The trouble with Sith

Okay, I said earlier that while I like Revenge of the Sith a great deal, there are flaws in the film. Some are little continuity annoyances, others are storytelling foul-up and missteps that Lucas consciously made for one reason or another. Many viewers may well look upon them as irrelevant, or even beneficial to the story. I’m not most viewers. These things stand out as beacons of wretched amateurism, and diminish my enjoyment of the film, so by golly, I paid my $7, and I’m not about to hold my tongue.

Most of the problems I had with the film are continuity errors, disconnects between Sith and the original trilogy that are the result, mostly, of Lucas shoehorning too many ideas together without clearly thinking things out. Personally, I wish he’d have hired a continuity monger such J.M. Straczynski or Joss Wheedon to map out the entire prequel trilogy before a single frame of film (or pixel of digital) was shot, but that’s something of a moot point at this point. I've known since Return of the Jedi that Lucas has a tendency to pull story ideas out of his ass on a whim, with little regard for how it fits into the overall picture. Most of the time this works out fine in the end, but this movie proves that sometimes that “inspiration” paints him into a corner.

Remember in Jedi, when Luke and Leia abruptly start talking about Leia's "adoption" as if it were common knowledge to the entire galaxy? That was a cheap trick on Lucas’ part, the equivalent of a murder mystery in which the murderer was exposed because he'd taken out a full-page ad in the NY Times announcing that he was going to kill the victim--only the audience isn't let in on this pertinent fact, only the hero of the story. The sum total of this trick is that the author gets to go, "Ha ha! Fooled you!" and feel impressed by how clever a mystery writer he is. That withholding of pertinent information--contrived, but pertinent--ruined Jedi for me more than even the cutesy-poo the ewoks did, although I don't like the ewoks either. But Leia responds to Luke's questions by saying (more or less), "I don't remember much about my mother. She died when I was very young. I remember she seemed sad." The trouble is, in Revenge of the Sith, Padme DIES IN FRELLING CHILDBIRTH! She dies of a bloody broken heart, which is quite possibly the worst cliche in tragic romances. That already-bad scene in Jedi is rendered even more ludicrous by the implication that Leia is very, very perceptive for a minutes-old infant, or Luke is just really dim. It's insulting on every level, and further evidence that Lucas didn't think things through way back when--the brother and sister device was simply a convenient way of breaking up the Luke-Leia-Han love triangle without anyone getting their feelings hurt.

Speaking of Padme, has there ever been a more pointless death in cinema? Forget that in Jedi the implication is given that she dies in exile/hiding. For as strong-willed a woman as the one-time Queen and Senator from Naboo to simply die of a “broken heart” after “losing the will to live” betrays everything about this character. She was strong. She was a fighter. Would Princess Leia die of a broken heart? I don’t think so--she’d kick the ass of the guy who broke it! And that’s what Padme should’ve done--fought Anakin. When it came time for a full-blown marital conflagration, Padme abruptly turned into a cowering, simpering victim. Pathetic. Lucas missed a tremendous opportunity to show the strength of her character by physically--or at least verbally--confronting Anakin, even though she was hopelessly outmatched. Instead of muttering half-hearted "Say it ain't so" variations, she should've unleashed the full fury of her verbal fury, letting Anakin know in no uncertain terms how he'd betrayed everything she ever believed in. She does this now, to a degree, but it's limp and weepy, not likely to leave an impression on anyone, let alone her Dark Side-corrupted husband. Similarly, the opportunity to show the depth of Anakin’s corruption was missed by not having Padme die from his attack. Making Padme the first victim of Vader’s “force choke” would’ve been tragic and poignant. Even had she not died immediately--she hung on through force of will to ensure her children were born safely--there were plenty of opportunities to make her demise relevant and meaningful, rather than abrupt and arbitrary. As it stands now, even her last words, “Obi-Wan, there’s still some good in him,” is undermined by her expiration. If she was dying because she’d lost faith, lost the will to live, then she really couldn’t have believed that Anakin was still worth saving. By dying as she did, her final words are rendered hollow and false.

And Palpatine's assertation that Padme died by Vader's hands... what's up with that? Does Palpatine just make up random things to get a rise out of his apprentices? Palpatine: "Darth Tyranus, your twin brother Saruman's attack on Helm's Deep failed because you wouldn't equip his Uruk-Hai with lightsabres. He's now dead, impaled on a spike." Darth Tyranus: "NOOOOOOOOOO!"

There are other nagging continuity glitches. In Star Wars, Kenobi tells Luke he hasn't gone by "Obi-Wan" since "before you were born," which implies that the Jedi were already in hiding at that time. There's nary a mention of "Ben" in the flick. That could be explained away by exaggeration on Kenobi’s part, but I don’t think so. In 1977 I believe that was a sincere line, that Kenobi had already slipped into exile prior to Luke’s birth.

At the end of Sith, C-3P0 has his memory wiped, but R2 doesn't. Which means that if R2 falls into the wrong hands, the bad guys have the whole story. That's a stupid continuity point, when secrecy is of essence. The implication is that 3P0 is too flighty to be trusted, which earns a cheap laugh in the film, but R2 should be a fountain of knowledge in the original “Star Wars” if this is the case, and he isn't. Sure, he's more devoted than other droids, but for a devoted droid he's sure stingy with relevant details, such as "Gosh, this holographic chick you're crushing on is really your sister, who's being held captive and tortured by your dad, who's is the evil enforcer for the Emperor." Viewed in that light, R2 is pretty much a fat metal prick. And Obi-Wan is pretty damn dense not to realize that this is the gold protocol droid built by the young Darth Vader and the astromech that belonged to Padme Amidala. Particularly the astromech that didn’t have his memory wiped. Obviously, in a rational universe, both robots would’ve had their memories erased for the safety of the twins.

At no point is it addressed why R2-D2 can fly in the prequels but not in the original films. I mean, if R2 was from a world with a red sun, and gained powers of flight under the influence of a yellow sun’s rays, that’d be one thing. But being able to fly in one movie and not the next? That’s just dumb.

And speaking of dumb, I understand that General Grievous is the big, bad new villain in this movie, who also happens to be a coward who will sacrifice his underlings to save his own skin. But was it really necessary to make him sound like Dark Helmet to drive this point home?

At the end of Sith, Vader, the Emperor and Moff Tarkin (who doesn't have any lines, tragically enough, so I suppose he’s not “Grand” yet) stand on a star destroyer’s bridge watching the construction of the Death Star, which is coming along at a pretty good clip, apparently. Which leads me to ask why the hell did it take 20 years for them to build the original Death Star, but only six or so to rebuild a bigger and badder one between Star Wars and Jedi? Don't give me baloney about "it's explained in the novels" or "it's a small prototype." The "Expanded Universe" is not canon in the film series--the books, comics and video games are merely tangential revenue streams for Lucasfilm, and have the same influence on the Star Wars movies as the Star Trek novels have on that series (which is zilch). In the context of the movie, this scene as presented makes it explicit that this is THE big, bad Death Star. Doesn't wash. Again, don’t tell me to read the novel spin-offs. Ain’t gonna happen.

But the single biggest problem I had with the movie is the Jedi’s use of the Force. A huge problem with it, had I. Remember back to 1980, with earnest, impatient Luke Skywalker sweating up a storm on Dagobah during his crash-course Jedi training. “A Jedi uses the force for knowledge and defense, never attack,” warns Yoda ominously. Down that path lies the Dark Side. Yoda doesn’t equivocate here: Use the Force to attack=Bad mojo. I saw this as a sign of Luke’s slipping toward the Dark Side in Jedi, when he Force-choked those Gamorean pig-guards to gain entrance to Jabba’s palace on Tattooine. Watch out, Luke, that’s five demerits! We knew Darth Vader was in thrall of the Dark Side in Empire because he flung all those kitchen appliances at Luke when they fought at Cloud City. That wasn’t cricket, old boy. In Clones, Anakin uses the Force to throw some industrial welder arms at bug warriors in the robot factory. I took this at the time to be a hint that he's disregarding his Jedi training and slipping over to the Dark Side--paralleling Luke’s slippage in Jedi. But suddenly, in Sith, Obi-Wan rips a big... well, it should have “Acme Anvil” stamped on the side... hunk of metal something out of the ceiling to crush his opponents when he’s chasing General Grievous. Golly, that sure looked like an attack to me. And Obi-Wan uses the Force to attack other times as well. As does Yoda. The green muppet pummels the Emperor’s bodyguards with the Force, then flings Palpatine across the chamber when they’re duking it out mano-a-mano. In the Senate Chamber, Yoda spins a “Senate Saucer” around and throws it at Palpatine. Granted, Palpatine started throwing things first, but somehow I don't think "He started it" holds much weight in the Jedi code of ethics. Does "attack" merely mean "Don't shoot wicked blue lighting out of your fingers at other people"? If so, that's a pretty narrow interpretation of "attack." And makes Yoda look even more like an unhelpful jerk in the original trilogy. I’m told that in the current spate of video games from Lucasarts, Jedi characters are allowed to attack using the Force, as long as it doesn’t amount to ripping someone’s lungs out or whathaveyou. You can use the Force to pick up a blaster and shoot your enemy dead, which is okay, but not choke them directly, which isn’t. Either way, the opponent is dead, and either way, the Force was used to do the deed. I find such lawyer-speak legalese definitions as to what kinds of Force attacks are kosher and which are evil and which are technically valid but just looked down upon as gauche in polite society downright demeaning. This kind of hair-splitting taints the original trilogy and the concept of the Force itself in a far more vile and corrosive way than even the much-loathed midi-chlorians. But then, since Lucas is surrounded by an army of copyright and trademark lawyers, I find the whole mood shift, and lack of respect for the property unsurprising.

Hell, maybe I am an old fogey that just doesn’t get it anymore. That’s fine. But I grew up with Star Wars--obsessed over it--and those movies are why I discovered science fiction and fantasy, and directly responsible for my being a science fiction writer today. I’ve been emotionally and intellectually invested in these films for close to 30 years now, and by my calculations, that gives me more than enough right to piss and moan.

All this for a movie I actually liked. Imagine the carnage if I’d hated it...

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