An Unpopular Opinion

I spotted Revenge of the Sith on the HBO schedule a little while back. Since I didn’t watch it in the theater and had never bothered trying to get my hands on the DVD, I figured I would go ahead and have TiVo grab it for me. I finally finished watching it tonight. The verdict? It pretty much lived up to my expectations. I’ll warn you now, a lot of you won’t like what’s beyond the “more” link.

The effects are great. The battle scenes are dramatic. The music is excellent and pulls all those little memory strings for those of us who grew up on episodes IV, V, and VI. I think this time I even almost believe that there’s chemistry between Hayden Christensen and Natalie Portman. Yet, I’m underwhelmed.

I could go on my normal rant about the chain of emotions that supposedly leads to the dark side. I could expound on my idea that Lucas drank the Joseph Campbell Kool-Aid and swallowed his own myth along with it. I won’t, though, because I’m not going to change anyone’s mind on this. I think I understand the path that Lucas tells us leads Anakin Skywalker to become Darth Vader, and when it’s all said and done, I just don’t buy it. In the meantime, Lucas had so much ground to cover in Episode III to finish telling his huge MythStoryHistory™ that it made for pretty much exactly the muddled, rushed movie I thought it would. During the last 15 minutes, I caught Amy with my best Yoda mimicry as I said, “Hmm… desperate attempt to tie up loose ends, I sense. Yes.”

I know some of it is self-fulfilling prophesy. I went into the movie expecting not to like it, so I wasn’t exactly being objective. Like I said, though, in the end he just couldn’t sell it to me. It just kind of sags under the weight of its own gargantuan mytho-religion. *shrug*