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Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith Starring Hayden Christensen, Ewan McGregor, Natalie Portman, Ian McDiarmid, Samuel L Jackson and Frank Oz as the voice of Yoda.

Written & directed by George Lucas.

Genre: Drama / Sci-Fi.

Released: 2005.

Running time: 140 mins.

Rated: PG-13 (American rating for sci-fi violence and some intense images).

A long, long time ago (but not in a galaxy far away) I wrote an article for The Cheers called ‘George Lucas Has Gone Soft’. You’ll probably still be able to find it somewhere in the archives, if you’re interested (but it was so poorly written, I very much doubt you will be).

In the article, I essentially put forth my case of how fatherhood and age had transformed Lucas from a revolutionary and daring filmmaker into a middle-of-the-road conservative, using the disappointing Star Wars prequels and the perplexing changes made to the original trilogy as my evidence.

I ended the article with this:

“…[Lucas] has said many times over that the upcoming Episode III will be the darkest of the Star Wars films. Whether that will make this film worth seeing, as opposed to the last two, is anyone’s guess.”

Well, over a year later and Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith is being released. So how does it stand up? Does it further condemn Lucas has an artist whose lost his touch, or does it do the unimaginable and rescue the Star Wars prequels from being completely laughable?

Yes and no.



To start with, I have to say how surprised I was to get an invite to a preview screening for Revenge of the Sith, let alone a preview screening being held a week before its release. Being a reviewer for an independent radio station, I’ve made peace with the fact that I’m not going to get invited to the bigger event films all that often. But whether it was through my pestering the distributor or because 20th Century Fox feels like they need all the buzz they can get, I managed to score my invite.

I was both excited and sceptical. I didn’t want to get my hopes up too high. After all, they’d been dashed by both the previous films. I have to admit, however, when I showed up for the screening to see Darth Vader and the Emperor patrolling the cinema lobby with a couple of Imperial Guards, I kind of geeked out a little, and my excitement grew.

Of course, there’s nothing like sitting in your cinema seat and hearing that booming music as the title card comes up and tells you you’re watching a new Star Wars film. The fact that it was for the last time made it even more bittersweet. I just hoped that I’d like what I was about to see.

The opening scene, a space battle taking place just outside Coruscant’s atmosphere, is a stunning display of exhilarating action and special effects wizardry. For all the previous films in the prequel trilogy, we’ve been hearing the Lucasfilm company line of how marvellous the CG imagery is. This is the first time I’ve ever really believed that. I don’t know how the people at ILM managed it, but there’s such a sense of space and gravity in that scene that it immediately hooks you, and hope begins to foster that maybe, just maybe, this will be a Star Wars film worth watching.

That hope only grows stronger throughout the course of the film. Lucas has left a lot of loose threads to tie up in this episode, and because of that there’s not much time for anything but plot. There are also no new characters that need to be developed (aside from a stock bad guy here and there), nor any romance that needs to be generated, so for the most part we’re spared the painfully contrived dialogue of the two previous films. It still rears its ugly head here and there – pretty much in almost every scene dealing with Anakin and Padme – but for the most part the interaction between the characters is smooth and natural.