Holding out for the Special Edition...

Rating: 2/10 (25 May 2005)

With a day to think it over, all I can say is (pardon my Yodaspeak)... disappointed I am. Weak plot with more holes than a ten pound block of Swiss cheese. Wooden characters, no humor, dialog ranging from forgettable to embarrassing. The best line had to be when Anakin lops off Dooku's hands and then manages to keep a straight face while spouting off "I shouldn't kill him - he's unarmed". Ya he's unarmed - you just cut his flippin' hands off! Was this Lucas' lame attempt to interject a James Bond-esqe one-liner? More likely, Lucas is just too out of it to make the connection, and nobody on the set cared enough to point it out to the big guy. Whatever you say GeorgeYou da man.
I can't help think about all the wasted potential. In the original Star Wars, didn't Obi Won tell us that the Jedi were hunted down and slaughtered by Vader himself. They could have done the Vader transformation early on, then made this the focus of the second half of the movie. We'd all rather Darth Vader getting' his bad groove on, than another hour of that whiny Hayden Christianson. They also could have done more to set up the rising rebellion and the motivation behind building the Death Star. At least it would have been a hell of lot better than showing him slaughtering a bunch of children. Vader the child-killer - are we ever supposed to feel sympathy for him after that? And that whole defection to the dark side - it took like two freakin' minutes. My wife thought it would have at least been cool if they showed the Emperor using some sort of dark magic to place those dreams in Anakin's mind. Good grief, even a non-Star Wars fan like her can cook up a better storyline than Lucas.
The only glimmer of hope I can see is the possibility that Lucas' fondness for tinkering with his films may eventually save the day. If he could somehow manage to isolate the good stuff from the first three films, cut out the bad (i.e. JarJar and half the talking robots), and then intersperse it with massive new dialog and plot changes there might still be some path to redemption. This would of course require tinkering on a scale never before seen on a major movie. He'd probably have to shoot many new scenes, use cutting edge CGI to morph new dialog over the faces of the actors. Perhaps the biggest hurdle though would be for Lucas himself to admit the first three movies were hobbled mainly by his poor writing and directing. He'd need to swallow his pride and bring on board a creative team with the firepower to bring his life's masterwork back from the abyss.
In many ways, Lucas' work has paralleled the Vader story itself. He started out looking like some sort of prodigy. Truly "A New Hope" for the Science Fiction genre. When he showed the good judgment and humility to step aside and let Irvin Kirshner take the reigns for Empire Strikes Back, he took his work to yet another level. At this point he was like a Jedi student learning from a master. By Return of the Jedi though the dark forces of cutesy marketing and unbridled special effects started taking hold. By the prequels, he'd fully cast aside most of what made him great in favor of blind focus on these false hopes. Like Vader, I'm sure he believes he's doing right, but in fact he's gone terribly wrong. Hopefully though like Anikin he'll eventually see the error in his ways and come back to the side of good. George Lucas - May the Force be with you.
Rich