Harry's Blog

L and I went to see Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith last week. Poor L had sat through the two other prequels on DVD in recent weeks in preparation, something which I feel I will be making up for a very long time. I have to admit to really enjoying Sith.

It seems to get most things right; the pacing was the best of the prequels, some of the dialogue was good. "So this is how Liberty ends; to thunderous applause," is a fantastic line, and Palpatine's telling of the Sith legend was superb, There was some real visual impact to the movie, with great framing and cinematography, in contrast to merely having great visual effects. The opening sequence was funny, exciting and action packed.

Yes a lot of the acting was ropey, the dialogue stilted, but that's always been the case with the Star Wars franchise. But the problems were kept to a minimum and on the whole the movie was very good, Some issues were fixed, such as the friendship between Obi-Wan and Anakin, which seemed to be well fleshed out in the early part of the movie.

It was a very dark movie, the second half being very bleak indeed, and it was a brave movie by Lucas in this respect. Once the descent of Anakin reached full speed there was no going back, it was going to be tragedy all the way. Anakin's response to the younglings in the Jedi temple had me gasping, as did the slaying of the Jedi. Sith really didn't let up from this point, yet I still had sympathy for Anakin at times - if only someone had shown him love, listened to him - but the Jedi were always too busy. Instead he was shown respect by Palpatine.

I'm looking forward to watching the original trilogy this week, Sith will no-doubt change the way I view many of the events. For now I'm happy to have seen an excellent Star Wars movie and I think I'll most likely go to see it again later this week.