Revenge of the Sith: a critical appreciation

Oh, it’s great. Revenge of the Sith is really great. I can’t recom­mend it highly enough. It’s quite a long movie, but George Luc­ozade has truly excelled him­self this time.

Let’s set the scene. It all takes place in space. Some­where in space. Well, actu­ally it doesn’t. It’s set on, um, a planet. Yes, a planet. A planet amongst the stars, where there are wars tak­ing place. Pre­sum­ably. Hence the title Star Wars, see? I don’t miss nuffink, I don’t.

Ter­rific visual effects, too. It’s all done with CGI and Mec­cano. I par­tic­u­larly liked the big space­ship — which is called, er, Big Space­ship Num­ber One. Wow. Cool. Etc.

There’s a man with a beard. There’s a man with a hood too. Come to think of it, the man with the beard and the man with the hood might be one and the same. Or broth­ers. There’s a little robot that makes funny noises, and a taller robot who talks like Hugh Laurie. Oh, and I mustn’t for­get the bloke in black with breath­ing prob­lems. He’s nasty, I think, which is why he’s been con­demned to eke out the rest of his exist­ence mak­ing smutty phone calls to women on other planets.

Now, if I’ve got all this cor­rectly sor­ted out in my head, I believe that this film is the last one in a tri­logy. Wait a moment — some­body is telling me that it’s two tri­lo­gies. Sort of. I think it’s two tri­lo­gies, then. Which is a six­ogy, as any fool knows. So yes, it’s the last film in the six­ogy. Except it isn’t, because it’s the third in the six­ogy, even though it was the last one to be made.

Oh, hang on, another per­son has just informed me that this movie is a pre­quel. That means that this par­tic­u­lar film is the last in the first tri­logy, before events move on to the first in the second tri­logy. Which was actu­ally the first movie. So surely this means that we all know what hap­pens in the end? Where’s the fun in that? Oh, never mind.

Any­way, in case you’re con­fused, the quick­est way to recog­nise the movies from the first tri­logy — which is actu­ally the second tri­logy, remem­ber — is by the hair­styles. The ori­ginal story takes place dur­ing the Great Space Era, when galactic fash­ions dic­tated that every­one should take their coif­fure cues from Earth in the late 1970s. Hence you’ll see a lot of lux­uri­ant bobs — the sort of hair­style that would prove to be immensely imprac­tical if a stray fly­away strand got caught round one of those bath­room strip-lights that they all use as swords. Ouch.

So in this last movie — or the third movie, whatever, I’ve lost the will to live by now — Luke Sky­diver finds out that Daft Vader knew Lloyd George who knew his father, and that he’s actu­ally Obi Wanker Nobi’s son. Or nephew. Or uncle. Possibly.

In sum­mary: the major dis­ap­point­ment of Revenge of the Lisp is that there are no big song and dance num­bers. A chorus line or two would have been a wel­come addi­tion, espe­cially if it had fea­tured Chew­bacca doing some tap-dancing.

There you go, then. Will that do?

OK, time to con­fess: I haven’t actu­ally seen Revenge of the Wisp yet. In fact, I won’t be see­ing it at all, because I have a pot of white emul­sion and a wall that needs to be watched as the paint dries. But I was begin­ning to feel a bit left out of the latest topic to over­take just about every single site out there in the blo­go­sphere, so I thought I would make my own pithy (sithy?) contribution.

Finally, here’s an exclus­ive plot spoiler:

THEY ALL DIE AT THE END.

Oops. Sorry. I hope that didn’t ruin it for anyone.