A LONG time ago, in a galaxy far far away (I think it was Clacton-on-Sea), a legion of impressionable young boys was seduced by the power of the Dark Side. They burst through the exits of the local cinema in 1977 waving imaginary light sabres and spent the next 28 years carving their way to jobs, families and tax bills. At infrequent intervals, they were reminded of how far they had drifted. Tortuous dispatches would arrive from the great Sith himself, George Lucas. These three-hour spectaculars were greeted like tablets from the proverbial mount. The very last one has just been delivered and the sigh of relief can be felt in planets as distant and strange as Cardiff.

Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith is the damp anti-climax that critics have been denying carefully for years. The acting is ghastly, the dialogue totters by on stilts, and that life-changing ending — long promised by Lucas when he finally made a commitment to shooting the whole back-story — is simply non-existent. I’m actually lost for words: amazed that I’ve held a candle so long for so little; and appalled by how irrelevant this marathon enterprise has become.

The story, as such, is this. A grumpy Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen) is the great white hope of the Jedi knights, and the secret lover of Natalie Portman’s Queen Padmé. The drama is how this precocious young buck is transformed by Ian McDiarmid’s corrupt Chancellor into Darth Vader.

It’s like watching sweets being stolen from a child. Or acting by numbers. Anakin feels underappreciated. His evil new mentor promises power beyond his wildest dreams, and the hero folds like a piece of paper.

Background

• It was 30 years ago today...

• Their future in the stars

• That Frodo Skywalker ...somehow it rings a bell

• George Lucas and Luke Skywalker reunited

• Geeks baring rifts - Star Wars on the web

Background

• Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith

• 1977: The original Times review

• 1977: Alec Guinness talks about Star Wars

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Star Wars: The Exhibition

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The dressing, of course, is sensational. Lucas clearly knows nothing about acting, or actors, but he clings to his childish faith in special effects. There are sparkling blue electricity fights, and severed limbs are two-a-penny. Faces crinkle like walnuts. The starship battles are state-of-the-art, but there is no rhyme or reason why they begin or end.

It’s the sideshows that remind you how silly it all is. Ewan McGregor’s Obi-Wan Kenobi has acquired a public school hair-parting on his hikes across the universe, and a stentorian gravitas that would embarrass a monk. He’s about the only actor who seems to enjoy himself. After the original Star Wars trilogy, there isn’t much potential for suspense. The fatal flaw is that Lucas has never found a way around that problem.

Lucas broke the B-movie mould when he made the first three episodes of Star Wars. They were arguably the biggest event movies since the 1950s. There was a taboo romance between a spookily gifted brother and sister; a slapdash, oversexed mercenary called Han Solo; and a casual cynicism about intergalactic politics that chimed sweetly with the unsettled times. Unfortunately, time has done nothing to season Lucas’s world view.

His appetite and understanding of cinema technology is probably second to none — but he has matured like Michael Jackson. His latest screen apostles are bubble-wrapped, or distressingly plastic. The swashbuckling antics are dismally two-tone. The biblical gobbets about the Force ring hollow. And I suspect a significant proportion of those boys he seduced a long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, are pruning the roses and sweating over Gardeners’ Question Time.

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