Dreadful, laughable, oh dear !

Rating: 3/10 (20 November 2002)

***SPOILERS*** ***SPOILERS*** AOTC was just dreadful. I loved the first three Star Wars, grew up with them, had a crush on Leia, even loved the Imperial march music with the 20th century fox film montage that you would get at the beginning of all the videos so i went in looking forward to it. Watched the Phantom Menance at the pictures and found it laughable and clumsy but thought hey as crap as it was, bar Darth Maul, let's give it a go and waited for AOTC. Oh dear, oh dear how can people who love film possibly defend this nonsense. The dialogue is as clunky as hell. Instead of trying to show us that Anakin still loves Amidala through acting and character development Lucas thinks 'Oh no, I haven't got time for that lets just get him to say it on the way up in the elevator. Bish bosh, job done, we can get on with the next chessy action scene. The emotion and sincerety in the love story is pathetic. As much as I wanted it to work it was just cheese city.
**** SPOILERS ****
Lucas's attempts to explain Anakin's inner torment over his mother where equally tortuous. If he cared about her so much why didn't he do anything earlier ? in fact why was he so happy to leave her in the arms of slavery back in Phantom. Surely Liam Neeson could have sorted something being an all powerful jedi. But no Anakin arrives after six weeks of her being tortured and just as he rescues her she dies. Lucas still might have saved it if he had used this opportunity to show Anakin's rage ( and maybe a little depth of character) when wiping out the village but no this was lost so we were left with a confusing plot, hilarious factory production line set piece that looked like it belonged in Sonic the Hedgehog or Crash Bandicoot, Yoda bouncing around like Kermit on speed, the virtual extermination of the jedi intercut with annoying and unfunny C3PO titbits which just killed any sense of real tension and some of the most dodgy, cheesy, 'flash gordon like' fade in and fade outs between scenes that I have ever seen.
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The legacy of Star Wars has been ruined by Lucas's greed and one can only hope that he realises before the third one that although a great visionary he is a p*** poor director and should pass it on to someone else pronto. One also wonders if everyone who raves about it so much want it so desperately to be good that they will stomach any old tosh that is served up. Shame on George for turning out this rubbish and shame on his fans for massaging his ego and letting him think that what he's doing is any good.