George Lucas and friends made a cinematic Mona Lisa in the original Star Wars films. In their three prequels, George Lucas alone took a can of spray paint to his silver-screen masterpiece.

Revenge of the Sith is a solid movie, worth seeing, and better than its two mediocre predecessors. But it's unworthy of the Star Wars trilogy. The dreadful first half of Revenge of the Sith is made up for by a climactic finish that ties together the storyline of episodes one through three while setting up the events of episodes four through six. The film is still uneven. While the grown ups (Palpatine, Obi-Wan) played their roles to perfection, the kids (Padme, Anakin) stumble through awkward dialogue. Star Wars/Empire Strikes Back/Return of the Jedi employed Nazi symbolism to mark the villains. Revenge of the Sith has its tragic villain mouth George W. Bush cliches. The newly christened Darth Vader tells his former master: you are either with me, or you are my enemy. In one breath, Obi-Wan denounces dealing in such absolutes. In another breath, he condemns the Sith as evil. "I'm a relativist. No, I'm an absolutist. Now I'm a relativist again," is the translation from Jedi-speak into English.

Things are never as special the second time around. The return of Star Wars after a lengthy hiatus proves this. May the force be with you.

Actually, judging only by the open thread comments, the most direct irony is saying that there is an absolute division line between those who use absolutes and those who do not.

Dan,

When was the last time you watched Star Wars (Episode 4, the original)? The acting is HORRIBLE...especially from Mark Hammill!

I see this last set of Lucas flicks just as I saw the first three. Both of the series get better as they progress. Just as Star Wars was weak in some areas, so was the Phantom Menace. Both series start to get good with the sequels...I draw parallels with their special effects and relative darkness...and finally the best flicks are the last ones (Return of the Jedi, Revenge of the Sith). Interestingly, both titles are nearly the same...Return-Revenge...Jedi-Sith! Both of the last films are very dark as well. But I still love Return of the Jedi the most!

Lucas is brilliant, and I think he did a phenominal job with this last installment...but you are right in your assessment of Jedi mind tricks in the form of liberal propaganda...I could have done without all the "Absolutist" talk that almost definitely connotates Bush and Conservatives.

I watched episode IV for the first time in many years yesterday, and I have to agree with Christopher - Hammill is nearly as bad as the boy Anakin in episode I. Empire Strikes back remains the best of the lot (which in retrospect, is a dubious honor).

As for episode III (I say it Saturday), it was a major disappointment. Lucas ruined almost everything. Even the light-saber fights (with the exception of Obi-Wan vs. Grievous) were boring. The low point of the movie was Darth Vader stumbling off the operating table moving more like Frankenstein than a Sith Lord - a clever person in the theater actually yelled "It's alive!"

Bad writing and acting were overshadowed by a terrible plot line. The main theme, Anakin's conversion to the dark side, was simply unbelievable. I watched him murder 'younglings' (a very dark scene), choke out his wife, and turn on Obi-Wan (yelling "I hate you") with complete incredulity. It was only remotely plausible because we all knew it had to happen, i.e., nothing in the movie itself justified such a radical change.

Thank god it's all over.

Folks, be careful not to spoil the movie for those who haven't seen it. Also, Natalie Portman makes Mark Hamill look like Kenneth Branagh. There are no scenes in the original Star Wars films that rival the "I love you" scenes in the three prequels for bad acting.

Brad couldn't believe Anikin's turn to the dark side? I bought the dark side, I didn't buy the turn--the problem was Hayden Christensen (sp?) couldn't play him good at all. He always seemed evil. The unhidable NY accent didn't help.

This is definitely the best of the prequels. It's good parts outweigh its bad parts for sure.

I never want to see Natalie Portman in another film. She is the worst actress I've seen since the floosey in Bullets over Broadway or Lina Lamont in Singing in the Rain (and both of them are supposed to be bad). She ruined Garden State, too. So terrible she should get an award.

Carrie Fisher was hot. Natalie Portman not so much. I was surprised that she refered to her baby in the womb as a baby rather than a fetus.

Here is an interesting read on the issue of absolutes in Star Wars, then and now. http://www.professorbainbridge.com/2005/05/betraying_sory_.html

I suspected that there must be an argument to be made what with the first series' categorical rejection of the "The Dark Side".

But this is even more of the self-estrangement through sloganization that happens as much on the left as the left like to point out on the right. It is the modern world that has given us a culture that is so distracted that it needs to have things summed in "sound bytes" in order get our attention. It is the modern culture that has equated the high and the low, such that a distracted dialog is to be seen as just as good as a disciplined one.

The interesting thing is that if we try to create a consistant context for this statement from Obi Wan, it becomes only a self-comment, and nothing that is absolutely true, unless it condemn others as well.

There is a sense to it however, but it only points up the imbalance of another sort pre-Sith. The Force had selected Annakin to be it's greatest "incarnation". The hard fast rules and practices of the Jedi had declared Annakin "unready". In otherwords, despite what organic continuity the force might be, Annakin did not fit the rules of practice by which the Jedi tried to constrain the practice of The Force.

And thus, Obi Wan actually represents an arguably non-absolutist/dogmatist in taking on Annakin as an apprentice. However, he takes Anakin on thinking that the Force would hardly offend their progressivistic sensibilities of peace and love and social progression, so he simply recasts the meaning of the Force into his own cultural view.

It is interesting to note as well that apart from all this talk about "absolutism" the ultimatum "either with me or against me" centers not around an absolute but an extreme type of subjectivity: I am my own cause. Where as Obi Wan's reaction is his cultural regurgitation of progressivism which practices only the absolutes that it embraces.

Such progressivism has even made a lapdog of the random-or-intentional power of the Force that has raised a destroyer of the progressive idol. Vader/Anakin reasons who reasons in quite an evolutionary fashion: "Me first, and when my son joins with me we will establish the primacy of our line." Vader in II (V) does not want to join with his son on any terms, but his own. He wants to seduce Luke not based on ideals (absolutes) but away from them and to a partiality to one's kin. In fact, he wants to rebel against the current leader of this movement to which he has current fidelity.

The movie is nothing as much as a comment on the compartmented thinking of wishful progressivism.

Before we start getting on the actors, remember that none of the impressive actors that have been recruited for the latest series have turned in anything remotely close to a good performance. Of Neeson, Jackson, and McGreggor, none have turned in anything remotely close to a memorable performance. (Portman was good in Garden State, at least).

I think a bit of the problem is that none of these actors has been willing to challenge Lucas the way Ford was. Ford: "George, you may be able to type this s---, but you sure as h--- can't say it!"

"Brad couldn't believe Anikin's turn to the dark side? I bought the dark side, I didn't buy the turn."

The acting was poor, but it would be difficult to 'act away' the plot's failure to sell Anakin's turn to the dark side. His desire to save the one's he loves and his fear of loss are dwarfed by the enormity of his actions. There's just a deep incongruence between the two. The effort to sympathize with (or at least understand) Anakin's plight was met with the gut response "There's no way he would do THAT."

Should call it 'episode III - revenge of the nerdiest'.

Brad: On the contrary, many people are willing to do terrible deeds to save the ones they love. See the contemporary scientific experimentation and canabalistic technologizing of human babies--urged on us by progressives using maxim's rejecting our absolutism and using sentimental stories of random people who suffer from diseases. This is of course coupled with great pride (they want a power suitable for a god). Moreover, these people don't follow Yoda's stoical advice -- they think death of one's self or loved ones is the worst thing sufferable. Given our surrounding world, I find this a completely believable motivation to turn to evil deeds.

If Lucas had a brain about him he would have made the double effect principle and not "democracy" the needed moral principle attacked by the forces of evil in this movie.

"...many people are willing...."

Of this I have no doubt. My point is that to view Anakin as one of those many is a stretch not supported by the development of his character.

The only prior support for the evil committed by Anakin in episode III is the slaughter of the sand people (men, women and children) in episode II. That act, however, was prompted by the murder of his mother, and was an impulsive, irrational moment of rage against those responsible. The atrocity in episode III is completely different.

From what we know of Anakin, the immediate and complete emergence of (for lack of a better expression) pure evil is unbelievable. Without some precedent, some incremental movement from light to dark, the leap is too far to be credible.

What's even worse is the implied fit of Anakin's ultimatum to George Bush's statement. We're not killing French because they opposed us, we derride them. We made jokes about them. It is liberal absolutism that reads "the killing "that we conservatives really want to do" behind derriding French veniality.

If left unchecked, we are supposed to believe, French jokes become French demonization and deaths.

Bush also didn't aim this toward Democrats and internal political foes. Conservatives question their brains and allegeance to America. Because this shares something in common with NAZI-ism, the absolutism of the liberals insist it is nothing more than NAZI-ism.

I would assume that liberals are against NAZI-ism, thus one could argue that liberals take what is not significantly anit-NAZI in their view, to be NAZI-ism, which they are against.

Bush invoked this against the Taliban which said it was apart from Al Qaeda, but nonetheless harbored Al Qaeda.

It is best for Lucas if, despite how some liberals are claiming this implicates Bush, he doesn't try to argue a similarity between remotely similar things said in such separated contexts.

The more and more I think about it, the word "Sith" becomes like "NAZI", and this is continuous with "progressive" thought that it is enough that one says something similar to NAZI-ism, that one can be put under the label of NAZI.

Star Wars will never die. "May the force be with you": That's how Dinesh D'Souza concludes one of his letters to a young conservative, advising an African-American teenager to succeed exclusively on merit, not race-based preferences.

First of all, I believe Christensen is Canadian which may explain not only his petulance but also his inability to force Lucas's script into making sound distinctions--namely, Christensen's acting betrays an inability to maturely present a convincing character and Lucas' secularism betrays an inability to 1)understand the genesis of evil and 2) convincingly present that development/fall.

Short is correct to note the motivation for his fall as a believable one, but Lucas' stymied moral sentiments couldn't help him write an articulate sentence much less tell an entire story effectively. Brad is correct to take note of that failure.

neglecting Lucas's committment of the same problems as the Matrix sequels (i.e., a lack of transcendence), the best scene of the movie was not a scene but a moment: when Yoda enters the emperor's chambers at the start of their fight, undetected, he "forces" two guards back into the wall without looking at them. Now that's the force at work.

Good call, Yeti, on the Yoda scene. Without giving too much away favorite scene is the Godfather-like sequence of hits.

Dan, what can you possibly give away? Unless a person has actually NEVER seen the original movies, and has started from Episode 1, they KNOW what happens..."Wow, who would have thought that Darth Vader was Luke Sykywalker's Father!?" Come on!

More importantly, if such a person really existed, why would they even continue watching? The rest of us, at least, will go see it and hope and pray that Lucas will deliver something that comes close to being as entertaining as his first effort. We thrive on a memory, of which such a person would not have the benefit. Lucas is a hoax. His rip-off of the Lord of the Rings (first Star Wars) and susequent movies were OK, but only because he stole from the best. I don't know if I can bring myself to go see this latest POS...I just don't think I can.

And I have to agree w/Short...Natalie Portman is a 10 on the "Andie McDowell Hate-O-Meter" (10 being as bad or worse an actress, and driving force to commit suicide upon viewing of her films, as Andie McDowell). Garden State did indeed have a lot of potential and she nearly ruined it. I can only hope that Lucas spared the audience another glimpse of his S&M fetish by resisting the urge to dress Ms. Portman in chains and metal bikinis. But don't give it away...

Carrie Fisher was hot. Natalie Portman not so much. I was surprised that she refered to her baby in the womb as a baby rather than a fetus.
Posted by obi juan at May 23, 2005 11:05 AM

Carrie Fisher hot, Natalie Portman not?

Okay seriously, what the hell?

Yeah, Obi Juan, you were way out of line there. Natalie Portman is really pleasant to look at--her acting just leaves a lot to be desired.

You know, a good actor has ways of defending himself from crappy dialogue and unbelievable character development. I actually feel for Ms. Portman; she has a tough slog. In effect, the bold, decisive young ruler of Ep I (and she was decent in that) has been turned into a plot point by the third movie. She has nothing to do but die so her much more important husband can flip over to the Dark Side. (Nice enlightened leftism there, Mr. Lucas.)

I think Natalie just checks out as a result. It's less than ideal; but an inferior actor would overcompensate for the weak material by chowing down on the scenery, which is far worse. The best approach, hit in this trilogy by McGregor, is just to have fun with it. The 'death sticks' bit in Ep II worked for me, because he was not quite winking at us when he tossed off the line.

Incidentally, it was that attitude that made the original such a fun film. Who else could have been Luke and Han but Hamill and Ford? I've seen Kurt Russell's screen tests - fine actor, but his Han doesn't quite work. As Twain remarked in another context, it was the difference between 'lightning' and 'lightning bug.' The original cast pulled it off. "I'm Luke Skywalker, I'm here to rescue you!" is my favorite in any of the movies, because Carrie Fisher immediately buys it - "Ben Kenobi? Where is he?" And the music comes up, and they dash off to the next fight scene: with EACH OTHER, as the befuddled Troopers surely wonder, "Uh, remember us? The guys shooting at you?"

And PS - young Carrie was a babe, even before the brass bikini.

I thought the New Movies definitly got it harder then they should have because of the huge expectations they had to live up to. They certainly werent as good as IV-VI, but they were solid movies. No eternal pieces of cinema art to be sure, but I had fun watching them, and thats the basic point of Star Wars in the first place. Also I woulds say that Revenge of the Sith was a legitimately good movie, save a few poorly written love scenes.