Where have all the villains gone...

Rating: 4/10 (22 May 1999)

I enjoyed this movie a lot. Let me just get that out of the way. I am not saying that it isn't worth the price of admission. I _am_ saying that it is probably not worth wasting a whole day camping out for tickets.
The special effects were great, the action scenes were great, even the soundtrack (and I am _really_ tired of John Williams) was great. But (for me anyway) the movie ultimately disappoints when compared to the first three.
There were a few moments of boredom as I watched it. That hadn't happened to me before on a Star Wars film. It took me about 1/2 an hour to realize why I got bored. It was this: the villains just were not all that sinister. Let's face it, the most prominent and active villains were that duo from the Trade Federation on Naboo, and they just weren't scary. Darth Maul never says anything, and ends up looking like nothing more than a henchman, and the emperor is more like a high-tech "bad conscious" than a true "force of evil". The only really sinister presence I saw was Senator Palpatine.
In this kind of a movie, a handful of bureaucrats and some underexplained trade restrictions are not going to cut it for an evil presence. Flash Gordon had Ming the Merciless. Batman has the Joker. Luke Skywalker had Darth Vader. In this movie, it was Qui-Gon verses the Better Business Bureau.