I just saw Star Wars Episode III for the second time. The opinion of the pundits, so far, seems to be that the movie succeeds in spite of itself. I have to agree with that. We as a culture are emotionally invested in George Lucas’ saga. We already know that the cute, mildly annoying kid from Episode I devolves into one of the most captivating movie villains ever. We also know, based on our experience with Episodes I and II, that the movie is going to be a letdown in many ways. But there we are, bouncing in our seats and silently yelling at poor Anakin to Turn Back While He Still Can. Just like in Titanic, we know the inevitable will happen. Rubberneckers that we are, we watch anyway. Twice, in my case.

I don’t really aspire to be a movie critic. I usually have to read other reviews before I make up my own mind. Others have sufficiently beaten the dead horse of Lucas’ dialogue. There are bones to pick about the pacing and acting — but I’ll leave that stuff to the pros. McGregor and Christensen, though, did a fine job mimicking the speech patterns of Alec Guinness and James Earl Jones respectively. Christensen even resembles Mark Hamill circa Episode VI.

Plotwise, I thought Anakin’s downward spiral could have been drawn out a little longer. We cheer for him in Episode I’s pod race, but find him insufferable and whiny in Episode II. He seems to have his act together (if a little misguided) for the first two-thirds of Sith. However, because the end happens so suddenly, the audience feels more sympathy for Anakin than he probably deserves. Palpatine tricked him, Obi-Wan abandoned him, Windu alienated him and Yoda blew him off. It’s like Lucas is trying to absolve him of responsibility for his own actions. But the tragic hero has to take some of the blame. We need to hate him a little, and not just for his whining in Attack of the Clones.

Speaking of Episode II, let’s toss it out and replace it with the expanded first half of III. Most of Clones is just exposition for Palpatine’s plotting, anyway. That would allow for the events in the final thirty minutes of Sith to be paced out better. In particular, I’d have loved to see more pre-mask Vader. So let the big showdown with Obi-Wan build up over weeks or months of plot time, as a mullet-haired, red-eyed Anakin spews angst across the galaxy. Once the mask goes on, his character development is done until Episode VI.

After all the nitpicking, the question I’d like answered is this: Why does the movie work despite all its faults? Why are we gripped by the last thirty minutes, despite the clunky lines and stiff acting? I think it all comes down to the Big Moment. We have to see Anakin dumped in the lava, and we have to see the mask donned. How the Big Moment is implemented, in detail, is not that important. The Star Wars macro-story transcends the script. Now that the macro-story is complete, we have to go check it out for ourselves, to get closure.

We’ve heard for years that Star Wars is really about Anakin. I went home and watched A New Hope on DVD to see if I perceived it any differently. Sure enough, it really hit home this time that Vader — his rise, fall and redemption — is the story. Luke, Han and company are the epilogue. I’ve always loved the idea of a nice round nine Star Wars movies. It seems to me now, though, that the story has been told, the gap closed.

Lucas came up with a killer framework for his myth. The books, games and action figures sold will number in the thousands. Fox will eventually crank out a third Star Wars trilogy, with or without Lucas. They’d be fools not to. But the framework is not the point. I think Lucas (for all his faults) understands something that Tolkien (for all his gifts) never did: it’s nifty to build your own universe, but that universe should serve the story. Not the other way around.

I started this post convinced that building a universe — in a series of doorstopper novels — was something I would love to do. I enjoy the writers that are good at it: Tolkien, Robert Jordan, George R.R. Martin, J.K. Rowling, Asimov’s Foundation series, and others. But the brilliance of Star Wars is not the universe alone, but the macro-story: the myth that resonates with us even if it’s not so deftly told. We’ll still tune in to see what happens next.

Appendix: a couple of “what were they thinking?” rants, because I just have to get them off my chest.

• What was the point of the whole General Grievous subplot? The only thing Obi-Wan accomplished by riding around on a big lizard is the sale of big lizard action figures.

• I almost laughed out loud when Palpatine’s face melted. He has to be pushing a hundred by the time we see him in Return of the Jedi. Isn’t that (plus a hundred years of smoking the Dark Side crack) enough to ugly up his face? The lousy makeup job almost ruined the dramatic climax of the movie.

• Space-geeky nitpick: While crash-landing Grievous’ cruiser, Anakin says “Now we’re really picking up speed!” during reentry. Any freshman physics student could have told George that spaceships slow down when they hit the atmosphere. They’re going thousands of miles per hour and then they start plowing through air. That’s where the heat comes from. It’s called friction, George. Look it up.

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