Review of Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith

The prequel trilogy is one of those series that is heavy on the quantity, but almost nothing in quality; akin to a new restaurant in town releasing an offer, only to discover they're cheapskates and are asking more for less. I've never been in the very least affected by the whole Star Wars phenomenon. Even though I ended up liking most of the characters and dialogues, none of the films in both trilogy attracted my fullest attention. Revenge of the Sith is no exception. It is an irony that the prequel trilogy was hampered by the very thing that Star Wars is least known for: acting. Weak performances by many led to awkward situations and thus made many characters weak and under-developed, but I'll talk about that later. RotS memorably opens up with an awesome battle scene, an impressive example of the wonders modern CGI and technology can do. It is only after when it has ended and when the dialogues have taken over that you wish they had done some CGI tinkering on the actors / actresses as well. Still to this day I've never cared about the story at all. Republic, Siths, Jedis, Emperial blah, blah, blah... this is all been there, done that, and nothing exciting in my opinion. Just replace certain real world words / phrases with strange sounding words / phrases and you got yourself Star Wars.

The pacing of the film was decent, but the acting by many were tiring, tedious, dragging, and hence, the pacing felt almost exactly like that. WTF was George Lucas thinking in casting Hayden Christensen as Anakin Skywalker? It was such a boring performance. Not only he had no chemistry or love with his co-cast, he had absolutely zero connection to himself. He completely ruined an otherwise promising role. There was no range, no depth, reluctant showcase of expression, and nary an emotion change in the vocals, angry, sad, happy, excited - all the same. What Kristen Stewart or Steven Seagal do with their faces, Hayden did with his voice. Ewan McGregor was another tiring joke in the film. His acting - alongside Hayden and Natalie Portman - is one of the awful I've seen in movies. Their combined awful performances, with stiff dialogues and wooden chemistries, make them the worst trio if not in history then just in the Star Wars franchise. Even a badass like Samuel L. Jackson was pitiful, laughable even, in his role as Mace Windu. So, yes, basically what I'm saying is that almost all of the cast were an embarrassment. The only saving grace was Ian McDiarmid as Lord Sidious. It was a menacing role, a vicious snake-like one.

In conclusion, Revenge of the Sith is impressive in the battle scenes, also has breathtaking imagery and the technology was put into good use. Had it been better in the acting department, then this film would've been an all-round heavy-filled awesomeness. In short, the film's greatest irony was its greatest defeat, and of the whole prequel trilogy in general.

6.0/10