I liked Revenge of the Sith a lot when I saw it back in April. I wouldn’t say it’s as good as or better than The Empire Strikes Back, but I do think it’s about as good as Return of the Jedi. Anakin getting pulled between the Jedi and Palpatine was more compelling than I remembered. I think it’s a little petty to say that Anakin is written just to be an idiot who got tricked into becoming Darth Vader.
There’s definitely a lot of the movie where it feels like it’s relying on the fact that it’s a prequel and we’re more prone to accept where it’s going that we would be otherwise. I can imagine being in my 20s in 2005 and being underwhelmed by how Revenge of the Sith connects the prequels back into the OT. But I wasn’t, so I feel like I have less of an expectation and it bothers me less.
I’ve never really liked the lightsaber fights as much as the OT fights (even when I was a kid), and the Grievous fight is especially bad. The whole movie looks like a cartoon and that’s shit. But I felt like the drama around these characters and the massive transformation the galaxy is undergoing is compelling enough that it doesn’t really ruin the movie for me.
I feel a lot more excited about showing Revenge of the Sith to my kids than I do about other, better Star Wars movies.
I like Matt Stover’s Revenge of the Sith novelization a lot, but I also just like the story of Revenge of the Sith in the first place. It improves on the story in some ways, but I think it’s a little overrated in that aspect. Like, for example, they add more of a subplot about an investigation on who the Sith Lord controlling the Senate is, and why they don’t think it’s Palpatine. But I think it just draws attention to this weakness in the story. I also don’t really like that the novel overemphasizes Anakin as uniquely prone to attachment, when I don’t think that’s really the point of the story or necessary. The novel does expand on the movie in great ways though and includes tons of little details that might have made the movie stronger, especially around the middle of the story, and most of the characters are more fleshed out than in the movie.