25 Years too late

Rating: 7/10 (1 June 2005)

Yes, the film (taken in context) is brilliant but I cannot help but feel it was made 25 years too late... The major problem for me is, that I was 7 years old when I watched the first film (A New Hope), I'm now 36 and my grasp of plot, good acting and my ability to suspend disbelief are a lot different now to what they were then... Hayden Christensens acting isn't terrible... physically he is able to convey emotions such as anger and hatred very well. It all falls down when he delivers his lines in a mechanical (pre Vader suit), monotone voice. This alone, throws you right out of the fantasy. You think to yourself, "Hey, I'm actually sitting in a Movie Theatre watching a film here, I'm not is some Galaxy far, far away". Then of course, there are the inconsistencies in the storyline from Ep I and II that never quite explained... a good example of this is C3PO... Anakin built him and Anakin lived on Tatooine, therefore C3PO comes from Tatooine, why in the hell doesn't C3PO recognise the planet in A NEW HOPE when he and R2D2 jettison there in the escape pod????? Okay, a minor detail I know which I'm sure someone on this site will be able to come up with an explanation for but still, for me, an irritating detail.
My biggest problem with this film though is Anakins "conversion" to the dark side. It just isn't convincing. It seems, one minute he is good (overly ambitious maybe, having doubts with the Jedi council, and entertaining an inner anger but still, generally, good) and the next moment he is slaughtering little children. Unless I missed something crucial, other than his ambition and growing discontent with The Jedi Council, the main reason he is "pushed" over to the Dark Side stems from his desire to save Padme from death during Child birth (a noble act in itself which any husband/ father-to-be would do). So he kills Mace Windu to protect Palpatine whom he thinks can help him save Padme, an act He immediately regrets (He even states "What Have I done")... The next thing you know, he is selling his soul to the Devil (so to speak) and pledging allegiance to Palpatine BUT I'm not convinced this is enough to turn him Evil (even though we do eventually find out he still has some good left in him) enough to Slaughter the Younglings and then Turn on Obi Wan whom basically has been a father to him for the last +- 20 years????
As I stated at the start, if this was made 25 years ago, when I was still young, it would have been the greatest movie I'd ever seen... Sadly, time has robbed me of this...