In Defense of III

Every once in a while, I like to challenge myself. Normally, these challenges are simple, like getting an A+ in a pass/fail course, detecting the time dilation from moving sixty miles an hour, or staying continuously upright on a rollercoaster with six inversions. But today, I take on a writing challenge, and perhaps one more difficult than the previously mentioned baubles. I aim to defend Revenge of the Sith, which shall be affectionately referred to in this piece as ‘III’. It is a thankless task, and one that might end with me curled up in the fetal position in a dark corner of a room somewhere, whispering about CGI like it was the One Ring, or with a Montana-sized double chin where the alien parasite resides. Nevertheless, the task is at hand.


It should first be noted that, unlike my other movie reviews, this one will not be in a segmented style where I make note of those aspects of a film which possessed a particular interest regarding cinema, morality, pop culture, or me. III demands more of a narrative, because to understand my defense of III, you have to understand how we got there.


Before the first dollar was spent, III was perhaps the most thematically constrained movie of all time (this seems like hyperbole, but I challenge you to come up with a better example). It was neither the end nor the beginning of the story, it was not a happy ending, everyone knew what was going to happen, and everyone knew what had already happened. In general, I am of the opinion that the middle movie of a trilogy has the greatest narrative advantages. It doesn’t have to wrap anything up, and it doesn’t have to get anything going because all the characters were already established in the first movie. But in III’s case, the movie had both the disadvantages of being in the middle—you can’t really wrap things up, and you didn’t really get a chance to start them—with none of the advantages. III couldn’t leave you hanging like Empire Strikes Back, because there was no more movie coming. The creative loop was closing. At the same time, thanks to the putridity of what had come before it, III couldn’t really rely on the characters having been already set up. They weren’t. III had to be the first, second and third part of a trilogy almost entirely on its own, and it had to do it even while we already knew the ending.


Yet I would suggest that this last point is the saving grace of III, indeed, the whole reason I can’t just throw it in the trash-heap with II or the basically-pointless-heap with I. I do not believe that George Lucas really had his story planned out all that well back in 1976, when they were creating the first Star Wars. In fact, if you have read The Book, you know that he did not. Yet, looking back on it, if you had to tell this story again, this is how you would tell it. You would start in the middle, get to the end, and then work your way back to the beginning.


The Original Trilogy is a salvation story. It is a triumph. It is a bringing back from the dead. Particularly in V, the stark reality of Good vs. Evil, love vs. hate, sacrifice vs. selfishness, Rebellion vs. Empire comes alive. You know the stakes and you meet the characters and by the end of the trilogy, Luke converting Vader is the Right Thing. But you can’t, and were never going to be able to, truly love Vader/Anakin. You love Luke, Han, Leia, Chewie, etc. And you cry when Anakin saves Luke and then dies, not so much because you know anything about him but because you know what it took the heroes to bring this about. They sacrificed, they lost arms, they got frozen, they got shot in the arm (conveniently, with the weakest blaster of all time…), they got cut in half by lightsabers, died in their old age practically alone on distant Dagobah, and their sacrifice brought down the Evil Empire.


The Prequel Trilogy, by contrast, is obviously the tragedy. And tragedies are always more tragic when you see what’s coming. You want to reach through the screen and twist somebody’s arm until they recognize what is so plainly obvious to you, the viewer. And in this case, Anakin’s eventual fall into evil is obvious because we, the viewers, already know it is going to happen. And this is where III shines.


Anakin’s descent into darkness, and the tragedy which follows, is easily the highpoint of the film. Aided by John Williams’ haunting score (say what you will about him copying other composers and even himself, his Star Wars music is always fantastic, and it is best in V and III), Anakin marches into the Jedi Temple and starts killing people left and right, and thousands of Jedi meet their deaths in a montage with more fatalities than your average Godfather sequence, you cannot possibly feel okay about this. You have seen this coming, and now it is happening, and you couldn’t stop it. The Jedi all die. The Republic dies. Anakin walks into a room full of children and turns his lightsaber on.

III accomplishes this feat of tragedy despite the fact that the set-up was unmitigatedly terrible. Though often castigated for the wrong reasons, I does basically nothing to shepherd the Anakin story along. The only important part of the story is that he loves his mother. Surely, that could have been accomplished in less time than an entire movie. II, although it gives Anakin his love interest, makes him such a whiny brat, and completely aloof from Obi-Wan, that III had to spend an hour artificially—and, of course, badly—attempting to brainwash us into believing that Anakin and Obi-Wan like each other. Sure. Suuuure they do.

While the crapitude of II was entirely George Lucas’ fault, if we take II’s crapitude as a given, I’m not sure what else he could have done to save III, then what he did: throw away the first half of the movie trying to pretend I and II never happened, and then hit us with the big emotional guns, bring in the swelling music, and roll curtains. In some sense, Order 66 was the prequels. The Prequel Trilogy was the Fall to the Original’s Salvation, and Order 66 was the Fall in a nutshell. Everything goes wrong at once. Anakin lets everyone down at once. Vader’s selfishness tears a galaxy asunder, and it does so not only with the score haunting us, but with the memory of the Original Trilogy crystallizing in front of us. The Vader/Anakin pain and suffering which will be released in VI's emotional finale looms large over everything.

In a reversal of the Original Trilogy, Anakin does exactly what Luke did not do. In V, Luke, against the wishes of his betters, runs off to Cloud City to save his friends, and there confronts a more powerful Sith Lord. Luke gets in over his head, and finds himself down an arm. But he doesn’t take that last step toward Hell; he would rather die than do that. Similarly, Anakin, against the wishes of his betters, runs off to the Chancellor’s office in an attempt to save his wife, and there confronts a more powerful Sith Lord. He gets in over his head, but instead of refusing that final step toward evil, he chooses himself over others, and Mace Windu ends up down a hand. Order 66 follows, and the tragedy ensues.

The weaknesses of III are copious, but I think they all stem from elsewhere. Anakin’s sudden reversal is often criticized as being too quick, and unbelievable. I think this is not the result of Anakin being too quick to change, but too slow. The transformation seems weird because it is an odd time to do something so dumb. Oh, now you decide to turn on the Jedi? Now you decide that they’re all evil? I and II spent so much time trying to make Anakin a fear-ridden, angsty, wreck of a human being that his “Fall” ends up seeming too much in character. A fall should be a FALL, all caps. The strangely crappy personal interactions between Anakin and Obi-Wan, Anakin and Palpatine—these are also products of the fact that III is too late to be doing this. The first two movies should have been making Anakin out to be the Wonder Boy who can do no wrong, feared by bad guys, admired by good guys, and lusted after by Palpatine. Instead, the first two movies did… none of that.

The signature awful moment of III, Vader’s comical “NOOOOOO!!!” near the end, is also a product of bad preparation. We never believed in Anakin and Padme’s love for each other, because it was, for lack of a better term, stupid. How could Padme be surprised by anything this guy does? She knows him better than us and even we know he’s a puerile loose cannon who would just as well wipe out a camp of sentient beings if he felt like it or if the script called for it. And she’s surprised when he goes Sith crazy…? Meanwhile, Anakin’s “love” for Padme is completely disingenuous. He even uses words like “intoxicating” to describe his attitude towards her. Padme to him is a drug to quench his appetite for companionship, and a spectator for his braggadocio. After killing Jedi kids, it seems like “finding a new muse” wouldn’t be that big a deal to him. So, to make us think that Vader really cares about her, we get the gratuitous scream. Notice how Leia didn’t need to scream when Han got frozen because… ummm… we believed that she loved him?

Again, though, these faults are faults that III was saddled with, and did not entirely overcome. They aren’t of III’s own making. Even then, for at least a few minutes, during Order 66, III did overcome them. Darth Vader is a tragedy. The horrors that the Original heroes will one day sacrifice life and limb for are the result of a deep, dark shadow cast by this terrible moment. If III can do that, even with all its failings, and even while having to make up for all the failings of I and II, it is doing something right. I think it does. I think the helplessness and inevitability (and did I mention the score?) make the purge of the Jedi about as well done as it could have been.

Of course, III did a lot wrong. A non-exhaustive list: Natalie Portman’s "acting." That ridiculous lightsaber duel between Yoda and Sidious. General Greivous. That ridiculous lightsaber duel between Palpatine and Mace Windu. The completely pointless Kashyyk battle. That ridiculous scene where Palpatine kills three Jedi without any of them so much as bothering to resist. (I think the moral here is: don’t give Palpatine a lightsaber).

I think my defense of III, then, is that it has the soul of what the Prequels were supposed to be, even in spite of all the multitudinous failings. The grandeur, the epic catastrophe, the horrible pit that develops in your stomach—ever so briefly, this all happens. It could very well be a testament to the Original Trilogy’s greatness. Maybe it is our leftover sense of wonder at what we know comes next that imbues III with tragedy. Maybe it is really a faint shadow of what III could have been that makes what III was worth watching. I’m not sure I would argue with that.

Until he turns his lightsaber on. Then I am utterly convinced that for at least twenty minutes, the alien parasite in his chin fell asleep, and George Lucas remembered how to make a movie.

~Right Thumb~