GingerNinja.net

I’ve just gotten home after watching Revenge of the Sith and what can I say that hasn’t already been said? In a word - Wow.

This film is fantastic. I will not spoil the plot anymore than the press already has except to say that I felt that ROTS was extremely successful in tying up all the loose ends that needed to be dealt with in order to merge into Episode 4 - A New Hope. I also liked the little touches such as some of the direct parallels in action and plot between ROTS and The Empire Strikes Back.

My only personal bone of contention was with a scene in the council chambers during the fall of Anakin which involves some younglings which I didn’t enjoy - an unfortunate side-effect of being a Dad, I’m afraid. Having said that, I do feel that this scene was needed in order to demonstrate what a decent into evil madness Anakin takes. This said, ROTS is far better than the other prequels and some of my fellow cinema-goers even felt that it was the best one of the six films. This is praise indeed for George Lucas who has so far come under attack from many die hard fans of the original trilogy who felt cheated by The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones.

I read over at Rotten Tomatoes that during the recent Celebration III, a fan had the guts to ask George Lucas why the Prequels were all rubbish compared to the Original Trilogy. In response, Lucas talked about how the first act of a play and the first chapters of a book are always boring because their exposition - they set up the rest of the story - and compared the prequels to that. Even more interesting, though, Lucas said that when he originally wrote the SW story, the prequels amounted to about 20 pages. 20% of that got used in TPM (with the rest of the movie made up - Lucas called it a jazz riff on the main plot), 20% in AOTC (with more filler), but fully 60% of the prequel plot is contained in ROTS.

This would explain a lot if you take the all of the films together, which is what Lucas intended. The original trilogy worked slightly differently as Lucas wasn’t entirely certain the Empire and ROTJ would ever be made, hence why ANH can stand alone as a film in its own right.

Ask me how I rank all the films now (as Empire was my favourite so far)? I don’t know as I would need to see ROTS again in order to be certain, but I will say this:

Do not download this film from the internet - buy a ticket and go and see it on the big screen. It will probably be your last chance to see Star Wars in the cinema so enjoy it while it lasts.