Force-Full Weekend

Nick and I lined up for the midnight show of The Revenge of the Sith late Wednesday. A few adolescents prowled the entrances in Sith capes and Vader masks, and one fellow whiled away the wait with his laptop in the theatre auditorium. Every preview shown before the film — a staggering eight — drew groans from the crowd, who applauded as the movie started. The geek factor was set on high, but not Rocky Horror Picture Show level. Despite a few bleary-eyed moments for this viewer just past his 48th birthday, the movie lived up to its hopes: The first Star Wars sequel to stand in the same rank as the original three movies. It surpassed Jedi, was a little better than Star Wars, and made a good attempt at catching the depth and character nuance of Empire.

It's earned a Megacritic rating of 68 so far, well above the 50-ish ratings of the three movies after Empire. Salon and the New Yorker were appalled at the film, but plenty of other top-line critics think George Lucas broke through with this one, at last.

Lucas has delivered a movie that doesn't care what the younglings think of it. Sith is no exercise in toy marketing, like Phantom Menace. It doesn't muff the character possibilities like Attack of the Clones did in its ill-trimmed romance scenes. It's dark and scary in plenty of places, with a few moments that make you feel just how low Anakin Skywalker falls to become Darth Vader. John Williams unreels a score that manages to strike new notes in themes he has mined in five other movies. Not a small feat. 61-year-old Ian McDiarmid steals every scene he's in as the Emperor, something you'd expect if you knew he's a theatre actor and director. Frank Oz shows us how powerful an actor's vocals can make an animated character, spark that springs Yoda like a lithe Jedi saber-wielder.

If only we could restrain Lucas from writing dialogue. Nothing's perfect, but the wooden, preachy lines remain a disturbance in his force. He still hasn't regained the courage to hire somebody like Leigh Brackett, the 65-year-old sci-fi novelist and Rio Bravo screenwriter who co-wrote Empire, then died before the movie was released. Her last project earned her a posthumous Hugo Award for the film. Although Star Wars and Jedi also earned Hugos, Episodes I and II weren't even nominated.

The story was good enough to drive me back to my VCR at home to look at the film that follows this one in chronology, Star Wars. Sith made the earlier film even more entertaining, which I think is a tribute to the character work in the new movie. Lucas hadn't done character work in many of his other movies. The brilliance of Empire came from the pen of screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan and director Irvin Kershner. Lucas was busy setting up Lucasfilm while Empire was being made.

Making a better movie than his last two installments is going to earn Lucas a windfall compared to the Episode I and II box office. Nick and I helped Sith to a $16 million total for the midnight showings alone. It's broken box office records and left its creator with money enough for producing the remaining three films, though we'll probably have to wait for those until sometime during the next decade. With Hollywood so desperate for stories that it's remaking slight vehicles like The Dukes of Hazzard, the force of Star Wars will be with us, always. Lucas, after all, is only 61, and shows no signs of slowing down, opening up a vast new studio complex on the site of the old US Army base at the Presidio. After this weekend's force, he could probably pay cash for the whole new complex.