I actually came out of the theater somewhat pleasantly surprised; I always say that pessimism pays off a lot better than optimism.
I'm willing to forgive Lucas the first half-hour of the film for the last hour. That opening battle, up until the crash landing, was utterly idiotic; it had nothing to do with the rest of the film, the special effects looked exactly like a video game (mind you, I wish the SCP could manage to pull that off
), and the dialogue/action was pretty pathetic. The love scenes were also terrible; "I'm only beautiful because I'm in love"!?
I thought the movie really began to pick up when Palpatine started working on Anakin; that scene when they were in the theater watching that glowing...thing (what was that anyway?
) had some really good dialogue. I thought Palpatine in general was pretty badass. Yoda's dialogue was great, as always; as cheese-tastic as his fight scene with Palpatine was, I couldn't help but get exctied about it. The fight scenes on Kashyyyk and that rocky place whose name I can't remember were pretty good. Having never seen the Clone Wars series, I thought Grievous was rather annoying and a bit of a distraction; I thought that Obi-Wan's fight with him was good, though. The slaughter of the Jedi, although a little rushed, was good; the sad effect of the youngling scene was somewhat lessened by someone in the first row laughing out loud right after it (someone else responded with "Yeah, real funny buddy").
The best scene, by far, was the climactic fight between Obi-Wan and Anakin; that was far better than I expected. When Darth Vader took his first breath, with the mist swirling in front of him...very kickass. I didn't think that the ending tried to tie up too many loose threads, as some people have said; I thought it did a pretty good job of pulling everything together. (Does anyone else think that Luke got the shaft when compared to Leia?
)
I was struck at how much Ewan McGregor managed to sound, and even look, like Alec Guiness at times; he did a great job. I still think Hayden is a terrible actor, but at least he was eons better than in Episode II. Natalie Portman wasn't that great herself. The original badass himself, Mace, was great once again; his death seemed a little underwhelming for his character, though. (I was expecting Boba Fett to finish him off, considering how he was holding his father's head at the end of Episode II.) That explanation for Palpatine's appearance was kind of weak; I think it would have been better if Palpatine had just managed to disguise himself somehow using the Force. The part with Qui-Gon and the explanation for the "Force ghost" was kind of weak as well. The one truly fantastic part was, as usual, the score; I liked how John Williams worked Duel of the Fates in at the end.
Overall, I thought the movie was much better than the previous two, if nowhere near the original trilogy. (The New York Times lost whatever credibility it had left when it proclaimed the flim "better than the original Star Wars!"
) I think that Lucas earned at least a small bit of redemption for it. For better or worse, Star Wars is over. Now I just have to go back and watch my original, un-interfered-with VHS copy of the Original Trilogy.
