Finest of the saga.

Rating: 10/10 (23 May 2005)

Star Wars hasn't been doing so well lately. Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones both went down as pretty awful, and caused fans to lose all faith in Lucas. But you'd better start believing again. Lucas has created another masterpiece, surpassing even Empire Strikes Back for terms of sheer greatness.
Nearly all of the problems with I & II are fixed for III. The acting is better. Ian McDiarmid does a fantastic job as Palpatine, using an increasing amount of menace and evil as the movie progresses, right up to the climax of his acting, his emergence as the Emperor. Hayden Christensen has finally nailed Anakin, he manages to pull off the evil of Vader as well as some confusion as he isn't sure which path to take. Ewan McGregor is having fun as Obi-Wan, and is fantastic at appearing betrayed by Anakin. The only real problem with the acting is the romance scenes, but they can be chalked up to Lucas's complete inability to write a love scene.
Speaking of the writing, it's not all that bad in this. The dialogue gets pretty lousy at points, but there's also a lot of good lines. Expect to see "Only a Sith deals in absolutes" on an anti-Bush bumper sticker sometime. One lousy line manages to be really funny, because hearing Yoda say "Not if anything to say about it, I have." is hilarious.
The CG is top notch, surpassing even the wild effects used in episodes I and II. Yoda looks perfect. He doesn't look fake, he actually looks better than his original puppet self. He moves with an odd jerkiness, but that's probably to emulate how the puppet moved. The droids, especially General Grievous, look fantastic. On a close-up of Grievous's face, you'll struggle and fail to find any obvious evidence that he's not real. The clone troopers look better than regular people in suits would, it's hard to tell when a Wookiee is CG or not, and the space battles look incredible. If they make episodes VII-IX, they would be completely photorealistic by the end.
The small flaws in this movie are countered by all that it does right. Incredible lightsaber battles, from Grievous's four lightsabers, to the Emperor and Yoda leaping about the Senate, to Anakin and Obi-Wan battling on top of lava. Some laugh-out-loud moments, mostly including R2-D2. Acting and dialogue leaps and bounds beyond episodes I and II. I really hope they go on and make VII-IX. Just as the magic is back, I don't want it to be gone.