Hugely Disappointing

Rating: Null/10 (22 May 2002)

Here's the gist of it...
I saw ANH when it first came out. I was five. I still remember it, though - it blew me away. Subsequently ESB and ROTJ equally floored me - the gap between ESB and ROTJ felt like the longest three years in history. It was great. Looking back with a critic's eyes, it's easy to see how ESB was possibly the best of the original trilogy and ROTJ the worst, but back then, ROTJ seemed the perfect ending - I was still young, bear in mind.
The next 'installment' came as the special editions of this trilogy. Unlike a lot of people, I welcomed these 'improvements'. They didn't detract from the story, and were necessary to fit in with the forthcoming 'new' trilogy. I had high hopes for the future.
My anticipation for TPM was very high - unprovoked by any reviews or details about the film, I saw it on it's opening night. It blew me away - certain elements were annoying, but not as many as some people may have thought. They were:

Anakin's "Yippee" in Watto's shop - The old lady (is her name 'Jira'?) who tells Anakin there's a "storm coming up" - Amidala's 'Queen' voice - Jar Jar Binks

Nothing more presented itself at the time of the first viewing. True, more criticism over the script emerged, but at this time those were about it.
However, the main thing about TPM (and I can now say this after dozens of viewings, is that it felt like a Star Wars film.
The same, unfortunately, I will never be able to say about AOTC. I have only seen it once and want to see it at least three times before I reveal my final opinion. The sad truth is, though, that it's unlikely to change. Some of the things I hated about it, is what most of you have said you liked the most, so here goes.

Coruscant speeder chase. Staying withing the speeders would have been good - falling fearless those kinds of distances took any suspension of disbelief out of me. It couldn't be believed, and that was that.

Over extended relationship between Anakin and Padme. No-one apart from a liar can say the acting (and chemistry) between Christiensen and Portman was awful. Not only this, but it was painful to watch. Also, did anyone notice one cut back to the meadow picnic scene - the movement of the camera, the scenery and the mise-en-scene of Padme's dress and composition lent itself exactly to 'The Sound Of Music'. Could it be that I could see that instantly on my first viewing (and never having seen ANY part of 'The Sound Of Music' other than the intro) and yet the entire team at Lucasfilm allowed it to make the final cut.

Pace. Another thing that was immediately apparent was how the pace of the film differed to all four of its predecessors. From this I was able to deduce that it wasn't TPM and AOTC that stood out from the original series, but that AOTC stood out from TPM AND the original series. When Anakin and Padme are about to leave Coruscant, we are also desperate to go. We are so bored of it by the time we go, that we are even more frustrated to find that, now we've left, we want to go back, because what awaits is even more tedious, i.e. Naboo and the aforementioned romance.

Yoda. Everyone who says he looks more realistic/better is also a liar. If Lucas was going to rejuvinate Yoda, why didn't he do it for TPM. People would have accepted a CGI Yoda then, because of the wait since the original trilogy. But now, a Yoda fitter than ever. A side never seen before, in both the original trilogy NOR TPM. He looked too diferrent to fit in with the other versions of him. And then the worst of it - Yoda fighting.

[explanation] In ESB, Yoda tells Luke "For 800 years have I taught Jedi" and then in ROTJ, Yoda tells Luke "When 900 years you reach, look as good you will not". This proves that Yoda was aged, say, 100 years of age when he began teaching Jedi. If we presume his species decline in faculties between 75% and 90% onwards of their lifetime, then Yoda would have been well into old-age before the events of TPM took place. Bear in mind AOTC is 30 years even further down the time-line. How, then, bar some illness (as we see no sign of injury, and Yoda ALWAYS has his stick) can Yoda be so fit as to be the leader of all Jedi in AOTC yet seemingly lifeless BEFORE and AFTER these events.
Getting back to what I was saying, Yoda fighting. Anyone who says it looks anything other than absurd is lying. Special effects are ALWAYS good to watch, but are they always pertinent?

End Battles. What happened to the juxtaposition of different locations so prevelant in the other movies (YES, including TPM)? Earlier on in the film, when Obi-Wan reaches Geonosis, you have simulatenously Anakin searching for his mother on Tattoine with VERY SIMILAR landscapes/times of day (why must night be night everywhere, when it's different planets we're talking about?). At then end of the movie, though, CGI takes control 100%. Now don't get me wrong, I thought the CGI was the best I've ever seen, anywhere. It will be revered as the 'Jurassic Park' of the 21st Century. But somewhere along the line (a line followed, pretty well, by TPM) Lucas has seemed to have forgotten that these events are meant to have taken place BEFORE the original trilogy. There's little or no evidence of that now, other than the evolution of the Anakin-Vader character. Why, for example, are the Death Star plans 3D, as they were in ROTJ. In ANH they are only shown in monochromatic 2D format. How can technology evolve, de-evolve and then evolve again? The battle sequences, although amazing to behold, serve nothing other than to confuse. Too many things happen at once, and we don't have that expectation of a key scene that we used to look forward to. Even in TPM there are moments of calm within the storm - remember when the Jedis were seperated by the force-walls? Remember when Anakin crashed inside the TF Control Ship? The pause before he destroyed the reactor (which again, a perfect observation, were a miniature version of the kind later to be found in ROTJ). No such observations were to be found in AOTC. The Death Star pay-off was poor at best, and poorly timed also.

In short, you will go and see it and remain captivated BECAUSE:

It's a STAR WARS movie, at the end of the day. - The CGI is amazing. - You will want to see how the story unfolds.

But you SHOULD hate the fact that:

The acting is AWFUL. Ewan McGregor and Samuel L Jackson (and possibly Ian McDiarmid) are the only ones worth watching. - The pace of the film is AWFUL. - The relationship between Anakin and Padme is TEDIOUS. - A lot of the CGI was UNNECESSARY and seemingly EXPERIMENTAL.

I could go on and on. Remember people, it is OUR generation that are the DIE-HARD fans. These newcomers who threaten physical violence, per se, to those who don't believe that AOTC doesn't BATTER the original trilogy, were brought up on Pokemon. They know no better. It's basically how Yoda percieved Luke and vice-versa in ESB. Neither thought the other was 'cool'. Luke thought Yoda was an old-fuddy duddy and Yoda pitied Luke's naivety.
And that's how it is with the original trilogy fans and the children of the new trilogy.
All I hope is that Lucas leaves the orignal trilogy alone after the next installment. Rumours of things like a photo of Qui-Gon Jinn in Obi Wan's 'hut' leaves me cold.
5/10 - but only because it IS a Star Wars film.