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Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith

The last movie of the second trilogy that's actually set before the first trilogy or the middle movie in the Star Wars Saga, Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith finally makes the first two movies of the second (or first, chronologically) trilogy make sense. More sense than this intro, anyway. In it, the Even Hotter Hot Bad Guy Hayden Christensen completes his destiny by becoming Darth Vader, Lord of the Sith and Scourge of the Galaxy. Meanwhile, Cool Bad Guy Ian McDiarmid's Chancellor nee Senator Palpatine ascends the throne as the Emperor.

Here's the short story: Anakin Skywalker (yeah, Luke's father), who is now married to Padme Amidala, former Queen of Naboo, has gotten buddy-buddy with the Chancellor of the Republic. When he finds out his wife is pregnant, he starts having nervous dreams about her dying in childbirth. Add that to the Jedi Council not giving him the rank of Master and his usual lust for power that he displayed in Episode II, and, well, I think we could all tell he was going to Turn Evil. Especially after all that "in your mind, my very young apprentice" nonsense from Obi-Wan during the last movie. And I think we were all pleased to see how much Hotter Anakin was in this movie than in the last one. More evidence that Evil makes people Hot. But I digress.

What we didn't expect is that Anakin would go Way Evil. Killing Little Kids Evil. I mean, that's EVIL. Naturally, Obi-Wan tries to stop Anakin, but during the fight, Anakin's three remaining limbs are somehow detached and Obi-Wan (who was moaning about not being able to kill Anakin) leaves him to die. (Evil Points? Maybe...) Padme loses the will to live, but they manage to save Luke and Leia, which I suppose is something, although it does provide evidence that Luke was always a whining individual.

Sure, this one ties everything together. Sure, it raises more questions (which I have tried to address) not to mention being Way Too Violent for the kiddies. This one isn't rated PG-13 for nothing. If I may quote a friend of mine, "Dude, he was On Fire!" On fire, indeed. But lousy dialogue aside, this was a pretty great movie. There are some clunky bits, but we all knew going in that George Lucas would do that and not even the best actress can do much with a line like "hold me like you did by the lake on Naboo, when all we had was our love." Yikes. But DUDE! The Bad Guys Win! And that's just AWESOME!