I Watched Revenge Of The Sith...

and while it's the best of the prequels, that's a relative term as overall it's still only average. I explained why in my Letterboxd review below:

I concluded my Star Wars watching in prep for A Force Awakens by seeing this, the one prequel film that people seem to like but me, I can only say that it's about average, and it's still pathetic compared to the original movies. I always thought that about this, by the way. When I saw it 10 summers ago I did not dislike it like the first two but even though it finally set things up for the original Star Wars, it still felt unsatisfying and yet I couldn't fully explain why.

Well, thankfully Red Letter Media did their reviews of the prequels; I'll never understand the presentation and the Mr. Plinkett character, but the complaints they brought up are almost all accurate. Here, the explanation of how the opening 20 minutes made zero sense was an “Ah ha!” moment for me. Honestly, trying to figure out logically the kidnapping and rescue of Palpatine is impossible so that's why it left me feeling hollow and uncaring. It's just a bunch of noise, signifying nothing. The fact that it's also a CGI orgasm of throwing 5,000 different things at the screen at the same time and even Michael Bay would say it's overkill... that does not help. Admittedly, in this day and age both things are far too common in modern film and it is a reason why I don't see most “blockbusters”. That doesn't excuse Lucas doing it, though. I wish for the simple and elegant storytelling of the original movies. I don't mean old-fashioned like “dying of a broken heart” or-sigh-”NNNNOOOOO”, though.

Then, there's how the atrocious writing of the first two films and how it affects the story told here and it can't overcome that. All of the characters are morons so your intelligence is constantly insulted and the world of almost constant green screens makes it look artificial and as the Red Letter Media video explained, it greatly constrained things, and Lucas being a lazy director did not help there either. Darth Vader being a whiny emo teenager with a moppy haircut... no, just no.

At least I can rate it as average, meaning it's better than I or II. While ineptly told, the general idea of Anakin turning evil is fine. A mastermind manipulating things behind the scenes so that he is the victor at the end... that is typically real interesting to me. Some of the CGI hasn't aged well but otherwise-even though it's essentially meaningless-it did create nice images and there are some interesting worlds visited. As I stated recently, Ian McDiarmid plays the Emperor real well and does his best with what he's given.

Like everyone else I'll never comprehend how the prequels got screwed up so badly. But I am over that and I can just forget they ever happened. Heaven knows that it will be a long time before I watch any of them again.