Revenge of the Sith...

We went to see Revenge of the Sith - for the second time - last night. Some random thoughts about it now follow:

• It is a better movie than either Episode 1 or Episode 2. As The Empire Strikes Back stood out amongst Episodes 4, 5 & 6, so Revenge of the Sith does amongst Episodes 1, 2 & 3.
• There were genuine moments of tension. For example, when Padme realises that Anakin has moved to the dark side.
• As everyone has been saying, it links the movies together very well. It fills in most of the gaps and answers a lot of questions. It does, however, leave a few things unanswered. For example, who is Anakin's father? I remember reading a few years ago that there was a rumour going around that it might be Palpatine, which is especially cool because it would mean that at the end of Return of the Jedi, when Vader is looking back and forth between Luke and the Emporer before throwing the Emporer down the shaft, he is actually choosing between his father and his son.
• Another small inconsistency is that in Star Wars (Episode 4) Ben Kenobi does not recognise R2-D2 when they first meet on Tatooine, even saying that he doesn't remember ever owning a droid. While I know that R2 was never actually Kenobi's droid, you'd think he'd remember all the interaction they had during the Clone Wars.
• Speaking of Ben Kenobi, Ewan McGregor virtually carries the film I think. His performance (as well as Natalie Portman's) is very strong, given the limited scope of the dialogue - which unfortunately is a recurring theme of all three of the new movies. And I also think that McGregor and the make-up artists do a good job of easing the potentially troublesome transition to Alec Guiness.