Confessing Evangelical

The spectacle presents itself as something enormously positive, indisputable and inaccessible. It says nothing more than "that which appears is good, that which is good appears". The attitude which it demands in principle is passive acceptance which in fact it already obtained by its manner of appearing without reply, by its monopoly of appearance. - Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle

Best comments I've come across yet on Revenge of the Sith are over at Bulbous Blog, where Peter Roberts critiques the more negative comments made by his older brother, Al "40 Bicycles" (as Peter puts it, "Ally cannot see the space for the ground. THE WHOLE POINT OF THE FILM WAS SPACE AND YOU DIDN'T MENTION IT ONCE!!!").

He goes on to argue that this was the best Star Wars film of all, because:

they didn't have too much of that stupid storyline, we got to see plenty of what really mattered... Space. Call me shallow, but when a film is called Star Wars, ground scenes should be secondary.

That's certainly George Lucas' philosophy, of course: cool spaceships cutting through hyperspace = good; characterisation, dialogue, plot coherence = erm, secondary.

A couple of particularly good observations in Peter's write-up. First, concerning the change in spaceship design as the film progressed (I was also interested to come across the word "greeble" for the first time):

The transition at the end of the film from 21st century futuristic designs to the 70s designs of the original trilogy is quite funny, though it is more convincing than you might expect.

This development - though driven largely by the need (i) to fill the prequels with really cool spaceships that make the most of modern CGI techniques; and (ii) nevertheless to ensure a credible transition to the original films - ends up being a very effective means of symbolising the descent from a golden age into the abyss of the Sith Empire, like the transition in human history from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age.

Peter also nails one of the key moments in the film (and apologies to those for whom "Anakin turns to the Dark Side" constitutes a spoiler):

The scene with Anakin turning to the dark side was extremely unconvincing. Obviously, this was a bit disappointing as the whole film revolves around this point. It seemed like he didn't really want to join the dark side, but he was sort of thinking 'Blow this for a lark' or 'meh, I'll join the dark side'. There wasn't a very convincing inner struggle.

Myself? Thought it was the best of the prequels, and probably on a level with "Jedi". It was a great spectacle, very exciting, swept you along, but then much the same could be said about Fascism (and, indeed, George Lucas's stylistic debt to Leni Riefenstahl has been frequently remarked upon), and even while watching it - and enjoying it tremendously - it all felt a bit hollow.

That probably won't stop me watching it again when it comes out on DVD, but when it comes down to it, give me just plain old vanilla 1977-vintage "Star Wars" any day.

And as for "Only a Sith deals in absolutes!": double meh.

(Also on Star Wars: Mark Steyn's reviews of Episodes IV, I and II are essential reading.)