What was Lucas thinking!?!?!

Rating: 3/10 (12 June 2005)

George Lucas may have been showered with praise and given a life-time achievement award at Cannes recently, but that doesn't excuse the fact that he cannot write decent dialogue and has no talent for directing. He may have blagged it with the original Star Wars, but he used his head and paid someone else to write & direct The Empire Strikes Back and Return Of The Jedi for him - and boy did it show!!
Lucas is clearly a great producer, so why doesn't he stick to what he's good at? Alas, he seems to have surrounded himself with such a bunch of sycophants that no-one would tell him what a mistake he was making, so instead of the new films complementing the originals, they now stand as testament to his arrogance!!!
I've given this film a 3 rating because some of the action sequences are brilliantly executed (something Lucas DOES do well) but I'm afraid that's not enough to make it a good film or even a mediocre one. Lucas has forgotten that the audience needs to care about the characters and believe in the actions that they are taking. And in this film, the dialogue is so bad that its impossible to care about anyone and worst of all the story arc leading Anakin to the dark side and his eventual fate as Darth Vadar (the MOST important part of the film) is ludicrously executed and in the final moments, completely unbelievable.
The only reason to watch this film is to see how Anakin becomes Darth Vadar (complete with all-in-one black suit and breathing apparatus) and it is an interesting transformation, but it's definitely not enough to want to sit through the rest of this lacklustre movie.