Thoughts on ROTS

A few thoughts on the Episode III re-release

I took in (like everyone else apparently) a screening of Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith, so, for fun and profit, here are a few random thoughts from my latest viewing.

• I was not a prequel kid, I’m a prequel adult. This movie came out when I was 29 years old, and I stood on line to see it at midnight in Times Square. I think there’s this belief that people who grew up with the prequels love them, and Gen Xers hate them, but that’s not exactly true. In fact, there were lots of us who liked the prequels, sometimes stubbornly, in the face of a general consensus that George Lucas had ruined everyone’s childhood. So, thank your elders for keeping the torch alive ‘prequel kids!’ And imagine this: a public outcry before social media. They existed! They just took more work! You had to listen to your friends complain about things at a party!

  

• I know Andor Season 2 is top of mind for all, and everyone is thinking about Star Wars in relationship to it, but Episode III’s counterpart on Disney+ does exist and it’s not Andor. It’s Obi-Wan Kenobi. which serves as Sith’s direct sequel. The Ewan-led series brings back key cast members, locations, and plots points from Episode III. (It’s also the reason I started this Substack! Check out the archives, those are my first write ups!) I feel like Obi-Wan Kenobi doesn’t quite get its flowers from the fan community. It’s got an original John Williams theme, it’s got a full compliment of actors from the prequels, it’s got Hayden’s return to Anakin Skywalker after almost twenty years, epic action, it’s such a love letter to this era. Anyway, it’s the perfect thing to watch after Revenge of the Sith.

  

• One of my favorite scenes in the prequel trilogy, not just Episode III, is a quiet scene between Obi-Wan and Anakin, immediately following Anakin being appointed to the Jedi Council, when Obi-Wan asks Anaking to spy on Palpatine for the Council. It’s a scene that’s shaped so well, with some of the best acting in the prequels. Everyone’s perspectives are founded in trackable motivations, there’s absolutely no camp or melodrama. It’s shot with a cool, 70s conspiracy in a hallway vibe. And it contains almost the entire misunderstanding between Anakin and Obi-Wan in just a few lines:

  “Why are you asking this of me?”

  “The Council is asking you.”

  

• There’s a momentum to Episode III that is even more acute now that we’re living in the world of streaming. I don’t know about you, dear reader, but when watching a movie at home, I’m prone to pausing often, breaking it up, watching a key scene, falling asleep in front of it, checking my email. Star Wars isn’t just more engrossing on the big screen because of sound and spectacle, but it’s also undeniably something that is meant to be watched from beginning to end. We begin watch two brothers flying in total lockstep as they dive into the biggest space battle we’ve ever seen, and two hours later, they are irreparably separated. Movies do this incredible trick: they are simultaneously efficient and epic. We spend far less time with Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker on the big screen than we will eventually spend with Cassian Andor or Ezra Bridger or Ahsoka Tano, but every second we see them is mythmaking and iconography.

  

• One thing that I find really interesting after my 1,000th rewatch is that clearly, at some point in the script, Anakin was supposed to be jealous of Obi-Wan’s closeness with Padme, and it just never landed or didn’t survive the edit. (Maybe Lucas wanted a Lancelot and Arthur compete for Guinevere vibe?) When Yoda talks about jealousy, or when Anakin says “Obi-Wan’s been here hasn’t he?” it feels like the echo of a draft where that was a bigger part of Anakin’s paranoia. I’m glad, to be honest, it doesn’t wind up in the film, because it’s not seeded in the previous episodes, but it’s an interesting artifact you can hear if you listen closely.

  

• In the US, our leaders always declare an Emergency in order to grant themselves extraordinary powers. It seemed worth mentioning.

  

• There’s just so much to look at in every frame of Revenge of the Sith. It feels sometimes like Lucas just wanted to push the limits of the possible until it was just out of reach. (There are moments when his reach exceeds his grasp - some of the clone animations aren’t convincing, for example.) But it makes for a movie where your eye can’t go wrong, where everything is rich with design and color.

  

• My Gosh, Ian McDiarmid’s cackle is such a big choice, a kind of male-coded Wicked Witch of the West. It’s something I love about the Emperor: he’s not supposed to be some compelling villian with cool design, like Darth Maul. When revealed, he’s repugnant: deformed, sure, but also, throaty, wailing, whining, toadlike. When he declares Anakin is Darth Vader, it seems to gurgle up from a bad lunch.

  

• The body count of Episode III is famously high, but watching it on the big screen, all by its lonesome, as a two and a half hour viewing experience, it’s kind of staggering how apocalpytically deadly the film is. Deaths include Count Dooku, General Grievous, Mace Windu and his three backup Jedi including my boy Kit Fisto; Padme Amidala; hundreds of Jedi including younglings; Plo Koon (crashed in his starship), Ki-Adi Mundi (shot to death), Aayla Secura (under a blue mushroom), Stass Allie (thrown from her speeder); a hefty number of clone troopers; some Wookies; and the entire Separatist leadership, including Nute Gunray begging for his life. Plus, Anakin Skywalker, sort of dies, as he’s kind of destroyed and burned to a crisp. If the movie had blood (it notably doesn’t), it would fill a river.

  

• I kind of love the little bits of tacked on canon clean-up that happen in the movie. We hear pointedly hear that “All droid units must shut down immediately!” to explain why there are no battledroids on the battlefield in the original trilogy, or “Have the protocol droid’s mind wiped!” to explain why C-3PO doesn’t know a thing about any of this in Episode IV. There’s not a lot of finesse in these moments, they just need to happen, so they do!

  

• It struck me that Anakin and Obi-Wan say goodbye to each other mid-movie, as Obi-Wan is heading off to Utapau, and they pretty much never see each other again. If the logic is that Anakin is no longer Anakin once he becomes Darth Vader, and he becomes Anakin again only after Luke saves him almost 20 years later, that means Obi-Wan saying “You are strong and wise Anakin, and I am very proud of you. I have trained you since you were a small boy, and you have become a greater Jedi than I could ever hope to be. But be patient. It will not be long before the Council makes you a Jedi Master… Goodbye old friend. May the Force be with you” are truly his last words to that little boy he met on Tatooine. Everything after that point? He says to Darth Vader.

  

• Tion Medon looks incredible. Why doesn’t everyone dress like this guy all the time?