Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith
I have seen the sixth and final of the Star Wars movies. What follows is my personal reaction to this film, my emotional and visceral responses but also my intellectual thoughts about it. I'm a geek, and I've been a Star Wars fan since the first movie; I'm also a scholar and social scientist of many things. I'm writing from all of this.
Don't read any further if you haven't seen the film yet, unless you happen to enjoy intellectual and aesthetic spoilers.
Don't read any further if you object to the very notion of analysis or if you dislike the idea of analyzing something pop culture, such as a film. Don't read further if you think continuity, gender, myth and folklore, etc. are not worth thinking about.
Cool?
My first response is this was a fun little movie. The action sequences are often exciting (although too many times Lucas cuts away from the action at just the wrong moment), and the special effects carried me off into this place a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. I loved the initial space battle, the sequences with Obiwan astride the giant lizard, and the magma battle went over the top in a way that was fun more than cheesy!
I hope to find someone with whom to see this film again. As I wrote earlier, this particular movie was a fun little movie.
Still . . .
When the last of the three The Lord of the Rings films ended, I just stood there in the movie theatre, watching the end credits and then watching the blank screen, tears pouring out of my eyes. Kip came up beside me and silently put his arm around my shoulders and watched with me. Weeping, I said to him, "It's not just that it's over -- that there will be no more Lord of the Rings films. It's that he didn't let us down. It stayed right, up 'til the end."
I wanted to feel like that after Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith. I had been part of Star Wars since the beginning; it had been a fertile source for my imagination since my early teens and had been part of what inspired me on the path which led to my Ph.D. in folklore and in gender studies. I remember as a college freshman pretending to have light saber battles with other freshmen -- young men making whzzzmmmrrr noises with our mouths while whapping each other with cardboard tubes, not giving a damn what anyone else thought when they stared at us and having the time of their lives! I remember using Obiwan Kenobi as an example of mentor figures in classes I've taught. If all the movies in the second trilogy had been like this one, I would have felt a sense of loss after Revenge of the Sith ended.
Instead, I felt cheated.
It was too little, too late. This movie came after the naive racism and absurdity of Jar Jar Binks and his species, the insultingly cutesy treatment of the child Anakin, and the pod race that was so nakedly an implanted advertisement for a computer game in The Phantom Menace; it came after the agonizingly wooden "romance" between Anakin and Padme and the cheesy saber-rattling of "good" versus "evil" in Attack of the Clones. It came after the aesthetic mutilation of having Han Solo shoot second in the Special Edition rewrite of the original Star Wars. It was too little, too late.
Having Han Solo shoot first with Greedo helped establish both Han's credentials as a wily survivor and set up the marvelous story of his slow growth from a survivor into a hero. Lucas's cry that Han wouldn't shoot first because "he's a good guy" was part of an attitude which would modify the character to reduce his personal growth.
Many scholars have observed that the Star Wars saga is like a modern American mythology. But a myth will fade, losing much of its power and applicability, if it becomes mired in petty real world literalism or if it becomes too sanitized for use as a viable psychological or existential metaphor.
Rewriting the character of Han Solo into a Han Solo who is "too much a good guy" to shoot first is the beginnings of a Han Solo who is too sanitized to carry the mythic trope of a cynic who discovers his inner heroism. The character becomes instead an emptily virtuous wise ass, little more.
In a small but tangible way, the Han Solo who is "too much a good guy" to shoot first is not the same Han Solo I saw in the original showing of the original Star Wars, and in a small but tangible way, it changes his every appearance after that moment.
The same thing happens with Anakin Skywalker a.k.a. Darth Vader in this film.
Let me digress a little, first.
Some critics have claimed that Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith is the tale of Anakin Skywalker's fall through the sin of his pride, his impatience, and through his love for Padme. They're wrong.
Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith is the tale of Anakin Skywalker's fall through the Jedi Council's sins of pride and petulance, through the Council's intolerant absolutism in which they believe in evil and good but not in redemption nor in human ambiguities, through the Council's starchy inability to cope with ordinary adolescent impatience, and through their abandonment of Anakin's obvious desperation for something to call a family.
My own social science studies have shown me that, in real life, groups which emphasize the ascetism argued by the Jedi Council also develop ways to direct and respect adolescent impatience rather than try to squash it. True, Star Wars is not intended to be an anthropological fiction in space -- rather, it is a fantasy of myth or folklore. Yet, even the folklore from and about such ascetic groups will include the moral warning that such groups create their own downfall the moment they become prideful and turn defensive about their authority.
The Jedi Council may have considered Anakin unready for the rank of master for good reasons, but the only reason they gave him was a petulantly prideful statement about their autonomy. Instead of warning him with explanations and human compassion about the dangers of Chancellor Palpatine, their rote response was to shame him for not unquestioningly accepting their good/evil judgements. They were without compassion. More importantly, they behaved around him as overt hypocrites, arguing against attachements while so strongly attached to their pride and autonomy. They failed to notice that young Anakin followed their stated ideals with far more fidelity than they did.
Obiwan may have loved Anakin like a brother (more like a nephew, actually), but he also dehumanized him as "The Chosen One" and showed no real understanding of Anakin's very human feelings and very real adolescent confusion. So even Anakin's closest friend among the Jedis had moments of treating him as a Thing -- "The Chosen One" -- and failed to take into consideration basic human nature.
I imagine that Anakin truly loved Padme. But I don't think that is the entire reason he was so desperate to keep Padme alive. With no mother or other family, no real homeland, and the loss of a stable home in the increasing petulance and secretiveness of the Jedi Council, Padme was the one remaining anchor in his life. Anakin did not merely love Padme: he needed her as the only stability in his young life.
No wonder Palpatine's fatherly concern so attracted Anakin. Of all the characters in the film, Palpatine is the only adult male who overtly treats Anakin with any consistent respect and consideration.
In this film, we are not presented with a grim figure whose hunger for power or pride drives him to destroy the Jedi Council and help overthrow the Republic; we have this frightened, desperate man-boy who turns to the dark side because he feels abandoned by all else.
Throughout Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, Anakin is reactive, not proactive.
He reacts to his precognitive dreams about Padme's death. He reacts to the Jedi Council's petulance. He reacts to Palpatine's psychological cunning.
He does not embrace his destiny as Darth Vader -- he weakly allows himself to be shoved into it.
After watching this film, as I lay in bed that night, the haunting martial theme music to Darth Vader played through my head. And I realized with a poignant sadness that, if I accepted Revenge of the Sith as continuity, Darth Vader as an epic figure had been ruined for me.
Villains of epic proportions are necessary for catharsis of our inner demons; hence the centuries-long cultural impacts of such characters as found in the works of Milton, Goethe, Melville, and Shakespeare, to name only a few. Although it is true that frightened, pitiable, desperate figures may be more psychologically realistic (as modern studies of the psychology of bullies and tyrants attest), such figures do not provide catharsis of a person's inner demons.
During and after the original Star Wars trilogy, my friends and I used to imagine and debate the origin of Darth Vader. We thought Darth Vader was the coolest mythic villain to appear on the big screen! The Darth Vader of the original trilogy was a villain of Wagnerian or Miltonian proportions. He was dignified, confident, powerful, witty, even majestic in a darkly evil fashion. We wanted to be as Cool as Han Solo and as Epic Good as Luke, but we hoped in our hearts that if we ever fell, at least we would be as impressive as Darth Vader. His total commitment to evil provided catharsis for our inner demons; his dark majesty provided catharsis for the image of the Dark Father which a child (particularly a son) carries inside of his own father.
With this new trilogy, the Darth Vader of the original Star Wars goes from being an eerie, mythic, evil knight to being a mere puppet on loan to Tarkin from the Emperor, a frightened man-boy still clinging to obedience to Palpatine as he has had nothing left to hold onto since the time of Revenge of the Sith. Leia's comments about who holds Vader's leash go from insult to accurate statement about his reputation as the eager dog to whoever gives his life meaning. His battle with Obiwan goes from two powerful mystic warriors at war to nothing more than an angry adolescent trying to kill the uncle he feels betrayed him by not protecting him enough or loving him enough.
Darth Vader in The Empire Strikes Back is no longer a Miltonian demon-king set free, as he had appeared when I'd seen the film in my late teens, but now is nothing more than a desperate angry youth finally seeing his chance to accomplish the adolescent power grasp he'd failed at in Revenge of the Sith. When The Empire Strikes Back first played, Darth Vader as Luke's Dark Father had record numbers of young men openly weeping at the movie theatre, often to the astonishment of accompanying girlfriends; it tapped into a dark malaise of warped father-son relationships which had been (and continues to be) plaguing our nation for decades, with Vader's revelation to Luke reminding the weeping young men of the Demon Father so many men had seen as children in their real life fathers. It was a powerful film for sons at a time of powerful films for sons. No one who sees Revenge of the Sith first will get such an impression from The Empire Strikes Back, however. Now, Darth Vader's revelation to Luke seems more like a fatherless boy trying to turn a son into a source of meaning.
In the second trilogy's interpretation of Darth Vader, there is no longer any catharsis of the Dark Father. There is no longer any redemption of the Dark Father by the son, nor any real transcension of inner evil, merely a frightened puppet choosing to obey Luke instead of Palpatine at the end -- there is only the Eternal Orphan and Eternal Victim left in Darth Vader now.
Darth Vader's redemption in Return of the Jedi seems less majestic now, and more that Anakin has simply killed off one more surrogate father and embraced death as the one escape from a life of tormented existential angst.
Let me put this more simplistically:
Darth Vader has gone from being a majestic challenge to being an abandoned child who only needed a really long hug to keep from turning evil.
In the original trilogy, the tale implies that Luke Skywalker becomes the epic hero by embracing the Jedi philosophy, rehabilitating the primary enemy of the Jedis while resisting powerful temptations, and bringing back the Jedis with their noble philosophy of ascetic self-confidence.
"Do or do not: There is no try."
"Trust your feelings, Luke!"
"I don't believe it!" "That is why you fail."
In the combined continuity of the original trilogy with this second trilogy, Luke Skywalker's epic heroism is reframed to be the result of his refusal of or transcension beyond the Jedi philosophy! Luke takes in their teachings, then promptly ignores their dictates against impulsiveness, attachement, and passion when he goes after the captured Han and Leia against Yoda's wishes, when he faces Darth Vader when told not to, and when he works towards redemption instead of execution. In the combined continuity, Luke inspires Anakin's salvation (salve = to heal) when he embraces attachement (father-son) and passion and enables Anakin to embrace those as well. In. Defiance. Of. Jedi. Teachings.
In Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, Lucas manages to deconstruct and defy the themes from his original trilogy.
Maybe this new theme works better today. It should be obvious that the film's message about how good people desperate for meaning can be destroyed by a charismatic leader and the self-abnegating petulance of traditional moral authorities can be applied to Bush supporters, Bush's charisma, and the uselessness of petulant churches who either fall under Bush's sway or render themselves impotent. And just as people in the 1960s through early 1980s were fascinated with the ascetic creeds of Jedi Knights and Star Trek Vulcans, so modern people have learned to distrust such emotionless approaches which enable otherwise-good men to talk about "acceptable casualties" and to whitewash conquest based on lies about W.M.D.s as necessary for "the Greater Good".
One might even argue that modern audiences identify more with the existential pettiness of the figures in the second trilogy, finding the aimless helplessness before forces beyond their control and authorities who never listen to be just as relevant to their Y2K lives as we had once identified with the mythic imagery and power in the original trilogy and found them relevant to our late-twentieth century lives.
Maybe.
None of that changes the disappointment.
Darth Vader is not Darth Vader any more, only a desperate adolescent in armor who never transcended his original trauma of loss and helplessness, a man who was born, lived, and died a slave for others. He is now merely a petty puppet cathartic only to those who feel orphaned and manipulated; there is no grappling with inner demons in this new trilogy, only with inner weakness.
Yes, it's only a movie. And a font of modern mythology. And an expression of father-son gender roles at one time in our nation's history. And a place of dreams.
The other films in the second trilogy should have been this good, but they weren't.
With Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, the Star Wars saga ends with an adolescent's whimper, not a bang.
(c) 30 May 2005 by W. Everett Chesnut
========================================
Don't read any further if you haven't seen the film yet, unless you happen to enjoy intellectual and aesthetic spoilers.
Don't read any further if you object to the very notion of analysis or if you dislike the idea of analyzing something pop culture, such as a film. Don't read further if you think continuity, gender, myth and folklore, etc. are not worth thinking about.
Cool?
My first response is this was a fun little movie. The action sequences are often exciting (although too many times Lucas cuts away from the action at just the wrong moment), and the special effects carried me off into this place a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. I loved the initial space battle, the sequences with Obiwan astride the giant lizard, and the magma battle went over the top in a way that was fun more than cheesy!
I hope to find someone with whom to see this film again. As I wrote earlier, this particular movie was a fun little movie.
Still . . .
When the last of the three The Lord of the Rings films ended, I just stood there in the movie theatre, watching the end credits and then watching the blank screen, tears pouring out of my eyes. Kip came up beside me and silently put his arm around my shoulders and watched with me. Weeping, I said to him, "It's not just that it's over -- that there will be no more Lord of the Rings films. It's that he didn't let us down. It stayed right, up 'til the end."
I wanted to feel like that after Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith. I had been part of Star Wars since the beginning; it had been a fertile source for my imagination since my early teens and had been part of what inspired me on the path which led to my Ph.D. in folklore and in gender studies. I remember as a college freshman pretending to have light saber battles with other freshmen -- young men making whzzzmmmrrr noises with our mouths while whapping each other with cardboard tubes, not giving a damn what anyone else thought when they stared at us and having the time of their lives! I remember using Obiwan Kenobi as an example of mentor figures in classes I've taught. If all the movies in the second trilogy had been like this one, I would have felt a sense of loss after Revenge of the Sith ended.
Instead, I felt cheated.
It was too little, too late. This movie came after the naive racism and absurdity of Jar Jar Binks and his species, the insultingly cutesy treatment of the child Anakin, and the pod race that was so nakedly an implanted advertisement for a computer game in The Phantom Menace; it came after the agonizingly wooden "romance" between Anakin and Padme and the cheesy saber-rattling of "good" versus "evil" in Attack of the Clones. It came after the aesthetic mutilation of having Han Solo shoot second in the Special Edition rewrite of the original Star Wars. It was too little, too late.
Having Han Solo shoot first with Greedo helped establish both Han's credentials as a wily survivor and set up the marvelous story of his slow growth from a survivor into a hero. Lucas's cry that Han wouldn't shoot first because "he's a good guy" was part of an attitude which would modify the character to reduce his personal growth.
Many scholars have observed that the Star Wars saga is like a modern American mythology. But a myth will fade, losing much of its power and applicability, if it becomes mired in petty real world literalism or if it becomes too sanitized for use as a viable psychological or existential metaphor.
Rewriting the character of Han Solo into a Han Solo who is "too much a good guy" to shoot first is the beginnings of a Han Solo who is too sanitized to carry the mythic trope of a cynic who discovers his inner heroism. The character becomes instead an emptily virtuous wise ass, little more.
In a small but tangible way, the Han Solo who is "too much a good guy" to shoot first is not the same Han Solo I saw in the original showing of the original Star Wars, and in a small but tangible way, it changes his every appearance after that moment.
The same thing happens with Anakin Skywalker a.k.a. Darth Vader in this film.
Let me digress a little, first.
Some critics have claimed that Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith is the tale of Anakin Skywalker's fall through the sin of his pride, his impatience, and through his love for Padme. They're wrong.
Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith is the tale of Anakin Skywalker's fall through the Jedi Council's sins of pride and petulance, through the Council's intolerant absolutism in which they believe in evil and good but not in redemption nor in human ambiguities, through the Council's starchy inability to cope with ordinary adolescent impatience, and through their abandonment of Anakin's obvious desperation for something to call a family.
My own social science studies have shown me that, in real life, groups which emphasize the ascetism argued by the Jedi Council also develop ways to direct and respect adolescent impatience rather than try to squash it. True, Star Wars is not intended to be an anthropological fiction in space -- rather, it is a fantasy of myth or folklore. Yet, even the folklore from and about such ascetic groups will include the moral warning that such groups create their own downfall the moment they become prideful and turn defensive about their authority.
The Jedi Council may have considered Anakin unready for the rank of master for good reasons, but the only reason they gave him was a petulantly prideful statement about their autonomy. Instead of warning him with explanations and human compassion about the dangers of Chancellor Palpatine, their rote response was to shame him for not unquestioningly accepting their good/evil judgements. They were without compassion. More importantly, they behaved around him as overt hypocrites, arguing against attachements while so strongly attached to their pride and autonomy. They failed to notice that young Anakin followed their stated ideals with far more fidelity than they did.
Obiwan may have loved Anakin like a brother (more like a nephew, actually), but he also dehumanized him as "The Chosen One" and showed no real understanding of Anakin's very human feelings and very real adolescent confusion. So even Anakin's closest friend among the Jedis had moments of treating him as a Thing -- "The Chosen One" -- and failed to take into consideration basic human nature.
I imagine that Anakin truly loved Padme. But I don't think that is the entire reason he was so desperate to keep Padme alive. With no mother or other family, no real homeland, and the loss of a stable home in the increasing petulance and secretiveness of the Jedi Council, Padme was the one remaining anchor in his life. Anakin did not merely love Padme: he needed her as the only stability in his young life.
No wonder Palpatine's fatherly concern so attracted Anakin. Of all the characters in the film, Palpatine is the only adult male who overtly treats Anakin with any consistent respect and consideration.
In this film, we are not presented with a grim figure whose hunger for power or pride drives him to destroy the Jedi Council and help overthrow the Republic; we have this frightened, desperate man-boy who turns to the dark side because he feels abandoned by all else.
Throughout Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, Anakin is reactive, not proactive.
He reacts to his precognitive dreams about Padme's death. He reacts to the Jedi Council's petulance. He reacts to Palpatine's psychological cunning.
He does not embrace his destiny as Darth Vader -- he weakly allows himself to be shoved into it.
After watching this film, as I lay in bed that night, the haunting martial theme music to Darth Vader played through my head. And I realized with a poignant sadness that, if I accepted Revenge of the Sith as continuity, Darth Vader as an epic figure had been ruined for me.
Villains of epic proportions are necessary for catharsis of our inner demons; hence the centuries-long cultural impacts of such characters as found in the works of Milton, Goethe, Melville, and Shakespeare, to name only a few. Although it is true that frightened, pitiable, desperate figures may be more psychologically realistic (as modern studies of the psychology of bullies and tyrants attest), such figures do not provide catharsis of a person's inner demons.
During and after the original Star Wars trilogy, my friends and I used to imagine and debate the origin of Darth Vader. We thought Darth Vader was the coolest mythic villain to appear on the big screen! The Darth Vader of the original trilogy was a villain of Wagnerian or Miltonian proportions. He was dignified, confident, powerful, witty, even majestic in a darkly evil fashion. We wanted to be as Cool as Han Solo and as Epic Good as Luke, but we hoped in our hearts that if we ever fell, at least we would be as impressive as Darth Vader. His total commitment to evil provided catharsis for our inner demons; his dark majesty provided catharsis for the image of the Dark Father which a child (particularly a son) carries inside of his own father.
With this new trilogy, the Darth Vader of the original Star Wars goes from being an eerie, mythic, evil knight to being a mere puppet on loan to Tarkin from the Emperor, a frightened man-boy still clinging to obedience to Palpatine as he has had nothing left to hold onto since the time of Revenge of the Sith. Leia's comments about who holds Vader's leash go from insult to accurate statement about his reputation as the eager dog to whoever gives his life meaning. His battle with Obiwan goes from two powerful mystic warriors at war to nothing more than an angry adolescent trying to kill the uncle he feels betrayed him by not protecting him enough or loving him enough.
Darth Vader in The Empire Strikes Back is no longer a Miltonian demon-king set free, as he had appeared when I'd seen the film in my late teens, but now is nothing more than a desperate angry youth finally seeing his chance to accomplish the adolescent power grasp he'd failed at in Revenge of the Sith. When The Empire Strikes Back first played, Darth Vader as Luke's Dark Father had record numbers of young men openly weeping at the movie theatre, often to the astonishment of accompanying girlfriends; it tapped into a dark malaise of warped father-son relationships which had been (and continues to be) plaguing our nation for decades, with Vader's revelation to Luke reminding the weeping young men of the Demon Father so many men had seen as children in their real life fathers. It was a powerful film for sons at a time of powerful films for sons. No one who sees Revenge of the Sith first will get such an impression from The Empire Strikes Back, however. Now, Darth Vader's revelation to Luke seems more like a fatherless boy trying to turn a son into a source of meaning.
In the second trilogy's interpretation of Darth Vader, there is no longer any catharsis of the Dark Father. There is no longer any redemption of the Dark Father by the son, nor any real transcension of inner evil, merely a frightened puppet choosing to obey Luke instead of Palpatine at the end -- there is only the Eternal Orphan and Eternal Victim left in Darth Vader now.
Darth Vader's redemption in Return of the Jedi seems less majestic now, and more that Anakin has simply killed off one more surrogate father and embraced death as the one escape from a life of tormented existential angst.
Let me put this more simplistically:
Darth Vader has gone from being a majestic challenge to being an abandoned child who only needed a really long hug to keep from turning evil.
In the original trilogy, the tale implies that Luke Skywalker becomes the epic hero by embracing the Jedi philosophy, rehabilitating the primary enemy of the Jedis while resisting powerful temptations, and bringing back the Jedis with their noble philosophy of ascetic self-confidence.
"Do or do not: There is no try."
"Trust your feelings, Luke!"
"I don't believe it!" "That is why you fail."
In the combined continuity of the original trilogy with this second trilogy, Luke Skywalker's epic heroism is reframed to be the result of his refusal of or transcension beyond the Jedi philosophy! Luke takes in their teachings, then promptly ignores their dictates against impulsiveness, attachement, and passion when he goes after the captured Han and Leia against Yoda's wishes, when he faces Darth Vader when told not to, and when he works towards redemption instead of execution. In the combined continuity, Luke inspires Anakin's salvation (salve = to heal) when he embraces attachement (father-son) and passion and enables Anakin to embrace those as well. In. Defiance. Of. Jedi. Teachings.
In Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, Lucas manages to deconstruct and defy the themes from his original trilogy.
Maybe this new theme works better today. It should be obvious that the film's message about how good people desperate for meaning can be destroyed by a charismatic leader and the self-abnegating petulance of traditional moral authorities can be applied to Bush supporters, Bush's charisma, and the uselessness of petulant churches who either fall under Bush's sway or render themselves impotent. And just as people in the 1960s through early 1980s were fascinated with the ascetic creeds of Jedi Knights and Star Trek Vulcans, so modern people have learned to distrust such emotionless approaches which enable otherwise-good men to talk about "acceptable casualties" and to whitewash conquest based on lies about W.M.D.s as necessary for "the Greater Good".
One might even argue that modern audiences identify more with the existential pettiness of the figures in the second trilogy, finding the aimless helplessness before forces beyond their control and authorities who never listen to be just as relevant to their Y2K lives as we had once identified with the mythic imagery and power in the original trilogy and found them relevant to our late-twentieth century lives.
Maybe.
None of that changes the disappointment.
Darth Vader is not Darth Vader any more, only a desperate adolescent in armor who never transcended his original trauma of loss and helplessness, a man who was born, lived, and died a slave for others. He is now merely a petty puppet cathartic only to those who feel orphaned and manipulated; there is no grappling with inner demons in this new trilogy, only with inner weakness.
Yes, it's only a movie. And a font of modern mythology. And an expression of father-son gender roles at one time in our nation's history. And a place of dreams.
The other films in the second trilogy should have been this good, but they weren't.
With Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, the Star Wars saga ends with an adolescent's whimper, not a bang.
(c) 30 May 2005 by W. Everett Chesnut
========================================