No lolly-gagging this time as Lucas goes straight to action with many explosions and some nifty piloting. Then it's directly over to some saber-wielding. No time to snooze!
Actually it starts off with 24 minutes of suspense and action. Most likely to distract the viewer from the awfulness of the acting from the two former instalments. Unfortunately, he cuts to Anakin and Padme in one of the worst dialogues of the entire franchise (and perhaps ever in a film not starring Madonna). Including ewoks muttering to each other. Harrison Ford said to George Lucas during the first trilogy that. "George, you can type this shit, but you sure as hell can't say it". Boy, was he right.
Thankfully, all is not awful in the land of Star Wars-acting. McDiarmid is astonishing and dominates every scene he's in to a most impressive extent. He conveys mischief, manipulation all around and is menacingly evil at just the right times. Naturally, McDiarmid with a lightsaber is not a spectacular action-feast, but he compensates with grimacing, sneering and a wicked grin. Christopher Lee is almost equally brilliant and the film suffers from his (very) early demise. Other than that it's mostly gruesome, both the casting and the acting. I've seen Natalie Portman in many films, and I can't believe how horrible she is in almost every single scene. Whether trying to convey love, fear or strength it's simply not even at an Ed Wood-standard. And she's competing with a Carrie Moss on drugs. Not exactly Ingrid Bergman to set her bar then... McGregor seems bored out of his skull, and particularly the opening scene has him looking like he'd rather pick lint from between his toes. Christensen is still nowhere near believable, though with a hood they make him look somewhat mean. And to top of it most of the side-characters are bad as well. I hope Samuel L. Jackson took his part for his kids.
The story works much better in "Revenge of the Sith" than its two predecessors. Lucas manages a decent build-up until order 66 is invoked, in part thanks to the beautiful transitions of John Williams' score. After this, it's sheer movie-magic. Riveting, suspenseful and devastating.
The editing of Yoda vs Sidious and Anakin vs Kenobi is utterly enticing and will keep you at the end of your seat from start to finish, which is good considering it goes on for a bit. The ending is all bad, for every single character (except Palpatine - I like that guy).
And so, finally, things are dark and grim enough to be exciting and credible as the world of Jedis descends into oblivion. And as Vader rises with James Earl-Jones' voice and a final, brilliant, piece of manipulation and deceit from Palpatine, we finally got what we deserved from this trilogy.
The problem is, it's only half a movie of three (very long) movies. And it's much less compelling than it should have been. Anakin's journey should have been an immense, psychological fall from grace. But firstly, we all stopped caring about Anakin after the first "woohoo" in "The Phantom Menace" as he is such an unendurable twit. Secondly, and more important, Lucas can't write nor direct characters. It just doesn't seem believable that what Anakin goes through (very much including the pivotal scene where he kills Mace Vindu) makes him a slave of Palpatine, willing to kill friends and children alike.
Like Anakin, this trilogy should have been the chosen one. Instead it brought mostly bitter disappointments.
7/10
