What is this? A LOTR cover?

Rating: 1/10 (2 June 2007)

Okay, this was almost painful to watch. I really hoped Christopher Lee would save the movie, by playing the villain. Nope. His lines seemed copy-pasted from The Lord of the Rings. All that "join me, old friend" and "the dark lord" talk just seemed recorded and re-used. I almost saw his white robe and Gandalf right across the room. The upside is that at least Christopher Lee didn't have to learn new lines. What a shame, for such a good actor. I wonder what Lucas told him when he got the part? "Hey Chris, look, I've got another villain role for you, don't bother preparing too much for it, just bring the LOTR script with you and cut out all references to the One Ring and Sauron and you've got the job!" Even the arena scene just looked like Lee's figure has been cropped from The Two Towers and pasted there... I almost heard the words "leave none alive!"... And then there's the arena scene. It was completely unrealistic. It was like the battle of Minas Tirith... I mean Annakin is fighting an robot-orc on top of a cross between an olyphant and the Balrog. Even the way the thing falls reminds me of the Olyphants...And the sounds it makes. Then, Obi-Wan fights something that looks like the praying mantis with a big aiming problem, and Padme is running away from a super-sized Garfield... But the character that failed completely in this movie was Yoda. Everywhere else he seems this calm little Buddhist with inverted phrases (which become intolerable in this episode), but now he's just this little rubber ball that jumps all over the walls...WHAT? For someone who knows the Force so well I could have expected levitation, but not this Xena Warrior Princess act. Anyway, to me this movie seemed like a cheap collage between The Gladiator, The Lord of the Rings and old karate movies. Pathetic, Lucas!