Review of Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (2005) by Victor T — 16 Dec 2015

After "Attack of the Clones", audiences were skeptical about the conclusion of the prequel trilogy, but when the film was released the word of mouth was that it was the best film of the whole prequel trilogy, and even some people considered it "a great addition to the saga". Is this an accurate description of "Revenge of the Sith"?

From the title itself you can perceive Lucas´ desperation to wrap-up the story, and the result of said desperation is the mess of a film that is "Revenge of the Sith". Again let's start by addressing the good elements: There is an actual story that has weight to the franchise, the CGI is vastly improved, the choreography is again impressive, my guiltiest pleasure in cinema (the action sequence in the senate room), and John Williams delivers the best score of the prequel trilogy. With the good out of the way, lets address the bad: The story is extremely rushed (this story should have been divided into "Clones"), unearned and extremely unsatisfying; it tries to get emotions out of you but it fails as you don't even know the name of most of its characters (and the scenes that involve the characters you know you just don't care as the overall trilogy made them uninteresting characters), the amateurish directing prevails, bizarre attempts at comedy, again an oversaturation of CGI, it completely relies on the EU when a movie needs to stand on its own or at least to the other films, an unnecessarily amount of sterile action sequences that try too hard to distract you from this mess of a story, an ending that desperately tries to emote some nostalgia in you, an insane amount of loose ends, probably the worst acting of the entire saga (since my review of "Star Wars", I said that I attribute this dreadful acting to Lucas´ directing, but with this film is either deadpan or extremely goofy), a surprising amount of unintentional comedy that actually made me laugh (I was in the floor laughing at the "unlimited power" scene), a surprisingly unfitting dark tone comparing to the kiddie first instalments, and Lucas tries too hard to make Shakespearean and Faustian parallels but they don't fit with this film.

"Revenge of the Sith" is undeniably the most enjoyable of the prequel trilogy but that doesn't make it good addition to the franchise. All the problems of this trilogy remain (I don't care how many action sequences or fancy CGI you throw at me, it doesn't distract me from the problems that the film contains). More entertaining but equally as bad.