This, the climax of George Lucas' Star Wars prequel trilogy, was one lame film. A classic case of join-the-dots storytelling. Even as fx house ILM reached greater heights with the types of environments and characters they could create, the script plumbed the lower depths of laziness. And just as Ewan McGregor catches the spirit of the young Kenobi and makes him the man we met in the original films, the other cast are resigning themselves to the fact that they are just parts of a machine. We get the Palpatine that Ian McDiarmid usually saves for Christmas parties, Samuel L. Jackson is clearly not engaged by the material as he was in the second film, and poor Natalie Portman can do nothing but watch her character turn into a series of plot devices, before being forced to act the most poorly conceived cinema death ever. George Lucas must have simply lost the will to write. Or bloody well direct, for that matter.
If only the hints dropped in the original trilogy (like Alec Guiness as Ben Kenobi wistfully recalling Luke's father) weren't so evocative, and hadn't had decades to grow in our imaginations. Many fans of the series could have (and probably did) pen superior third instalments. Lucas' insistence on filling in every possible gap (from the evolution of each type of spacecraft to not being able to resist explaining the Emperor's decrepit look in the original films, as if twenty years of abusing the dark side of the force wasn't enough) made it feel like watching a screenwriter run through a checklist of things he had to do. There was more excitement in the Pavlovian response the trailers generated - the right combination of R2 beep, Wookiee growl, laser zap, and bursts of John Williams and the LSO tweaking geek pressure points in anyone of a certain age. It's sad, because Attack of the Clones seemed to be a step in the right direction. Even The Phantom Menace has aged better than I suspect Sith will.
At least John Williams wasn't phoning it in. His score is full of beauty, action, adventure, and despair, even if it doesn't reach the heights of adrenaline as such cues as 'The Asteroid Field' from The Empire Strikes Back. The John Williams of the last, let's say, sixteen years is a different composer to the man who scored Superman, Raiders of the Lost Ark, or Dracula. He's a less excitable composer now - his instincts tend more towards subtlety. But he has not lost the capacity to produce thrilling music. Go on, give it a spin and tell me that 'Anakin vs Obi-Wan' is not a terrific action cue, or that the last two minutes of 'Anakin's Dark Deeds' is not beautiful and heartbreaking. Williams has become less prolific of late but when he does choose to work (because it must surely be always there for the asking for the most legendary living film composer) he always delivers something special.
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