Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith
The prequel trilogy's dark landing, May 19, 2005: Order 66, the Mustafar duel, and the Vader suit sealed shut — the first Star Wars film ever rated PG-13. It was the year's #1 movie in North America, and it has aged into the one the prequel generation defends.
Revenge of the Sith premiered on May 19, 2005 as the first Star Wars film rated PG-13, for "sci-fi violence and some intense images" — fair warning that this was a tragedy, not a family adventure. The story is Anakin Skywalker's fall: desperate to save Padmé from a death he's foreseen, he's seduced to the dark side by Ian McDiarmid's Palpatine, and the trilogy's long-promised break finally comes.
The back half is the saga at its bleakest. Order 66 sends the clone troopers turning on the Jedi they'd fought beside; Obi-Wan and Anakin duel over the lava rivers of Mustafar ("I have the high ground" — merely a line in 2005, an internet institution years later); and Anakin, burned and broken, is sealed into the Vader suit while the newborn twins are hidden away on Tatooine and Alderaan. For the kids who'd grown up on the prequels, watching the galaxy fall was a genuinely formative gut punch.
It landed commercially and critically: the #1 film of 2005 in North America, roughly $850 million worldwide in its original run, and a $50 million opening Thursday — the biggest Thursday opening day ever at the time. Its 79% Rotten Tomatoes score made it easily the best-reviewed of the prequels, and its standing has only grown since: when the prequel generation defends the trilogy, this is the film they point to.
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