Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith, 2005 - ★★★★½
Is there anything better than a great Star Wars at the cinema?
Ok sure I've seen this movie at least a 100 times in the past 20 years.
Its available on demand all the time on Disney+ and on TBS most weekends - but so what ITS THE LIGHTSABER BATTLE BETWEEN ANAKIN AND OBI-WAN AND I HAVE THE HIGH GROUND AND THIS IS HOW LIBERTY DIES WITH THUNDEROUS APPLAUSE ON THE BIG SCREEN!!!!!!!!
Star Wars (ok good Star Wars) resonates when its Opera is kicked up to 11. Does this hit harder in 2025? You bet your ass it does. Do its flaws seem smaller and less important with 20 years of garbage action movies ahead of it? Absolutely.
Lucas understood Fascism all too well - just compare the last scene of the A New Hope to "Triumph of the Will". ROTS well understands what drives purportedly good men and good societies to evil acts - and the demons who take it down the path of destruction.
Long Live The Rebellion! May the force be with us all.
Lucas based many aspects of the Empire on Nazi Germany. From its colors mirroring the blood flag to the assault on the Jedi temple which always seemed a lot like the Reichstag Fire. Hell, he named the elite fighting corp of the Empire "Storm Troopers" and Palpatine was even given emergency powers to make him an autocrat just like Ole Adolph. I also have a theory that the TIE Fighters mirror the Imperial Japanese Navy fighters like the Mitsubishi Zero with its high agility and light armor and armament while the Rebels ships reflected Allied aircraft design such as the P-47 and P-38 with their ruggedness and fire power. Lucas did base the Death Star Trench Run off of a famous WWII mission in which British Lancaster bombers were made to fly low in a valley before dropping a special payload which skipped across the water and impacted into an Axis hydroelectric damn.