Better then RotJ and TPM, not as good as ANH or ESB

Rating: 7/10 (17 May 2002)

-Spoilers ahead!-
Some random thoughts,
Good-the CGI looked a lot better then the first movie much cleaner and life like. The jedi were interesting, nice that we got to see a lot of them. One thing that surprised me was the fact that it made me feel some sort of emotion for Boba Fett, my least favorite character from the trilogy. The character designs were a step up from episode 1, I thought the cloning aliens were well done, the ship and clone-troopers looked nice, although the new battle droids were disappointing. Some nice things in the background like in Episode 1, Sebulba in Courscant and some other random things. I loved how Lucas just pissed on about 90% of the novels with this movie, especially the Jedi Academy trilogy, the books deserved it. Yoda looked good with a lightsaber, although it wasn't as amazing as everyone was acting like.
-Bad- why is it no one who plays a male Skywalker can not act their way out of a wet paper bag. Some of Anakin's lines were just god awful in delivery and writing. The first half hour or so didn't feel like a Star Wars movie, it felt like an episode of a TV show in the universe. The factory scene seemed very much like a video game, and Anakin's hand being caught in the machinery with no lasting effect was just lame. The dialog was chunky, although not as bad as Episode 1. And yes we do have Jar-Jar to blame for the empire now.
-Ugly- This had the most decapitations I have ever seen in a PG movie, but that is not entirely a bad thing. It seems the more I think of it the worse Return of the Jedi becomes, mainly because of the much smaller scope and the deaths. Boba who was given a decent history still was killed in a moment of comic relief. The Emperor's death is almost as bad, not who did it or why it was done, but how, I always thought it looked very cheesy and now seeing Palpatine in all of his glory it makes it even worse. I am hoping they make another special edition to give the ending of RotJ more scope and to improve on the mistakes of the first one (improve Jabba, make Han shoot first etc.)
-End of Spoilers-