The first half hour of ROTS is my least-favorite introduction of all of the SW films. The opening space battle scene has been praised by some due to the single-shot editing, but the camera work comes off corny and dated, and the entire scene is weighed down by bad dialogue between Obi-Wan and Anakin. Their arrival on the command ship is equally terrible, with poorly-staged action shots that strain credibility, like Obi-Wan’s “force gymnastics” ejection from the fighter and the stupid, fake-looking duel with Count Dooku. All of this is interspersed with awkward, forced attempts at humor which completely undermine the story.
Anakin’s “turn” to the dark side is probably one of the weakest payoffs to one of the greatest set-ups in motion picture history. Essentially, the question posed by the prequels is, “why did Anakin Skywalker turn to the dark side?” It’s an intriguing and worthwhile question to ask, but the prequel trilogy in general, and ROTS in particular, fails to answer this question in a satisfying way. While not explicitly stated, throughout various scenes the film offers up the suggestion that Anakin’s main weakness—and ultimate reason for his turn to the dark side—was that he simply couldn’t deal with loss, and that this weakness led him down a path of destruction.
This could have made for a very powerful and complex emotional drama, but Lucas’s writing is simply not up to the task, and what we get instead is a childish, blunt, and overly simplistic motivation for Anakin: I don’t want my wife to die. I want “special powers” so that she can live. I’ll kill anyone I have to kill to get them.
The problem I see with this, from an audience standpoint, is that it takes away any sympathy one might have had for the character of Anakin Skywalker and undermines the drama of his turn to the dark side in a major way. Loss, in and of itself, is a universal and very personal concept we can all relate to. But when Anakin goes to the over-the-top extremes he does to prevent it, it undercuts the drama by making him look less sympathetic than simply pathetic.