Why Revenge of the Sith is the best Star Wars movie

Nos­tal­gia is a pow­er­ful thing. It makes us yearn for the grain of film and the crack­le of vinyl in an age where stream­ing videos at any­thing less than flaw­less 1080p is tan­ta­mount to sacrilege.

It’s under­stand­able then, that the pre­quel tril­o­gy to the orig­i­nal Star Wars films con­tin­ues to be the source of much oppro­bri­um. The apolo­getic del­uge of trade agree­ments, some pret­ty fee­ble child act­ing and Jar Jar Binks cer­tain­ly didn’t help when the series was regen­er­at­ed over a decade ago, but on reflec­tion The Phan­tom Men­ace and Attack of the Clones weren’t awful, just mediocre.

Their crime was in promis­ing the world, only to deliv­er a shiny bauble. Of course we were intrigued to see how Darth Vad­er turned to the Dark Side, how the Jedi were all but wiped out and how the Empire came to rule the galaxy. We want­ed more of a good thing. Who wouldn’t? The prob­lem with Episodes I and II is that they deliv­er none of the back­sto­ry that still to this day makes Revenge of the Sith the best instal­ment in the franchise.

There is an embar­rass­ment of rich­es on offer: the trag­ic fall of Anakin Sky­walk­er, the deaths of count­less key char­ac­ters and more icon­ic duels than you can shake a lightsaber at – although George Lucas once again proved that you can write this shit but you sure can’t say it, with a script that con­tains some exe­crable dia­logue while pro­vid­ing a grand and fit­ting con­clu­sion to the trilogy.

Hay­den Chris­tensen as Anakin Sky­walk­er gets stung more than most, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the roman­tic scenes he shares with Natal­ie Portman’s Pad­mé. Star Wars was nev­er a series to wear its heart on its sleeve, pre­fer­ring instead to hide it in the earnest bum­bling of Luke or the louche wit­ti­cisms of Han. Here, it is unques­tion­ably the weak­est ele­ment of the film, and yet Anakin and Padmé’s rela­tion­ship nonethe­less deliv­ers believ­able moti­va­tion for the Jedi’s descent into dark­ness. Anakin’s about-face is gen­uine­ly trag­ic; his fatal flaw is that he fears los­ing the ones he loves, blind­ing him to the evil Pal­pa­tine. Mis­guid­ed, petu­lant and stub­born – for once in the series Christensen’s act­ing style strikes just the right note.

Which is not to ignore the true star of the film: Ian McDi­armid. Repris­ing his role as Chan­cel­lor Pal­pa­tine, lat­er revealed as Darth Sid­i­ous, the man soon to become Emper­or. It’s a glo­ri­ous, rep­til­ian per­for­mance which embraces the series’ campy B‑movie ori­gins and final­ly puts some meat on the bones of the frail, shad­owy Emper­or of the orig­i­nal tril­o­gy. McDiarmid’s incar­na­tion is bru­tal, Machi­avel­lian and a force to be reck­oned with.

The film’s final hour – as Anakin turns ful­ly to the Dark Side, slaugh­ters the younglings in the Jedi tem­ple and bat­tles his men­tor, Obi-Wan – is the dark­est and most thrilling of the entire series. It’s grand and oper­at­ic and its stakes feel vis­cer­al­ly real in a way that the orig­i­nal tril­o­gy nev­er quite man­aged. Anakin’s final clash with Obi-Wan is cross­cut to great effect with Yoda’s bat­tle against Sid­i­ous, as John Williams’ score thun­ders to a tense and tri­umphant crescen­do. Nev­er has the term ​‘space opera’ felt more apt.

Sure, Revenge of the Sith has its flaws, but where it suc­ceeds it does so emphat­i­cal­ly. All any­body ever real­ly want­ed from the pre­quels was to wit­ness the sto­ry of how Anakin Sky­walk­er became Darth Vad­er, and George Lucas deliv­ers that with vir­tu­oso skill. By reveal­ing the man behind the mask, he added depth and nuance to an oth­er­wise one-dimen­sion­al vil­lain, and in doing so, enriched the orig­i­nal tril­o­gy as well.

My most pow­er­ful mem­o­ry of Star Wars is watch­ing The Phan­tom Men­ace aged sev­en at my local cin­e­ma and star­ing open-mouthed as Obi-Wan Keno­bi launched him­self into the air and sliced Darth Maul clean in two. In hind­sight, it’s mere­ly a cool moment in an ordi­nary film. When you strip away all the emo­tion­al bag­gage from Star Wars, the orig­i­nal tril­o­gy los­es some of its lus­tre while Revenge of the Sith shines stronger. It has the great­est bat­tles, the most pow­er­ful deaths and it reach­es an unpar­al­leled emo­tion­al peak. I’m con­vinced it’s the best Star Wars film. But then again, nos­tal­gia is a pow­er­ful thing.