SWTOTD SWTOTD 28 - Review of the Sith 5/19/2005 12:46:00 PM | Zeroplate There's no way to talk about this without spoilers, so go see this movie before reading what I think about it. The short version: it was incredible. The long version with plenty of spoilers: I had a list of things I wanted Revenge of the Sith to accomplish before I went into the theater Wednesday night. I needed a handful of questions answered, some issues with the prequels needed to be addressed, and some characters had to work completely and ultimately better than they have up to now. First of all, the movie needed to turn Anakin from a conflicted boy into a man we could see as a hero. I think more than seeing Anakin become a hero though, (which is what I figured the first two episodes would have been about,) the whole thing simply builds to the idea of Anakin's potential, and the tragedy that he never achieves it. He does lots of heroic and impressive things as a Jedi, most of which we never see but hear about in passing, but he's never saved the galaxy like Luke, and he's never fought against some seemingly impossible odds to win the day. That is what Luke is for in these movies. No, Anakin's journey is one that stops at the brink of greatness, and it's told perfectly in one scene with Anakin and Obi-Wan where the elder Jedi reassures his former padawan that the Jedi Council will soon recognize him as a master, and that he simply needs to show a little patience. Anakin is fully-realized finally, and Hayden Christiansen plays him as a troubled and confused young man with more power than he knows how to handle and who is unfortunately growing up and dealing with everything at the worst possible time--in the middle of a galactic war. Of course, none of this is an accident as Sith reveals the extent of the Emperor's puppeteering and manipulation. The Jedi are too spread out and too focused on fighting a war for the Republic to see that the Sith are right under their noses. They never realize that Anakin is not just a whiny punk, but a seriously troubled kid needing guidance rather than text-book Jedi mumbo-jumbo. They also never see that part of the stoic Jedi way of things isn't working for Anakin, and that the absolute dogmatism of the Jedi code has some flaws. This is where the movie really works on a deeper, more realistic and personal level. Like so many troubled kids who get sucked into crime or drug abuse or violence or mischief that leads to trouble, Anakin is just in over his head and the events unfolding around him don't allow time for him to understand what's going on. When we watch Palpatine revealing himself to Anakin, there's a moment where Anakin realizes that the Chancellor is a Sith Lord and that he needs to turn Palpatine in, and the power of the movie is in making the audience feel like maybe Anakin WILL turn it around, do the right thing, and avert his dark fate. Of course, he doesn't, and we know that he won't, and in that way, the film works as a kind of weird meta-textual meditation on free will. As much as we want Anakin to turn out good at this point in the movie, we know that he can't, and it just becomes existentially frustrating. Obi-Wan is the other great star of the film, and he needed to be. His story is just as tragic as Anakin's in a way because he sees Anakin's fall as his own failure. He goes from being a happy, fun guy in the first half of the movie to an anguished father/brother figure. There's such a bittersweet tension when the two part ways half-way through the film. The phrase "may the force be with you" has never had as much resonance as it does there. After the duel, when Obi-Wan is literally crying and pleading with Anakin's legless body, Ewan McGreggor shows why he was the most perfectly-cast Star Wars prequel actor. I've seen Ewan in a dozen other movies, but he completely becomes Obi-Wan in this film. All of my other questions and concerns were basically addressed, including the method by which Jedi can come back from death in spirit form. That scene at the end when Yoda explains this to Obi-Wan is where I finally lost it and the tears started flowing a little. The movie works on so many levels, as a bridge between the trilogies, as an end to the happier times of the Rebulic, as an end to the Star Wars saga as a movie-going fan--it was just hard not to get to that denoument without feeling some emotional release. What surprised me most was how the dark tone of the film worked as it was supposed to dramatically. It's not "dude, this is dark... huh huh, cool" kind of dark, but it's seriously tragic and menacing. It makes the toys and lightsabers and even our record seem kind of off-track a bit. If this were the only Star Wars movie, toys wouldn't even make sense because there's no play scenario that makes this a fun story at all. As we left and I saw all of the people dressed up as Darth Vader and all the jokes about the dark side and all of the Stormtroopers, and after watching the troopers and Vader murder all of the Jedi uncermoniously, somehow identifying with them just doesn't seem right. I didn't expect to have the movie turn the Jedi or really anyone into sympathetic characters to the extent that it would change the way I look at toys and posters and costumes, but it did. I realize all of this will wear off after a while and I'll be back to thinking of Star Wars in terms of toys and games and good times, but at the moment, it's not about good times. Not at all. It's over now, and I feel somehow exhausted. It's been a fantastic ride, with a few downs but way more ups and this film is really the perfect ending for adults who grew up loving this universe. I'll see it again, I'm sure, and I may write a thing or two more about it here, but I'm happy to say that we've gotten some closure, that it's over and that it ended as it should have, with a glimmer of hope in a dark, troubled time. Somehow, that is more prescient than Lucas possibly could have known. Back to Top {2} Comments

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