Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith

Our Review

The best of the prequels by a wide margin, and the only one that functions as an actual tragedy. Revenge of the Sith opens in the middle of a space battle above Coruscant and rarely stops to breathe, and for once the breathless pace serves the story: this is the film where everything falls apart on schedule. Anakin’s turn to the dark side had been the destination since 1999, and the horror is in how bureaucratic the fall feels. Palpatine doesn’t tempt him with evil. He offers safety, then order, then a favor, and by the time the mask comes down the kid who wanted to save his wife has strangled the Republic in its sleep.

The high points are real. The opening rescue is buoyant, the Order 66 montage, children of the Force cut down to a mournful score, is the most affecting sequence in all three prequels, and the opera scene where Palpatine retells the tragedy of Darth Plagueis is genuinely sinister chamber drama. Ian McDiarmid stops nibbling scenery and starts devouring it in the best way. Ewan McGregor gets the film’s one perfect line, You were my brother Anakin, I loved you, and the lava duel that follows finally earns its heat.

It still carries prequel DNA: the dialogue between the lovers remains leaden, some effects shots have aged into plastic, and the droid humor undercuts the doom. But as a bridge between trilogies it lands the melancholy the first two prequels fumbled. Seven out of ten, with respect for how hard an ending this was to stick.