Nowhere near as shit as the other two.
In light of Disney's recent buy out finally taking the Star Wars franchise out of George Lucas' hands, I decided to give the best of the prequel trilogy a blast in an attempt to remind myself that the series can still be good.
.Everybody, myself included, likes to talk shit about the prequel trilogy because it's easy to do and makes it seem like you know what you're talking about. But, if you ignore The Phantom Menace (because it could have been so good and was so just not), they weren't actually that bad and frankly Revenge of the Sith is pretty good. Yes, Hayden Christensen still cannot act. Yes, the dialogue is still stilted. Yes, all the morals are so ham fisted you'd think Lucas had bacon for knuckles. But the story is a powerful tragedy of epic proportions.
It's all a little Macbeth in terms of Anakin's (Christensen) story arc. Here we have a guy with the perfect makings of an anti-hero. He loves his wife so much he is prepared to put himself through hell and sacrifice everything he has in order to save her. His love is so strong that he is willing to give up his masters, his friend and even his own humanity and subject himself to complete corruption just so that the centre of his world and the mother of his child(ren). It's pretty admirable in a fucked up kind of way. The ultimate tragedy (and Macbeth allusions) comes in the form of the self-fulfilling prophecy: Padme (Natalie Portman) dying is the reason he allows himself to be corrupted, but it's his corruption that eventually leads her to lose the will to live (because apparently in the SW universe just giving up on life kills you, apparently). Plus you've got the whole Obi Wan( Ewan McGregor) thing going on towards the end where he loses belief in Anakin being the chosen one even though its becoming Darth Vader that eventually does allow him to bring balance to the force all the way down the line in Episode 6.
On the less heavy side, Episode III is full of a lot of little details that bridge the two trilogies really well. Everything from the designs of the armour and equipment that the clone troops using gradually edging closer to the type that the storm troopers use later on, the first rebel ship from the original trilogy featuring heavily through to some shots being lifted straight from Episode IV, there's obviously a labour of love at work here from all the guys behind the scenes. That said, some things are a little forced and obviously just fan service, and some of those just flat out don't make sense. Chewbacca was apparently some big general in the wookie army and best buds with Yoda, so why, when a kid turns up who (I imagine) looks like Anakin Skywalker, is a goddamn jedi and has the last name Sky-fucking-walker, doesn't he pipe up and mention the fact that he's obviously Darth Vader's son? it's not like he wouldn't be able to put two and two together, he was after all a pretty high ranking officer. Same exact thing goes for R2D2, the shiny camp one has his mind wiped so fair enough, but you'd think the smartarse beepy one should probably have let Luke know what was what, especially when he was coming on to a girl who the beepy bastard knew was his sister.
So yeah, Episode III was the best of a bad bunch, and we'll just pretend EpI didn't happen. I'm prepared to forgive most people involved for the prequels, especially Portman and McGregor. Not Christensen though. There's a reason I've only seen him in Jumper since this came out. It's because he's shit.
(Jumper was also shit)
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