Awesome

Rating: 10/10 (19 May 2005)

Regardless of the dark texture of this film, and the fact that it takes us in a direction we've been hoping not to go for a long time, it's clearly the best of the prequels by a long shot.
If you managed through the ham-fisted dialogue and acting of the first two prequels to develop a sense of sympathy for Anakin and Padme, you aren't disappointed. This is the simple, Shakespearean formula of "Love as your heart ripped out and stomped on in death." Three separate influences on Anakin pull him; his love for Padme, his falsely obtained trust of Palpatine, and his loyalty to the Jedi Order. We all know how it has to be, of course. But seeing the bland and phlegmatic Palpatine, who has been carefully kept separate from his "secret" identity as Darth Sidious, metamorphose in a series of gruesome switches into the Dark Master, was heart-breaking. My son didn't really grasp that these two characters were the same person until he saw a toy in the store of Palpatine holding a red lightsaber -- which I wish he had not seen until the movie.
At the end you can't totally sympathize with Anakin's harsh fate, or Obi-Wan's inability to finish his task, but you can see how it had to be. The pacing of the film was brisk, and most of my major irritating questions about how things happened were answered satisfactorily. I only felt things slowed down a little bit at the end, but like the ending to the Lord of the Rings, there were some sequences that just needed to be in there to provide closure, and they were again what I had expected. The cruel rapacity of Palpatine/Sidious was excellently portrayed by Ian McDairmid, who thoroughly dominated the movie and carried it, in my opinion, as he became revealed as the primary mover behind all of the tragedy.
So, thanks George Lucas, for finishing us off with a good solid kick in the ass. It's what the series needed.