A great ending for a great saga

Rating: 10/10 (20 May 2005)

The day has finally arrived. After almost 30 years of the creation of a mythical saga, George Lucas has finally has closed the circle. It is now complete, with the realization of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. And the good news is that the closing of the circle, which is this movie, is more than satisfying: it is excellent. More or less three years have passed since the events of Attack of the Clones. Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen) is now a Jedi Knight, and his mentor, Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) is now a Jedi Master and part of the Jedi Council. Padmé Amidala, the senator of Naboo (Natalie Portman) is married to Anakin Skywalker (although it is prohibited for the Jedi to marry) and is about to give birth to two twins. The Supreme Chancellor Palpatine (Ian McDiamird) has been made prisoner by the separatist forces and is being held in General Grievous' (a separatists Cyborg leader) cruiser, the Invisible Hand. Obi-Wan and Anakin have been sent onto a mission to rescue the Chancellor from the clutches of Grievous, and even though Anakin gets to finally defeat Count Dooku (Christopher Lee) and rescue the Chancellor, everything seems darker now, as Anakin and the Council start to discover the Chancellor's real identity. The film starts with a thrilling, adventurous and somehow comic action sequence: the space battle, and then the events to rescue Chancellor Palpatine. The space battle is pretty intense, and has some interesting additions such as the Buzz droids that attack Obi-Wan's fighter. Now, when both Jedi reach the Invisible Hand, and with the incursion of R2 to help them, some of the movie's best (and only) comic events happen. They all involve R2, Obi-Wan, and some Trade Federation droids, but the good thing about them is that they are not childish jokes such as the ones that appeared in Episode I. But after the rescue of the Chancellor is when things start to turn bad. In the second third of the movie is in which most of the most important plot revealing sequences happen, and in which the plot of the movie starts to reveal itself. In this third is when most of the action sequences stop to appear (momentarily). Although there is Obi-Wan's assignment to go to Utapau and kill General Grievous, we feel that this third of the movie mainly involves the developing of Anakin and Padmé's secret love and trust, and the decisions that Anakin must make towards Palpatine and the Jedi Council. But, talking about lack of action, there is some action in this movie, and it's pretty good. There is the above mentioned space battle, a chase between General Grievous (riding an unicycle) and Obi-Wan (riding an Utapaun, lizard-like creature), a lightsabre fight between Palpatine and Mace Windu (Samuel L. Jackson), one between Palpatine and Yoda, and the famous and awaited final battle between Obi-Wan and Anakin. These are all great and are magnificently choreographed and shot and edited. Nothing has been ever seen before. In the end, I think it can be said that this is definitely the best of the prequel movies, and, for me, in my top six of all the Star Wars movies, it would be in a first place tie along with The Empire Strikes Back. It is a great conclusion to a 20+ journey created by a visionary, full of drama, action, and... sadness. I bet most of the people will want to watch A New Hope after watching Revenge of the Sith, because of the feeling that is left after the end credits. It happened to me. But... it's definitely a great conclusion to a great saga.