May the force (whats left of it) be with us.

Rating: 3/10 (31 May 2005)

A long time ago in a galaxy far far away (we wish). At the beginning we are told that chancellor Palpatine has been kidnapped by the separatists, and held captive on General Grivous's (commander of the droid army) Ship, after a fairly ordinary space battle, Anakin and Obi wan land on Grivous's ship in order to rescue the chancellor, they confront Count Dooku and after a short light saber fight Obi Wan goes unconscious and Anakin chops off Dooku's arms. Palpatine convinces Anakin to kill the armless (literally) Dooku and after 2 seconds of Anakin going "no, I shouldn't, he's weaponless etc.." he's convinced and Dooku's head ends up next to his incompetent hands.
This first scene marks the pattern for the rest of the movie, apparently one day (probably after the making of Attack of the clones) Lucas woke up and thought to himself "Oh my God! I got 1 SW movie left to make and I didn't do anything on the last 2!" then he probably got into his bank account, watched how much money he has and calmed down a bit. The movie completely feels like its on fast forward, Lucas had so many things to close up on this last installment (having done nothing on the previous 2) that he had to rush from one scene to the next, characters get in and out (usually ending up without some kind of major organ) and in all that mess the editing is incredibly bad and seems almost amateur.
Acting school? Why bother. This movie, by far, has the worst acting and dialogs (even compared to silent movies) ever known to man. It seems as if a 12 years old kid wrote the screenplay as a school assignment (and flunk at it too). This movie gives you an example what happens when taking a bunch of actors and stuff them with the most moronic, pathetic and laughable dialogs in the history of movie making. Entire scenes are just embarrassing and totally ridiculous. Heyden Christensen(Anakin) stick up the most at this, and occasionally I actually thought Yoda was a better "actor" than him. Even Ian McDiarmid (Palpatine), who was basically the only reliable actor at the first act of the movie, is transformed into a totally laughable and ridiculous character after turning into the evil Emperor, he starts coughing out stupid lines and clichés (which are already abundant) that ruin what's left of his character as well. A few times I found myself putting my hand on the forehead amazed that such ridiculous scenes were actually possible to make, one incredibly stupid scene involve Padme dying right after giving birth to Luke and Leia simply because she "lost the will to live".
Sith Happens. The main reason for making the 3 prequels is totally missed out. The transition of Anakin to the dark side is shown through a series of few miserable and unreliable scenes, it starts off with Anakin executing the defenseless Dooku, then having a series of lame visions/dreams in which he sees Padme dying during labor, it all followed by him getting close to Palpatine, during which Palptanie hints him that Padme could be saved by using the dark side of the force, it then ends with Anakin rescuing Palpatine from Mace Windu's light saber and ending up killing Windu himself, vowing his loyalty to Palpatine in exchange for saving Padme's life. Anakin's shift is so sudden, and so completely unreliable that you are left wondering what the hell just happened. From the nice little Jedi he was, Anakin then marches on to butchering little Jedi children and leading the Clone army to a betrayal at the rest of the Jedi with no particular good reason.
Me Frankenstein, me bad. The scene which had the most potential was also, sadly, the one who got butchered the most. It is the scene which Anakin finally becomes Darth Vader, the scene starts off nicely with Anakin lying on the operation table (after having a most unfortunate duel with Obi Wan, which costs him with half of his body), Vaders helmet lowers from above and briefly we can see what its like from inside of it, then, the greatest part we were all looking for for years, Vader's first Breath. Let me tell you that this part was fairly exiting, but then, then came the horror. Vader's bed Rises, he immediately asks the emperor what happened to Padme (after Padme found out he became evil Anakin choked her until she went unconscious), Palpatine answers that in his rage, Vader had killed Padme. Vader then gets angry, things get blown off around him, he breaks free of his wrists holders, and then ! He stumbles like Frankenstein with his new legs and screams out the most ridiculous "NOOOOOO" ever heard by humanity, something you would expect DR.Evil to do after finding out that "Mini Me" had been kidnapped by "Austin powers" and delivered to fat bastard as a morning snack. Thus, perhaps the greatest character in the history of movies had been ruined.
To sum things up, I am TOTALLY AMAZED that such a movie got so MANY good reviews, it is absolutely beyond me to comprehend. I am completely disappointed, and feel betrayed, Lucas had almost killed Star Wars for me. The movie does attempt to close some loose ends concerning the Old trilogy (such as the erase of C3PO's memory), but eventually, for various reasons, Lucas fails to do so. Also, the movie does have a "dark" and ominous feeling into it, but the unbelievably bad acting, the ridiculous and cheesy dialogs, the bad editing and the fast forward sense of feeling have left me terribly disappointed at the end. This definitely could have been the greatest one of them all, but too many errors done by Lucas's dark side have made it to be a joke rather than a serious Star Wars movie, and for that - I am forever sorry.