May 19, 2020, marks the fifteenth anniversary of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, the conclusion of Star Wars' prequel trilogy and the saga's final film under the watch of George Lucas. People thought it would be decades until another Star Wars movie came out, but Lucas surprisingly sold Disney in 2012. The acquisition spawned a new trilogy and series of live-action spin-offs and shows.
However flawed and maligned the prequel trilogy is, over the past two decades, its burden has finally been passed down to Disney's sequel trilogy, which somehow turned out to be more polarizing and controversial than before. Lucasfilm can take credit for their prequels being the vision of one leader (Lucas) and said leader guiding it to its natural conclusion.
Meanwhile, Disney relies on multiple directors for their trilogy, and neither agree on how the story should be told. Comparing the two highly debated trilogies can be exhausting knowing both their strengths and weaknesses, but one thing the prequels have going for them is that they have a better conclusion than the sequels.
A decade and a half later, Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith still has detractors for the same inconsistencies in tone and action of its predecessors, but it rises above these faults because it has the best story. The transformation of Anakin Skywalker into Darth Vader and the rise of the Galactic Empire are some of the most compelling stories in all of Star Wars lore, and Episode III does its job at explaining those incredible events in just two hours and twenty minutes. Even for being a family movie, the film portrays the paranoia of Anakin and his turn to the Dark Side well and shows how he had good intentions for doing so, which were to protect Padmé from dying during childbirth.
The prequels get maligned for constantly showing intergalactic politics, but Revenge of the Sith does a fine job explaining why the public is swayed into accepting an Empire over the Republic. Padmé captions this with her line, "So this is how liberty dies, with a thunderous applause," which is frequently memed on Twitter.
Skywalker's turn to the Dark Side isn't as soft as some expected. He's shown being responsible for the deaths of Jedi younglings, and his gruesome burning at the Battle of Mustafar could fit in with an R-rated movie. Revenge of the Sith pulls few punches as a tragic ending to its trilogy, while The Rise of Skywalker comes off more like a band-aid for its previous movies than it does trilogy-capper.
Regardless of his critics, Lucas approaches Episode III with the intent to complete his ambitious project. The darker tone of Revenge of the Sith shows he listened to some criticisms; however, he doesn't cater to every dig at his films. What Disney did for Episode IX was listen too much to the vocal fans who criticized its predecessor. While Rian Johnson's The Last Jedi took plenty of shots, it at least took the formulaic franchise into new and more complex directions. Instead of Abrams continuing to go in this direction, Episode IX feels like it caved under public criticism and resulted in a bland Star Wars movie.
The Rise of Skywalker minimizes the complex politics and psychology that make Revenge of the Sith interesting and creates a movie where the characters' actions have little to no consequences. The only main character of the sequel trilogy who makes a sacrifice is Kylo Ren, and he still avoids trial and punishment by the restored Galactic Republic. C3PO even receives a soft fate in Episode IX as opposed to Episode III, where the droid gets his memory erased. It's teased that C3PO is going to lose his memory again in The Rise of Skywalker, but, like a lot of things in the film, it is fixed in the end.
While everyone who watches Revenge of the Sith is aware of what occurs in the classic trilogy and that good triumphs in the end, it's refreshing to have a trilogy that ends with the villains winning. The births or Luke and Leia provides hope for the future, but that's still decades away.
The third installment of the prequel trilogy ends violently with the rise of the Empire, near-extermination of the Jedi and the deaths of key characters like Padmé and Mace Windu. While The Rise of Skywalker is where good triumphs, the only true good character who passes away is Leia, which is necessary because of unfortunate real life circumstances. This too is a criticism of Return of the Jedi where no beloved, new characters die in that movie either.
If there's one thing Episode III deserves credit for over Episode IX, it's for doing a better job at using Darth Sidious. The prequel trilogy builds around Chancellor Palpatine's inevitable overthrow of the Republic, and his reveal as a Sith Lord is compelling. The sequel trilogy, on the other hand, forces the Emperor back into the series with little-to-no explanation. His downfall at the end of The Rise of Skywalker is essentially a deus ex machina and nowhere near as satisfying as his alleged death in Return of the Jedi.
15 years later and Lucas' final installment of his prequel trilogy ages better than Disney's movie that was released last year, in-spite of better special effects and advanced filmmaking techniques. Episode III's complex look at politics and psychology was ahead of its time as opposed to The Rise of Skywalker, which is directed like a Disney movie.