There’s a large segment of Star Wars fans that try and delude themselves into thinking that Revenge of the Sith is actually a pretty good film. They try and say that while it isn’t as good as A New Hope or The Empire Strikes Back, it’s certainly better than Return of the Jedi. My friends, these people are fucking morons. Revenge of the Sith is the worst Star Wars film of all. Lucas has taken his cinematic legacy, and after raping it hard, has shat in its mouth.
There are many low points in the film but the nadir is the Vader transformation. It's the bit that everyone has been waiting to see. It's the bit that is supposed to make the trilogy worthwhile. So imagine my disgust when Vader lumbers from the operating table like a constipated Frankenstein and cries "Nooooooooooooo!" in Seymour Skinner style when he hears that his wife has died. Pathetic. Now, when I watch the original trilogy, I'm only going to see a melodramatic drama queen under that tin can helmet.
But I still don't even know why Anakin turned to the dark side. The plot just doesn’t make any sense. Anakin had some bad dreams, got worried about his wife and then turned to the dark side to protect her? Eh? What? It's absolute rubbish. And it's amazing how stupid Anakin is. Palpatine tells him a story about a "person he knew" and how this "person" had known a powerful Sith Lord. This "person" then learnt many things from this Sith Lord, including how to extend life. However, this "person" then killed this Sith Lord in his sleep. Hmm. I wonder who this person was? Gosh, it's a puzzle...
But because of one or two bad dreams, Anakin decides to trust this slimy scumbag on the off chance that his dream will come true. Of course, the dream only comes true when Anakin attacks his wife. Oh, so it was a self-fulfilling prophecy? Oh, aren't you clever, George? Let me bow down before your writing genius.
But I just hate the idea of Vader being so stupid. What it amounts to is that he was tricked into becoming a bad guy. He had a few worries, some bloke came along and used them to his advantage, and there you go, he's evil. It's terrible. When the trilogy started I was looking forward to a nuanced story. I wanted it to have, you know, some depth. I wanted Vader to be truly troubled. What I didn't want was a pouting idiot with an inferiority complex. Unfortunately, that's what I got. I got a girly man who tapped some pussy and who then drove himself mental because he was a little bit worried about her.
However, the other bad guys are useless too, especially General Grievous. With a name like that you'd imagine a hard-as-nails villain. Instead you get a spluttering moron whose party-trick is to take four lightsabers and twirl them before attacking windmill style. It's the equivalent of me getting into fight, twirling my arms, and running forward at full speed. Needless to say General Grievous loses a scrap to a man with three less lightsabers.
In fact, that villain, and everything else in the film, makes me wonder what the motivation for it was. I can just picture some animator or Lucas saying, "Wouldn't it be cool if..." or "Wouldn't it be neat if..." But of course, it's not neat and it's not cool. Just because you can do something doesn't mean that you should. I'm actually really pleased that Lucas made the original films when he did. It meant that he couldn't indulge every whim and that he had to focus on trivial matters such as story. After all, the originals have cracking stories. They may not be high art, and they may have hokey bits of dialogue, but at least they make sense. The new films on the other hand make no sense whatsoever. The plots are needlessly complicated, and not complicated in a good way. After all, I think that I'm a reasonably smart guy. I can make my way through a dense story. But this story is only dense in the sense that it's incredibly stupid. All the talking seems to be an excuse to move to another bland piece of action. It doesn't matter that the plot is impenetrably fuzzy.
And while on the subject of the film’s CGI wankery, what the fuck is up with the Fern Gully lizard thing that Obi Wan rides? It looks ridiculous and it takes part in one of the worst chases I’ve ever seen. There’s a bit in the film where the lizard, which yelps every five seconds like someone is cramming a lightsaber up its arse, chases General Grievous on a pathetic farty mono wheel – it sounds like its running on methane. It’s embarrassingly bad and makes those who try and defend this wretched piece of shit look like the fucktards that they are.
Another piece of shockingly bad cinema is the fight between Palpatine and Mace Windu. This is supposed to be the grand revelation of The Emperor. We’re finally meant to get the first full glimpse of the true evil in the series. But how can The Emperor be scary when he’s so damn hammy? He chews the scenery like a madman and sounds more like a petulant child than an evil genius. I mean, screaming ‘Unlimited powar!’ is the sort of thing that an eight year-old would shout while electrocuting someone. Ooh, look, I can shoot lightning bolts out of my fingertips! Isn’t that neat?!? Unlimited powar!!!
But it’s not a surprise that Anakin falls for this fool. He too has the mental agility of a child. In one of the first scenes he kills someone in cold blood by beheading them. He then says to himself that he shouldn’t have done it. It isn’t the Jedi way. But he only seems vaguely puzzled. It only seems like a minor mistake, like he’s ordered the shrimp instead of the crab.
But who gives a fuck about the Jedi code anyway? The Jedi are all a bunch of wankers. The whole code basically revolves around not having any feelings and sitting there while talking out of your arse to a conehead. No wonder Anakin decides to leave. At least when he leaves he gets to kill younglings and shit.
Oh, and by the way, Palpatine’s seduction of Anakin is hilarious. He takes him to this weird show with glowing lights. Is this the Galactic equivalent of a porno? It has this weird, seedy vibe to it, and all through the scene you’re expecting Palpatine to ask this hot stud to reach into his pants and give him a happy ending.
But what all of this leads up to is the fight between Obi Wan and Anakin – the clash between good and evil. And this is the thing that I’d been waiting to see. But the fight is a bitter disappointment. For once I was hoping that Lucas could leave all of his gimmicky bullshit to the side and have a wonderfully simple contest. But no, instead of replicating the amazing fights at the end of Return of the Jedi and The Phantom Menace, we have nonsense where Obi Wan and Anakin fall off towers and fly over lava flows on little robots. It has no drama. And there’s even one bone-headed moment when Anakin and Obi Wan stand there endlessly twirling their lightsabers at one another. It’s a big head scratcher. What are they supposed to be doing? Drying each other’s sweat-drenched brows?
And the dialogue is mind-blowingly awful. ‘You underestimate my power,’ says Anakin with all the venom of someone who’s been sitting on their couch eating hash cake all day. And then when he finally gets sliced and diced by his mentor, he yells, ‘I hate you!’ Yes, Vader is basically an emo.
But even worse dialogue comes from a robo-doctor that operates on the dying Padme. ‘She has lost the will to live.’ That’s your strict medical diagnosis? But for someone who has lost the will to live, Padme seems incredibly focused. She names her children in about ten seconds. Not bad going for some bint that wants to thrown in the towel.
And while some people have praised the film for tying the two trilogies together, it only left me with questions. Is it really going to take 20 years or so to build the Death Star? Are R2-D2 and C-3PO really going to be on that rebel ship for a couple of decades? And how come Obi Wan is going to age so terribly? He’s going to go from a youthful Ewan McGregor and turn into a decrepit Alec Guinness. The Force may be strong with him but a few years without lightsaber battles and conehead Jedis to talk to is going to seriously speed up the aging process.
