This past May marked the 20th anniversary of the third Star Wars prequel film, Episode III: Revenge Of The Sith, which finally paid off its long-running story of how Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker fell to the dark side and eventually became Darth Vader. And if you want to me to tell how I felt about the film at the time, I thought it was the only really good film out of the prequel since everyone died. And I wasn’t the only one who thought that because a bunch of people I went to see the film with thought it was the only really good prequel out of the bunch because everyone died.
Now we all know that statement is a bit of a fib. Not everyone died, obviously; this isn’t Rogue One, for cryin’ out loud. But the cast of characters that were introduced in prior prequel films were either killed off or cast aside to make way for the characters that people actually cared about to come along and have the adventures they had back in 77 and the circle would be complete or some deal like that.
Count Dooku? Gone. Mace Windu? Gone. Padme? Gone. Some Jedi people in the background? Gone. Jar Jar Binks? Relegated to non-speaking background cameo. Wattu? Not even mentioned?
And yes, we fell for the usual traps. The opening space battle at the beginning was a spectacle, the lightsaber duels were fantastic, the light banter between Anakin and Obi-Wan during that first chapter was fun stuff that you wish the films did more of, the intimate moments between Anakin and Padme continue to be the worst part of the prequels thanks to listless direction from George Lucas, and of course, Ian McDirmand chewing the scenery with every lick of screen time he gets.
Oh… and John Williams composes yet another fantastic Star Wars score… back when that wasn’t worth mentioning because that’s like saying water is wet.
So yes, we enjoyed Revenge Of The Sith for what it was at the time… and then the video game came along and I actually got quite a bit of mileage out of that piece of business.
Now we’ve seen time move along and the opinion of these prequel films fluctuate over the years. One minute they’re great, the next minute they’re shit, then they’re great again, and then RedLetterMedia drops one of its Plinkett reviews to tell you that they suck again, and then we start getting all nostalgic over these films because the recent ones don’t measure up, and now we’re like… do we like these films or not?
I’d like to think that my opinion of the prequel films have been pretty consistent. Phantom Menace had its moments both high and low, but was otherwise nothing special once the hype of a brand-new Star Wars film died down. Attack Of The Clones remains the absolute worst Star Wars film ever made and I stand by that statement even if you want to include the sequels, which we’ll get to next time… but Revenge Of The Sith was the one movie that I had always enjoyed for its spectacle and for some lighter moments. Yes, these films had flaws. Questionable dialogue, some poor acting in key moments that were supposed to be the crux of the whole trilogy, and an overreliance on CGI that made everything look fake and phony were some of the common complaints. Hell, I once argued that the C-level acting in a Star Wars FMV video game was better than anything in the prequels and I’d stand by that. Fact is that I cared more about the interactions between Rookie One and Ru Murleen in Rebel Assault II than I did anything involving Anakin and Padme. Hell, even the Jedi Knight II bits with Kyle and whatherface were more compelling stuff than the thing that’s supposed to be the whole catalyst of Anakin’s turn to the dark side.
The whole issue with the prequels – at least, initially – boils down to a couple things. First off, depicting the birth of Darth Vader and how that’s handled over three films is going to lead to ongoing speculation on how those films will play out. The first time people saw that dude in theaters, he was presented as one of the most feared, terrifying villains on television. Once you start peeling away the layers and you eventually get to the big revelation, you start to wonder how that came to be. And so when the announcement of the prequels came to be, that brought with it an enormous amount of hype. And the thing with hyped up products is that as much as they can excite the anticipation, they can also wind up being massive letdown. Basically, fans had an idea on how the story would go and when that story didn’t turn out the way they thought it should have, they cried fouled. The birth of Darth Vader and how that came about was something that people were dreaming up stories about and then when it happened, it was like… “That’s it?”
Revenge Of The Sith’s biggest issue was its build on Darth Vader. Everywhere you looked, promotion was about Darth Vader. There was little focus on the prequel characters that we’ve followed for one or two movies and more focus on the legacy Star Wars villain whose screentime was a charitable two minutes total towards the end of the movie… in a scene that is supposed to feel tragic and instead feels funny. And so, from that perspective, the prequels turn out to be a bit of a dud. All that hype and hooplah. All that anticipation. And that’s what we got? Bah…
But that’s a perspective from twenty years ago. Time has come along and we’ve long since left behind that initial hype train of the prequels. Enough time has passed that we can sort of formulate our own opinions on the films. We’ve passed the hype period, we’ve passed the “these movies are bad” phase, and now we’re just in the “Who Cares? Like What You Like” phase… which should have been the only phase. I have no qualms about enjoying Sith; I think it’s the best of the trilogy in my opinion. Yeah, there’s CGI aplenty and the Jedi fights are as much wire-fu spotfests as professional wrestling these days are Cirque De Soleil ones, but sometimes, I can just sit back, take in the spectacle, and go… “Yeah, this is okay.”
Is this my way of redeeming the prequels? No… but then I don’t think the prequels needed redeeming. There are those who watched these movies as kids, grew up with these movies, and don’t buy into the notion that the old farts bring up about these aren’t as good as the originals or that they sucked. These are their childhoods. That’s why stuff like Obi-Wan and Ahsoka (sp) got a bit of hype because they touch on this stuff, revisit it years later, and… I don’t know, memberberries and stuff. I’ve seen Obi-Wan; it’s fine. Not a great show, but certainly a good Ewan McGregor vehicle if you wanted more of his Obi-Wan. Haven’t seen the Ahsoka show, even though it has Grand Admiral Thrawn, a Legacy EU character.
Every new generation will come along and have their own take on these things… but every individual fan will just follow their thing. We’ve reached a point where if you liked the prequels, great. If you don’t like the prequels, great. If you liked the originals, great. If you hated them, great. If you liked the sequels, cool. And if not… well, you know the rest.
Revenge Of The Sith was the movie that closed out the prequel trilogy in its own grand fashion. But in a way, it was the end of Star Wars as a major cinematic event. After that, Lucas seemed content in producing Clone War cartoons and letting other people license out the property for different things here and there. We’d be going back to Expanded Universe stuff for the foreseeable future until Lucas decided the world needed more Star Wars movies.
And then he sold everything to Disney… and that’s another story to be told for another time.
dtm666 