TITLE: Archive Review: Episode III (2005) AUTHOR: Joe Johnson DATE: 9:16:00 AM ----- BODY:
The following post is from an old blog I used to maintain. It was written after my initial theatrical viewing of Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith.

Dir: George Lucas

I am from that generation which had its first meaningful literacy test when those cyan-tinted Franklin Gothic letters splashed across the screen: “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away....” That opening drum cadence of Alfred Newman’s Twentieth-Century Fox theme was like a Pavlovian gut-reaction. Any Fox movie I watched from that point on always made be believe, if only for a moment, that I was entering a new world.

Episode III, then, is a bittersweet closure on childhood as pivotal as having children of my own. It marks the end of a fantastic hope: that I would see Darth Vader before his mask or Obi-Wan with swagger. Those hopes are reality now, and George Lucas has the impossible task of trying to put skin onto a dream. Of course he can’t do that. No one can.

I re-watched Episodes I & II before seeing Sith – noting that Phantom Menace wasn’t as bad as I remembered, nor Clones as good. As for Episode III, the real test is whether I watch it in five years and still feel that same anticipation and magic when the shimmering Lucasfilm logo appears on some twenty-five inch television.

The magic was there on the screen in Yakima. It was there at the beginning with the scrolling text. It was there at the end when I saw Tatooine – that bridge to my childhood, the desert with multiple suns, home of an “Old Ben Kenobi” and a Californian Skywalker. The question is what happened in-between as Anakin, the unmasked post-pubescent hero, becomes Hitler. Would it break my heart or did I care more about a character putting on a mask than a man losing his soul?

There’s the dilemma of George Lucas. Anakin has to put on that plastic and metal. His humanity has to be devoured and I’m supposed to like it. It’s predestined and there’s nothing I can do about it except hope that Jar-Jar gets killed in the process.

The movie is Lucas’s attempt to slow the process and make it more meaningful. He has to explain why that cute little philanthropist of Episode I becomes the lifeless machine of Episode IV. He set himself up for failure and can’t quite convince me that “Ani” becomes capable of killing "younglings." Metachlorians aside, the transformation lacks the dreadful manipulation of great Greek tragedy or Shakespeare. Padmé isn’t Desdemona and Anakin isn’t Othello.

There are a number of problems with the film, almost all of them going back to Lucas’s loss of understanding character. He hires the right people; he dresses them in the right costumes, but can’t make them breath. It’s like Richard Nixon on “Laugh-In.” It’s uncomfortable and anachronistic. It’s Lucas’s great weakness and the larger the stage, the more obvious it becomes.

The greatest example of this failure occurs with the suiting of Vader: that moment we all hoped for, even us Christians who talk about salvation (perhaps because we know Episode VI redeems). Instead of drawing on the tragedy of a lost soul and a lost life, Lucas makes homage to the Frankenstein movies. And the audience has to supply the anguish for Anakin since Lucas can’t draw it out himself. We have to pretend that he really is dying inside because he betrayed his friends and killed his wife. We have to pretend that he didn’t just arch his back, clinch his fists and shout out “Noooooooooo.”

But does the movie succeed? Is it part of the cannon? Yes. It succeeds because Lucas does what no one else can do. His trick is this: we argue that he fails because he doesn’t meet our expectations. In other words, Lucas made us dream dreams. We get mad because he gave us the dreams and can’t possibly fulfill them. He made us believe stuff that no one else could. Now, in our Dockers and Nirvana-drenched-pessimism, we have to try and believe. After twenty-eight years, I am responsible for helping Lucas. It’s my job to let him give me new dreams – not hold him responsible because the six-year old version of me believed easier “long ago.”

I still believe that Ben and Anakin and Luke and Leia exist. That’s what Lucas does and that’s why Episode III is Star Wars. I watched Yoda destroy the Senate with the Emperor. I saw lightsabers fly like fireworks. I heard those ships rumble through space and got the sunset on Tatooine. That’s more than anyone else has ever given me in a film. And so, I guess I can let Jar-Jar live.

**** of *****

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