TORONTO — So here we are at last, come full circle 28 years later.

The Republic in ruins. Galactic democracy quashed under the heel of the evil Empire. The noble Jedi Knights either slaughtered in ambush or scattered in exile.

Heroic Anakin Skywalker turned to the dark side of The Force, emerging as the ruthless, black-clad cyborg Darth Vader.

And yet, the hint of "a new hope.'' While Padme Amidala dies in childbirth, her and Anakin's twin offspring Luke and Leia are born and spirited away under cover for the ultimate redemption to play out in the original Star Wars trilogy.

So how did George Lucas do, wrapping up the wildly popular and very profitable space opera he unwittingly began in 1977? Well, Revenge of the Sith certainly delivers the anticipated goods, albeit with the bleak, relentless tone of an operatic tragedy befitting the inevitable curtain fall on this pop-culture epic.

The third and final episode is quite dark and violent, the only film of the six to get a PG-13 rating, certainly light years away from the original's fluffy comic-book tone. It is also so jam-packed with action and digital special effects that audience members risk sensory overload. And the finale is over-stuffed with plot resolution in what seems a desperate race to ensure it effectively ties up all hanging threads while holding the line at two hours, 20 minutes.

Not since Titanic has there been a film so unlikely to be ruined by spoilers. We all knew how this prequel trilogy was going to end, so there are few secrets to be exposed, just the technical readout of how it looks.

And it looks great. Perhaps too great to make sense when fans pop the original Star Wars movie into their DVD players to see just how well Lucas has meshed this grand finale with where he started. Alas, Episode IV now truly does look cheesy and campy, even with the digital sprucing up it was given for that theatrical re-release a few years back.

And there are other problems.

Director-screenwriter Lucas may be a master cinema technician but is a failure when it comes to actors and dialogue. Hayden Christensen (Anakin) and Natalie Portman (Padme Amidala) can act. They've done so in other movies. So can Samuel L. Jackson (Mace Windu) and Jimmy Smits (Bail Organa). Yet all appear unable to plausibly handle the cornball lines they are given here. Yes, yes, Mark Hamill as the original Luke Skywalker wasn't exactly a renowned thespian either. And, in a way, these films are homages to the old-time Saturday matinee serials where the likes of Buster Crabbe as Flash Gordon were far from Oscar material, too.

But to compensate, there are plenty of little bits here and there to trigger a welcome sense of familiarity.

Someone inevitably utters the traditional Star Wars mantras: "May the force be with you'' and "I've got a bad feeling about this.'' The much-maligned Jar Jar Binks makes an ever-so-brief appearance in Padme's funeral procession. Even Chewbacca the wookie and the Millennium Falcon itself have brief cameos.

And when Darth Vader and the Emperor stand triumphant on the flight deck of their ship, they are joined at the end by an actor bearing a remarkable resemblance to the late Peter Cushing, the original Grand Moff Tarkin. So with Christopher Lee as the menacing Count Dooku at the beginning, this Star Wars in a way brings together the two old Hammer Film horror actors.

The Star Wars strong suits remain the franchise's action, its innovative special effects (including futuristic cityscapes and space dogfights that are simply jaw-dropping here) and Lucas's clever tapping into the richness of both human history and our pop-culture fables, tossing it all into a script blender and pressing "puree.''

Edgar Rice Burroughs' early-20th-century John Carter of Mars fantasy novels, for example, included familiar-sounding names like Jeddaks, Banths, Tarkas and Woola while the space protagonists might wear a ray gun on one hip, a sword on the other. Luke's own adventures invoke not only the pulp thrillers of the 1930s and '40s but the juvenile sci-fi novels of Robert A. Heinlein and Andre Norton in the 1950s.

Padme is given a funeral that recalls Ophelia's demise in Hamlet. The newborn Luke and his sister are smuggled away Moses-like, while the Jedis are betrayed and murdered not unlike the 12th century inquisition against the Crusades' real Knights Templar.

Anakin's morphing into the helmeted Darth Vader and Chancellor Palpatine's emergence as the evil but charismatic Sith Lord while the galactic senate dutifully cheers, carry clear echoes of the rise of the German Third Reich. All of this reflecting man's primal struggle between good and evil, the ongoing lure of ascending into heaven versus the fear of paradise lost.

If that seems too ennobling, let's forget about profundity and just say "Thanks, George. It's been a heckuva ride.''