Niall (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
coalescent) wrote2005-05-20 09:59 am
coalescent) wrote2005-05-20 09:59 am
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Revenge of the Sith
Revenge of the Sith is one of the most frustrating films I have seen in some time, because it is not disappointing in the same ways that The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones were disappointing. Those films, especially the former, disappointed the most not because the dialogue was so risible, or because the acting was so laughable, but because even once you cut through all the junk they did not, at heart, seem to have a worthy story to tell.
The same cannot be said of Revenge of the Sith. The story here is meaningful, and that applies to the large-scale, the Fall of the Republic, as much as it does to the personal tragedy of Anakin Skywalker. "So this," notes one character, "is how liberty dies--with thunderous applause." It is exactly the sort of moment that the first two films, which had ambitions to the same sort of widescreen drama, lacked. And this does not excuse them; Lucas did not need to produce films that baggy or that absurdly overcomplicated to move his pieces into position. Still, at the start of Sith they are all in position, and at its best that is why the film succeeds: because we know the dominoes will fall.
And this is also where the frustration comes in, because the film is at its worst when the reason for the fall should be simple dramatic inevitability, but has the feel of authorial fiat. And that, sadly, is once again down to the writing. The acting is bad too, but it's hard to criticise Ewan MacGregor too much for failing to make his lines deliverable, or to criticise Natalie Portman for failing to appear anything less than pathetically passive when almost all the plot allows Padme to do is to stand around waiting to give birth. Moreover, there are a few moments--too few--when Lucas trusts his visuals enough to just let us watch them, and for those moments it has to be said that it works. There is a scene in which Anakin and Padme, each alone but in the other's thoughts, look out over different views of the same city. It is as melodramatic as Star Wars has ever been, but for once it's the right kind of melodrama, and more effective than a hundred teeth-grindingly bad declarations of love.
If the film started well but ended badly that would be one thing; and if it started badly but ended well that would be another. But the good in Revenge of the Sith is mixed unpredictably with the bad, right up until the end, when it becomes clear, in a moment of striking cognitive dissonance, that the personality behind Vader's mask remains that of a petulant teenager. This despite the fact that some of the good is genuinely good: the slaughter of the Jedi, the declaration of Empire, the final, brutal fight between Obi-Wan and Anakin. Watching the details of the saga finally knit together.
There is a sense, as I said, as there conspicuously wasn't in the first two films, that this is a story that matters, and that inspires a certain amount of goodwill. The problem with the story is almost entirely that Lucas doesn't know how to tell it. He knows where the big beats lie, but apparently has no idea how to move from one to the next. There is no better illustration of this than the relationship between Anakin and Palpatine. You can see, from the glimpses Lucas can give, that the way Palpatine plays with Anakin's loyalties is devious and effective; but you never quite feel it. Like so much else in the film, it is a case of so close, and yet so far, far away.
The same cannot be said of Revenge of the Sith. The story here is meaningful, and that applies to the large-scale, the Fall of the Republic, as much as it does to the personal tragedy of Anakin Skywalker. "So this," notes one character, "is how liberty dies--with thunderous applause." It is exactly the sort of moment that the first two films, which had ambitions to the same sort of widescreen drama, lacked. And this does not excuse them; Lucas did not need to produce films that baggy or that absurdly overcomplicated to move his pieces into position. Still, at the start of Sith they are all in position, and at its best that is why the film succeeds: because we know the dominoes will fall.
And this is also where the frustration comes in, because the film is at its worst when the reason for the fall should be simple dramatic inevitability, but has the feel of authorial fiat. And that, sadly, is once again down to the writing. The acting is bad too, but it's hard to criticise Ewan MacGregor too much for failing to make his lines deliverable, or to criticise Natalie Portman for failing to appear anything less than pathetically passive when almost all the plot allows Padme to do is to stand around waiting to give birth. Moreover, there are a few moments--too few--when Lucas trusts his visuals enough to just let us watch them, and for those moments it has to be said that it works. There is a scene in which Anakin and Padme, each alone but in the other's thoughts, look out over different views of the same city. It is as melodramatic as Star Wars has ever been, but for once it's the right kind of melodrama, and more effective than a hundred teeth-grindingly bad declarations of love.
If the film started well but ended badly that would be one thing; and if it started badly but ended well that would be another. But the good in Revenge of the Sith is mixed unpredictably with the bad, right up until the end, when it becomes clear, in a moment of striking cognitive dissonance, that the personality behind Vader's mask remains that of a petulant teenager. This despite the fact that some of the good is genuinely good: the slaughter of the Jedi, the declaration of Empire, the final, brutal fight between Obi-Wan and Anakin. Watching the details of the saga finally knit together.
There is a sense, as I said, as there conspicuously wasn't in the first two films, that this is a story that matters, and that inspires a certain amount of goodwill. The problem with the story is almost entirely that Lucas doesn't know how to tell it. He knows where the big beats lie, but apparently has no idea how to move from one to the next. There is no better illustration of this than the relationship between Anakin and Palpatine. You can see, from the glimpses Lucas can give, that the way Palpatine plays with Anakin's loyalties is devious and effective; but you never quite feel it. Like so much else in the film, it is a case of so close, and yet so far, far away.
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Bingo! (http://www.livejournal.com/users/the_red_shoes/550346.html)
I think Lucas is a master technician, and I don't mean that in a sneering way. He's done beautiful things with CGI and sound systems and other film technologies. But when you compare him with his peers -- Scorcese, Spielberg, De Palma -- his camerawork is pedestrian, his directing style is bad, he can't write characters or dialogue for sour apples and his sense of narrative non-existent. The original SW and Raiders (done with Spielberg) are great pastiches -- but for all his revolutionary effect on the cinema I don't know if the guy really understands movies.
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Yes, you're spot on there. Excellent point about Yoda as well. And it's notable that the prequels don't do the thing that Star Wars does of drawing on all the different genres of cinema--there isn't an equivalent of the Western moment in the Mos Eisley cantina. They're entirely based in their own iconography. I think that's why they feel so familiar and so different at the same time.
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Oh, awesome point. I hadn't thought of that at all. I have heard that Sith sort of quotes ANH, which might make it worth seeing for DVD comparisons, but that really pegs it on the money -- it's all sort of the pictures in Lucas's brain, which must be lovely but don't have that cultural resonance. Man, now I have to wonder what it might have been like if someone like De Palma, steeped in cinema (esp Hitchcock) had gone after something like SW....well, except for the gory bits.
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it's all sort of the pictures in Lucas's brain, which must be lovely but don't have that cultural resonance
Actually, I think what's interesting is that some of them almost do. The shape of a star destroyer, the scream of a TIE-fighter, the hum of a lightsaber, that sort of thing. I will admit to a feeling a little thrill when someone said "Lock S-foils in attack position"! And it's not like Lucas isn't stealing liberally (even sometimes offensively) from other cultures, present and past, in creating his world. It's more that it doesn't give anything back in the presentation of them. It's far more concerned with resonances within its own story than with resonances elsewhere in art or history.
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Vader's first breath got a barely audible ripple through the audience.
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HEH. We still say that around the house (plus, of course, "It's notmyfault!").
it's not like Lucas isn't stealing liberally (even sometimes offensively) from other cultures, present and past, in creating his world. It's more that it doesn't give anything back in the presentation of them. It's far more concerned with resonances within its own story than with resonances elsewhere in art or history
Ah, yes, good point....and I wonder if that isn't what makes more mainstream critics see the series as meaningless pop or bubblegum or whatever. I mean, I was listening to some of the media reports on "Those whacky Star Wars fans who dress up and wait in line for two days!" and while yeah, that's the ultraviolet in the spectrum of fannish behavior, it struck me that they were also sort of totally misunderstanding the fannish phenom, and yet how much fannishness has been absorbed into the general culture (gee, I didn't hear "Those whacky kids and their parents who dress up and wait in line for Harry Potter! snicker, snicker!"). But that's going off on a total tangent....it seems like maybe genre movies do their best to create a sort of self-contained world, and that delights some people who happily enter into it and other people just sort of bonk their noses on the outer shell and stand around complaining about it ("His dialogue sucks!"). But that's opening a much bigger kettle of worms about genre movies and why they appeal to certain people (hell, I like Westerns, my husband doesn't) which I should probably just drop quietly right now.
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The comment below reminds me that when I saw the XF movie in a theatre and Scully first said "Mulder, it's me" the audience went BANANAS. And it was in the first week of its distribution, but it wasn't like a sellout midnight premiere audience or anything.
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it is a case of so close, and yet so far, far away.
I bet you've been planning that line for ages.
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As I grew up, and came to realize how bad the dialogue is in Star Wars, a film that gets worse the more you watch it (whilst Return of the Jedi, for all its faults, gets better, though Empire is still the best), I understood that Lucas was right. Unfortunately, for the last two decades, people who never progressed beyond the fifteen year-old fanboy mentality have been telling him what a shame it was he didn't direct 5 and 6.
If I had a time machine, I'd go back to the mid-1990s and say 'George, don't listen to them, you were right the first time'. I'd also try to explain the meaning of the term 'back story'.
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(And it's not nearly as bad as it could have been. It just could have been so much better ...)
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Of _course_ it is. Look at the way he acts in 4-6 - every time someone annoys him even a teeny bit he kills them on the spot (if not reigned in).
Evil _isn't_ cool and calm and controlled. It's violent and demanding and a pain in the ass.
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Guilt accepted.
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Yes. This is their only good scene ever and notice how they don't speak.
Grievious with four lightsabres and Yoda = good, everything else = bad. Even the space battles were shit! He's regressed from Battle Of Britain to Hornblower, for Christ's sake.
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And Yoda and the Wookies were so getting it on.
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In other words, I enjoyed both the Prequel and Original trilogies and view both as an entire saga . . . instead of bashing one trilogy in favor of another.