Astonishingly bad

Rating: 2/10 (29 May 2005)

To all those who gave this pile of turd 10/10 - what are you on? I know Lucas can make a good film, and I hoped in vain that he would redeem himself after the the childish TPM and laughable AOTC. Unfortunately Lucas is no longer an imaginative storyteller, he's a Chief Exec of a multi-billion dollar franchise. I can see him sitting there at Skywalker Ranch surrounded by advisers, being told "CGI - yes lot's of it", "great dialogue George" and "yeah Hayden's great isn't he" Firstly I make no apology for spoilers - if you haven't seen this yet it's best avoided, no actually go and see it for comedy value. Besides, Lucas does a great job of spoiling this film himself. Please if you want to see a decent trilogy, watch the original again, or see LOTR. Christ, Peter Jackson must have laughed so hard he cried. Onto the plot, or what passes for it. The first word of the scrolling intro was WAR! I looked around expecting everyone to start singing "WAR, HUH, what is it good for, absolutely nothing", you could say the same about this film. Believe me this wasn't the last comedy moment. The only decent character from the previous two, Count Dooku played by Christopher Lee, is killed off immediately. First his arms are chopped off by Anakin, and as he ponders killing him he says to Chancellor Palpatine "I shouldn't kill an unarmed man!" Are you serious? After seemingly 5 hours of pointless CGI battles (I forget how long), Anakin turns to the dark side in an effort to save his pregnant Padmé. It doesn't take much to turn poor Anakin, the dialogue is like this (I paraphrase): Palpatine - "Join me" Anakin - "I shouldn't" P - "Go on" A - "Alright then". And how does Lucas depict this most evil of villains post-switch? Anakin lowers his eyebrows and wears eye-shadow. Anakin and the evil Empire then set about trying to kill all the Jedis. Predictably only the Jedis that we have been introduced to offer any sort of fight, most seem rather easy to kill for Jedi Masters. Not even the Younglings (no, not the Youngling family) are spared, though by this point we have been put under anaesthetic which renders this important scene somewhat insignificant. Obi-Wan looks back at the security hologram to see the slaughter taking place then exclaims "I can't watch this anymore". How do you think we feel Obi-Wan?! Yet more pointless battle scenes take place for the next few hours, including Obi-Wan vs Anakin/Vader on a planet of molten lava (why do they choose the most precarious places to fight?). Meanwhile Padmé is about to have her babies. In one scene she looks slim and normal, in her next (after the Anakin lightsabre fight) she is sporting a large bulge. In any other film the length of her pregnancy may have raised a few eyebrows, but this fight scene really did seem like 9 months. Padmé falls ill as she goes into labour. A medical robot says to Obi-Wan "There's nothing medically wrong with her, but she's losing the will to live". With that I couldn't contain myself any longer and laughed out loud, thinking "we all know that feeling!" The laughs don't end there. After losing the battle, Anakin is horribly burned and has to put on the Vader costume. After the operation he gets off the table, raises both arms aloft and in the style of Frankenstein lets out a long "NNNNNOOOOOOOO!!!". A good summary of the entire film in that one moment.