Review of Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (2005) by Kevin R — 07 Oct 2018

Highly overrated film. For so many years ever since I was a 9-year-old kid, I loved this movie, but after watching Mr. Plinkett's review video of this movie on YouTube, I realize that this movie is actually bad. All of the characters in this movie are dumb, except for Darth Sidious/Palpatine. All the characters (except Palpatine) lack cohesive thoughts. The only reason I gave this a three star rating instead of a two and a half star rating is because Jar Jar Binks is barely in the movie, John Williams' amazing soundtrack, the entertaining action scenes, the attempt at emotional scenes, Ewan McGregor, Ian McDiarmid, and the movie just being fun (but that's it, it's just a fun movie, not a good movie). The CGI has not aged well. There is still too much overuse of CGI. The acting (mainly from Hayden Christensen and Natalie Portman) is a lot worse than I remembered. The Star Wars prequels are poorly made, poorly written, poorly directed, poorly acted, and poorly executed films. There are big continuity errors in this movie. Anakin wasn't seduced by the dark side, he was tricked into going to the dark side. In A New Hope, Obi-Wan said that Vader was seduced by the dark side. In Return of the Jedi, Leia told Luke that she remembered her birth mother and said that she was always sad. In Revenge of the Sith, after Padme gave birth to the twins Luke and Leia, she died a few seconds later with no explanation whatsoever. There is no logical way Leia could've remembered that. The Mace Windu vs. Palpatine lightsaber duel scene was badly choreographed and laughable. Darth Sidious should not have used a lightsaber in this movie. In Episode VI, he referred to a lightsaber as "a Jedi's weapon". That scene was so unintentionally hilarious that it looked like a parody/comedy. That fight scene was so stupid that it spawned so many memes. The acting and dialogue was so laughably bad that a bunch of the lines from that scene became memes. Mace Windu brought three Jedi Masters with him but all three of them got taken out so quickly and easily. The Jedi purge scene could've been emotional and great if we had known at least a few of the Jedi who died. None of them had any character development, so it was hard to feel any emotion when they died during the Order 66 scene. I know a lot of people are going to say that you have to watch The Clone Wars show to get emotionally invested in those characters, but if I have to watch a TV show to understand a movie and to feel emotions for the characters, then the movie fails. Movies need to stand on their own. I shouldn't have to rely on the lore to understand the prequels or any movie for that matter. The Star Wars prequels rely too much on the lore and The Clone Wars show for things that are never explained in the movies. It's been so many years since I watched Star Wars: The Clone Wars, so I can't remember any of the Jedi who died and can't get emotionally invested with the characters. Another huge problem with the Jedi purge/Order 66 scene is that it used far too much CGI and the visual effects did not even age well at all. Some parts of the scene literally looked like a video game cutscene. Obi-Wan said too many cheesy one-liners and some of them didn't even make sense. The dialogue in Episode III is still terrible and awkward like the previous prequels. Anakin and Obi-Wan's lightsaber duel with each other in the third act on Mustafar was ridiculously overchoreographed. The final battle went for too long and it kind of mostly feels like it was just them showing off their cool moves and stunts rather than having a realistic and emotional final battle. Also a lot of the acting (mainly from Christensen and Portman, but mostly Christensen) and dialogue (especially from Anakin) on Mustafar was so horrible that it was laughable and unintentionally hilarious. I felt like I was watching a comedy instead of a serious action/space opera film. And Darth Vader screaming "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO" at the end was extremely overdramatic and corny. Episode III ruined Darth Vader. Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith is definitely the best and most watchable of the Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, but it is still a pretty bad film. I can only now see this film as a guilty pleasure. Hence why I gave it a three star rating.

Rating: 4.8/10.