Mick Ryan
For my regular readers, this is a slight variation on my normal topics. And this wasn’t the article I had intended to write this week. But, while watching the third chapter in the Star War prequel trilogy over the weekend, I could not help myself. Fiction, and science fiction, can help us think about contemporary challenges.
Next year, the third prequel film in the Star Wars saga, Chapter III: Revenge of the Sith, celebrates 20 years since its release. The movie, which provides the closing chapter in the prequel trilogy that explored the life of Anakin Skywalker and the rise of Darth Vader, was a commercial success, taking over $840 million world-wide.
Most rankings of the Star Wars films place Revenge of the Sith somewhere in the bottom half of all Star Wars movies released to date. A 2024 Buzzfeed ranking had it at eighth of 11 movies (Solo takes last place), Entertainment Weekly in 2023 ranked it in 6th place, Space.com put it in 10th (ouch) and the Rotten Tomatoes ‘Tomatometer’ has it in 7th. So, it is fair to say that the film has its lovers and haters, as do the prequel and sequel trilogies more generally.
There have been hundreds of articles written about this subject in the past two decades. To get a sense of this debate, I have included some of these pieces below:
I am sure I could write pages and pages to justify which Star Wars films I love (generally the original trilogy, Rogue One and the prequels) and the ones I don’t love as much (the rest). But that is not the aim of this piece.
Let me go back a step. Last night, I sat down to watch Revenge of the Sith As always, the movie provides outstanding visuals and a good conclusion to the Anakin Skywalker trilogy, even if the dialog is shaky at times (“no, it’s because I love YOU so much”).
Anyway, as I watched the opening sequence with Anakin Skywalker and Obi Wan Kenobi conducting their approach to the Separatist ship on which Count Dooku and General Grievous are holding the abducted Chancellor Palpatine, it occurred to me that the scene contained a plethora of issues with autonomous systems, as well as human-machine and human-AI teaming. Key themes in this opening sequence might be useful for current military leaders and those involved in developing new tactics, strategies and force constructs for the 21st century.
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