Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith
Monday, July 11th 2005
Finally got around to seeing this film and you know it wasn't bad. Less clunky dialogue than the previous chapters certainly. Maybe it was only good when judged against how dodgy the previous two were but it was nice that everything wrapped up tidily and dovetailed into what happens in episode IV. It would have been easy to have felt cheated by this, this was perhaps the most difficult film for Lucas to get right. To a certain extent it wrote itself but the pressure must have been on to get everyone's motivations right and to properly explain what happens in A New Hope without it feeling forced. Christiansen still can't act although he is better in this than the previous chapter and generally I bought into what was the final catalyst that pushed him to the dark side. It all seemed rather easy though - there was no real soul searching on his part, he gave himself over to Palpatine far too easily. I realise that the groundwork for this has been laid by Palpatine for a long time but still, it could have been dragged out a bit more.
The effects in this one I liked, lots of really cool design stuff with a nice retro futuristic feel. I didn't find the SFX as intrusive this time round either. Nice sound effects too, I liked that all the droids screamed and groaned as they died which sounds horrific but was actually quite comical. R2D2 has quite a bit to do but disappointingly C3PO is hardly in it and gets his memory wiped at the end which of course is necessary for Ep.IV but didn't seem to make much sense, why not wipe R2D2 also in that case? The whole Vader getting burned and chopped to bits was very well done and his subsequent rebuilding complete with cool inside shot of the helmet was excellent. His reaction when he heard of Padme's fate was less good, the character doesn't work in that suit when he tries to act human, it just looks silly although it was interesting to see him have a human reaction, presumably the last he would have until he rescues Luke from the Emperor at the end of Return of the Jedi (though I suppose we never see him off duty - who knows what he gets up to when he's on his own?)
All round good stuff and I look forward to seeing it again when the DVD comes out.
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