Great action, bad acting

Rating: 7/10 (23 May 2005)

So now that I've seen them all, Episode 3 makes me pine for the more innocent and romantic original series (Episodes 4-6). Star Wars was fun, cutting edge special effects at the time (circa 1977) (old, beat-up spaceships) and most of all, romantic. Up until Leia announces that she loves Luke in episode 6, after all, he's her brother, you really can feel the heat of the triangle between her, Luke and Han Solo. What do we have here, a lot of very cutting edge special effects, circa 2005 which make for a fun film. I enjoyed the action scenes. You can get lost in it, and it makes for a fun 2 hours or so in ye olde film theatre. But as far as the acting is concerned, it's horrible! The one thing I wanted to see was how Lucas was going to turn that cute Anakin from Episode 1, who turned a bit whiny in Episode 2, but is still basically a fine, upright young Jedi, into Darth Vader, one of filmdom's great villains. Well, it doesn't happen. I will never in a million years believe that this Anakin could turn to the dark side. And the reason is supposed to be because he doesn't want his wife to die in childbirth?? This is a noble sentiment. It doesn't make you evil! At the point where the Emperor-to-be reveals himself to be a sith lord, I think it would have been more logical, given the way Anakin's character had been developed up to that point (remember, he chopped off Dooku's head earlier in the film), to have whipped out his light sabre and chopped off Palpatine's head. Good riddance and now I can go home and be with my very pregnant wife. I guess, in the end, my expectations were so low, that I found myself enjoying this film as being better than the previous two, despite this major defect in character development.