Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith

Starring Ewan McGregor, Hayden Christensen, Natalie Portman, Samuel L. Jackson and Ian McDiarmid

Written and directed by George Lucas

The second type of bad movies requires the introduction of proper nouns. Financed by major Hollywood studios, made with A-list talent and the top production and special effects teams that money can buy, these movies are made in the sincere belief of all involved that what’s being made is, if not art, at least successful popular entertainment. The former films are merely cockroaches of bad filmmaking, instantly recognizable and easily avoided. Films of this second type emerge from the chrysalis of high hopes and blitzkrieg marketing campaigns to reveal themselves as spectacularly flamboyant butterflies of Badness. It’s a line that began with Birth of a Nation and runs through The Ten Commandments to Cleopatra to Spielberg’s 1941 to Wild Wild West and Battlefield Earth. Like turkeys who think they’re peacocks, these films preen and pose, utterly oblivious to their inherent awfulness. They are the Bad Films, and collectively they make up the works of Bad Cinema.

And so, with the Star Wars saga having come full circle and soon to pass into history, it comes time to officially anoint George Lucas as the greatest Bad Filmmaker of all time. There is no other. Not Schumacher; not Bay; not even DeMille in the full flower of his genius can touch the hem of Lucas’s garment. The collected works of Star Wars are the Paradise Lost/Paradise Regained of Bad Cinema. Lucas is the genre’s Milton. It falls to us to acknowledge his greatness.

No one going into Episode III: Revenge of the Sith goes in cold. We all know that this is the chapter in which snot-nosed petulant teenaged Jedi Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen) experiences his Shakespearean fall from grace, squares off against his former master Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor), falls into a pit of molten lava and emerges as über-villain Darth Vader. The What assumed, the film aims to answer the How and the Why.

As he sat down in front of the battered Corolla, Power Mac, crayon-and-newsprint or whatever it was he used to write the script, Lucas had a laundry list of questions to answer. Why did Anakin finally turn to the Dark Side of the Force? How did Senator Palpitine/Darth Sideous (Ian McDiarmid) seize power over the Galactic Republic? How does Padme (Natalie Portman) die, and how do the twins Luke and Leia become separated at birth? And most importantly, does Jar-Jar Binks finally get the bloody, painful death he deserves?

The good news for fans is that most of these questions are answered. If the answers sometimes raise more questions, and if some of the more vexing inconsistencies go unresolved (Why doesn’t Darth Vader recognize C-3PO, the droid he built himself, in Episodes IV-VI? So was Anakin the result of a midichlorian-assisted virgin birth, or wasn’t he?), then these missteps aren’t fatal to Lucas’s overall achievement. If The Phantom Menace was both astoundingly listless and terminally cute, and if Attack of the Clones veered too wildly between high adventure and high camp, then Lucas here achieves most closely the giddy balance of swashbuckling heroism and grand operatic sweep that distinguished the most successful parts of the original trilogy. It’s the first film in the new trilogy that doesn’t wither in comparison to The Empire Strikes Back.

But as much as fans will find here to love, Star Wars haters will find just as much to fuel the fires of their impotent rage. If the dialogue in Attack of Clones left you wanting to puncture your eardrums with the nearest sharp object, then the dialogue in Episode III may cause you to experience a stroke or an epileptic seizure. I plan on getting a lot of mileage out of my two favorite lines: “Hold me like you did by the lake on Naboo” and of course, “I sense Count Dooku,” which I plan to introduce as a catch-phrase to use whenever somebody farts at a party.

The actors, of course, are still left to flounder in front of the green-screen sets like gasping tuna flopping in the bottom of a boat. Nor can Lucas resist the cheesy mood-breaking side gags that mar the first two episodes; Wookies giving the Tarzan yell here join the NASCAR announcers in Episode I and the “I’m beside myself!” abuse of C-3PO in Episode II in the annals of Star Wars infamy. The film also suffers from a serious time crunch— after dicking around for two movies, Lucas has suddenly realized that he actually has a story to tell. Consequently, Anakin’s turn to the Dark Side takes only slightly more time than it does to flip on a light switch. Like the audience, the other characters are alarmed less by Anakin’s descent into evil than by how quickly it happens.

But no matter. Nothing in Revenge of the Sith will change your mind about Star Wars. It’s the cinematic equivalent of the 2004 Presidential campaign— full of sound and fury that signifies nothing, and driving a polarized nation farther apart. After five movies, you know what you’re going to get. “If you’re not with me, then you’re my enemy!” Anakin says in the film’s climax— and rather than take this as a veiled jab at the Bush administration, as some wags have done, I’m more inclined to read the line as a direct admonition from Lucas to his audience. If you don’t like Star Wars, he’s telling us, then fuck you.

When Star Wars burst from the screen in 1977 and into the brain of this impressionable young boy, it was as if Lucas had taken every half-baked fantasy in my head formed from reading sci-fi books and watching Star Trek and transformed them into a deliriously entertaining cinematic roller coaster ride. All of us who bear unreasonable love for the original trilogy can’t help but be Star Wars apologists. I defended The Phantom Menace until I couldn’t anymore. I loathed Attack of the Clones, but saw it three times in the theater anyway. That I could actually leave Revenge of the Sith with my chin up makes it a runaway success in comparison.

But let’s face it— the Star Wars movies have always been bad. Star Wars was a Bad Film that became a great one through the sheer exuberance of its making and the communal experience of its audience. The Empire Strikes Back both elevated Badness to an exciting new art form and set the stage for the epic Badness to follow— when Darth Vader hissed “I am your father,” it was a thunderous crescendo that also marked the collapse of the Star Wars universe into a cloistered village in which every character in the series’ history knew or was related to every other character. And Return of the Jedi— well, it was just bad.

When it came time to create the next trilogy, George Lucas had a choice. He could have brought in the best writers and directors in Hollywood to hone his vision into a series full of epic adventure, resonant dialogue and mythic sweep. But driven as he was by a burning artistic vision, he chose rather to assume sole authorship. No subcontracted artist could realize the Badness that Lucas saw fully formed in his own mind.

So enjoy Revenge of the Sith as I did— as another triumphant artistic achievement from the greatest Bad Filmmaker who ever lived. Revel in the dime-store spirituality. Rejoice in the symphony of tin-eared dialogue. Cheer mightily as the film struggles for mythological greatness while collapsing under the weight of its sheer ineptitude. When, after 22 long years, we finally hear that raspy breath and the voice of James Earl Jones emerge from that goofy black Chrysler grill, the moment is both an apotheosis of American popular culture and a seminal moment in the history of Bad Cinema. In that context, the Star Wars series is a work of monumental genius, and Revenge of the Sith a worthy capstone. We will never see its like again.

May 22, 2005
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