The Star Wars franchise has been catching a lot of flak since the release of The Phantom Menace, and the majority of it has been deservedly so. But most ire is directed at the prequel trilogy, which is a complaint that I personally find perplexing. This isn't me locking my lips to George Lucas' ass and taking a long draw, but rather my genuine respect for Revenge of the Sith. I'm not even going to begin any sort of coherent defense for its predecessors -- it would take hours of my time to work through the rationalizations to do so -- but I really do find the final third of the trilogy quite enjoyable, and I honestly hold it with (or near to) the same regard as the original three films.
There are problems, sure, and there's no defense for them. Hayden Christensen is a plague to the franchise, but even through his whinny and wholly unconvincing performance it's easy to grasp at the inner turmoil and overwrought naivety that leads him down the path that transplants his consciousness into a walking respirator. There's General Grevious, who seems to have been created for the sole purpose of giving Little Johnny a new action figure to play with, and there's Padme's inane, inexplicable death at the end of the film. But on the whole, working with those issues and getting past them, I can't help but feel that Rotten Tomatoes is right on the mark with their aggregate score for the movie.
And I think it's Ewan McGregor that rescues the production from the pits of mediocrity where I'm concerned, pulling off Obi-Wan Kenobi in a way that I think would make Alec Guinness proud. Even after his unjustifiably bad acting in Episode I and macabre of shoddy one-liners in Attack of the Clones, I feel that he really comes into his own here. Of course, I can't contribute my personal affinity for what some consider to be a blight on their beloved fantasy to one actor alone, and so I'll cite Ian McDiarmid for an outstanding performance as Emperor Palpatine, one that threw me back Return of the Jedi as if I had just seen it for the first time yesterday.
I think Revenge of the Sith does a fine job of leading into the original trilogy, though certainly not without flaw. Despite the glaring blemish of its predecessors, it comes off to me as entertaining and (mostly) genuine, if a little overloaded. And so I turn to you, the Screened Community: discounting Episode I and II, what's your opinion of this entry in the storied franchise?
There are problems, sure, and there's no defense for them. Hayden Christensen is a plague to the franchise, but even through his whinny and wholly unconvincing performance it's easy to grasp at the inner turmoil and overwrought naivety that leads him down the path that transplants his consciousness into a walking respirator. There's General Grevious, who seems to have been created for the sole purpose of giving Little Johnny a new action figure to play with, and there's Padme's inane, inexplicable death at the end of the film. But on the whole, working with those issues and getting past them, I can't help but feel that Rotten Tomatoes is right on the mark with their aggregate score for the movie.
And I think it's Ewan McGregor that rescues the production from the pits of mediocrity where I'm concerned, pulling off Obi-Wan Kenobi in a way that I think would make Alec Guinness proud. Even after his unjustifiably bad acting in Episode I and macabre of shoddy one-liners in Attack of the Clones, I feel that he really comes into his own here. Of course, I can't contribute my personal affinity for what some consider to be a blight on their beloved fantasy to one actor alone, and so I'll cite Ian McDiarmid for an outstanding performance as Emperor Palpatine, one that threw me back Return of the Jedi as if I had just seen it for the first time yesterday.
I think Revenge of the Sith does a fine job of leading into the original trilogy, though certainly not without flaw. Despite the glaring blemish of its predecessors, it comes off to me as entertaining and (mostly) genuine, if a little overloaded. And so I turn to you, the Screened Community: discounting Episode I and II, what's your opinion of this entry in the storied franchise?
