A long time ago in a galaxy made of CGI...

Rating: 3/10 (26 August 2005)

Warning, this unquestionably contains spoilers. (How can it contain spoilers when we know the ending? By quoting wholesale from the script. I have done this because it is the best way I can think of to demonstrate how bad this film is, letting it speak for itself.)
Lets start with my favourite line from this film: "I have seen a security hologram of him killing younglings!" Watch Ewan choking back that smirk as he delivers this dross. You get the feeling that this could have been written by a child and possibly by a child who had not seen the original 3 films, as the attempts to mesh the events of these films together are half hearted at best. "Wipe these droids memories!" oh! and get Ben Kenobi whilst your at it and do his too. In fact just wipe everyone's memories as they all seam to have spent years in each others company 20 years before episode 4.
Many of the pivotal plot lines are so clunky as to be unbearable: "From my point of view the Jedi are evil." The Yoda speak in particular is milked until it becomes utterly comical. "Been mixing up the subject and object you have!"
The locations and sets are so varied that they just appear confused. This leaves you with the impression that little more thought was put into picking them than someone deciding it would be 'cool'. The computer graphics which constituted almost all of this film were often reminiscent of the early interactive computer games featuring 4th rate actors superimposed on top of ray traced backdrops.
There is also a lot of American patriotism in the film that to me felt extremely out of place. "My allegiance is to the republic to democracy!"
The only account I can make for people apparent enjoyment of this is that peoples expectations have been so lowered by the last 2 miserable offerings that this didn't seem so bad. Also the ending is good, but as the ending of this film is the only thing that has been in place since the originals it does it little credit.
With this said I should reflect on the positive points of this film: I unreservedly enjoyed the John Williams score at the start and end.