7 Things You Didn't Know About 'Revenge Of The Sith'

What A Film!

By Culture SlatePublished 3 years ago • 4 min read

There are many conflicting ideas about the Star Wars prequels, but something that almost every fan can agree on is that Revenge of the Sith is widely acclaimed to be the best of the prequels. Or at least, one of the most complex and compelling stories. Revenge of the Sith is full of tidbits, Easter eggs, and fun facts that happened both onscreen and behind the camera. One of them is that Revenge of the Sith is the only film among the originals and the prequels to be rated PG-13 due to its much darker themes and sequences. (I mean, the lightsaber battle between Anakin and Obi-Wan? Anakin cutting off Count Dooku’s head? Yes, definitely darker.) Here is a list of some of the interesting things you may not have known about Revenge of the Sith.

7. Revenge of the Sith’s runtime is 2 hours and 20 minutes, which is a pretty good length for a space opera film. However, there have been reports of an original cut that clocked in at over 4 hours long. The opening scene where Obi-Wan and Anakin “rescue” Palpatine from Dooku was originally over an hour long itself. In spring of 2020, a petition circulated for Disney/Lucasfilm to release this extended cut, and it obtained over 17,000 signatures by June of 2020. However, the problem with this is that there is no solid evidence that this extended cut even exists at this point. Perhaps the scenes were cut for a reason, unlike the extra scenes that were kept for extended releases of The Lord of the Rings and the Snyder Cut of Justice League.

6. The original draft of the movie was supposed to have a young Han Solo living with the Wookiees on Kashyyyk. But it was cut for various reasons. He may not have been in the film, but the Millennium Falcon does make an appearance at the Senate Docking Bay, at the bottom of the screen. There has been some question as to the timeline of why this takes place. However, it is noted in the Inside Star Wars YouTube video “What the Millennium Falcon Was Doing In Revenge of the Sith” that at the time of the movie, the Millennium Falcon, operating under a different name, was owned by a secret organization and corporate conglomerate that was run by members of the Jedi Order. Hence why the ship was in Coruscant.

5. Grand Moff Tarkin almost made an appearance in Revenge of the Sith in the form of stock footage and CGI of Peter Cushing. The stock footage wasn’t deemed sufficient for what George Lucas wanted to do, and the CGI wasn’t quite up to the standard it needed to be, so it was scrapped for this movie. However, the idea was brought back again for Rogue One, and Lucasfilm was able to re-create Peter Cushing’s Grand Moff Tarkin.

4. You know how Revenge of the Sith has a ton of Clones because the Clone Wars are still going on? Well, none of those clones onscreen were real. None of the helmets, armor, or costumes of the clones were ever made for this movie. Every single Clone was CGI. Along this same vein, most of the Wookiees were CGI as well. In the DVD commentary for Revenge of the Sith, it is explained that only a few people actually dressed like Wookiees in the front of the crowd, when the Wookies are all assembling for war. But the rest of them? CGI.

3. One of the iconic elements in Revenge of the Sith is General Grievous, complete with his hacking cough and his love of lightsaber collecting. During post-production, George Lucas developed a rather nasty cough. They had an idea. They recorded the cough, filtered and mixed it, and used it as General Grievous’ hacking bark. So, yes, the next time you watch Revenge of the Sith, just know that that iconic cough was originally George Lucas hacking his guts out.

2. In every single Star Wars film, there is the iconic line: “I have a bad feeling about this,” or “I have a very bad feeling about this.” It’s been said by various different characters throughout the franchise: Luke, Leia, C-3PO, Anakin, Rey, etc. But, in Revenge of the Sith, Obi-Wan becomes the first character to speak the line twice in the films. Obi-Wan previously says the line in The Phantom Menace. He then says it again in Revenge of the Sith, becoming the first Star Wars character to utter the line twice in the films.

1. On major film sets, there are usually multiple directors. As well as the main one, whose name is attached to everything as the director of such and such, there are second unit directors which are there for less important pick-up shots and inserts to scenes. Most of the time, these people aren’t well-known, usually in training, and not the least of which, multiple Oscar winner directors. And yet, that’s what happened with Revenge of the Sith. George Lucas directed this film but he had his old friend Steven Spielberg help him out as a second unit director. Steven Spielberg helped out with the iconic lightsaber duel between Anakin and Obi-Wan, which, let’s be honest, is one of the best parts of the entire film.