Good movie, but not so good "Star Wars" episode.

Rating: Null/10 (23 May 2002)

Possible spoilers ahead.
I'm not a fan of Star Wars, just fan of good movies.. AOTC as a movie was good. Great special effects, action, plot, characters. I'd say go see it, definitely.. I'd give it 7 stars. However, as a Star Wars movie, there were significant disappointments. +Special Effects: The effects in this movie were excellent. Lots of creativity went into character, costume, and background design, as a Star Wars movie should be. The different worlds that were shown were filled with a lot of details. One scene reminded me of a chase scene from Fifth Element..though..
+Action Scenes: The fight scenes, whether they were between Jedis or drones, clones, machines, space ships, they were all great. It's hard to beat a Star Wars and George Lucas on that.. I hate to repeat what everyone already said, but Yoda's scene was excellent.
-Anakin: I tried to like this character. I tried to have compassion for this poor kid (with all the bad things happened to him). But I couldn't. Although Vader's character was evil (until the very end), I had respect for him as the bad guy. I just can't imagine whiny Annie becoming the Vader character. I wished that they made him someone who I could like.. someone who I'd hate to lose to the darkside, but no.. not this kid.. the dark side can have him. Also the tragic scene with the death of you know who.. too cliche.
+Amidala: I thought Portman as Amidala was great. She makes a good Amidala.
-Romance: This was significantly disappointing. When Amidala says she love him, I was not convinced at all. Anakin had a crush on her at best.. was I expecting too much? Some of the lines were down right corny.. man they need better writers.
+/- Plot: The plot is very important, since they can not leave holes.. we know what happens later. In order to tell the story, you have to explain the important subplots and the origins or all the characters. This led to the film jumping around quite a bit.. but I thought it was a bit choppy.. I thought LOTR had done a better job telling its story.
Overall, I think acting and writing could've been much better. The pace could've been better too.. the first 2/3 was a bit too long to wait for all of the action. It was a good movie to see for the familiar plot, characters, and its excellent visual effects.. but now, I'm not so eager to see the next one.