*Caution: This review contains spoilers for both the prequel and original Star Wars trilogies. But if you don’t know the story of Star Wars by this point, well, I don’t know what to tell you.*

By the time 2005 came around, fans were burnt out on the Star Wars prequel trilogy. The disappointment of The Phantom Menace was massive enough, but when Attack of the Clones fell flat and two-thirds of the trilogy left fans sour, the excitement had extinguished. Combine that with the fact that the infinitely superior Lord of the Rings trilogy had been released around the same time, and expectations for the final installment of the Star Wars prequels were low.

When Revenge of the Sith was released in May of 2005, many were surprised to find it a marked improvement over its two predecessors, with some even comparing it favorably to the original trilogy. The latter may be a bit of a stretch, however. Revenge of the Sith, despite having a clearer focus and better narrative than the preceding prequels, still suffers from a number of their same faults.

Set three years after the events of Attack of the Clones, Revenge of the Sith begins in the midst of the Clone Wars. Jedi Knights Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) and Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen) are sent on a mission to rescue Supreme Chancellor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid), who has been kidnapped by Separatist forces.

The two Jedi infiltrate the flagship of General Grievous (Mathew Wood), a cyborg leader of the Seperatists’ droid armies, where they once again encounter Count Dooku (Christopher Lee). The Jedi do battle with the Sith lord, and during the fight Obi-Wan is knocked unconscious, when Anakin manages to disarm Count Dooku in a most literal fashion. With his opponent defeated, Anakin – at the behest of the chancellor – decapitates Count Dooku (in a little over the thirteen-minute mark, making Dooku yet another underutilized Star Wars villain). Anakin rescues Obi-Wan and Palpatine, but Grievous manages to escape.

When the Jedi return to Coruscant – the capital planet of the Republic – Anakin is confronted by his (secret) wife, Padmé Amidala (Natalie Portman), who reveals she is pregnant. The Jedi Council sends Obi-Wan Kenobi on a mission to track down Grievous, while Palpatine – who has become a dictator in all but name by this point – appoints Anakin as his personal representative and informant on the Jedi Council. Though the council allows Anakin to join them, they do not grant him the rank of Jedi Master. Distrusting the chancellor, the Jedi Council then assigns Anakin to report Palpatine’s actions back to them. All the while, Anakin begins to have visions of Padmé dying during childbirth, similar to the visions he had of his mother before her death.

With his mentor Obi-Wan gone, his faith in the Jedi Order shaken by the council’s distrust of his friend Palpatine and what he perceives as a lack of confidence in himself by his peers, as well as his nightmarish visions, Anakin is at a loss. It’s at this point that Supreme Chancellor Sheev Palpatine reveals his secret to Anakin: he is the Dark Lord of the Sith, Darth Sidious. And with his knowledge of the dark side of the Force, he may hold the power to prevent the death of Anakin’s beloved Padmé.

What’s great about Revenge of the Sith is that it’s a much-more focused movie than either of its preceding episodes, and it makes an honest-to-goodness attempt to get the series back to its roots, while also trying to make it more thematically mature. It isn’t always successful, mind you, but Revenge of the Sith’s attempts to recapture the magic of the original Star Wars trilogy shine through enough to make it a more worthwhile effort than either Phantom Menace or Attack of the Clones.

The film opens with a genuinely exciting space battle, which is then followed by equally exciting scenes of lightsabers slashing through droids and, finally, the aforementioned duel with Count Dooku. It’s almost as if the film’s high-octane opening moments are a kind of apology on the part of George Lucas for the profuse amount of scenes involving debates that slowed down its two predecessors.

Granted, the political stuff is still present, but it doesn’t feel so needlessly in the way of the action and adventure the series is known for this time around. Naturally, Revenge of the Sith focuses on Palpatine’s master plan coming to fruition, and sees him ultimately dismantling the Galactic Republic and creating the Galactic Empire. It’s all necessary to the plot and never feels like it drags on this time around.

Of course, the big story at play here is the downfall of Anakin Skywalker and the birth of Darth Vader. The film takes a number of dark, dramatic turns, especially once Palpatine instructs the execution of the Jedi, with Anakin himself carrying out a good deal of it. Of all the Star Wars features, Revenge of the Sith remains the most (appropriately) bleak of the lot. There is, however, one major issue with the fall of Anakin and the rise of Vader…

Hayden Christensen still can’t act!

Okay, so Christensen’s performance may have improved marginally since Attack of the Clones, but it still puts a hamper on what would otherwise be a well told story. And no, Natalie Portman still couldn’t be bothered to put in the effort. So once again, the emotional core of the prequel trilogy still falls dead-flat because the relationship at the center of the story just doesn’t click.

Thankfully, the acting is better elsewhere, with Ewan McGregor still holding things together, and Frank Oz’s vocal performance as Yoda is still memorable. On the interesting side of things, Ian McDiarmid seems to completely ham it up this time around. I don’t mean that as a negative, though. There’s a comical, intentional sense of overacting from McDiarmid in this third prequel outing that makes this film’s depiction of Palpatine feel different from his other appearances. I don’t know if it was the reception of the two preceding films that lead McDiarmid to throw caution to the wind, or if he just decided that since this film saw the transition of Chancellor Palpatine to the evil Emperor we first saw in Return of the Jedi, that he should do something different with it. Either way, the end results of McDiarmid’s take on the character in Revenge of the Sith are inarguably entertaining.

The film is also highlighted with a number of fun action sequences. I’ve already addressed the first fifteen or so minutes with its space battles and lightsaber duels, but Revenge of the Sith features a number of other, equally entertaining action scenes. Obi-Wan’s showdown with General Grievous, though admittedly silly at times, is a lot of fun. And the final two lightsaber duels – one between Obi-Wan and the newly-turned Darth Vader, and the other between the two most powerful Force wielders in the series, Yoda and Darth Sidious – are among the best in the franchise (though Yoda welding a lightsaber still looks a bit silly, at least his fight ends up being more Force-driven this time around).

It’s because of these elements – as well as a captivating last few minutes that sees the events of the original trilogy set in motion  (Owen and Beru Lars taking in baby Luke as Obi-Wan goes into hiding on Tatooine; the haunting image of Palpatine, Vader and Governor Wilhuff Tarkin overseeing construction of the Death Star) – that elevate Revenge of the Sith well above the other two entries of the prequel trilogy. With that said, Episode III isn’t quite a return to form.

Along with Christensen and Portman’s acting (or lack thereof), George Lucas’s infamous writing rears its ugly head once again in a very bad way. Though we are mercifully spared of any monologues about sand, some moments that should be dead serious can come across as unintentionally humorous because of the writing. When Obi-Wan confronts his former friend on the fiery planet of Mustafar, the former Anakin Skywalker proclaims that “if you’re not with me, then you’re my enemy.” To which Obi-Wan retorts “Only a Sith deals an absolute.” (a statement which, in itself, is very much an absolute). Moments later, when Obi-Wan tries to reason with Anakin that “Chancellor Palpatine is evil” the latter comes back with “From my point of view the Jedi are evil!” Well yeah, we figured that, Anakin. If he believe Palpatine were evil and still believed the Jedi were good, why would he be doing what he’s doing at this point? The audience is smart enough to pick these things up without having the characters literally shout them, George…

Yet another drawback that’s carried over from the past two episodes is the weird “villain of the week” scenario with the antagonists. Count Dooku was built up pretty strongly in Attack of the Clones before he actually showed up in the film’s third act. Though his screen time was minimal, we assumed he’d have a bigger role this time around. But as mentioned, he’s cleared out of the picture before we even hit the fifteen-minute mark. Then we have General Grievous, a character who is introduced as the “action villain” of the movie, who then spends most of his time on-screen running away from the action. And when he finally does battle with Obi-Wan, revealing a second set of arms, he acts like a total doofus and gets his extra limbs lopped off almost instantly, and is then abruptly killed a few moments later.

What’s weird is that George Lucas has admitted he wanted to go this route with the villains in the prequels. But that begs the question as to why? The same series that brought us arguably the most iconic movie villain ever in Darth Vader suddenly decides its villains aren’t worth developing into memorable characters? I don’t get it.

This goes back to a mistake in The Phantom Menace that, if avoided, could have benefitted the entire prequel trilogy greatly: Darth Maul shouldn’t have died in his first appearance, and should have been in all three prequels! Maul had a great look that set him apart from Darth Vader, and had all the makings of being an iconic villain in his own right. It would have made for a more fluid narrative if Maul – the villain who killed Qui-Gon, a man Anakin idolized – had been the one destined to fall to Anakin Skywalker as Palpatine’s apprentice.

I like Count Dooku, and Christopher Lee is always a bonus, but he never really seemed like a villain who needed to be a Sith, and was seemingly only made into one because Maul got killed off and every villain in the prequels needed to use lightsabers apparently. Plus, it kind of undermines Palpatine’s determination to turn Anakin to the dark side if the Dark Lord of the Sith goes through apprentices like they’re going out of fashion. And why does General Grievous even exist other than to have a new “badass looking bad guy” after Maul and Jango Fett bit the dust? The prequels would have felt more cohesive if they featured at least one consistent villain of their own.

Once again, the visual effects are a bit of a mixed bag. I don’t have a problem with CGI, but there’s something about it here in the prequel trilogy that feels overdone. Some of the creatures and locations look great (like Mustafar, which is essentially the final level of a Super Mario game turned into a planet), but others don’t hold up too well (the Clone Troopers don’t look any better here than in Attack of the Clones). On the bright side, the soundtrack is an improvement over that of its immediate predecessor, and features some of the more memorable tracks in the series, which is saying something.

Sadly, there are bigger demons of The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones that are still at play in Revenge of the Sith. Namely, the same kind of strange creative decisions that alter the original trilogy, including some glaring plot holes.

The biggest inconsistency still being why C3-P0 is not remembered by anyone by the time the original trilogy takes place. C3-P0 gets his memory wiped by the end of things, but that doesn’t explain why no one remembers him. This situation is made even stranger in Revenge of the Sith by the fact that R2-D2 does not get his memory erased.This essentially means R2 knows that Darth Vader is Luke’s father, that Leia is his sister, and knows pretty much everything else that’s happened up until now, but never tells anyone because reasons. So I guess R2 is retroactively the Galaxy’s biggest jerk for not telling Luke any of this.

Another unfortunate plot hole is made for Return of the Jedi. In Episode VI, Princess Leia remembers the little she can of her mother to Luke (remembering that she was “very beautiful, kind, but sad”). Except here, we find out that Padmé died about a minute after giving birth to Leia. So who knows how Leia remembers her mother – both in looks and personality -when she only saw her for a brief second as a newborn infant.

Normally, plot holes can be forgiven, but considering these three movies were long-gestating prequels to a well-established narrative, the fact that so many glaring plot holes for the original trilogy are created in the prequels gives the impression that George Lucas didn’t even re-watch his own movies to polish up the story and make a proper connection between trilogies.

To add insult to injury, we also get another instance of the Star Wars Galaxy feeling really, really small and condensed. It’s not as bad as Anakin building C3-P0, but it’s still a bit silly. This particular instance involves Yoda fighting alongside none other than Chewbacca on the Wookies’ homeworld of Kashyyyk. I can accept a cameo of Chewbacca during the fight, but when Yoda blatantly acknowledges him as an an old friend, it’s just another “wow, really?” moment.

Still, I have to admit that these elements aren’t nearly as bad as those featured in the past two films. But it would have been nice if Revenge of the Sith could have avoided these pitfalls, considering all the improvements it makes to its predecessors elsewhere.

Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith may not have completely redeemed the prequel trilogy, but at least it ended it on a (relatively) high note. It feels different from the other Star Wars films, due to its darker content, but it works in the end. If the entire movie were as good as the last few wordless minutes, Revenge of the Sith may have been one of the best Star Wars features. As it is, well, it’s the best of the prequels, anyway.

 

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