George Lucas strikes back

Rating: 8/10 (23 May 2002)

Contains minor spoilers
Yes, Star Wars is back. After the cute but disappointing Episode One, George Lucas has delivered a much better, much more mature and much more serious installment to the Star Wars series. There are plenty of things to like about this new SW movie: much less Jar Jar Binks, no overly cute characters like the Ewoks, much more storyline (still flawed and with lots of holes, but who cares?), hilarious scene where C3PO's head is replaced, and some pretty spectacular action scenes. Seeing Samuel L. Jackson with a lightsaber is even better then Samuel L. Jackson with a gun like in Pulp Fiction, and the scene where 30 or so Jedi duke it out against thousands of battle droids is great. Yoda with a light sabre is a bit silly, though.
Unfortunately, there are also a lot of bad things, primarily the totally unconvincing, stupid and cliche love story between Anakin and Padme, which is worse then those of Titanic and Pearl Harbour put together. Dialogue in the rest of the movie is better then in episode 1, but still often very silly. Action scenes are spectacular, but some of them are really not even remotely believable.
However, I think the good points of this movie more than outweigh the flaws. Episode 2 may lack the charm of the first three Star Wars movies, but compared to Episode 1 it's a huge leap back into the right direction, and compared to most modern action films it's definetely above par.
*** out of *** stars