Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (2005)
Directed by George Lucas
When the sinister Sith unveil a thousand-year-old plot to rule the galaxy, the Republic crumbles and from its ashes rises the evil Galactic Empire. Jedi hero Anakin Skywalker must choose a side.
27 connections found
View:
27 films that influenced this film
What critics say influenced Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith
Lucas reminds us of his early inspirations— Flash Gordon , Commander Cody , Tarzan , King Kong , Frankenstein , and (again) the oeuvre of Ray Harryhausen—but also alludes to Biblical and Greek Tragic conundrums, Faust , and buddy Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather .
I was intrigued by the relationship between Obi-Wan and Anakin, I cared about the deaths of the Jedi in a long sequence that was very reminiscent of “The Godfather”, and I hoped Anakin would make the right decision despite the fact I already know which path he chooses.
Lucas takes a note from The Godfather in a montage of Jedi knights falling victim to traps (a sequence that would have carried much more weight if only viewers had come to know these Jedi, see them in their full glory, and comprehend the pain of their downfall).
Beginning with Anakin’s fateful decision to the cold, emotion-stirring Clone betrayal with Order 66 to The Godfather -influenced proclamation of The Empire intercut with Anakin’s slaughter of the Separtists, Sith takes a heavy, emotional turn.
This glimpse of intergalactic hell inspires moments of epic grandeur that haven't been felt since "The Empire Strikes Back."
Lucas has declared that this is the darkest film in the series (certainly, The Empire Strikes Back is the only chapter that compares), and the MPAA obviously agreed by pasting the movie with a PG-13 rating instead of the usual PG.
But before we all hail George Lucas for raising the level of political discourse in American cinema (and on that score, the accolades have already begun to roll in), let’s remember that all of the “Star Wars” movies — even the genuinely superb “The Empire Strikes Back” — have a relatively simple piece of rhetoric as their backbone: Good must triumph over evil.
The obvious point of comparison for "Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith" is 1980's "The Empire Strikes Back."
I guess it’s as believable as whey-faced Mark Hamill playing Anakin’s son and counterpart, and you might recall the scene in The Empire Strikes Back when Luke, in Jedi training with Yoda, enters a cave to confront the phantasm of his nemesis and father.
Ideas and images from sources ranging from Fritz Lang’s Die Nibelungen to John Ford’s The Searchers find their way into the mix, and pop versions of psychology from Freud to Joseph Campbell (the latter might be the downfall of the imagination in Hollywood) further addle it.
This movie chronicles Anakin's earlier transformation, by which the righteous pilgrim, so handsome, so brave, so noble, so committed, lost his way and became Ahab or Macbeth or Raskolnikov or Faust, or John Wayne in "The Searchers," a figure of power and strength and charisma and intellect, all of it invested in madness and destruction.
Depicting the future stumped Fritz Lang with Metropolis and H.G. Wells with Things to Come.
Advertisement
It would also help if Christensen and Portman were more expressive actors and if the dialogue they were forced to utter didn't sound like it was stolen from "The Black Shield of Falworth," starring Tony Curtis, in 1954, but he's not that kind of director either.
And Sith’s set designs diminish in complexity from the Blade Runner–like sprawl of Coruscant, the galactic capital and a city whose entire surface is one vast city, to Mustafar’s infernal landscape, which evokes in its stark, glowing immensities Gustav Doré’s engravings for Dante’s Comedia and Milton’s Paradise Lost.
Did Lucas learn nothing from “Alien” and “Blade Runner”—from the suggestion that other times and places might be no less rusted and septic than ours, and that the creation of a disinfected galaxy, where even the storm troopers wear bright-white outfits, looks not so much fantastical as dated?
If "Episode III" were a person, it would be like Roy Hobbs in "The Natural," not as perfect as it had the potential to be, but exceeding low expectations for a hell of a whack out of the park.
But maybe this is largely because there are no Ewoks involved, no singing Teddy bears.Anyway, as everyone knows by now, "Sith" is the turning point in the series: the chapter wherein the once sweet and innocent Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen) succumbs to the Dark Side of the Force and becomes the most-wicked man in the universe, newly named "Darth Vader" by the corrupt Chancellor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) in a passage that reminded me of the pledge scene from "Animal House"; and the chapter where the eons-old democracy known as the Republic is overthrown and the evil, totalitarian Empire assumes control of the galaxy.
Advertisement
It has made "Episode III Revenge of the Sith" into easily the best of the trio of "Star Wars" prequels and has even attempted the tougher assignment of saving writer-director George Lucas from himself.
As Anakin is seized by jealousy, bitterness, and the sense that the galaxy really owes him something, Christensen tilts his forehead into the camera, rolls his dark eyeballs up, and tries to look like Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange.