STAR WARS: EPISODE III Revenge of the Sith (2005)
Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment

Our rating:

Your rating:

(Click a rabbit to cast your vote.)

E-mail this review to a friend »

Ambitious hero-in-training Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen) is angered by his subordinate role on the Jedi Council. He's also haunted by deadly visions involving his pregnant wife, Sen. Padmé Amidala (Natalie Portman). In an apocalyptic power play, the dad-to-be aligns with the Republic's corrupt Chancellor (Ian McDiarmid) and betrays his fellow Jedis -- not to mention his do-gooder wife -- with repercussions of Biblical proportions. It all builds to Anakin's final conversion to the Dark Side -- a Frankenstein-like transformation into Darth Vader -- and an ultimate showdown with his former mentor Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor).

If you were to watch 1977's lo-fi "Space Western" Star Wars back to back with this high-tech CGI-sweetened sixth film in the series, you would have little indication that the films were related. Glaringly absent is the underlying sense of humor, like C-3P0's one-sided bickering with R2-D2, and the wisecracking "get-a-room" flirtation between Carrie Fisher's Princess Leia and Harrison Ford's Han Solo. Regardless, taken on its own merits, Revenge of the Sith is a solid, crowd-pleasing, action-adventure movie of our time where new technology like "Vulture droids" ramp up the fear factor, and the gleam of new stronger light sabers makes us forget how dull the relationship between humans Padmé and Anakin really is. With its dizzying outer-space dogfights, light-saber duels played out across treacherous, acrophobia-inducing gangways and full-out army battles waged on fantastical distant planets you can't help thinking while you watch the movie, "I can't wait to play this video game."

Where do you begin on a DVD from the visionary director who invented most of the CGI effects employed across Hollywood today, and even the THX sound system whose logo precedes this film? For the last and ultimate Star Wars DVD, meaty amenities abound. Feature-length audio commentary by George Lucas and a battalion of producers and FX folks painstakingly narrates how far digitally animated characters have come -- particularly in the area of realistic fabric animation -- but the self-congratulatory technical dialogue becomes repetitive and mind-boggling, geared more to tech-heads and film students than armchair movie buffs. It actually makes you yearn for the low-tech live action, puppet work and no-frills sets of the original Star Wars. More interesting are the revelations about how Ewan McGregor morphed his look and his voice to more resemble Alec Guiness (who plays Kenobi in old age) and how the starships and sets evolved in this installment to more resemble the iconic sets from 1977's Star Wars, which picks up the story from here. A 75-minute documentary feature, the gem of the bonus disk, introduces a galactic family tree of departments and staffers who collaborated on "Scene 158," the climactic lava-erupting light-saber duel between Anakin and Obi-Wan. More than 1,000 people, from catering and payroll to model builders, rotoscopers and editors, explain their trade, giving you a comprehensive, head-spinning look at the dozens of layers that go into nearly every frame of the film and makes you realize that $9 isn't such a bad deal for a ticket price after all. Deleted footage includes the much-discussed "Seeds of Rebellion" scene in Padmé's apartment featuring Playboy cover model Bai Ling and George Lucas's daughter as senators. DVD-Rom bonuses provide additional script-to-screen comparisons and deeper "Depth Commentary" on film minutiae, plus 14-day trial access to "Hyperspace: The Official Star Wars Fan Club."

by Rob. Walton