Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (2005)

In 2005, viewers criticized the film for an absence of clear character motivations when it did not adhere to the expected classical narrative conventions. In 2025, the same actions and events become more coherent when the image of white men faithfully supporting harmful practices became a familiar pattern. These changes thus supply additional context to interpreting a movie’s cause-and-effect relationships. This does not suggest that George Lucas encoded Revenge of the Sith as a story of white grievance, nor that every viewer interprets it as such. Rather, it demonstrates that the logic of motivation is itself influenced by historical, social, political, and ideological contexts. Narrative coherence depends not only on what a film shows but on what a culture is prepared to recognize as reasonable behaviour. The rise of backlash politics provides familiarity with images of white men acting self-destructively so that, when we see Anakin acting in such a way in Revenge of the Sith, it is now recognisable and no longer narratively unthinkable. However, this also means that actions that American audiences once thought would be irrational have become commonplace today.

— Paul D. Peters (Senses of Cinema)