After years of trailing through two sluggish and somewhat discomforting prequels, George Lucas finally managed to reign in his vision for the saga and lay out all the cards for his final Star Wars movie. Whilst certainly far from perfect, Revenge of the Sith offers a fast-paced and action-packed adventure which finally shows how Anakin Skywalker succumbed to the Dark Side as well as the tragic events which followed the commencement of Order 66. The movie ties up several plotlines which Lucas had laid out throughout the previous films, such as Padme and Anakin’s love story as well as the Republic’s dissolution into the Galactic Republic and the forming of the Rebellion, thus setting the scene for the original trilogy to take place.
Let’s just jump straight in!
Meanwhile Obi-Wan is sent to track down Grevious, the new leader of the Seperatists, on the planet Utapau where they are preparing for a final stand against the Clone Army.
On Coruscant, Mace Windu leads a strike team to arrest Palpatine who responds with violence. Anakin arrives and intervenes, realising that Palpatine knows for a way to save Padme’s life, which gives the Sith Lord the opportunity to kill his Jedi captives. Anakin surrenders to the will of Palpatine and is given the new title of Darth Vader, replacing Dooku as his new apprentice.
Back on Utapau, Obi-Wan manages to survive and escape when his clone troopers turn against him after defeating Grevious. Obi-Wan returns to the Jedi Temple and discovers what Anakin has done. Yoda, who survived the attack, orders him to chase down Vader and end it. Meanwhile, Yoda himself goes after Palpatine (who has dissolved the Galactic Republic into a new Galactic Empire). Whilst Yoda fails to defeat Palpatine, Obi-Wan manages to immolate Anakin in a lake of lava after cutting off his legs and one of his arms, leaving him there to die. The surviving Jedi meet up on a secluded space station, where a rebellion against the new empire is forming, and Yoda decides to go into personal exile on Dagobah. Obi-Wan makes a home for himself in the dunes of Tatooine where he safeguards one of Padme’s children, a boy called Luke. The other child, a girl called Leia (as Padme was having twins) is sent to live in secret with the royal family of Alderaan.
Whilst much more intense and less family-friendly as Episode I and II combined, Episode III provides an ultimately fulfilling and surprisingly exciting conclusion to a trilogy of films which, in retrospect, might have seemed a little redundant. The power of the original trilogy was that it left much to the imagination, but in Lucas actually showing us what happened in the events before Luke Skywalker becomes a Jedi and learns of his heritage, just a little of what made Star Wars so magically was – sadly – taken away.