Review of Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (2005) by Lenny R — 17 Jun 2017

Looking at it objectively, this is actually the best of the prequels (though I prefer Attack Of The Clones). However, it's not without its flaws. Hayden Christensen is probably the biggest of those - but what're you gonna do? Ian McDiarmid actually manages to compensate for Hayden being even crapper than last time, by stepping up and pulling out one of the most surprising performances I've ever seen.

Forget the Darth Maul duel. Forget the podrace. Forget the Clone Battle in part II. The bubble-opera monologue scene is THE BEST SCENE in the trilogy, thanks to Ian's chilling delivery (apparently done while he was rotten with the flu!) of a genuinely brilliant piece of speechwriting from Mr Lucas (huzzah!).

It comes at a pivotal moment, being that at which Palpatine finally dangles the hook in front of Annie, and so it really makes the movie (for me anyway). The battles are all fantastic, but my favourite is the Yoda/Palpatine duel, which feels less video-gamey than the Obi/Annie showdown (those floating droids and platform things are silly).

There seems to be a bit of a mad rush at the end to tie everything up in a neat bow, but it would be tricky to get it to match A New Hope completely, I suppose. The biggest non-Christensen-related problem I have is the size of Padme's baby bump.

Someone as tiny as Nat would get freakin' ENORMOUS when carrying twins, particularly ones that look about six months old when they're born. Perhaps her uterus employs the same space-warping technology as Dr Who's Tardis.

But probably not. And a robot proclaiming that a person has "lost the will to live" is just ridiculous. Those problems aside, it's not too bad, really.