4. Star Wars Episode III: Revenge Of The Sith
Where The Franchise Went Wrong: You know this, don't play that game.
How It Re-Succeeded: Stuff had to happen to wrap up the prequels. You could probably create several digital forests with the volume of internet pages attacking George Lucas, so I'm not going to dwell to heavily on his myriad faults here. After all, it's all things you've heard before, so just a quick recap will do. Simply put, the main problem with the prequels was that a lot of stuff happened that we didn't really care about. The original Star Wars had a relatively simple plot enlivened with monster hooks and twists, but the prequel series devolved into strange minuitae about trade embargos, the Galactic Senate and political conspiracies. If this was a political thriller, I'm sure everyone would've lapped it up. Yet it wasn't this was Star Wars, and people came for the epic whizz-bangery of the awesome originals. Yet for two whole films Lucas didn't seem to grasp this, instead chucking labyrinthine plot at us like nobody's business. Honestly, in other hands this attempt at more complex subject matter might've gone well, yet punctuated by Lucas's notoriously clunky dialogue the whole thing just seemed to fail harder. But in the final installment, any attempt at wallowing in the narrative was quickly curb-stomped by necessity. After all, this was (at the time) the last film in the franchise, featuring a definite and clearly defined end-point at which we had to arrive. Lucas finally had a target and a place to go, and the film picked up a good amount of pace to make this happen. So we got to see exactly how pouty Anakin Skywalker got turned, we got to see what turned him into the asthmatic harbinger of doom we all knew and loved and we got to see the set-up behind Luke and Leia's situation in the originals. On top of this, we got to see Samuel L. Jackson go out like a badass. It's a bold opinion, but I think Lucas absolutely nailed these essential story beats. Anakin and Obi-Wan's fight in the lava was excellent, the final throes of Padme and Anakin's relationship didn't collapse into cringe-worthy embarrassment that hilarious 'NOOOOOO!' aside and the birth of the Empire was handled really well. It could've continued in the prequels' vein of colossal failure, but in my book it gave a much-derided mini-franchise a positive note on which to end, so it must be praised for that, if nothing else.