Loved It - Contains Spoilers!!

Rating: 10/10 (19 May 2005)

I can't believe the amount of work that was put in to this movie. I've never seen so many special effects, especially of this high calibre.
Special effects aside, I thought the acting was wonderful. Ewan McGregor was my favourite, however Ian McDiarmid, Hayden Christensen and Natalie Portman did an amazing job.
My only real criticism is that the movie wasn't long enough. Although 140 minutes is quite long by regular standards, I thought the story was fast-tracked in some spots. I believe it would have served the story better to expand the scenes where news of the supposed "Jedi Plot" -- to take over power of the republic -- was received by counsel. It seemed to me that the entire counsel accepted this story from Palpatine way too easily and without question. It would have been more convincing if the counsel had maybe seen a misleading hologram record to make them believe that the Jedi had turned corrupt. I also thought there could have been a bit more character development with the wookies. The wookies seemed very wooden, and I didn't get much of a sense of their personalities. More wookie screen time would have been nice. Another thing I would have liked to see more of was some of the planets that were shown while the Jedi were being exterminated. I don't know which planet it was, but there was one with amazing scenery; it looked like a huge garden with giant mushrooms and whatnot. Very cool. Maybe they'll use some of those planets as the backdrop for the planned Star Wars live action TV series.
That being said, it was an AMAZING film. It was very dark, and even quite depressing, but as Lucas has said, it needed to be that way to tell the story. I just hope that an extended version will be available when this is released on DVD.
Definitely go see this movie. Even if you are one of those people that are hyper-critical about the dialogue, the movie is worth seeing merely for the incredible animated artwork. The special effects are by far the finest I've ever seen. Anyone who has the gall to give this movie a one-star rating is simply doing so to stand out from the crowd, to play devil's advocate or just for the sake of being a cynical ass with a contempt for Star Wars prequels. All the intense human effort that went into making this film deserves great kudos. And George Lucas deserves a huge round of applause for his imagination and innovations.
Lan