Prequel Month: Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (Dir George Lucas, 2h 20m, 2005)

Hello there.

Is Revenge of the Sith actually good? Not mimetically good, not ironically good, certainly not nostalgically good, but actually good. Certainly one cannot help but agree it is the best of the prequels. Whilst, hardly a high yard-stick, it's one that Sith crosses easily, as it portrays the fall of the Republic and the rise of the Galactic Empire, as Hayden Christensen's Anakin completes his fall to become Darth Vader, and kindly Chancellor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) reveals himself as the cackling mastermind behind the entire Clone Wars, seizes power, all but destroys the Jedi Order and becomes the Emperor, thus setting the gears in motion for the Original Trilogy. It is Star Wars on a grand, operatic scale, a film that at least starts to reach the heady heights of its cinematic forebears in both its sense of fun and gravitas, where the central trio of Palpatine, Anakin and Obi Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) lead a cast where every actor is, if not absolutely stellar, veritable light-years ahead of the stilted woodenness of the first two prequels.

Nostalgia, of course, rears its head, and whilst it's fair to consider all three films as subject to it to some degree, Sith is the film on whose head it rests heaviest. For, of course, Revenge of the Sith is released, unlike its predecessors, at a point where the still nascent internet was about to enter its Wild West phase, where the memetic, the ironic and the abhorrent rubbed shoulders daily. It's fair to say, thus, that the more upbeat tone, the stronger preponderance of one lines, of fun back into the Star Wars universe, in a film practically stuffed to the gunnels with quotable one liners, particularly from its central trio, together with this potent cocktail of a nascent social media and image boards...mutated Sith into what many consider it today; a film beloved, rather than respected, a fun, dumb sci-fi movie in which Shakespearean-trained actors quip one-liners at each other whilst flying spaceships, battling asthmatic cyborgs, and fighting each other on a volcanic planet.

I, myself, returning to cinemas for Revenge of the Sith (this time with my mother and younger brother in tow), have to agree to a degree. Sith is practically an apology in cinematic form in places, giving the Star Wars fans what they wanted (always a bad idea as the calamitous Rise of Skywalker has proved), a film in which Anakin is finally our focus, where the feel and fun and pace of the Original Trilogy is palpable from the opening seconds as Lucas risks a one-take shot opening as our heroes, aboard space-fighters, travel into battle in perfect sync to rescue Palpatine, to the closing seconds that perfectly close the saga off where it began, with an infant Luke, a binary sunset and the music of John Williams. Star Wars is fun again. Moreover, I do agree that this film's odd memetic legacy has given it a longer, stranger and almost post-modern afterlife, its cavalcade of one-liners taken out of context, used as amusing reactions, even endlessly remixed so that "I Have the High Ground" "Hello There" "I Am The Senate" and so on have drifted into the common arena, devoid, and yet, unmistakably ingrained into the colossal subculture that was and is Star Wars.

I dare to say, however, that Sith is a good movie. A great movie, one could even argue. It, of course, cannot live up to the original trilogy, and, whilst its charm easily outstrips both of the other prequels and Abrams' workmanlike duo, it falls short of Last Jedi, itself a portrait of a man conflicted between love and power, a performance by Adam Driver that cannot help but touch, in places, on Christensen's performance. But what makes it great is, in essence, its sum of parts, from Lucas finally matching the best direction of the trilogy to the inevitable forward drive of the fall of the Republic and Vader into darkness. For, at its centre, for all its memetic silliness, for all its fun, Sith is a tragedy, and Anakin Skywalker is a tragic hero; for inevitably, at the end of Sith, our hero must fall to become the black suited master of evil that is finally redeemed by finally rising up against the man he could not defeat, his master, Palpatine, at the end of Return of the Jedi.

This, in itself, gives the film a suitable narrative heft. We know the Jedi must fall, we know that Palpatine must rise, we know the Empire must rise, we know that Anakin must fall. Onto these bones, long-since placed at the business end of any Star Wars prequel, Lucas places perhaps his best writing, his best ideas, his best concepts. Sith, for one, is a surprisingly lean film; there is barely a scene wasted from the opening set piece that manages to remove one major villain, and introduce another during a daring rescue that barely lasts twenty minutes from opening crawl to "another happy landing" to its neat sign-off from its surviving major players in its last ten minutes.

Impressively, even scenes between Anakin and Padmé not only make the central couple a believable, empathetic romance, but proof that when Lucas pares his dialogue down to the bare essentials he makes more interesting scenes. Nowhere is this better seen than in the nigh silent, two minute sequence midway through the film, where, divided by the bulk of the city of Coruscant, Anakin and Padmé gaze out across the city towards each other's locations. Soundtracked only by Williams' score, a vocal and an ominous drone, it says more, wordlessly, as our heroes struggle with their feelings for each other, and with what they have to do, than could ever be imparted with even a few lines of dialogue. It is, even for Star Wars, a remarkable moment.

Equally remarkable is Anakin as a character. Gone is the complaining teenager of Clones, Anakin in Episode III is a remarkably no-nonsense, tough, pragmatic, and openly heroic figure; his relationship with Obi-Wan is wonderfully fleshed out in the opening set-piece, as they trade banter, support one another and, together, form a cohesive and formidable unit, that the film then spends its remaining run-time disassembling. Christensen plays the conflict in Anakin, between protective husband, Jedi Knight and general, and eventually villain, with supreme skill, little by little slipping closer and closer to the seductive form of evil that Palpatine represents. Much of this he does without even speaking; there are excellent shots where Lucas captures the turmoil on his hero's face, or, in one memorable scene, captures the shifting light and dark on Anakin's face as he recalls the nightmarish dreams of Padmé’s death that will eventually drive him into Palpatine's clutches and down into darkness.

Time and again the film shows Anakin's morality slipping-the iconography of Anakin, long-haired, a Luciferian, Byronic hero, and clad in black, against the white-garbed and positively Christ-like Obi-Wan, only compounds this, from his defence of Palpatine, his resignation to serving him as his new apprentice, to his Reifenstahl-esque march on the Jedi Temple and subsequent massacre of the innocents, to his slaughter of the former generals of the defeated Separatists, to his brutal attack on his wife, and horrific injuries at the hand of Obi Wan . We know Anakin is going to fall to darkness, because Lucas visually tells us, and as he falls, his performance grows all the grander, a dark, aggressive figure that, with the fury of the Sith behind him, his performance pared down to rage and chaos and darkness, becomes what might be the highlight of the film, if not for its warring forces, the light of Obi-Wan and the darkness of Palpatine

When McGregor, McDiarmid and Christensen are on screen, the film palpably jumps up a gear; the fact that all three share multiple scenes together, one of which features Christopher Lee in full form as the quickly dispatched Count Dooku, very much forms the backbone of the film, but each on their own, or as duos, do much of the film's heavy lifting, with McGregor and McDiarmid dialling their performances up and down wonderfully as the film's operatic, colossal scale requires. Obi-Wan, for his part, essentially carries on his sterling work from Clones, albeit, as the film storms to its volcanic final duel, a scene that is all the more desperate and brutal in its sundering of Anakin and Obi-Wan's relationship, with a heavier brow and the increasing gravitas of the collapse of everything he has ever known, the weight upon his shoulders as he is forced to destroy his friend, brother and apprentice, and his disappearance into decades-long exile.

And then there is Palpatine. Everyone puts in, it's fair to say, a decent performance in Sith, if not a career-best. Ian McDiarmid owns this film. It is, every second he's on screen, an absolutely riveting performance in which he springs with glee between scenery-chewing, roaring combat manic, and gloating, mastermind, slowly, seductively corrupting Anakin to the Dark Side, as, in a performance unrivalled in the Star Wars series (with the possible exception of the much older Palpatine in Return of the Jedi), he lays his plan, his phony-war that he has been masterminding, puppeteering both sides, with an absolutely effortless glee. It's arguable, perhaps giving Lucas too much credit in hindsight, that the prequels are actually about the rise of two force users from backwater planets to the ultimate power in the Galaxy; after all, Palpatine goes from mere senator to Chancellor to unopposed dictator across the trilogy, his rise to unassailable power happening, as Sidious's actions do, almost in stealth, in the background of the first two films of the trilogy.

Without a doubt, he's got the lion's share of the best scenes, from the beautifully shot, harrowing Order 66, in which, without dialogue, and with John Williams' music and Lucas's mastery of imagery at the fore, the Jedi are exterminated, to the gleefully messy, mimetically immortal fights between Sidious and the Jedi order, and later between Sidious and Yoda, to his final, gleeful, and utterly downplayed smirk of victory in the film's closing minutes. Yet. whilst the Opera House scene is a masterclass in his particular brand of villainy-at multiple points, you are forced to concede for all his villainy, as Luke later states in Last Jedi, the Jedi were doomed to failure-it's in the quiet, creeping horror of Anakin's confrontation of Palpatine, as, with dawning comprehension our hero realises his kindly, supportive mentor is the villain.

It is this moment of unmasking the effortless puppet-master who has manipulated not just the Jedi and the Republic but the Separatists as well that the film hinges upon; Throughout it all, Palpatine is calm, rational, almost warm, and yet his evil is seductive and absolute, the moment when he drops to the familiar throaty growl of the older Palpatine utterly chilling as he digs deep into Anakin's psyche, Christensen a sublime foil, the younger actor a ever-more conflicted, and eventually doomed young man, as Palpatine begins to reveal his hand, and inevitably corrupts him to the Dark Side. Here, Palpatine's power is, in great sweeping moments, perfectly depicted. He rules this film, utterly, from beginning to end, in a commanding, spectacular performance.

Revenge of the Sith thus, is a fitting finale to the trilogy, an impressively scaled, unquestionably operatic piece of cinema, in which suitably colossal performances from its hero and villain have long-since reached beyond mere cinema into a memetic afterlife. It is a film where its main creative force finally finds his voice again, in both the striking visual sensibility and the zippy, smart, fun narrative that takes our heroes from allies to adversaries as the Republic collapses around them. It is a tragedy in which an idealistic young man falls to darkness, seduced by power, and empty promises. More importantly, even back in the early 2000s, and even to a degree, now, it brings perhaps the greatest cinematic franchise back to its rightful place with a resounding, towering, and most importantly, entertaining, crescendo of a film.

Rating: Highly Recommended