Yesterday was May the Fourth (be with you), today is the…Revenge of the Fifth! I didn’t make that up, think I heard it on Facebook.

The Battle of Coruscant

In nine days, Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith will be 11 years old. I remember the sense of finality at the time, and the realization that this would be the last Star Wars movie EVER (little did we know).

Concept for a “Ringed Planet” that never made it to the screen

I like Revenge of the Sith, for a long time it was my unquestioned favorite of the prequel movies. Over time I’ve come to favor Episodes I and II because they have more “real” stuff in them; III is 99% green screen. Barely any full sets were constructed and no actual suit of clone trooper armor was ever made for filming (and boy can you tell).

Episode III needed all that green screen though; it gave us more stunning, pan-galactic vistas than ever before. The movie spends significant time on five worlds and gives us glimpses of seven others, new and old.

Concept of a world featuring elements that wound up on two different planets in the Order 66 sequence

One of the men tasked with visualizing these wonders was Ryan Church, who had previously provided concept art for Attack of the Clones. Church has since gone on to work on The Force Awakens, Transformers, the JJ-verse Star Trek movies, and many others. His style is realistic yet impressionistic, reminding me of scifi masters John Berkey and Robert McCall.

Have a great Revenge of the Fifth and enjoy these cool windows into the Star Wars Universe in its darkest days, before A New Hope came to the galaxy.