Ewan McGregor as Obi-Wan Kenobi

Movies: STAR WARS III – THE REVENGE OF THE SITH Directed by George Lucas

With audiences at the Cannes Film Festival likening its politics to that of the US involvement in Iraq, the final episode of the Star Wars franchise, Star Wars III – The Revenge of the Sith is inadvertently timely.
Long awaited, belaboured and dizzy in its aim, director George Lucas tries to achieve the impossible – to bring the glory of his groundbreaking Star Wars series back into our hearts and minds.
Hayden Christianson, Natalie Portman, Samuel L Jackson, Ewan McGregor, Ian McDiarmid and Jimmy Smits all reappear, lending continuity with Attack of the Clones. But Sith isn’t like its predecessors made in the old days.
Lucas’s finale attempts to tie up the loose ends, as it were, but it ends up feeling choppy and theatrical, with the set design and GCI winning over acting, action and emotion.
With Lucas in the director’s chair there are, of course, bits off brilliance to be found, mostly with McGregor’s performance of almost physically morphing himself into Alex Guinness, complete with elegant movement and delivery. Then there is the surprisingly fast slide to the dark side of Anakin Skywalker – or Darth Vader as he becomes.
What sends him over the edge is more a Hamlet-like worry than the reality of what is before him. Gone are the jokes and the silliness of previous episodes, although Yoda gets a few good licks in for comic relief.
Don’t be fooled by the extra press given to the Wookies. They are only wallpaper here, not central characters.
For serious Star Wars obsessives, not all the elements will bundle up neatly, but with a large fan-base concentrating on a complex universe such as the Star Wars franchise inhabits, that may have been impossible.
Still it is comforting and exciting to know that another bit of a much-loved classic has been completed, even if it can't really compete with the ones that came before it.