Star Wars Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith Review (War on Star Wars Part Two)

Among fans Revenge of the Sith is often considered to be the worst film set in the Star Wars universe, which has always seemed to be an unfair judgement to me when The Star Wars Christmas Special, Caravan of Courage and Ewoks: The Battle for Endor (don't worry reviews of these are coming) are still all technically Star Wars films. It seems to me that Revenge of the Sith is simply the worst Star Wars film in the saga (consisting of Episodes I-VI), which is still an amazing feat...

The main problem with Revenge of the Sith is quite simple: only one person in the entire film can act at all. Don't get me wrong this film has a lot of other problems, bad scripting, bad CGI and George Lucas to name but a few, and whilst they couldn't really have been overlooked if the acting was up to scratch, they might have been tolerated by some of Lucas' more retarded fans.

However must be given when due and therefore credit most definitely must be given to Ewan McGregor (Trainspotting) for being the only vaguely competent actor present within the entire film. To put it simply compared to the rest of the performances on show in this film, Ewan McGregor's Obi-Wan is comparable to Al Pacino's Michael Corleone, that's only comparatively speaking however. In reality Mcgregor only ever actually flexes his acting muscle once within the film, and even then it's half-heartedly which should give you a vague idea of how everyone else manages.

By far the worst performance in the film comes from Hayden Christensen (Jumper) as Anakin Skywalker, our infamous co-lead. To put it simply Christensen's performance consists of pausing to look moody in between the delivery of lines no matter what context they are meant to be in, screeching and crying as much as it is humanly possible to and speaking as monotonously as possible. In short he is the living personification of emo.

The script is simply appalling. Every single character in the film acts as a living, breathing expository device, dialogue is laden with puns and overly dramatic expressions of melancholy, and character development is given the depth of three lines at most. Love scenes are embarrassing, often consisting of Padmé and Anakin gazing at each other with equally retard expressions whilst telling each other how attractive they are repeatedly. Married people do not talk like that!

The action sequences in the film are the highlights, however they are still abysmal. CGI flies over each sequence with little purpose or direction, Lightsaber's seemingly explode when they hit each other and actor's perform badly choreographed fights which look like elaborately staged renditions of Strictly Come Dancing.

To put it simply the film is a mess. It isn't the worst film I've ever seen. It isn't even the worst Star Wars film I've ever seen but it's still bad. Very bad.

3/10