Revenge of the Sith opens like the original Star Wars, panning the length of a massive ship. Then, just as you appreciate that nod to an earlier era of more relaxed yet thorough filmmaking, short attention span kicks in; two smaller, zippier space vehicles swoop in and divert as if to say, "just kidding! Look this way! Time to get busy!" By the film's close it seems that it was George Lucas who got busy just to keep busy, and his business was fruitless.

Lucas devised the plot for Sith and the two prequels before it (The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones) as back story to the characters of his earlier trilogy. By the time he envisioned filming this grounding, the circumstances were still thin. He planned the movies as three stages in the life of Anakin Skywalker, aka Darth Vader, with two including a lot of filler and the finale consisting of 60% of the character's development. Revenge of the Sith therefore became so busy that a lot had to be cut out to get a proper theatrical release (it only clocks in at 146 min.; not much compared to the final Lord of the Rings).

There is no denying that Sith feels rushed even while it still performs more like filler than the previous prequel episodes. Each character implies an urgency to lock into place for their roles in the originals and each shot is cluttered with more animation than an anime shop, but all of it just seems to run around like a headless chicken (fitting with all the decapitation taking place in the movie). Just like with the winking tease of the opening shot, other sequences such as a battle on the Wookie planet Kashyyk are introduced and then quickly abandoned. As fun as it would be to watch more of Chewbacca, there is very little reason for the scene in the first place other than as self-tribute.

Occasionally the picture does slow down, almost to a standstill, as this character and that character discuss Anakin's oncoming descent toward the dark side. Yoda discusses it with Obi-Wan; Obi-Wan discusses it with Padme; Padme discusses it with Anakin; Anakin discusses it with Palpatine; somewhere on the cutting floor C3PO surely discusses it with R2-D2. By the time Anakin does emerge as Vader, you have to be longingly remembering the concise speeches from The Empire Strikes Back that adequately touch on the exposition dragged out here.

While sitting in the screening, bored with the three or four inconsequential subplots being interweaved before my eyes, I thought about what might be necessary for a condensed prequel and eventually concentrated on an appreciation for The Godfather. That film works fine without the biography of Don Corleone, but Part II works the chronicle in as necessary to its own story. None of the prequels have a story of their own except as accompaniment and Empire already does similar to The Godfather Part II's flashbacks without the flashbacks.