Marval Movie

After all the stupidity, bad writing and crap performances that everyone had gotten out of the prequel Star Wars movies you would be forgiven if you gave up on them, especially after Attack of the Clones. But if you decide to stay, you wont regret it.

As soon as the movie begins you start to feel better with an incredibly fun space battle scene with super elaborate C.G.I. that feels well executed, rather that messy. It starts the movie off at a brisk passe and you feel as if there's back story that you need to catch up on, you know, like the first Star Wars movie.

The Clone war is continuing, with both sides furiously fighting but it seems like it is coming to an end. Meanwhile at home Anakin (Hayden Christensen) and Padme (Natalie Portman) are living out their marriage in secret but they know that it will come to an end, because Padme is pregnant. Meanwhile Chancellor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) is making some strange sneaky moves that raise concerns among the Jedi.

Doug Walker brought it up in a video and he was right about so I feel I should address it. In a crucial scene Anakin and Palpatine sit down in an opera stadium and the chancellor tells Anakin of an old tale about a once greatly powerful Sith Lord. Walker was right in saying that beyond the aesthetic of the scene being well shot and acted it added a mythology into the mythology. All the other great mythologies, like Lord of the Ring, Avatar and Game of Thrones have had their own tales and fables within them, like the real world. It makes the world the characters inhabit seem lived in and real. Before, in the original trilogy, it was like we were living the legend of (lets say) King Arthur, but there was nothing that came before it. Now there is one.

Hayden Christensen really doesn't deliver a good performance as Anakin. His obrolan is unconvincing and flat, but where his delivery fails he does come through in presence. Within his stoic posture and dark stares you can see his hate and fury and believe that this was behind Darth Vaders helmet the whole time. And his character has improved, he has moved past the whiny teen stage and has become a more gracious young man.

Still the shining light in all the bad acting in the movie is Ewan McGregor. He has come full circle with his performance from the young learner with potential in Episode one and now the proud master. He really delivers it in a scene near the end where he expresses all his disappointment in another and his failure. He is already a very, very fine actor but in these movies he shines like a sun in a dark galaxy.

Like in the last movie we get another Yoda fight and this one is even better that the last one. The scale is epic and there are risks. As well as that Yoda gets to combine his incredible lightsaber stunt fighting with his mastery of the force.

I realized that a common complaint of the prequel movies is that we know exactly where these characters are going and who survives and who doesn't. Well that's true, but what about the people that start with the prequel movies? George Lucas could have just put in a movie with no stakes or threats but if you see those movies first then you will be underwhelmed.

In this movie is the best lightsaber fight ever. In the original trilogy they were slow but the emotion and the stakes were real, so far in the prequels the fights have been fast but the weight and emotions have been flat. Now in the climax we get both fast wielding lightsabers and stakes that are charged with building emotions, all framed in a great location.

Yes there are bad performances, yes there are still stupid moments but this is the first Prequel movie to get close to the feel of the original while incorporating modern visuals and techniques. If you came out of Attack the Clones and still wanted more Star Wars (or at least didn't abandon the prequels) then Revenge of the Sith is your reward.

Rating: 3 stars out of 4