Thirty Years Of Fan Loyalty Down The Drain

Rating: 3/10 (9 April 2006)

I was working in a video store when this sorry piece of crap came out on DVD and I just wanted to tell customers to run, don't walk, away from this movie. I've been a Star Wars fan from the moment I first sat alone in a movie theater when I was 18 years old and saw the opening scene of A New Hope. I saw the original trilogy so many times over the years I could only be described as a Star Wars Geek and proud of it. George Lucas took it all away with the last one and I'll never forgive him, I feel like I've lost an old friend. I came out of the theater fuming, "but Princess Leah remembered her mother!" and why did we have to watch a graphic close-up of Anakin being burned almost to death? that was disgusting, no one needed to see that. I guess if you have to wait almost three decades to continue your saga you're bound to lose the feel of the originals. A New Hope had all the thrill of a great western, fairy-tale and adventure flick all rolled up in one great movie. There was all that humorous dialog, poor wimpy C3PO, R2D2's spunk and Chewie who didn't much care for the smell of garbage. Empire went a little darker as sequels do and explored some of the past and future for characters that we actually gave a hoot about, and Jedi was a huge crowd pleaser. Even back then Lucas would goof up with the dialog now and then; give Leah an upper-crust British accent, then have her talk like the gun-totin' fearless rebel she was. Have Luke say something stupid like "I'll not leave you here, I've got to save you." But we forgave him back then because we were rewarded by a rousing adventure with the promise of future episodes. Everybody was so busy grumbling about JarJar when the real problem with Phantom Menace was the untalented kid Lucas cast in the lead. I guess it was easier to pick on a CGI character rather than a child but was Haley Joel Osment not available because Jake was cute but.. yikes. And why was Anakin's mother tied up in a tent all by herself beaten half to death in AOTC, was this the only reason the Sandpeople kidnapped the locals? And let's talk about the birth of Luke and Leah in this last debacle. Robot mid-wife says something like "Sir we have to operate now if we're going to save the babies." Next thing we know poor little Padme is hooked up to some kind of birthing contraption and is crying out in pain while the robot is doing something down there that produces the babies. This is how they operate on women in the delivery room in this space-age galaxy? what, run out of anesthetic? I was the most furious about the closeup shots of a burned Anakin, that was completely unnecessary. I waited a couple of weeks for the images to leave my brain before making a final decision but Star Wars was dead to me, why would I keep the rest of the series when there was no way I would buy that one? I sold off all my Star Wars movies and I feel bad for people who wanted to share this series with their children only to find the last so graphic it required a PG13 rating. Shoulda' just tossed it; into the garbage chute Flyboy!