A delicate operation, neatly performed

Rating: 9/10 (21 June 2005)

It must be pretty hard to link up 6 or so hours worth of movies with another 8 hours or so filmed 20 or 30 years ago, even if you were planning to do it when you started out. I can't say it floored me but it was a workable effort. This entry focuses on Darth Vader's conversion to the dark side. Look, I know character development isn't Lucas' strong suit, but I still think they could have done better than Christensen (sorry), and he certainly isn't helped by the story line they give him. The transition from good guy to bad guy just didn't convince me. Plus there's a whole lot of jawing at the beginning of this that didn't seem necessary. But they do a nice job of tying things together, at the very end it's like stitch, stitch, stitch. In my mind episode 4 (the first movie) will always be the huge creative breakthrough, with episode 1 a somewhat remote second. This gets a 9 just based on the enormous scope of the effort.