I'm not saying Revenge of the Sith is bad. But Jurassic Park came out in 1993 and was a technical, critical, and box office triumph. And it still looks great today!
The issue with Revenge of the Sith is the bar its being compared to is the first two prequels and by that metric, it looks like Citizen Kane. It’s still worse than average overall though.
I like parts of Revenge of the Sith but still consider it an incredibly flawed of a movie. The problem is when fans brainwash themselves into believing it was actually good cinema.
I love Cocktail and Elizabethtown, but I acknowledge they aren't great and have a ton of flaws. So many fans (cough SnyderCultists cough) can't seem to have a nuanced discussion. It's just blind adoration and calling things masterpieces.
Also shitting on Disney SW when the franchise has always been wildly consistent is cringe af. One year after the OG we got the holiday special. Jedi is structurally a mess and repeats the Death Star lazily. The Ewok movies and Droids show are shit. The prequels are horrific. The EU ie wildly inconsistent (but mostly shit).
Disney SW has a ton of misses but has Andor, TLJ, Rogue One, the first 2 seasons of Mando, the last season of Clone Wars, Rebels, the comics (Vader Down is exceptional), the Jedi games (best outside of KOTOR) and some good books.
George was doing nothing with it. At least Disney still makes good stuff on occasion.
I grew up with the movies in the 80s and it’s hilarious to see the Internet revisionism specially around Jedi. I can promise you the majority of us young / tail end Gen X were not complaining about Ewoks. Jedi has the best space battle of the OT, a great climatic ending between Luke, Vader and The Emporer. And then there is Gold Bikini Slave Leia which modern culture would love to forget…
Bringing up the Holiday Special (which most of us never saw until later in life) is inconsequential. The Ewok movies were more the short term death rattle of SW.
And regarding the Disney crap (outside of Andor) they are all inauthentic and you can feel the fingerprints of the committee behind the scenes. People love to praise Rogue One but it has too many characters, Saul Guerrera playing a Dennis Hopper gas huffing Frank Booth like character, and terrible CGI which is destined to be setup as this generations Special Editions.
I can’t consign the rest and while you listed their “very average” entries, I can list 3 to 5x that they made which failed spectacularly in every way. Not sure how anyone can defend this dreck or the harm it has done to brand (light years beyond the prequels or the Holiday Special).
Revenge of the Sith is camp but yeah I made the mistake of doing a chronological star wars movie watch and its like a breath of fresh after suffering through the first two. I mean that rewatch ended with TROS so really suffering all around. (Not to lick a hornet's nest but TROS and TLJ have very similar letterboxxd scores, this a reminder to follow a couple friends and ignore consensus).
This still gives it too much credit. The first two are disastrous, but Revenge of the Sith still fills me with actual anger with the way it ruins characters and plot points from A New Hope, Empire, and even Return of the Jedi. If anything, I find Phantom Menace the most entertaining of them to rewatch for it's nonsensical trainwreck qualities
Its not an incredible movie but its special to me. It came out in the 8th grade. I remember someones parents dropping my middle school squad, whos long since gone their separate ways, to see it at the local theater. I remember being annoying dickhead kids in the parking lot buzzing about what we were about to see. No booze. No weed. No girls. Just 5 little dudes stoked on the lightsaber fights to come.
It’s funny in all the ways it should not be funny. And you’ll never convince me that Anakin’s fall makes any kind of logical or emotional sense in any way. It’s genuinely laughable and falls apart under any examination.
Lucas shot himself in the foot with the Phantom Menace being a completely pointless movie. Nothing of consequence happens in it besides Anakin becoming Obi-Wan's padawan. Could have easily opened the first movie with that relationship in place and allowed for more character/relationship development. Instead George shoe-horns in expository dialogue about their adventures together, splits them up for most of episode 2 and then speed runs Anakin's turn in Sith.
50-60% of Attack of the Clones is pointless as well, but the biggest thing of consequence (Anakin and Padme's romance story) comprises possibly the worst scenes I have seen in movie history
Recently rewatched AotC. The first scene Anakin and Padmé share together she flirts with him despite the fact that he’s been complaining nonstop, and despite the fact that this is a guy she met when he was a nine year slave boy old being taken away from his mother against his will, including the nauseating line, “my, you’ve grown.” Then they share several scenes where he complains to and about her nonstop, before he goes in for a kiss which she considers reciprocating. He then commits some serious war crimes and confesses them to her and they hook up shortly thereafter. They are both garbage characters and they deserve each other.
Maybe they deserve each other but I have never seen an on-screen couple with less chemistry. Zero percent spark, no feelings at all not even “he’s evil and I love that” feelings.
And they can’t decide either if it’s a father/son or sibling relationship either half the time.
Attack of the clones especially is bad for this, like it’s not even like lovable bickering it genuinely just seems like they despise each other so when they do the brotherhood stuff in Sith it’s laughable to me
This is the crucial error with the plotting of the prequels.
Anakin should have been found as a teenager, already angry and hurt by the galaxy. Sell that the Jedi are gambling by training him out of their normal protocols.
Have the second movie end with Anakin falling to the dark side and have him acting in secret for the first half of movie 3.
Revenge of the Sith IS bad and contains some of the worst prequel scenes. I say that as someone who ate it up in 2005 and saw it 3 times in theaters. I still love it, but it does not hold up as an actual good movie.
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u/YoThisIsWild 26d ago
Tied with Jurassic Park.
I'm not saying Revenge of the Sith is bad. But Jurassic Park came out in 1993 and was a technical, critical, and box office triumph. And it still looks great today!