When “Revenge of the Sith” first had its cinematic release, I was zero years old. At the time, and upon my first conscious viewing of this cinematic masterpiece around the age of eight, it was regarded as mediocre and conceptually underutilized; nostalgia in combination with the release of the new Star Wars sequels has retroactively made it seem like the greatest film ever made. This re-allotment has only been confirmed for me since watching ROTS on the big screen for the first time this past weekend. 

As most cool people know, 2025 marks the 20-year anniversary of the release of the culminating installment in the Star Wars prequel trilogy. In honor of this momentous occasion, the film has been rereleased in theaters nationwide, giving me specifically the opportunity to watch a remastered Anakin Skywalker go from hot in one way to hot in a very different, significantly more literal way in just 140 minutes. I very deeply enjoy “Revenge of the Sith,” and I do fear it has changed me fundamentally as a person and media enjoyer— when something is good, you can only think about it so much, and when something is bad, those same fundamental limitations apply, but boy oh boy, when something is mediocre, you cannot imagine the mileage I get out of it. But first, I would like to take this opportunity to honor the core spirit of every Star Wars fan that has come before me, and complain. 

I know George Lucas is not personally at the helm of these remastering productions anymore, but by George do these post-edits NEED to be stopped. Do not quote me on these, because it’s possible I’m going off of an old DVD version and am simply not up-to-date with newer digital remasters that preceded this 20th-anniversary one. That being said, adding unnecessary clips to already perfectly clear scenes just to show me your poorly CGI’d spaceship retroactive-bandaid-canonization is just silly. Obi-Wan is already there, and he is clearly at a space port, and I do not care if you decided that he needs to get on a Star Destroyer or a different little pod thing that you made canon in some spinoff and felt the need to stitch in this movie afterwards. I know for a fact, thanks to the incredible secondhand embarrassment I got from the authentic scene, that there was not originally any weird Palpatine (and your pal, Friendpatine) voiceover when Padme and Anakin are having their Longing Looks Across Coruscant moment. The only thing adding that accomplished was making me feel sad that they felt the audience had, over 20 years, lost the attention-span capabilities necessary to recognize the subtextual meaning of the scene and subsequently felt the need to bang us over the head about it. 

But the worst offense, in my opinion, was the weird reverb slash breathing slash groaning added to the scene where Palpatine (and your pal, Friendpatine) gets Anakin to pledge his loyalty to the Sith. Maybe that’s always been there and the theatrical experience simply amplified it, but my god, I think I fully covered my ears in the theatre. 

Now that I have gotten that out of my system, I would like to say that I love “Revenge of the Sith.” The prequels just conceptually are incredibly compelling— they’re one of the few blockbuster franchises I can think of where the whole point is the tragedy, and we, the audience, walk into the films already secure in the knowledge of the heartbreak of what we’re about to see. The prequels are, at heart, the tragedy of the Skywalkers as this time knows them; the hope, then, bubbles up at the very end, as Padme fades away and we are given a glimpse of the new time, the time we saw play out with the original trilogy in the story of Luke and Leia Skywalker. The prequels amplify the shadow of tragedy glimpsed with Darth Vader’s death in “Return of the Jedi” (1983), securing, with our understanding of the boy Anakin, Vader’s redemption and his metamorphosis back into a man who is, has been and can be loved, but only as he dies. 

Many of the little details throughout “Revenge of the Sith” contribute to my passion, because I see the passion of those who worked on the film. Anakin’s medpod at the end of the movie, having been Crispified™ by the fires of Mustafar and thus in need of medical attention, is the same as Padme’s bier— Anakin, in every way that matters, died with her. I appreciate the shift in Anakin as he goes all robotic and monotone when he submits to Palpatine (and your pal, Friendpatine) as though he’s been possessed, his eyes truly losing their color and going Sith-yellow as he strips away the last of himself to fight Obi-Wan. I am always struck by Anakin’s eyes widening in fear as the Vader mask is dropped on his face (the last thing he sees with his own eyes…), before being raised to standing while still cuffed to an operation table like a prisoner, looking every bit the restrained attack dog Palpatine (and your pal, Friendpatine) has made him. Honestly, shoutout to the underappreciated GOAT Hayden Christensen for carrying Anakin’s character given the absolutely ignominious script with which he had to work.

Obi-Wan, refusing to kill his friend, his brother, outright, walking away from Mustafar thinking Anakin will succumb to his wounds, thinking nobody could survive what Anakin just experienced, only to hear “Darth Vader” somewhere down the line and have his blood run cold— he killed himself fighting his closest friend, and the galaxy will suffer all the more for it. (Every time I picture Ewan McGregor’s Obi-Wan beside Alec Guinness’s Obi-Wan saying, “He [Obi-Wan] died around the same time your father [Anakin] did,” I do want to cry a little.) Obi-Wan losing his friend Padme moments after losing Anakin, watching her just die for no reason (Doylistically, I get it, but from a Watsonian perspective, if they didn’t want me to think that was stupid as hell, they should’ve come up with a better explanation than “She’s just dying ig”). 

Obi-Wan, in general, actually greatly distresses me. He #serves, and then everyone he’s ever known and loved DIES and he has to live on a sand planet (my worst nightmare. coarse. rough. irritating. gets everywhere.) until he ends up turning into Alec Guinness and dying himself. 

I must mention Yoda, who is arguably a reliable comedic source throughout the film. RIP to the original, scary, scary puppet, but regardless, his commitment to just fully giving up on fighting Palpatine (and your pal, Friendpatine) and then f*cking off forever instead of doing any singular thing to help out the remaining Jedi is crazy. 

And of course, Padme, my beloved. I could have saved you. Your commitment to serving both [redacted] and true democracy will forever be iconic. 

May the force be with you, or, if you’re not into that, live long and prosper.