|
|
|
Star Wars: Episode III— | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
ar!
So begins the crawl of the last Star Wars movie. The Clone Wars have reached the skies of the city-planet Coruscant, where Chancellor Palpatine (McDiarmid) has been taken hostage by the villainous Gen. Grievous, head of the droid army, and the Separatist Alliance.
Obi-Wan Kenobi (McGregor) and Anakin Skywalker (Christensen) pilot their small fighters amid the raging battle to mount a rescue. Anakin and Obi-Wan again confront the nefarious Count Dooku (Christopher Lee). And a series of near-disastrous events almost destroys them all.
But they succeed, and back on Coruscant, Anakin is reluctant to assume the hero's mantle. All he wants is to be with Padme (Portman), who has happy news: She is pregnant!
But Anakin chafes under the secrecy of their marriage. He also bristles at what he perceives to be his poor treatment at the hands of the Jedi Council, led by Master Mace Windu (Jackson). When the council needs someone to head crucial missions to Utapau to rout Gen. Grievous, or to the Wookiee planet of Kashyyyk to confront the droid army, it sends Obi-Wan or Yoda, but never Anakin.
Only Chancellor Palpatine seems to understand Anakin's dilemma. Taking him into his confidence, Palpatine appoints Anakin to be his special representative on the Jedi Council. That raises further distrust on the part of Windu, who grudgingly accepts Anakin's appointment but refuses to promote him to master. At the same time, Obi-Wan asks Anakin to spy on Palpatine, in effect asking him to betray his mentor.
But Anakin has a greater worry. His dreams are troubled by visions of Padme's death. His only hope of saving her: a tantalizing story about a Sith Lord who held the power of life and death, achieved only through study of the dark side of the Force.
The circle is now complete
The much-anticipated final installment in Lucas' epic Star Wars saga is here, and the good news is—it doesn't suck. Die-hard fans will love it: It pays off all of the issues that writer/director Lucas has painstakingly set up in the previous two prequels and tidily tees up Episode IV. But the surprise for more casual fans is that Episode III may be the best Star Wars movie since The Empire Strikes Back.
Lucas offers up the usual Star Wars pleasures, including stunning visuals, dazzling spectacle, epic space battles and swift lightsaber duels. The beginning sequence, in particular, is beautifully rendered and paced, opening with a sweeping run over the surface of a massive battlecruiser in a scene that recalls both the opening of the original Star Wars and that film's climactic attack on the Death Star, and culminating in the biggest space battle scene likely ever filmed.
Beyond the thrills, however, Episode III displays unexpected subtlety in its drama. Lucas shows a sure hand in depicting how a good, if flawed, man can be seduced into evil acts at the same time an empire can rise, as Padme observes, to thunderous applause. For much of the film, it's easy to empathize with well-meaning Anakin's inner conflict. At all times, he just wants to do the right thing, and he doesn't lie about his motives or actions, even to Padme or Obi-Wan. Ultimately, Anakin is as surprised as anyone when he commits the act that places him on an irrevocable course toward the dark side. Episode III shows how good and evil, as Palpatine suggests, might simply depend on your point of view.
In Episode III, Lucas also seems to have remembered what made the original Star Wars so special: irreverent humor, heroic struggle, magical strangeness and an underlying melancholy.
Episode III falls just short of being a great movie for the usual reasons. Lucas is still hamhanded with intimate dialogue. (Padme: "You're a good person. Don't do this.") And he is still inconsistent in eliciting great performances. Portman and Jackson are especially stiff. Christensen has the right mix of confusion, anger and menace, though he is less credible as a romantic figure. McDiarmid goes completely over the top, particularly when encased in makeup that renders him nearly laughably grotesque.
Despite that, I defy even the most skeptical fan not to feel a lump in his throat when that dark mask inevitably thunks into place, when the droids board the Tantive IV or when those double suns rise over Tatooine for the last time. —Patrick
Also in this issue: Hercules, Star Wars: Clone Wars DVD and Sapphire and Steel: The Complete Series DVD,
|
 |
|
| Home |
Copyright © 1998-2006, Science Fiction Weekly (TM). All rights reserved. Reproduction in any medium strictly prohibited. Maintained by scifiweekly@scifi.com. |
