Should be renamed to The Rise of Vader

Rating: 7/10 (25 December 2019)

"Revenge of the Sith" opens with more politics in the scrolling exposition, ugh, and in our opening space battle we find that Obi-Wan is now a military general, really?! But still dressed in humble robes while flying a battle mission, ugh. And he seems too well groomed to be a Jedi knight and general with his feathered hair style from our time. Could the designers not give him a more time and environment appropriate style? He's just so out of sync. Weak. Anakin is still Obi's padawan but continues in his backtalking arrogance. When Obi tosses off his overcoat to confront Dooku his Jedi fashion looks more like medieval apprentice-wear than state-of-the-art Jedi protective-wear which is closer to what Anakin sports in black leather. Weak. And the fact that Dooku - the grand leader of the successful galactic separatist movement - chooses to confront two Jedi by himself (with a couple of token droids) is just poor storytelling again George Lucas. In any other story Dooku would've been surrounded by legions of Sith warriors, and never have been vulnerable. So weak. And I am so tired of Obi/Anakin being able to lightsaber their way out of captivity every single time. Again, it's just lazy/weak storybuilding when you deus ex machina every challenging situation, it just wastes our time. And we learn that though Anakin and Padme are married (from "Attack...") they're still hiding that fact from everyone as unlikely as that can be. Seriously, a senator like Padme would have a close circle of friends and advisors, any of which she would've confided in at some point, or been found out. Again, any other veteran storyteller would've given us a more mature, complex/realistic treatment of this and other story elements. And surely it's a dire violation of the Jedi Code for him to be married yet somehow he's hidden that from ALL the Jedi who are supposed to be able to sense such things. So very weak. Oh, and she's pregnant, so that's going to be fun. BTW, ever notice it's never raining, anywhere, any planet, ever. Must be too hard for LucasFilms to CGI it. But I do have to admit the events leading up to Anakin's conversion to Darth Vader were well crafted. However, that praise quickly falls when you realize that not once during the massacre of the Jedi did Obi ever inquire of Anakin's safety or whereabouts. Even the VFX misfire occasionally, like when Anakin and Obi face off near the end, Obi draws his lightsaber from his waist but it doesn't activate when he swings it out and you can tell he meant it to. The VFX techs fumbled that one. Anyway it was genuinely fascinating to see that as Luke and Leia were born as offspring of Anakin and Padme that Anakin was being resuscitated as the dark-clad Darth Vader - two very interesting and very different types of birth. But at the end when Senator Organa instructs that C3PO's mind be wiped, that comes off as another lazy, cover-the-plot-hole way of force-fitting him into the next trilogy where he had no prior knowledge of all these events, ugh. Again, much of these failings can be laid right at the feet of George Lucas who wrote, directed, edited, and generally managed everything by himself. You HAVE to permit others to critique and collaborate otherwise you get subpar stories like this.