Obligatory RotS post
So yes, I went and saw Revenge of the Sith this weekend - in fact, I saw it twice - and my thoughts are mixed.

Plus: It is definitely the case that this is the best of the prequel movies.

Minus: But then again, this is not hard.

Plus: It might even be on the level of Return of the Jedi.

Minus: Again, this is damning with faint praise: Return of the Jedi was probably the worst of the original movies.

Plus: Yoda is generally badass. When he fights the Emperor, he still jumps around like a crazy thing, like in Episode II, but this time there seems to be more purpose to his crazy jumping. It's a lot more believable this time.

Minus: Yoda *runs away*? Wha? The Emperor looked almost defeated at that point! And yet Yoda ran away? This has left me confused. I figure the only reason Yoda ran away is that continuity demanded it. Lucas dropped the ball here. Palpatine should have almost-totally 0wnzored Yoda in the fight, easily deflecting all lightsaber strikes and outclassing him in Force usage.

Plus: With a casual sweep of his hand, Yoda takes out two Red Guards without even trying. Hee!

Minus: Sorry, can't think of any other Yoda minuses.

Plus: Ian McDarmid is really really good as Senator Palpatine, and makes his (extremely stilted) dialogue work.

Minus: After the fight with Mace Windu and getting all scarred and deformed, Ian McDarmid is really really *bad* as the Emperor and Darth Sidious. He's supposed to be a terrifying, insidious (hah!) enemy, a master manipulator, putting his enemies, friends, and pawns into a win-win situation. Suddenly he's a stock-standard evil villain, hamming it up with a totally overblown bad-guy voice.

Plus: The dialogue is better than in Ep1 and Ep2. I understand that somebody else went over the screenplay after George Lucas had finished with it. I can sort of see this.

Minus: The dialogue is still silly.

Plus: The movie looks *amazing*.

Minus: The look of the movie is also very busy. Too much stuff going on in some scenes. Just because you *can* fill the frame with hundreds and thousands of effects from corner to corner doesn't mean you *should*.

Plus: Samuel L. Jackson and Ewan McGregor also turn in some good performances.

Minus: Hardly anybody else does. I was cringing at times.

Plus: My brother commented that, with his very limited lines in the final scenes, James Earl Jones did a better job than Hayden Christensen did over the last two movies. I can certainly see this.

Minus: James Earl Jones promptly ruined with it with that, "NOOOOOOOO!" It sounded really, really stupid.

Plus: I actually felt a bit choked up during the fight between Anakin and Obi-Wan, and the lead-up to it. Obi-Wan's "You were the chosen one!" speech that ended with "You were my brother! I loved you!" speech intensified this.

Minus: There seemed to be a general malaise in the lightsaber fight scenes - sometimes, as if the actors weren't really trying and just waving their props around. However, maybe this was intentional, in order to make the final battle between Obi-Wan and Anakin look better.

Plus: We finally got to see Kashyyk, the planet of the Wookies!

Minus: The Kashyyk bit seemed to be added on just for the hell of it. Not only *that*, but the depiction of Kashyyk in the movie runs directly counter to how it's been depicted in the books and games.

Plus: It may still be possible to reconcile movie-Kashyyk and books&games-Kashyyk.

Minus: It'll be hard though.

Plus: The 'immaculate conception' of Anakin is given an interesting and sinister twist: It's entirely possible that either Palpatine, or *his* previous master, Darth Plagueis, *created* Anakin.

Minus: Darth Plagueis is a really really stupid name. So far we've had Darth Sidious, Darth Maul, Darth Tyranus, and Darth Vader. All pretty dark and nasty sounding names. Then along comes "Darth Plagueis."

Plus: I finally got to see General Grievous on the big screen, after reading about him in various books.

Minus: General Grievous says that Count Dooku taught him Jedi Arts - ie, lightsaber fighting styles. The Count must not have been concentrating at the time, because Grievous simply. Couldn't. Fight with four lightsabers at once. (He should have attacked with all four at the same time from four different directions, with droid like speed. Obi-Wan would've been resting in pieces.) And what the hell was up with Grievous coughing and wheezing all the time? He imght have been partially biological, but he obviously didn't have lungs.

Plus: No more SW movies means that Lucas can't screw up the Expanded Universe material (the stuff from the books, comic books, games, etc.) anymore...

Minus: On the other hand, I've heard mutterings of George Lucas doing more SW stuff...

Plus: The book was really really good, and better than the movie. I recommend it. It gives Padme more of a role, it expands on things, it sidelines unimportant things (like the Kashyyk battle), its fight scenes are exciting, it shows the beginnings of the Rebellion (they're even *before* the beginning of the Empire!), it concentrates heavily on the most important part of the whole thing - Anakin's seduction to the dark side, and it fleshes out and improves the dialogue.

Minus: I knew it was better ever before seeing the movie.

Plus: I'm sorry, I can't think of a plus point appropriate for this next minus. I'll throw in something unrelated instead. So. Hearing Leia's Theme and what I think is Luke's Theme again, for the last two scenes... there was something almost chilling and eerie about it. As if *this* was the glue that tied the prequel movies to the original movies. Despite that there's a Death Star and Darth Vader and Emperor and Obi-Wan and Yoda and Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru and their moisture farm on Tatooine...

Minus: So. This is the big one. Anakin's heel turn to the dark side is the event that these prequel movies have been driving towards. It's almost their entire reason for being. And, in the end, it was handled really *really* badly. He does it to save Padme; for love; to save her from the dreams he's had of her dying in childbirth. But there are just so many problems with that.

If Palpatine knows about these dreams, and Anakin *knows* at this point that Palpatine is Sidious, should he not at the very least *consider* that Palpatine has put those visions into his dreams himself?

Not only that, in one moment he's all, "Oh my god what have I done I just aided in the murder of Master Windu," and the next he's saying, "Sure, my new master, I'll turn to the dark side and serve you and toddle off to the Jedi temple and murder six year old children simply because of this so-called Jedi plot against the Republic you're telling me exists even though I know you're a Sith and should therefore deduce that you are opposed to the Jedi on principle and -"

Oh, please excuse me, I was ranting, but this really really irks me.

In the book, it's handled a bit better - Anakin is shown as more conflicted between Palpatine and the Jedi Order, and doing it for love of his country as well as for love of Padme - but it still happens impossibly fast.

While I'm vaguely on the topic, I'd just like to say that Anakin murdering the Jedi younglings was... well, really evil, of course, and I'm not trying to trivialise it, but... it seems almost cliche. It smacks of, "Anakin's turned to the Dark Side, so we need to show how evil he is now."

One last problem with the killing of the Jedi younglings: Anakin is a soon-to-be-father. Shouldn't this have an effect on his thinking? Shouldn't it present a problem to what he does at the Jedi Temple.

Oh, and another thing. Right after his turn to the Dark Side, Sidious says, "We shall search for the power to prolong life, that my master discovered, and find it together!" This was only the entire reason for his turn. At this point Anakin should be saying, "Hey, hang on a minute Palpy, you said you already *had* this power, you bastard!" and totally flip out and kill him then go and prostate himself before the Jedi Council and explain everything. Except that would wreck movie continuity, so I suppose he can't.

Whew. Just *look* at the size of this minus.

Plus: But, despite all that... it's possible for it to make sense. Remember when Anakin pledges himself to Sidious? There are these weird evil-sounding whispers all around the dialog. Perhaps this is to help show that Anakin is falling and falling quick to the Dark Side, being pushed and pushed by Sidious, until in just a few short moments he has been twisted and lost beyond all hope, and he is no longer able to think straight. Remember what Yoda said: "Twisted by the Dark Side, young Skywalker has become."

Minus: Still, that is *such* a cop-out explanation.

Overall impression: Despite the size and vitriol of that second-last minus, my overall impression is not bad. It's just... it should have been better. It should have been a "Good as Empire Strikes Back", not a "Well, it's better than Episode I or Episode II, and maybe even on Return of the Jedi level." The Star Wars movies should have ended with a bang. Instead, they end with something that is not a fizzle, not a pop, and not a bang, but somewhere between all three.

Final impression: I have been working on this, off and on, for almost one and a half hours! I'd better finish up and post it.

EDIT: Oh, hey! One final minus, that I kept on forgetting to put in: "Minus: Padme dies of a *broken heart*?!?!? What. The. Flaming. HELL?? Out of a movie filled of stupid moments, stupid dialog, stupid direction and a huge big stupid plot development, this has to be the stupidest."