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Understand this first of all: I am not a Star Wars fan, at least not in the sense that the average person conceives of one. I didn't spend my childhood captivated by George Lucas' original sci-fi trilogy. I didn't see the films over and over dozens of times. Although I have a general familiarity with the stories and characters, I can't tell you every little detail about Chewbacca's home planet or the Millennium Falcon. For people like that, reviews are irrelevant. Most either can't stand Lucas' new trilogy because they feel it tramples on their memories, or make apologies for all of its flaws because they're blinded by their love for the earlier films.
Outside of either blind hatred or blind adoration, Lucas' films (and that includes the revered original trilogy) are a mixed bag. While the older films are certainly better, they're often overrated by people with nostalgia-clouded perceptions. And the newer films are just as often underrated by those with the same preconceived notions. Lucas' latest, Star Wars: Episode III –Revenge of the Sith, the third in the prequel trilogy and supposedly the final film in the series, is clearly designed to appeal to hard-core Star Wars fans who were disillusioned with the last two entries in the series. It's full of familiar faces doing expected things, setting events in motion for what nearly every viewer knows will happen in Star Wars (now known by its own expanded title, Episode IV – A New Hope), the first film in the original series.
As such, Sith is rarely sidetracked by the procedural minutiae and pointless secondary characters that marred the first two prequels, The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones. Lucas finally sets Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen) firmly on his path to becoming Darth Vader, the mouth-breathing villain of the original trilogy. The Clone Wars, begun at the close of Attack of the Clones, are in full swing, and Anakin and mentor Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) are tracking down the evil General Grievous as the film opens.
The first 20 minutes or so, with a fast-paced battle that culminates in a showdown with Christopher Lee's treacherous Count Dooku, come the closest to capturing the rip-roaring, Saturday-afternoon-serial feel of the original trilogy, or even certain moments in Attack of the Clones. After that, the film gets bogged down in repetitive exposition and endless lightsaber battles that all look the same, none of which have the sheer cool factor of the Qui-Gon Jinn battle with Darth Maul in The Phantom Menace, or the emotional weight of Luke's battle against Vader in The Empire Strikes Back.
Lucas moves characters into place for where they will be as A New Hope begins, but what should have a tragic feeling of inevitability only comes off as rote. There's no sense of excitement or danger in watching confrontations in which we already know who lives and who dies; even in the earlier prequels, there was more urgency about the lives of the characters. As always, Lucas' dialogue is hopelessly stilted, especially in the romantic scenes between Anakin and now-pregnant wife Padmé Amidala (Natalie Portman). Christensen at least loosens up a bit this time, and seems to really get into Anakin's descent into semi-evil.
Portman, on the other hand, is grossly ill-served by Lucas, reduced to standing around and wringing her hands over the fate of her "Ani." Lucas' direction has never been kind to actors, but here he mistreats the character as well, negating all of the political maneuvering and gun-blasting that Amidala did in the first two prequels. Sith is Anakin's movie all the way, but his journey to the Dark Side of the Force is dull and predictable, with Lucas equivocating the entire way to turn one of cinema's greatest villains into a whiny loser.
Knowing the destination wouldn't be so bothersome if the journey were more enjoyable, but every scene just feels like another delaying tactic. The much-hyped Grievous, the film's only significant new character, is a waste, yet another computer-generated phantom with nothing to add to the overall mythos or even this particular installment's plot. Lucas is so intent on making Sith a dark tragedy (he's touted the film's PG-13 rating, the series' first, in nearly every interview) that he forgets that the best things about his previous films (even the relatively dark Empire) were their sense of fun and adventure.
There is nothing fun about Sith, except maybe the opening space battle, and it's not so much an adventure as an ordeal. Ian McDiarmid, who's afforded a larger role than Portman, lays it on thick as the villainous Supreme Chancellor-cum-Emperor Palpatine, but his mustache-twirling performance is more tedious than entertaining, and his entreaties to Anakin to join the side of evil are circuitous and repetitive.
None of this will likely matter to the throngs of Lucas faithful, who will either love or hate the film merely on principle. For those who were disheartened by the earlier prequels, Sith at least offers a direct connection to the original trilogy, and feels more like a story that matters to the events of those films. It also features only brief, silent glimpses of the spectacularly irritating Jar Jar Binks. But these are not, and should not be, enough to elevate Sith beyond passable entertainment into what none of the Star Wars films have been: a truly great movie.