Origin stories are irresistible, but they can be dangerous when it comes to villains. The risk of exposing too much and lessening the evil may even inspire a fear equal to the unrelenting Dark Side of the Force. 

In 1999, Star Wars supremo George Lucas returned Star Wars to the world with a prequel trilogy that would concentrate on, of all the things in a galaxy far, far away, the tragedy of the Skywalker family and the much speculated descent of Anakin Skywalker to legendary villain Darth Vader. 

War! As skirmishes of the long and damaging Clone Wars reach the capital world of Coruscant, the Galactic Republic struggles with the increasingly authoritarian control of its Chancellor.

After a daring rescue mission leads to the death of Separatist leader Count Dooku and points to the whereabouts of the renowned Jedi-slayer, General Grievous, the Jedi have a chance to end the war once and for all. But just as the Republic strains under the weight of a galaxy-wide war, the Jedi struggle with the effects of being dragged into an increasingly uncomfortable role. 

As rumours of a Sith Lord pulling strings behind the scenes persist, Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen) finds himself caught in the middle. Can he reconcile his Jedi training, the forbidden love for his pregnant wife Padme (Natalie Portman), and the counsel of Chancellor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid), who offers to share his uncanny awareness of the ways of the Force with the troubled but talented Jedi Knight?

Now receiving a generous 20th-anniversary re-release at cinemas, it’s a good time to reflect on what Lucas achieved with the conclusion of his Star Wars prequels. Having established an unexpectedly political universe with The Phantom Menace and delivered the complicated strands of the Clone Wars in Attack of the Clones, Lucas pulled the focus tight with the last episode. While the trilogy closer has to resolve many plot strands and move pieces into place for Episode IV: A New Hope, its direct approach works wonders.  

The Prequel Trilogy has a blander industrial sheen than the worn characters and tech that helped make the first films so popular. But Anakin’s path slices through the final instalment like a lightsaber, ensuring it’s the closest modern Star Wars has come to tapping the Original Trilogy.

What does Dooku say early on, ‘twice the pride, double the fall?’ Well before Anakin’s arrogance costs him both legs and nearly his life, Sith throws more villains at the screen than Star Wars has ever seen: Dooku, Grievous, and the not-so-mysterious Darth Sidious. Then the main event of Darth Vader in his shiny new armour, the looming promise in a swirl of impressive action. Revenge of the Sith has the customary dogfights and the long-awaited saber duel between Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi, and its design and CGI hold up 20 years later in what remains the best screen representation of Lucas’s turn-of-the-century Star Wars vision.

Revenge of the Sith fuses technology and melodrama into a maelstrom of fire. As any fan would expect, the main glue is John Williams’ unifying score, drawing together the trilogy’s themes and portents of the timeline’s future. 

While it may be the most deftly realised film in the trilogy, there are sacrifices. Revenge of the Sith plays a melancholic minor chord, where everyone’s endpoints are marked. By the end, Vader must be by the Emperor’s side, the Jedi beaten and the remnants in exile, and – in the film’s crucial nod to New Hope of the following chapter- the twins hidden with their adoptive families. In the rush of the 2 hours 20 minutes running time, the cost is often characters caught in two-person scenes of terse dialogue. 

Often, less is more, but not when it’s functional dialogue trying to capture a tragic fall with huge lashings of the Lucifer legend. With characters frequently interacting in pairs, it’s acutely apparent that Revenge of the Sith features very little comic relief. It’s almost as though the tragedy is too worthy to be undercut, but worthiness without lightness feels wholly un-Star Wars.

 Even at the trilogy’s end, actors surrounded by green screens struggle under the technical direction. Portman gamely struggles on with a character arc decimated over three films. Others like Samuel L. Jackson’s doomed Mace Windu work to a lean set framework. Interestingly, Scottish actors emerge with the most credit. McGregor once again gets to suavely patrol on his own before injecting some steely menace into his betrayed Jedi Knight.  Then Ian McDiarmid can let loose as the insidious Palpatine and finally emerge as the cackling Emperor to lock lightsabers with Yoda.

It’s a credit to McGregor and Christensen that their partnership has endured beyond Anakin’s descent, particularly with the limited sequel series Obi-Wan Kenobi (2022). Revenge of the Sith doesn’t take its spotlight away from Christensen, which is an unfair level of scrutiny on this dramatically shortened journey. Anakin would be a challenging role for any actor, but fans who come for Darth Vader will likely struggle to believe there isn’t a snarling, manipulated teenager under that helmet at the end.

Lucas is not interested in preserving the original trilogy’s mysterious cliffhangers as Anakin plummets. While it was wise to concentrate on the simple dark story of Vader’s rise, waiting for characters to catch up with what the audience knows makes it a more plodding journey. As its design morphs into the 1970s aesthetic of A New Hope, the difference to the simple, affecting brilliance of the films that inspired it couldn’t be clearer.

Overcoming the expectation that had haunted the franchise for decades and successfully realising the invention of Darth Vader was an impossible task. Incredibly, despite its flaws, Revenge of the Sith comes close. Twenty years later, its reputation improved along with the rest of the trilogy, and it remains the pinnacle of new Star Wars. 

It may be where Lucas’ myth was reduced to chapters of the Skywalker saga, but it’s also the one chapter that stands closest to the Original Trilogy.