Review: Revenge Of The Sith

Sad to end the prequel trilogy on this note but Revenge Of The Sith was frankly the least enjoyable film I watched of the bunch.

Unlike other films, which pleasantly surprised me with their level of quality, Revenge Of The Sith simply had beats I was looking forward to and a lot of dead air in between.

I think part of it is that even the cast was feeling fatigued at this point. Coming out in 2005 with Phantom Menace premiering in '99, I'd wager at least six years of their lives were dedicated to films they had less and less investment in. Natalie Portman seems like she's phoning in all but one scene and I can't blame her because a previously kick-ass Padme is turned into kind of a background damsel in this film.

The core of the film, Obi-Wan and Anakin's fallout, is perhaps the strongest part and the scenes on Mustafar are genuinely where the film hits its strides but it was surprising how tempted I was to just... Skip to the good bit. From Anakin's actual turn to that climactic conversation requires almost an hour of long investigation and betrayal and logistics that I'd actually yelled out "Go cut that man's legs off already!" at my screen.

And it is a lengthy experience, a 2-hour 20-minute film which feels like 3. It's not the longest Star Wars film, The Last Jedi is 2 hours and 32 minutes and Attack of the Clones is actually a longer film at 2 hours 22 minutes but this is the one which I felt could be tightened up the most. Personally, I think below 130 minutes is the best length for a Star Wars film but your mileage may vary.

It's not unwatchable but if anything, I'd say skim the progress bar on this one. It's kind of predictable and it really feels like it's just going through the motions, so rather than sit through minutes of fluff, it's best to be your own director here.

And that concludes it. Six films, two trilogies, and it's not like I came out with some grand revelation. I actually don't really feel more or less love for the series at the end, and while there were some pleasant surprises the most poignant thing I can say about Star Wars is that it consistently plays out like commercial genre fiction, and for what it is... That's fine. I think we keep trying to attach this grand narrative to Star Wars when in truth, it probably has more in common with contemporaries than people would like to admit. Influence might make for a legacy and intrigue but when you get down to brass tacks, what you're left with is a set of above-average fantasy films that use the aesthetics of science fiction to tell a straight-up heroes tale.

And I think that because of that, we shouldn't take it too seriously.