels aren’t actually sequels, but are merely derivative works that share some of the same elements. Much like Highlander.

There should have been only one.

Style: 5/5 (great effects, great scenery)
Substance: 3/5 (pretty good for space fantasy)
What’s it worth: $6.50

P.S. The review in The New Yorker is hilarious. Here’s a particularly funny tidbit:

The general opinion of “Revenge of the Sith” seems to be that it marks a distinct improvement on the last two episodes, “The Phantom Menace” and “Attack of the Clones.” True, but only in the same way that dying from natural causes is preferable to crucifixion.