Star Wars III: The Missed Opportunity

After a week and a half of resistance, I broke down and took the kids to see Revenge of the Sith yesterday afternoon. The Teen Princess actually fell asleep during the movie -- twice -- and The Kid got awfully fidgety and impatient before the last light-sabre duel was finally over. As we emerged from the theater, blinking in the overcast daylight, the Teen Princess said, "Hayden Christensen is gorgeous, but God, I wish he'd kept his mouth shut!" The Kid, on the other hand, ever the observant critic, said, "Dad, how come the soldier droids were so much stupider in this movie than in the last two?" My guess is that even the Evil Galactic Empire contracts its military programming out to the low bidder, but I kept that observation to myself.

The real problem with ROTS -- interesting acronym, that -- is that Lucas put all his energy into the visuals and didn't spend enough time on the script. Admittedly, the visuals are spectacular, and I'll probably rent this one when it comes out on DVD just to slow-mo some scenes to see what I missed. But this movie could have been Lucas's Macbeth: the brilliantly told tragic story of a great man's descent into evil and madness.

Instead, what we get is the story of a moody young snot who doesn't get the promotion he thinks he deserves, so he goes postal on his co-workers. Some tragic hero.

Your comments, s'il vous plait?