Darth Side

MAGMA FORCE: Anakin (Hayden Christensen) and Obi-Wan (Ewan McGregor) battle it out.

In the midst of Episode III's saga is a young man's consumption by power.

Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith

by Cindy Fuchs

"This is how liberty dies, to thunderous applause," observes Sen. Padmé Amidala (Natalie Portman), as her fellow lawmakers grant Supreme Chancellor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) emergency wartime powers in a well-meaning effort to stave off the belligerent Sith. As the Senate does precisely the wrong thing and the Empire is formed, Padmé looks on, sad, wise and large — she's pregnant with twins by her secret husband Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen).

With Revenge of the Sith, the saga is complete, which means the thunderous applause can begin in earnest. That's not to say that the Star Wars films — or the multifaceted franchise — mark the death of "liberty." On the contrary, sort of, George Lucas' decades-long marketing extravaganza stands as a mighty emblem of self-expression, individual desire elevated to icon. Even as the films espouse devotion to democracy, they chronicle its repeated battles with the Dark Side, embodied by Anakin, whose shift from light to Darth is the focus of this final installment.

As a film, Sith is less embarrassing than The Phantom Menace and less tedious than Attack of the Clones. It begins with a gorgeously executed battle scene: Anakin (aka the Chosen One) and his Jedi master/mentor Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor), attended by R2-D2 (Kenny Baker), zip around in fleet cruisers, attacked by buzz droids and reveling in their piloting and robot-killing skills ("This is where the fun begins," asserts Anakin as the shooting starts).

Fighters with a philosophy, the Jedi knights appear in midmission, on descent to the planet Coruscant, where they will take down droidy General Grievous and odious Count Dooku (Christopher Lee) and rescue the ostensibly captive Palpatine. Egged on by Palpatine, Anakin slays the unarmed Dooku, and both he and Obi-Wan believe their mission accomplished. But Dooku's end only leads to the next step: the rise of the next, extra-powerful Sith lord, Darth Sidious.

"I sense a trap," intones occasionally empathic and always charismatic Obi-Wan. Indeed. What Obi-Wan doesn't know is that their success on Coruscant sets in motion Anakin's relentlessly impending tragedy. Sith means to demonstrate why and how the good Anakin (who, you will remember, saw his mother abused as a child, learning early on the effects of power) might be tempted by the Dark Side. Frustrated by his perception that he is slighted by the Jedi masters — among them Obi-Wan, Mace Windu (Samuel L. Jackson) and the fully CGI-ed Yoda (voiced by Frank Oz) — Anakin seeks confirmation of his brilliance and rightness elsewhere.

The most touching images of this search involve Padmé, mostly confined to the gorgeous apartment she shares with her husband when he's not off saving the universe. Her fears for him are palpable and tenderly expressed, but his nightmares of her painful death in childbirth and conversations with Palpatine lead him to refashion his love for her into another sort of mission. As much as he imagines his desires to be selfless — he wants to save his beloved, after all — the film submits that Anakin's aspirations are utterly individualistic, abandoning the greater good for personal gain.

While it replicates its predecessors' episodic structure, Sith's finale status lends its exposition a certain trajectory. The movie careens between glowering pronouncements and antic action (Obi-Wan riding a giant lizard), building to the long-awaited confrontation between Obi-Wan and Anakin on the hellish, lava-laden Mustafar (superimposed over footage of Mount Etna). In fact, the film offers several climactic fights, including another with little Yoda flipping and slashing on an elaborate CGI set, this time battling the less convincing figure of Darth Sidious.

For all its lavish effects, however, Sith's primary purpose is to showcase Anakin's dilemma. Advised by Obi-Wan that "Only a Sith lord deals in absolutes," the angry, gifted and ambitious Anakin asserts that such binary thinking is precisely his new credo: "If you're not with me, you're my enemy." That this thinking leads directly to Anakin's systematic slaughter of Jedi knights (including children) only underlines the costs of ideology and devotion: Looking for both a cause and a route to redemption, Anakin only finds war.

While Lucas long ago claimed his story was partly inspired by Nixon and that whole historical debacle, the last movie's assessment of power — its cycles, rationales and executions — can hardly be detached from the current U.S. administration's polarized world vision. What's most distressing is that the long anticipated emergence of Darth Vader is so mundane. Built on a surgery table, he's gigantic and tragic, but inside, he's a kid, mad that he can't get his way, striking out at perceived enemies, unable to imagine reconciliation.

Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith Written and directed by George Lucas A Fox release Now playing at area theaters