Star Wars Revenge Of The Sith
Aquarium Morris
Revenge of the Sith is set three years after the onset of the Clone Wars as established in Attack of the Clones. The Jedi are spread across the galaxy in a full-scale war against the Separatists. The Jedi Council dispatches Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi on a mission to defeat General Grievous, the head of the Separatist army and Count Dooku's former apprentice, to put an end to the war. Meanwhile, after having visions of his wife Padm Amidala dying in childbirth, Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker is tasked by the Council to spy on Palpatine, the Supreme Chancellor of the Galactic Republic and, secretly, the Dark Lord of the Sith Darth Sidious. Sidious manipulates Anakin into turning to the dark side of the Force and becoming his apprentice, Darth Vader, with wide-ranging consequences for the galaxy.
Lucas began writing the script before production of Attack of the Clones ended, citing that he wanted the end of the trilogy to have similar aspects to a romantic tragedy, thus building into Darth Vader's state at the beginning of the next film. Production of Revenge of the Sith started in June 2003, and filming took place in Australia with additional locations in Thailand, Switzerland, China, Italy, and the United Kingdom.
Revenge of the Sith premiered on May 15, 2005, at the Cannes Film Festival, then released worldwide on May 19, 2005. The film received mostly positive reviews from critics, with most regarding it as the best film of the trilogy, although some criticism was reserved for Lucas's screenplay and Christensen's performance. It broke several box office records during its opening week and went on to earn $868.4 million worldwide, making it the second-highest-grossing film in the Star Wars franchise at the time. It was the highest-grossing film in the U.S. and the second-highest-grossing film worldwide in 2005. It also holds the record for the highest opening-day gross on a Thursday, making $50 million. It is also the final Star Wars film to be distributed by Fox, although it would be also acquired by Disney five years after it acquired Lucasfilm.
Orbiting above Coruscant, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker lead a mission to rescue Supreme Chancellor Palpatine from the cyborg Separatist commander General Grievous. After infiltrating Grievous' flagship, Obi-Wan and Anakin battle the Sith Lord Count Dooku, whom Anakin decapitates at Palpatine's insistence. Grievous escapes the damaged ship before Obi-Wan and Anakin crash-land it on Coruscant. There, Anakin reunites with his wife Padm Amidala, who tells him that she is pregnant. Soon after, Anakin has visions of Padm dying in childbirth.
Palpatine appoints Anakin to the Jedi Council as his own personal representative. Distrusting Palpatine, the Council agrees but refuses to make Anakin a Jedi Master. They instead instruct him to spy on Palpatine, diminishing Anakin's faith in the Jedi. Meanwhile, on Utapau, Grievous relocates the Separatist leaders to the volcanic planet Mustafar. Obi-Wan travels to Utapau where he confronts and kills Grievous, while Yoda travels to the Wookiee planet of Kashyyyk to defend it from the Separatist droid attack on the Wookiees.
Palpatine tempts Anakin with the dark side of the Force, promising it can save Padm. Anakin deduces that Palpatine is the Sith Lord behind the Clone Wars[a] and reports his treachery to Mace Windu, who confronts and subdues Palpatine, leaving the latter disfigured. Desperate to save Padm, Anakin prevents Windu from killing Palpatine by slicing his right hand off. Palpatine then sends Windu falling to his death. Anakin pledges himself to the Sith, and Palpatine knights him as Darth Vader. Palpatine issues Order 66, which commands the clone troopers to kill their commanding Jedi generals across the galaxy, while Vader and a battalion of clone troopers kill the remaining Jedi in the Jedi Temple. Vader then travels to Mustafar to assassinate the Separatist leaders, while Palpatine declares himself Emperor before the Galactic Senate, transforming the Republic into the Galactic Empire. He denounces the Jedi as traitors.
On Coruscant, Yoda battles Palpatine, culminating in a stalemate. Yoda flees with Senator Bail Organa and regroups with Obi-Wan and Padm on the planetoid Polis Massa. Padm gives birth to twins, whom she names Luke and Leia. She dies soon after, still believing there is good in Anakin. Palpatine recovers a barely alive Vader. On Coruscant, Vader's mutilated body is treated and encased in a black, armored life-support suit. When he asks about Padm, Palpatine says Vader killed her out of rage, leaving Vader devastated.
Obi-Wan and Yoda conceal the twins' birth from the Sith and retreat into exile until the Empire can be challenged. As Padm's funeral is underway on Naboo, Palpatine and Vader supervise the construction of the Death Star.[b] Bail takes Leia to Alderaan to raise her as his daughter. Obi-Wan delivers Luke to his step-uncle and step-aunt, Owen and Beru Lars, on Tatooine. Obi-Wan settles nearby as a recluse while watching over young Luke.
Peter Mayhew, Oliver Ford Davies, Ahmed Best, and Silas Carson reprise their roles as Chewbacca, Sio Bibble, Jar Jar Binks, and Nute Gunray and Ki-Adi-Mundi, respectively, from the previous films. Joel Edgerton and Bonnie Piesse also make cameo appearances, reprising their roles as Owen and Beru Lars respectively from Attack of the Clones. Sound engineer Matthew Wood provides the voice of General Grievous, the fearsome cyborg commander of the Separatists' droid army, who had been trained in wielding a lightsaber by Count Dooku. Wood took over the role, after Gary Oldman was originally cast in the role, but had to drop out of the production due to scheduling conflicts; Oldman had completed some voice-over work.[5][6] Temuera Morrison portrays Commander Cody and the rest of the clone troopers. Bruce Spence portrays Tion Medon, local administrator of Utapau. Jeremy Bulloch (who played Boba Fett in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi) appears as Captain Colton, the pilot of the CR70 corvette Tantive III.[7] Genevieve O'Reilly portrays senator Mon Mothma, though her speaking scene was ultimately cut.[8][9][10][e] Rohan Nichol portrays Captain Raymus Antilles.[11]
Wayne Pygram appears as a young Wilhuff Tarkin, and stunt coordinator Nick Gillard appears as a Jedi named Cin Drallig (his name spelled backward, without the 'k').[12] Editor Roger Barton's son Aidan Barton portrays Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa as infants.
Director and Star Wars creator George Lucas has a cameo as Baron Papanoida, a blue-faced alien in attendance at the Coruscant opera house.[13] Lucas' son Jett portrays Zett Jukassa, a young Jedi-in-training. One of Lucas' daughters, Amanda, appears as Terr Taneel, seen in a security hologram, while his other daughter Katie plays a blue-skinned Pantoran named Chi Eekway, visible when Palpatine arrives at the Senate after being saved by the Jedi and talking to Baron Papanoida at the opera house.[14][15] Christian Simpson appeared as a stunt double for Hayden Christensen.[16]
A significant number of fans speculated online about the episode title for the film with rumored titles including Rise of the Empire, The Creeping Fear (which was also named as the film's title on the official website on April Fool's 2004), and Birth of the Empire.[21] Eventually, Revenge of the Sith also became a title guessed by fans that George Lucas would indirectly confirm.[22] The title is a reference to Revenge of the Jedi, the original title of Return of the Jedi; Lucas changed the title scant weeks before the premiere of Return of the Jedi, declaring that a true Jedi could never seek revenge.[23]
Lucas had originally planned to include even more ties to the original trilogy, and wrote early drafts of the script in which a 10-year-old Han Solo appeared on Kashyyyk, but the role was not cast or shot. He also wrote a scene in which Palpatine reveals to Anakin that he created him from midichlorians, and is thus his "father", a clear parallel to Vader's revelation to Luke in The Empire Strikes Back, but later scrapped this scene as well. Another planned scene by Lucas that was written during the early development of the film was a conversation between Master Yoda and the ghostly Qui-Gon Jinn, with Liam Neeson reprising his role as Jinn (he also hinted his possible appearance in the film).[24] However, the scene was never filmed and Neeson was never recorded, although the scene was present in the film's novelization.
After principal photography was complete in 2003, Lucas made even more changes to Anakin's character, rewriting his turn to the dark side. Lucas accomplished this through editing the principal footage and filming new scenes during pickups in London in 2004.[25] In the previous versions, Anakin had several reasons for turning to the dark side, one of which was his sincere belief that the Jedi were plotting to take over the Republic. Although this is still intact in the finished film, by revising and refilming many scenes, Lucas emphasized Anakin's desire to save Padm from death. Thus, in the version that made it to theaters, Anakin falls to the dark side primarily to save Padm.[25]
For the Kashyyyk environment, the art department turned to the Star Wars Holiday Special for inspiration.[26] Over a period of months, Lucas would approve hundreds of designs that would eventually appear in the film. He would later rewrite entire scenes and action sequences to correspond to certain designs he had chosen.[25] The designs were then shipped to the pre-visualization department to create moving CGI versions known as animatics. Ben Burtt would edit these scenes with Lucas in order to pre-visualize what the film would look like before the scenes were filmed.[25] The pre-visualization footage featured a basic raw CGI environment with equally unprocessed character models performing a scene, typically for action sequences. Steven Spielberg was brought in as a "guest director" for the film's climax, overseeing the pre-visualization of an unused version of the Utapau chase scene[27] and making art-design suggestions for the Order 66 assassinations as well as the Mustafar duel.[28][29][f] The pre-visualization and art department designs were sent to the production department to begin building sets, props and costumes.[25]
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