it starts out on an awful, pretentious note, but thankfully cleans up its act with a sweep of majestic power well before it ends

Rating: 7/10 (13 February 2010)

Now that George Lucas has cleaned up his act for the first two movies in his Star Wars prequel trilogy, we can all pat him on the back and say, "That's more like it, George." His third film in the trilogy, I say, still does not quite capture the magic and feeling of the original classic narrative from 1977-1983, but it's close enough, it's a lot better than "The Phantom Menace" and "Attack of the Clones," and, despite a poor, rushed beginning, it's a pretty good movie, though not remarkable like the originals.
Here's the movie where we finally get to see Anakin Skywalker (still played by Hayden Christianson in a miscast part) transform from the young, loyal Jedi romancing a galactic queen (Natalie Portman) into the vicious black-helmeted villain who terrorized us so in "The Empire Strikes Back." We also see the final transportation of Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) into the sister, gravelly-voiced Emperor, and other things.
"Revenge of the Sith" starts out on a pretty poor note. For a moment, I was very concerned that it was going to wind up being exactly like "The Phantom Menace" and "Attack of the Clones" - dreadful, boring, and disappointing. The opening scene where Obi-Wan (Ewan McGregor) and Anakin Skywalker invade an enemy space fleet, blast apart bad guys, slice up robots, and fight the most ridiculously-named villain, Count Dooku (Christopher Lee) again, was just like before. It was dumb, ostentatious, and filled with lousy dialogue like "It's not the Jedi way." And later on, there was again that sappy romance with Padme, with more trashy dialogue like "Hold me as you did by the lake on Naboo." (Naboo? Can't Lucas come up with a better name for a planet that *that*?) But...*but* after that, the movie really redeems itself.
After this point, the writing, though uneven does improve, the action scenes become a little more entertaining, and most impressive of all is a change of mood from the campy video game-like atmosphere of before into a more serious, pessimistic note with a tragic feeling. For the first time, this new Yoda, created through CGI imagery instead of a puppet, captures the mystique and charm and personality of the original. Now he seems more like Yoda and not just a shrunken philosopher with an object-subject-verb speech manner. If there still is a weakness, it is the character of Darth Vader. Remember, this guy is supposed to one day become one of the cinema's greatest villains. We still don't get that feeling with this one. Even when he does become Vader at the end, it still does not seem like the same. It seems like a different character with no resemblance beyond appearance. And it's the personality of Vader, not merely his appearance, that made him so compelling in the original trilogy.
"Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith" is the best and only solidly entertaining entry in the prequel trilogy. It's not, I say, a great movie. It is flawed and again, its beginning half-hour or so is rather poor and boring and flat, but it does pick up things. Slowly at first and then quickly. And the movie's climactic lightsaber battle, directed in part by Steven Spielberg, is truly entertaining though not believable.