What a waste!

Rating: 1/10 (17 December 2001)

I am sure George Lucas is smug as bug, I think he wanted to completely distort and rearrange the Star Wars universe just because he thinks it is his to do as he pleases, he knew that 20 years of people waiting for the new movies would guarantee it making a billion dollars, even if it sucked.
Does anyone remember watching the first Star Wars, and seeing the Stormtroopers ruthlessly board the blockade runner and waste the rebel scum, not a hint of mercy, only following their orders.
The ships and weapons and equipment were realistic for a sci fi movie. It all seemed to fit together to give the perception of an entire universe of history, culture, politics, agriculture, space travel, trade, greed, crime, law enforcement, bounty hunters etc.
You really felt for Luke being a bored farmer, he had adventurers blood in his veins, no liberal anti jedi uncle could remove it from his mind.
Darth Vader was a cool, dark, menacing villain. He had complete command of his minions around him, a true commander in the field for the emperor. Darth Vader was a follower of the dark side of the force, which may or may not be evil. The empire did seem to control law and order, the economy seemed to be functioning, the military obviously was being funded very well. Civilians in the outlying areas seemed to have the right to own weapons which is more then most earth people can say, the Storm Troopers were made out to be regular joes in some scenes where they are talking about family and such.
The empire failed to win over the hearts and minds of all people by adopting a join us or die mentallity. But that was their strategy.
I won't comment on the next 2 other than to say I did not like the ewoks much, the idea of killing a Storm Trooper as an ewok with a flimsy miniature wooden bow and small stones is absolutely insane. You would think an empire that is ruthless enough to destroy Alderaan would clean out any indigenous teddy bears that could be a threat. As ineffective as Imperial troops were I don't see how they could conquer anything, why is it an armored storm trooper can't take any hits from sporting blasters yet Leia can survive a blast from a military blaster with no armor on.
As bad as I thought return of the jedi was, the phantom menace was far worse. I found almost none of the "Good guy" characters likeable. The anakin slave plot line was real retarded, nobody wants to see a cool evil villain like Vader be reduced to a sniveling, crying slave. The race scene was just filler to make the movie 2 hours and sell some more toys, the fact that anakin won when he was way behind is totally ludicrous.

I don't like the way the evil droids don't follow their orders, the senator ordered them to anihilate the opposition, he didn't say anything about taking prisoners, especially taking all the pilots and just leaving them next to their fueled and armed bottle rockets er I mean fighters. The civil war like ground battle was really stupid, why these trade federation dudes don't they have orbital bombardment methods of attack, use the droids to mop up.
I think Yoda was a little out of place being on Corascunt (spell?) , I am still trying to picture in my mind him having a light saber duel with an opponent. And since when did the light and dark side of the force (which grand moff Tarkin referred to as a religion) which makes for a spiritual presence that can hop star systems and visit luke have to do with organisms that crawl on your skin and on all matter you command to make metal objects float and do your bidding. That metachlorians crap was the biggest travesty to come out of lucases mind yet. It made me wonder what his motives were, was he afraid having a religion in his fantasy world would upset someone.
And to cap the movie off the honorable jedi double team Darth Maul, what kind of honorable duel was that.
I rate Star Wars 10, Empire 9.5, Return of Jedi 5, Menace 2.5 (Darth Maul is all of those points). I don't expect my comments to matter, just thought I would share them.