Never but never underestimate the power of the dark side of the Force. It has made "Episode III Revenge of the Sith" into easily the best of the trio of "Star Wars" prequels and has even attempted the tougher assignment of saving writer-director George Lucas from himself.
It's a tribute to the power and durability of the universe Lucas and company created in the first three "Star Wars" movies that we want to see this episode despite the tedium of the previous two and despite knowing exactly what will happen in it. Or maybe, as with a familiar story told around a campfire, it is precisely our knowledge of how things will work out that makes us interested in the first place.
As anyone who was part of the estimated $3.4-billion worldwide theatrical gross of the previous five "Star Wars" films can tell you, "Revenge of the Sith" is where the beloved Republic turns into the dreaded Empire, and Anakin Skywalker, once thought to be the Chosen One, goes over to the dark side and ends up Darth Vader, he of the heavy breathing and black-on-black ensemble.
Because it contains the creation myth of one of the most durably popular films of our time, and because seeing a potential hero torn between good and evil before succumbing to iniquity is always involving, "Revenge of the Sith" is the most energetic of the prequels, the only one at all worth watching. But that doesn't mean it is without the weaknesses that scuttled its pair of predecessors. Quite the contrary.
"Revenge of the Sith" begins with one of its areas of strength, combat on screen. An elaborate, multipart action sequence -- which starts with a cataclysmic air battle featuring fast jets swooping between huge air ships and ends focused on individual lightsaber duels -- lasts for close to half an hour and shows that the droids at Industrial Light & Magic have made excellent use of the film's more than 2,200 visual-effects shots.
The fight has Jedi knights Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) and Anakin (Hayden Christensen) trying to rescue Supreme Chancellor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) from the clutches of the evil brotherhood of the Sith. Their opponents include Count Dooku (Christopher Lee) and the computer-generated rebel leader General Grievous, a rasping villain who resembles nothing so much as a syphilitic grasshopper.
