Star Wars Episode III

Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (Director: George Lucas)

STAR WARS EPISODE III has been nominated for Best Makeup (Dave Elsey, Annette Miles)















Well, here's a director who needs little introduction. Lucas has directed all of the new Star Wars and the original Episode IV, and he's obviously the creator of this cash behemoth. Other films include THX 1138 and American Graffiti. This is apparently the last of the Star Wars films, although there's going to be some television shows in the future.

I was trying to figure out what exactly I didn't like about Episode I: The Phantom Menace and Episode II: Attack of the Clones, what left me cold about them, and I decided that it wasn't the method by which George Lucas told his saga of the fall of Anakin Skywalker in becoming Darth Vader. It was just that the first two were not great stories on their own. Necessarily, Episode III had to be the one that explained the basis for the original saga, so what exactly would Lucas do for the first two?

I'll tell you, I imagined a world full of Jedi and Sith having to fight each other, and I would have much preferred to have seen the focus of those first two films directed towards the "religion," the balance of The Force, the mythology of it all. Instead, we got scientific explanations for Jedi with midi-chlorians, and we got Senate debates, and a loss of that classic Star Wars environment--not only through the CGI-ing to death of everything not human, but those nuggets like the cantina, or the underground duel at Jabba the Hutt's place, or the creature in the asteroid. I felt like the backdrop for Anakin's fall was too hum-drum. I understand the political parallels and how that's all well and good, but we weren't clobbered to death by politics in the original series like we have been here. In sum, not enough Jedi action. We had to wait until the end of Episode II to finally see Yoda fight.

Episode III is what you've been waiting for. In this, we have light sabers ahoy. We have climactic battles throughout, a great change in Anakin's character and a believable reason for it. Ian McDiarmid as Palpatine and of course, The Emperor Darth Sidious (I've actually seen some reviews try to make this like it's a secret--how can that be?) is so mesmerizing in this you can see why Anakin goes to the dark side. He's seductive and evil--he's, well, the devil. I liked Hayden Christensen in this, too. There was a slight hint of something good in his performance when Episode II showed his first vengeful act, and now he's a fabulous tragic character. Generally, everyone is better in this, but that damn lovey-dovey dialogue between Christensen and Natalie Portman has to go.

Here is where we find out why Yoda goes to the Dagobah system (like that, Scot? See what I did there? Spelled it right, too :))), Obi-Wan to Tatooine along with Luke, how the Emporer and Anakin/Vader become deformed, and where the hell all the other Jedi went. The movie even creeps into being that classic Star Wars feel, despite its shiny CGI nature. Lucas went all-out on directing this picture. Certain shots will give you chills, and especially the finale and the full-circle ending, along with John Williams' retro score.

It's not hard to say that I really, really liked this one. It does not, in the end, save the entire series, but it would have been some kind of wicked voodoo masterpiece to be able to pull that off, because this is a near-perfect chapter.