Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith to receive largest U.S. re-release ever

If you want to see Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen) becoming the spooky Darth Vader again, you are in luck, as Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith is getting a re-release for its 20th anniversary, and it will be screened in 4DX for the first time. So, in a way, you won’t just be seeing it; you will be feeling it.

Though Disney should have waited for, like, three more weeks—as the film was first released globally on May 19, 2005—it did a business of almost $850 million by July 9, 2005, becoming another Star Wars film that left the creators with a fortune.

It concluded the prequel trilogy and was followed by the sequel trilogy, which included The Force Awakens, The Last Jedi, and The Rise of Skywalker. Christensen had a vocal cameo in the third movie in this trilogy, but also had some role in series like Obi-Wan Kenobi and Ahsoka.

How was Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith received?

Based on Rotten Tomatoes, the film currently holds a 79% critic approval rating based on 326 reviews; that tells us it’s certainly well received. A few of them didn’t really like it, calling it “junk.” Not everything that’s gold can be seen by some as gold, but brass.

However, some saw it as the best in the prequel trilogy (some even included the original trilogy in the equation). The Hollywood Reporter’s Kirk Honeycutt wrote that,

"The final episode of George Lucas’ cinematic epic Star Wars ends the six-movie series on such a high note that one feels like yelling out, Rewind!"

One of the most cheerful reviews came from Colin Kennedy of Empire Magazine, who called the film “light-years ahead of the turgid Menace and the undercooked Clones.”

While that was the critical meter telling us how the professional audiences felt, Rotten Tomatoes’ Popcornmeter, a rating scale for fans, gave the film a 66% approval. All in all, it is currently at number seven if we go by the ranking on RT, followed by Solo (2018) and Attack of the Clones (2002).

A brief history of Star Wars re-releases

Episode III was released in May 2005. (Image via 20th Century Fox)

This will be the 19th time a Star Wars film is re-released, beginning in 1977, when the first film in the franchise, A New Hope, starring Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, and more, was released. George Lucas, the franchise’s creator, is well known for altering something every time he decides to re-release a film from this space opera. It was then re-released on different occasions, like in 1981 and 1983.

Looking at some recent ones, the original and the prequel trilogies were brought in with 4K resolution on Disney+ in 2019. And as we mentioned, there were some alterations in color schemes and other adjustments for streaming. The Phantom Menace (1999), the first film in the prequel trilogy, was re-released in 3D in 2012.

Star Wars is currently the fourth-highest media franchise after Pokémon, Mickey Mouse & Friends, and Winnie the Pooh, and it’s expanding more with a James Mangold project, which will explore the origins of the Force, in line.