Revisiting Revenge of the Sith

Between a sprinkling of unwieldy subplots, a smattering of underwhelming supporting villains, and some absolutely toe-curling attempts by George Lucas at Shakespearean melodrama, Revenge of the Sith is far from perfect. It is sometimes a showcase of Lucas's worst tendencies as a filmmaker, a movie where women are beautiful because they are in love, and people die for no other reason than that they lost the will to live. But unlike the other two movies in the prequel trilogy, it rings with a timelessly tragic echo that resonates throughout its story, like a bell tolling for the imminent deaths of noble people and noble ideas. It is Macbeth with laser swords, haunted by a looming darkness that left the other two prequel movies relatively untouched. Through its near-spiritual ups and irritating downs, it is obvious that this is the Star Wars movie George Lucas has wanted to make for a long, long time. 

Everyone knows of Darth Vader's infamous I am your father twist from The Empire Strikes Back. This movie bridges the gap between the child Anakin Skywalker used to be and the monster he will become, and is by nature far more serious than either of the other two prequels. Anakin’s forbidden wife, Padme Amidala, is pregnant with his children, and Anakin is haunted by dreams of her dying in childbirth. He seeks out guidance to soothe his troubled soul, and while some of his mentors truly seek to guide him into the light, others hope to use him and his deeply-held fears for their own gain; who is who? That question is often easier to answer than I would have liked, but I respect the movie for asking it, nonetheless. 

There is a darkness that hovers over this final chapter of the Prequel Trilogy, a darkness that was absent from the previous two movies. I like it. Revenge takes itself more seriously, a refreshing change of pace that eliminates much of the camp that didn’t accomplish as much as Lucas had obviously hoped it would. I am relieved that he tonally course-corrected this trilogy, allowing a dark and mysterious story of espionage and betrayal to be just that: dark and mysterious.

What works best about it is the interpersonal drama between Anakin, Padme, and the mysterious Chancellor Palpatine, a major step up in quality from the inappropriately cheap and center-stage love story in Attack of the Clones. George Lucas drops a few cheesy lines trying way too hard to be meaningful here and there, because of course he does, but the rest of this movie is borderline Shakespearean, and though the acting and dialogue would have benefited from a few reshoots and rewrites, the editing and soundtrack serve its tortured love story extremely well. The interpersonal drama steals the spotlight in the movie’s second half, and that’s why the latter half is so much stronger than the former. Now, about the former.

Revenge of the Sith tries to pay off everything the previous two movies set up, and it unfortunately gets bogged down in subplots that don’t work towards that goal as much as it thinks they do. The first half of the movie is a long-winded search for General Grievous, a four-armed Separatist leader who serves no thematic purpose, walking around like a hunched-over nursing home resident and coughing like a smoking addict in a weird, half-hearted attempt at comic relief that also wants to be taken semi-seriously. This movie is really two movies: the second is the one Lucas wanted to make, and the first is the one he had to make to get there. Its characters, though treated with respect, can’t always sustain the depth Lucas desires.  

The raw performances in this movie mostly let it down, with Ewan McGregor’s Obi-Wan being one of the weaker links; his deadpan delivery of strangely humorous one-liners has been both the target and the beneficiary of countless memes. Though this is a tragic movie, its tragedy is mostly carried by its wonderful score and editing, not performances that would have benefited from better dialogue and an extra dose of nuance and tonal consistency. I don’t like how witty many of the lines in this movie try to be. It’s not that jokes in a Star Wars movie are anything new, just that I wish these ones were funnier and more natural. Some of this movie’s reveals don’t work either. It’s called Revenge of the Sith for a reason, and much of its focus is on the Jedi trying to track down a hidden Sith lord. I don’t like the twist surrounding his identity, if you can even call it that. The actor portraying this dark figure doesn’t play him in a way subtle enough to make the revelation land with much force. The truth is more like a slow, lukewarm stream trickling down to us than it is a sudden hammer blow of bombshells.

However, despite its imperfections, there is a somber cloud that hangs over this movie, whispers of a tragic conspiracy to wipe out an order that, while corrupted, had the good of the galaxy at its heart. There are a couple of fantastic lightsaber duels in the final act, duels injected with a sense of all-bets-off collapse and grandiosity that really makes you feel as though you are witnessing a turning point in the galaxy’s history. One is between Yoda and the hidden Sith Lord as they battle through the empty chambers of the Republic’s congress, and the other on a lava world between two Jedi who had once shared the love of brothers. Both are wonderfully staged with plenty of great chunks of every imaginable material for each of the combatants to throw at each other, and even if this movie does lack the polish of other Star Wars movies, it builds up to an explosive conclusion that answers a lot of questions about why the galaxy is the way it is in the Original Trilogy.

Revenge of the Sith is two movies back-to-back, with the second being the movie that Lucas had in mind when he wrote it, and the first being a load of filler that gets spooked and flies away in the face of darker, more emotionally challenging ideas. This movie so obviously tries to frame itself as a modern science-fiction epic, and at its best, it actually measures up to its own ambitions. Its stronger elements are both firm enough to make me wish that it had killed some of its more self-indulgent tendencies and firm enough to easily place Episode III at the top of the Prequel Trilogy, though I’ll leave the decision of how high a bar that is to clear up to you. It exists in a dark shadow that the rest of its trilogy doesn’t, a shadow where it seems you must either use others or be used by them.

 Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith - 7/10

Psalm 41:7-13