The only ‘Star Wars’ movie Roger Ebert hated with a passion: “Has it come to this?”
Very few franchises in cinema history have been able to escape the law of diminishing returns, and Star Wars is no different. That said, mileage varies on which of the sci-fi saga’s multiple instalments deserves to be called the worst.
For a lot of people, it’s The Phantom Menace. After a decade and a half away from cinemas, George Lucas’ return to a galaxy far, far away made the first entry in the prequel trilogy the single most hotly anticipated blockbuster of all time before its release in the summer of 1999, and the response was polarising, to say the least.
For others, it’s Rian Johnson’s The Last Jedi. The backlash to the middle chapter of the sequel trilogy was vociferous, but there are just as many Star Wars supporters willing to defend it as one of the best. When it comes to one of pop culture’s most monolithic properties, opinions tend to vary. However, there was one that Ebert hated more than the rest, and it was the only one to receive a proper drubbing.
All things considered, Ebert was a pretty big Star Wars fan. He may not have attended conventions and fawning over the movies to the same extent as its most ardent backers, but his reviews were generally strong across the board. A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi each received the full four stars, so he clearly thought highly of the originals.
The Phantom Menace and Revenge of the Sith earned a solid three and a half stars, leaving Attack of the Clones the odd one out on a lowly two, which indicated that it was a perfectly average film by Ebert’s four-star metric. Only one Star Wars movie fared lower, and it was the franchise’s only theatrically released animated feature.
Sure, people can cry foul about including director Dave Filoni’s 2008 effort Star Wars: The Clone Wars as a part of the tapestry woven by episodes one through six, with Ebert passing away before The Force Awakens, The Last Jedi, and The Rise of Skywalker, but he was a critic who reviewed movies that were released in theatres, so he treated it no differently than any other Star Wars film.
“Has it come to this?” he asked in a 1.5-star review. “Has the magical impact of George Lucas’ original vision of Star Wars been reduced to the level of Saturday morning animation? Star Wars: The Clone Wars, which is a continuation of an earlier animated TV series, is basically just a 98-minute trailer for the autumn launch of a new series on the Cartoon Network.”
As happy as he was to see “the familiar Star Wars logo and the pulse-pounding John Williams score,” Ebert was crushed to discover that it opened “a deadening film that cuts corners on its animation and slumbers through a plot that makes us feel like we’ve seen it all before, and makes us wish we hadn’t.”
In his defence, he wasn’t alone. It’s the lowest-grossing and worst-reviewed Star Wars movie ever to see the inside of a multiplex, and unless something goes terribly wrong in the future, it’s hard to see those unwanted benchmarks being usurped by anything else.
