What a piece of junk!

Rating: 1/10 (27 May 2005)

Little could Mark Hamil have known when he uttered these words in A New Hope that he was making a profound prediction of the future of the Star Wars movies. Did he also foresee the rise of an actor who would make him look like Laurence Olivier?
As a Star Wars fan I so wanted Sith to be good, but after the first five minutes I just wanted it to be over.
I can't recall the last time I witnessed such a poor performance from a professional actor as from Haydn Christansen. All his lines were delivered in a monotone totally devoid of any emotion, nor did his facial expression ever change - he could have been pushing a trolley round his local supermarket rather than being in a film. I belong to an amateurdrama group and any of our blokes could have acted him off the screen.Perhaps that was why Christopher Lee had so little to do - he wouldhave acted Christansen off the damn planet!! I have never seen Haydn in anything else so I'm prepared to admit that I could be doing him a disservice. Maybe that monotone was the only way he felt he could deliver such lousy dialogue without laughing or puking up. During the film I wanted to do both.
Even if I could have ignored the lousy acting and the even worse dialogue (and it would have taken a Jedi mind trick of gigantic proportions to make that possible) the CGI was just as tiresome after about five minutes of it. The opening space battle looked more like a traffic jam on the M1 Motorway than a battle.
I wasn't thrilled, I wasn't moved, I wasn't touched by any of it. I cared more about the slaughtered Jawas in New Hope than I did about Padme and Anakin through all 3 prequels.
This film said more about Hollywood's obsessions with youth and thinness than about a galaxy far, far away. If the following films were made now there would probably be no Han Solo character (a type of character the prequels badly needed) - way too old! They can't even show a woman properly pregnant with twins - I swear in some shots that Natalie Portman wasn't even wearing any padding.
If you are a true Star Wars fan there are only 3 ways to deal with these prequels-:
1) Wipe them from your memory 2) Bombard Peter Jackson with frantic pleas to remake them 3) Write your own
I'm going to try the last one - I'm sure it will be a million times better, just a shame I won't get paid millions for it!