Revenge of the Sith

[helenic]

Despite the relatively recent date of my birth, I grew up with Star Wars. My parents recorded them onto VHS when they were shown over various Christmasses, and I'd seen them all by the age of seven. Except for the bit in The Empire Strikes Back where Han is lifted out of the carbon freezing chamber, because his clutching hands and the look on his entombed face were so unbearable I had to leave the room or hide behind a cushion.

Episodes I-III are both advantaged and disadvantaged by the fact that they are Star Wars films. IV-VI are so iconic, and at the time were so ground-breaking, that the later episodes - released into a world which is by now used to digital effects (used, I believe, for the first time in A New Hope, in 1977), and in which the other hallmark features of Star Wars have become tired clichés - were always going to pale in comparison. On the other hand, the fact that they are Star Wars lends them a power and significance they might otherwise have lacked. They are new stories set in a universe I, and many others, fell in love with before I'd even read The Lord of the Rings, and as such they will have an emotional effect without needing to be particularly good. The theme and the opening scroll was enough to set my heart pounding before I even began to read the backstory. The names of planets and people are deeply nostalgic. The legacy of "the original" Star Wars films in part condemns the new releases, but it also forgives them a great deal.

I superficially enjoyed yet was immensely frustrated by Episodes I and II, and I was fully prepared to be similarly disappointed by Revenge of the Sith. I'm still thinking about it, trying to argue a case for not liking it, partly because that seems to be the fashionable opinion and partly because liking a modern version seems to somehow betray the greatness of IV-VI. But I know that's irrational and I more than liked it: I was moved to tears by it, it got me thinking about the nature of epic, I hated Lucas for the moments when he let the film down (and oh, there were many of them) but despite its weak points I came away not disappointed, but fulfilled. I've now seen all of Star Wars, and the structure is complex and subtle and it works, and there aren't any gaps any more. I suppose a lot of the irritation at I-III stems from the sense of a mystery being solved, things being made explicit that were before inferred, the loss of an era of imagination and guesswork. Mysteries are more fun, but they don't give as much closure.

Nearly all the things that annoyed me about the film are sympathetically and wittily summed up here. (Like me, the author overall loved the film for all its moments of stupidity. It's possible to criticise something you approve of - in fact, it's preferable. And while I agree the film needs criticism, I'd be disappointed if those criticisms were received in an absolute way - "Yes! That's why I hated it! Fucking Lucas!", etc - rather than in a more nuanced light.) Hayden Christiansen was vastly improved from II, but still embarrassingly wooden at crucial moments. The romantic dialogue was stilted, predictable and unconvincing. The script took itself too seriously. Natalie Portman can act, we've seen her do it, so either she's lost it or she's been very badly directed. The character of Padme has been domesticised and completely removed from politics or social passion, doing a real disservice to the only strong feminine voice in the plot, and her death was embarrassingly handled. "General Grievous" is, come on, a really bad name.

Other than that, however? The fall of Anakin was imperfectly yet powerfully rendered. The inevitability of it had the feel of true tragedy - the visions, Anakin's attempts to change the future that brought about his own downfall. If he hadn't turned to the Dark Side, Padme wouldn't have died and he wouldn't have needed to turn to the Dark Side. It's an old story, but that doesn't mean it's not still a good one.

The speed and panic of his allegiance to Palpatine was beautifully done; his sense of helplessness, the false but compelling belief that it's out of his hands now, he has no choice. The fact that neither Anakin nor the Jedi Council were "in the wrong" and yet they drove each other by misinterpretation to destruction. Anakin, as a hurting, afraid, very powerful and very young man, has a tendency to see things in absolutes: Padme's going to die or I'm going to save her; the Council are for me or against me, they don't trust me so they must be bad; Palpatine trusts me, he must be good. The only time he shows any nuanced understanding is in his feelings about Obi-Wan, but in his desperation he doesn't follow it further. Anakin sees things as polarities, as does Palpatine: to them, the Force is either Light or Dark, and to ignore half of it is clearly folly. But the Council aren't Light and don't pretend to be; they're Grey, that's the point, and this isn't something they can tell Anakin, he has to learn it for himself. Only there isn't time, and it's something he never finds out until the moment of his death.

One of the things that should have been obvious before but which I realised powerfully during Revenge of the Sith is quite how much the Star Wars sextet are Anakin's story. It's not the story of the Republic and then the Empire, or the stories of Obi-Wan, then Anakin, then Luke; it's the story of Anakin and the effect he has on those around him, his fall and his redemption.

It's a mythology, and as such is simultaneously on an enormous scale (the destruction of planets and Galactic Empires; themes of good and evil and free will and fate) and an intensely personal one. Like all good mythologies, it's a story you've heard before, one you know the ending of almost instinctively, but which keeps you hooked anyway. And like all the greatest stories it feeds on the stories before it. Originality isn't the point; the point is quite how much more powerful is Anakin's slaughter of the Padawans if you know the legend of Arthur.

Then there's the whole question of emotionality, which really was challenging in Episode III. Yoda's advice to Anakin that he must let go of everything he fears to lose - that the only way to avoid anger or fear or hate is to also avoid love - is clearly advice impossible for a human to heed. And so it should be. Anakin's fall is in part a celebration of his humanity, and the complexity of this message, and the questions it poses, are some of the greatest things about the whole sextet. Star Wars asks the question, what is wisdom? but it doesn't give an answer. Obi-Wan is perhaps the closest we get to a hint of it. He loves Anakin, there is no question of that. And yet his feelings are contained by him, not the other way round. He is able, when it comes to it, although it causes him pain, to maim and kill (he thinks - or does he? Does he deliberately leave Anakin alive?) his own apprentice. Actually, why Obi-Wan leaves Anakin for dead is fascinating. Surely the greater compassion would be to show mercy, put him out of his misery? Does he leave him alive out of a sense of hope? Is he, weakly, avoiding absolute responsibility for his death? Is he at this one moment overwhelmed by human sensibility and cannot bear to complete the act? Is the rise of the Empire under Vader in part Obi-Wan's fault - the fault of his emotionality and weakness?

Clearly, humans are not designed to attempt the emotional distance and peace that Yoda does. He represents the guru, the being who transcends the limits of humanity, but in doing so misses out, somehow. Perhaps there is no answer: love and hate and fear are the blessing and the curse of humanity; we shouldn't try to avoid them, but we also shouldn't hope to survive? Star Wars does not so much focus on ethical issues as what it is to be human, and that's what gives it, in my opinion, the status of mythology and epic. Yes, in many places it is badly executed. But the questions it asks are those that have always been asked. It's not politically or socially complex - it doesn't attempt to challenge the contemporary status quo. But it does examine the issues of what is the right way to live, and when killing is necessary and whether, in those circumstances, it's acceptable, and how one balances wisdom and emotionality, and whether one can love without weakening oneself, and how although a fully nuanced understanding of the balance of energies in the universe is beyond us, it should never be viewed simplistically.

I think addressing such grave and universal issues in today's cynical world, which mostly wants irony and humour and disinterest, is remarkably courageous. Lucas made a lot of mistakes in his attempt, but having seen Episode III I feel able to say that in Star Wars, he didn't fail in it.

Which is why I liked the Revenge of the Sith, although it was far from perfect. It's better than the first two and an equal of A New Hope and Return of the Jedi, in my opinion, although The Empire Strikes Back stands as one of the best science fiction films of all time. The main failing of the first three films is the lack of a character on the scale of Han Solo - someone energetic and funny and tragic and passionate and morally ambiguous, a sympathetic over-sexed rogue who is frustrated in love, has genuine philia with Chewbacca, is tortured, captured, and has continually great one-liners. I think that all the weaknesses of the first three episodes can be summarised by the lack of Harrison Ford. Obi-Wan is the strongest character of I-III, and Ewan McGregor does a fine job, but ultimately he lacks the drive and the wit to be as appealing, or to hold the action together as coherently, as Han.

Comments

[dennyd.livejournal.com]

Han Solo is teh r0xx0r. All the geekiest people involved in the game alliance I run were using Star Wars nicknames on IRC last week... mine was HanSolo :) "Moral ambiguity" was the exact reason I gave for choosing it :)

Speaking of which, I loved this icon in the comment of the thread you linked:

[nicolasix.livejournal.com]

i'm not really a fan, although i went to see this (even though i've not seen either of the first two prequels) last weekend. i think the script was most at fault. my favourite line was when obi wan and anakin were fighting on the things floating in the lava river and obi says 'the sith are evil' and anakin says 'but i think the jedi are in the wrong!' like, who the fuck wrote this?! i laugh til i almost cried... xx.

[libellum.livejournal.com]

Ha - yes. That particular line slipped me by, I confess, because I was jumping up and down in my seat waiting for the moment when Anakin fell in the lava. And trying not to think about how unlikely it was that they could be in that close proximity to molten planet without catching fire already. But I'm not an expert on physics.

I think for me the most awful lines in the film were all Anakin/Padme moments. "You're beautiful because I'm in love with you!" to which you can see her struggle not to say "whaaaat? you callin' me fat, biatch?" And the death scene. Oh the death scene. She already has baby names lined up and they're her last words, the woe.

A part of me wants to believe that the immaturity of a lot of Anakin's lines was deliberate characterisation, but I realise that's perhaps overly optimistic.

[dennyd.livejournal.com]

Hrm. I don't get the joke.

If you mean that Anakin is stupid to believe that the 'good guys' could be badly in the wrong, then perhaps you don't have much to do with politics. Or teenagers ;)

[dennyd.livejournal.com]

He made a very good sulky brat. At least four of his lines should have been "Pfft. Whatever." ;)

[libellum.livejournal.com]

I think the humour is in the whinyness and stating-the-obvious-ness and pettiness of it as a criticism. It's sort of like saying "but the Jedi have cooties!"

[libellum.livejournal.com]

Why do you make hilarious comments on my OH SO SERIOUS review? *cries*

[libellum.livejournal.com]

Everyone wants to be Han. Or shag him. Or maybe both. But I have to admit, I don't get the icon...

[dennyd.livejournal.com]

I sort of thought it had to be said myself. I mean, the rest of the universe at that point takes it for granted that the Jedi are doing the Right Thing, that Doing The Right Thing is their job description and way of life. If you think something's gone wrong there, then you'd probably feel a need to explicitly state it.

[dennyd.livejournal.com]

O_o

I love you, but you are woefully undereducated. ;)

Han Shot First (http://www.chefelf.com/starwars/ep4se_1.php) (scroll down to nitpick #4)

Also, see: http://www.google.com/search?q=Han+Shot+First

[libellum.livejournal.com]

ah! I see!

I wasn't familiar enough with the 1997 release to get the reference - when I watch IV-VI, it's still on the old eighties VHSs :)

[dennyd.livejournal.com]

Somebody has pointed out to me that there is a solution to getting your original as-it-should-be trilogy fix on DVD... rip the Laserdisc edition and burn your own. I will definitely do this at some point.

[dennyd.livejournal.com]

The review is fantastic by the way. I nodded through most of it, although I would never have thought it all through like this.

I was badly unconvinced by the sudden 'meh, okay' turn to the dark side, but I see your point that the very suddenness of it could have been what made it convincing - if only the acting had held it up.

[nicolasix.livejournal.com]

er... wasn't the whole film about how he eventually allowed himself to believe that the jedi were in the wrong because it justified him turning to the dark side so he could get the powers to save his woman and their babies? although, i could be seriously out of my depth here because i don't know the films well at all.

i thought the line was funny because it was like, they've been fighting for about 10 minutes already, ended up on a thing floating in lava as the hell-world crumbles around them, and it has already been shown to us through the last half an hour's worth of the film why obi wan feels he has to stop anakin and why anakin feels like he has to fight back - it is the culmination of that, it is the action that makes the story at this point and yet STILL they are stating very obviously their reasons for fighting each other. and it's a bit like obi: 'i think you're wrong' anakin: 'well i think you're wrong' so...? i expected obi to actually say 'and?' i don't think it was the right time to make a reference to anakin's youth, or for 'witty' references to teenage behaviour. so what is it's purpose? i already knew they disagreed with each other, they've been trying to kill each other for that very reason!

[nicolasix.livejournal.com]

i'm afraid i think it's very much overly optimistic.

i also like the line where anakin is awakened by his terrible visions of padme's death, and she says 'what's wrong?' and he says 'i had a dream' and she's says 'bad?' !!!!!!!!!!! i mean, does she think? he is being dark and broody over a good dream?! their interaction was very amusing to watch. but they, the star wars scripts are famously terrible. i enjoyed all the silly bits as much as the fun action-y bits. xx.

[ixwin.livejournal.com]

I can think of two interpretations of 'let go of everything you fear to lose'. There's the 'never allow yourself to love' interpretation, but there's also 'love isn't about possession'.

I can't now remember enough of the surrounding dialogue to judge whether the second interpretation was available in context.

[romauld.livejournal.com]

Viewing the story Ep 1-> Ep VI as the fall and redemption of Anaking Skywalker is one of the things that Ep III brought home to me, very strongly, as well. And yes, another thing which this film reminded us of is that Star Wars is a story of Greek Epic proportions, for all that Lucas has told some bits of it very badly.

A conversation with kilinrax led to a slightly different perspective on the tragedy of Star Wars, which is to consider Yoda's perspective.

Here is a character who has been one of the best-loved and most-respected members of an order whose raison d'etre is to preserve justice general good stuff for eight hundred years give or take. Then, in the last fifty years of his long and powerful life he sees:

• The order destroyed
  
• The Republic it served brought down
  
• All the friends and students he loved and taught murdered, by one of his students
  
• The Force betrayed and perverted
  
• The Sith ruling the galaxy
  
• The betrayal of everything he held dear
  

And then, after he's been driven into hiding in a remote swamp, a new hope for the Galaxy arrives, becomes a beloved student, fails him, effectively betrays his training and Yoda dies, unfulfilled, with no real hope that balance will be returned to the galaxy.

Now that's tragedy in the long view.

[romauld.livejournal.com]

It is the one I came away with, whether Lucas meant me to or not.

[surje.livejournal.com]

thank you, that was a great summary and review, and on the whole it mirrors my own feelings, which in general i find too complex to summarise!

i would only add that it was also - in places - visually intricate and complex in ways that outshine the other films and its contemporary competitors. also palpatine is an interesting character as bad guys go.

my immediate feeling on coming away from sith was to find more about darth plagueis and to explore his role in creating anakin possibly as an engineered fulfillment of the prophecy of the chosen one. also to figure out whether he was cypher diaz. there is a novel that is a prequel of sorts of episode 3 and i wonder if it contains more on this back story.

[simont]

Wouldn't say no to a copy if you do :-)

[simont]

Hmmm. I thought Darth Plagus the Wise (hmmm) was one of the low points for me. I like the fact that they managed to clearly imply him to have been Palpatine's teacher and Anakin's creator without actually feeling the need to heavy-handedly state it outright, but I didn't like the fact that he was Anakin's creator in the first place. Anakin's fall to the dark side should have been a tragedy, something that happened as a result of terrible misunderstandings and the best intentions, something that could and should have been prevented but tragically was not. But if Anakin was created by a very powerful Sith Lord, then suddenly it starts to look less like that and more as if the entire thing was planned from the start by Plagus. The tragedy has suddenly become the triumphant fulfillment of a twenty-year-long power play by the Sith, and Anakin is suddenly acting in accordance with his intrinsic nature rather than in spite of it.

[wintrmute.livejournal.com]

Having just got back from seeing that movie myself, I have to say you've summed it all up better than I could.
One thing I'd like to add - did anyone else notice slight jabs towards George Dubya Bush? ie. "If you're not with me, you're my enemy!" "But Anakin, you can't just see things in black and white like that.."

[surje.livejournal.com]

it's not clear whether sidious was the one who took the power to create life and created anakin, or whether plagueis was the one.

but either way, in an almost off-hand remark in the script, the whole story has become much less about destiny and much more about intentionality. and in fact much closer to the ring cycle, where wotan brings about most of his own destruction through his own greed.

but then that goes back to what libellum was saying about leaving things to the imagination. my favourite line in ep4 is "the emperor has dissolved the regional councils", when we never even saw the emperor, but it generated the whole basis for a functioning ecosystem.

in fact i'm now wondering whether the clones are the valyrie :)

[ashfae.livejournal.com]

doing a real disservice to the only strong feminine voice in the plot

Only strong feminine voice nothing--only feminine voice of any sort, alas! I long for Leia.

[libellum.livejournal.com]

I don't know - when he suddenly dropped to his knees and pledged allegiance it was - well - sudden, but the more I thought about it the more it made sense. Turning to the dark side isn't something you'd do after much careful deliberation, is it? He did it out of desperation, and part of that is doing it too quickly to let himself argue.

[libellum.livejournal.com]

the second interpretation is a very appealing one. I like that it was left ambiguous - if you're going to come to that answer to the question, you have to do it yourself, the film doesn't make it explicit.

[libellum.livejournal.com]

yeah - there were female figures, but none of them had anything to say! I too long for Leia, stroppy and irritating though she was. Sigh.

[libellum.livejournal.com]

yes, that did occur to me :) Although I have no idea how deliberate it was - I'm not at all sure what Lucas' politics are.

[libellum.livejournal.com]

it's an interesting perspective :) Was the Old Republic really that stable for that long?

fails him, effectively betrays his training
This took me by surprise - I remembered Luke struggling with the training but not out and out failing. I've been thinking I need to re-watch anyway.

Looking at it like that, it does look as though it was the tragedy that killed him, in the end. Why else die now? Do we know anything about Yoda's race, their normal lifespan? I mean, do any others exist or were they all wiped out? Is he an exile? Or did he achieve near-immortality and just out-live them all with his l33t Jedi skills?

[libellum.livejournal.com]

Yes, I thought Palpatine was very well acted. They've got the continuity between characters very well despite changing actors. And Portman/Christiansen really do look as if they could be Luke and Leia's parents, facially. It's quite impressive.

I wasn't so much bowled over by the CGI so much as the scale of the shots - in fact that's something romauld mentioned to me before I'd seen it. The scope of Lucas' vision is immense; not only thematically and in terms of plot, but visually. If the storyboarding or equivalent was his own, then it really was quite innovative. And then there's the extreme close-up angle of most of the hand-to-hand combat ... in fact Lucas handles the integration of micro- and macrocosm very well in general :)

The impression I got is that the prophesy was misunderstood, and Luke Skywalker is actually "the chosen one". Or that it was ambiguous - either could have been depending on Anakin's choices. I agree that Anakin's identification as the chosen one does enhance the tragedy of Ep III.

What's the cypher diaz thing about, then?

[dennyd.livejournal.com]

Turning to the dark side isn't something you'd do after much careful deliberation, is it?

Taking that as a general and rhetorical question, I see your point.

Taking it as a question to me, the answer is probably yes :)

[mrpyro.livejournal.com]

I seem to remember somebody saying at some point that the Republic had stood for a thousand years. I could be making that up though.

Luke failing his training: Yoda didn't want him to confront Vader. The fact that he did - that he gave in to his feelings for his friends - could be considered a failing. At the point Yoda died, he probably knew that Luke would confront Vader, and probably expected him to die or turn to the Dark Side as a result.

[mrpyro.livejournal.com]

Change of actors? When did they change actors? Ian McDiarmid was Palpatine in Return of the Jedi as well as the three new films.

The prophecy: Yoda mentions that the prophecy could have been misread. It depends on how you define bringing balance to the Force: two Jedi (Yoda and Obi-wan) and two Sith (Vader and Sidious) sounds fairly balanced. Or it could refer to Vader killing Sidious at the end of RotJ.

[mrpyro.livejournal.com]

In case you haven't seen it yet I shall link you to the Darth Vader blog: here (http://darthside.blogspot.com) (I'd advise downloading the PDF, since the web version is a little annoying to navigate). Some of it is silly, but some of it (especially the final entry, Vader's thoughts on his meeting with Luke before the final confrontation with the Emperor) is very well written.

[surje.livejournal.com]

there is an interesting interview (http://www.bit-tech.net/bits/2005/05/24/amd_lucas_starwars/1.html) with a guy who was involved with the PCs they used for the animatics, which enabled Lucas to preside over storyboards that were rendered in real time, rather than having to review them on a weekly basis.

yes it seems highly likely that the prophesy of the chosen one has been misinterpreted by sidious, in that anakin is needed to eradicate the jedi (who are a force of reactionism in the universe, despite their best intentions), and then luke is needed to heal anakin, so in some sense they're both needed, but luke is the final balancing factor.

in the theory that plagueis creates anakin, there is an unanswered question as to whether he was attempting to fulfil the existing profecy, or whether he cunningly invented the prophecy at the same time as fulfilling it. presumably in our own mythology it's more tempting to make the new testament analogy.

cypher diaz was supposedly the jedi master who paid for and initiated the creation of the clone army without the knowledge of the rest of the jedi (and deleted camino from the jedi archives). although it's unclear whether the clones being programmed with the instructions to kill the jedi was added later by jango under instruction from dookuu. my interpretation was that perhaps cypher diaz was a cover name for darth sidious, as the time of his death seems to correspond.

the main question is whether plagueis did actually create anakin, or whether it was sidious after all who has already been "taught all that he knew".

[surje.livejournal.com]

sidious foresees that skywalker will destroy him, he just gets the wrong skywalker. that's a separate prophecy from the "chosen one" (which although described loosely, it seems to be in common knowledge amongst jedi). but it could be a separate vision of the same future event.

[surje.livejournal.com]

i think it was also mcdiarmid in the one scene in ep5 where he appears before vader via hologram.

[surje.livejournal.com]

that yoda feels luke unready to face vader is more (from 25 years ago!) evidence of his reactionism, only obi wan has faith in luke. what yoda doesn't see is that luke needs the real experience to complete his training, not more exercises.