And on this note, Star Wars is finally done being milked. Except for the DVD sales now, of course

Rating: 8/10 (24 May 2005)

Okay, before I get to the core of this review, I'd like to make a couple notes. First, it was very pleasant to have the nearly complete absence of Jar Jar in this installment of the Star Wars saga. I can handle it if all he does is make a small cameo and his mouth never opens. Second, somebody really needs to tell George that it gets pretty annoying after a while if you use all those different scene transition effects, all the wipes and swooshes and swirls. He's like a teenager who is just learning how to use Powerpoint. But I digress.
So I'm sure the core of Star Wars elite nerds knew everything that was going to happen in this movie before they ever saw it. I saw a few of those nerds in the mall the other day, dressed in their full Star Wars garb. A few storm troopers, a clone trooper, and a healthy smattering of Jedi were patrolling the West Edmonton Mall. But that's beside the point. For those of us who saw the early episodes, and I imagine most people who saw III have seen I and II, we know that Anakin and Padme are married. And for those who have seen the original trilogy, we know that Anakin Skywalker is going to become Darth Vader, everybody's favorite galactic villain. That's what this movie is really about. The fall of the Republic, the transition of Anakin into Darth Vader, and the birth of the Skywalker children.
The movie starts off with a big space fight in progress. The opening credits inform us that two Jedi trying to rescue Chancellor Palpatine. The two Jedi are in fact, Obi-Wan and Anakin, and they come on the scene in a couple fighter ships swirling and swooping and avoiding enemy fire while trying to get to General Grievous' ship, where the chancellor is being held prisoner. They get there, find the chancellor, Count Dooku shows up and we have a little good versus evil confrontation, and of course evil gets its butt kicked. Dooku loses his head at the hands of Anakin, after being goaded into killing a disarmed man be the chancellor. It's already by this point where we start to wonder if the chancellor is a friend or foe.
But they get the chancellor off the ship, head back to safety, Anakin bumps into Padme, he finds out she's pregnant. This is obviously a bit of a dilemma for them as nobody on the Jedi council even knows they're married. It's something they've been hiding. Anakin starts having nightmares about complications during the delivery where Padme dies, and he feels that these are predictions of the future.
Later Anakin is assigned a position in the Jedi council, but not as a master. The main reason the Jedi want him on the council is because they were persuaded by the chancellor, and also because they want Anakin to spy on the chancellor for them. They have doubts as to where his loyalties lie. Anakin talks to the chancellor, who knows about the dreams he's been having about Padme dying, and he informs Anakin that there is a way that she can be saved, by utilizing the dark side of the force. The chancellor keeps insisting to Anakin that a true master harnesses both sides of the force to achieve a balance that none others could have, making him more powerful than all the other Jedi before him.
So that's the carrot that gets dangled in front of Anakin's face as a little temptation to switch over to the dark side. The movie definitely has a very Star Warsish feeling to it, and I'm sure this was George's final attempt to pacify the nerds after Episodes I and II, not to mention to milk that cow for every last buck he can.
Me, I'd say it was okay, but nothing special.
Bottom Line: 3 out of 4 (worth watching)