A Look Back At Revenge Of The Sith (2005)

Written on April 28th, 2025, by Rami Abuhamra.

It was only 20 years ago when George Lucas completed his Star Wars saga. This was it, the film that will tie all the loose ends and bridge the gap between the two trilogies. Upon release, the film did get mixed to positive reviews, but still suffered from all those "prequel haters" and critics, with their somewhat big heads, to compare each new Star Wars film to the original trilogy. Fortunately, the movie still did very well at the box office, merchandise sales, and a great fan reception.

Now we're in 2025, 20 years after the film released, and when I look back at the film, I relalized that there is a lot to take in and talk about. Upon writing this, I just got back from watching this in the cinema with some friends. It's not like I haven't seen it, I just thought, I may not ever get a chance like this ever again, so I went and saw the film in the cinema.

This film holds up well 20 years later, with a few things not aging well. George Lucas did a great job setting up everything in Revenge of the Sith with The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones. Anakin is at the point where he can fall to the dark side. It's quite a tragic fall, because it wasn't because he was "evil" he just was badly manipulated and groomed by Palpatine, who he lend towards as a father figure, ever since he arrived at the Temple. This makes him a tragic hero and Hayden Christensen does a great job convincing us that Anakin is a tragic hero.

Speaking of Christensen, the cast for this film also gave good performances, even Anthony Daniels, who is given less to do in this movie. Although one thing did hurt their performances by just a tiny bit, and that's some of the dialogue. George Lucas wrote the screenplay, with some uncredited writers helping with rewrites, including Christopher Neil, who served as a dialogue coach. He was suggested to Lucas by his long time friend, Francis Ford Coppola. While each person did their best, some of the dialogue in the movie still wasn't the best. In the beginning of the film, like the first half hour, or less, the dialogue was good, but as the movie went on, the dialogue slowly started to get pretty wooden. I've gotten used to it at this point, but it still doesn't stop me from cringing a bit. But's just a small criticism.

Something that genuinely surprised me was the pacing. The last time I saw Revenge of the Sith in full was maybe over five years ago, I can't remember. But I was shocked to see how fast the movie went by. The movie is like 2 hours and 20 minutes, but it felt like I was only sitting for half an hour. There was so much happening, but it wasn't to the point where I felt like it was too much.

I remember a lot of people saying how poorly the prequels will age because of George Lucas' overreliance of CGI. I didn't see much of a problem with the CGI. In some instances, the CGI looked pretty rubbery, but that's only when something was far, out of focus, or in the frame for a few seconds. The amount of work spent on the CGI must've been months. The whole movie was shot in a bluescreen. I felt like it made more sense because a lot of scenes were in spaceships, board-rooms, and unknown locations. While it may seem that the film was fully CGI, there were still plently of pratical effects used. Which include model work, makeup effects, and some shots filmed in real life locations as backgrounds. For example, on Mustafar, the volcano you seen in the background was real. Mt. Etna in Italy, which was erupting at the time of production, was used for the volcano on Mustafar.

Looking back it fully, Revenge of the Sith is not a perfect movie, but it's movie that great fun. It has its fair shar of weakpoints, but overall, I think it's the best one after The Empire Strikes Back. I tend to avoid looking at reviews of the prequels, but one critic usually sticks out to me, and that's Roger Ebert. He was one of few critics who understood what George Lucas was trying to do. In his review, Ebert said "George Lucas has achieved what few artists do; he has created and populated a world of his own. His “Star Wars” movies are among the most influential, both technically and commercially, ever made. And they are fun." If you read his review, you notice that he hardly compares any of the prequels to the original trilogy, like most critics and fans did at the time, and still do.