Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith

The prequel series is marked by a conceptual dithering. Writer-director George Lucas invokes certain themes and ideas but only in a superficial way, so you end up wondering if the insinuation was even intentional. Big, interesting topics exist only as suggestions, colouring the edges of incessantly bland, inhuman exchanges that defy any sense of personal identification. In The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones it's apparent to the audience that the Jedi are not the infallible collective of legend. Their robotic behaviour doesn't mark them as intergalactic samurai, it's the obvious, preventable flaw that is very clearly sowing the seeds of their impending downfall. In that respect then Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith is a marked improvement. It's an iterative instalment that at least attempts to address some of this phase's communication issues. Most immediately this means giving Hayden Christensen's Anakin Skywalker someone to talk to who is sympathetic to his experience. 

Skywalker doesn't normally hold conversations you see. Instead he bubbles over, spewing venom and invective at whoever is near, usually either his mentor Obi-Wan Kenobi or his wife Senator Amidala. Revenge gives him someone prepared to talk through his thinking rather than just pull a grim face then try to forget he's even spoken at all. Ian McDiarmid's Palpatine fills a crucial role for Skywalker then. He offers a guidance and understanding missing elsewhere. He doesn't criticise Anakin for his feelings either, he sympathises and even congratulates him. Palpatine wins Skywalker's heart by positively reinforcing the violent, impulsive behaviour that will be soon be useful, once their insurrection is underway. Anakin has never had a father figure in his life and, unfortunately, none of the Jedi seemed willing to take on the role. The late Qui-Gon Jinn, played by Liam Neeson, came the closest before his own, untimely death but the senior Jedi who have followed are either dogmatic and numb or openly contemptuous of little Ani. 

On the rare occasion that any of the Jedi do attempt to engage with their messiah (for that is exactly what they all believe him to be), they assault him with infuriating rhetoric that condemns perfectly reasonable feelings of adolescent inadequacy. Palpatine takes the opposite tact. He flatters and encourages the resentment seeping out of Anakin, grooming him essentially. Palpatine presents himself as a friend who claims, very convincingly, to understand the dark, terrible humanity that lurks inside this troubled young man. Not only is this what the character Anakin Skywalker wants, it's exactly what this film (this series) needs. Their coupling reinvigorates Revenge. Suddenly there's a foothold for investment that goes beyond simply appreciating ILM's maximalist approach to computer-generated special effects. The two warlocks conspire; Palpatine slowly seducing Anakin and taking an almost sexual delight in his apprentice's pain and moral decay. This Emperor then is, basically, Dracula: an impossibly old evil that fosters then feeds off youth and turmoil. All told, the Star Wars prequels are a deeply peculiar series of films. George Lucas, in subordinating his space opera to the pop iconography of Ralph McQuarrie's gas-masked menace, has built three-acts around a vapid, hollow monster who is, tragically, simply desperate for love and direction. They'd be a wonderfully strange science-fiction triptych if they weren't so relentlessly dull.