Ummm... did I miss something? (Mild spoilers included)

Rating: 2/10 (21 May 2005)

Blinding action? Relentless pace? Over-the-top crap to me. Whatever happened to the simple moments, the light-hearted breaks, the banter? Putting it into the over-done, over-long opening alone doesn't cut it. And how is it possible that TEAMS of filmmakers working on the layer-on-layer-on-multiple-layer of FX in every frick'n scene could stand to watch those pathetically bad dialogue passages without one of them saying "um, George -- this stuff is crap". "Love me like you did on Naboo..."? Vader going "NOOOOOOooooo!"? Crap, all of it. Holy cow, I'm at a loss here to see how anyone can call this a good film. What's presented is non-stop battle, which folks can argue was the point of the episode, but where within Ep.III was the exciting chase/race scene, the tension of "will the hyper-drive work", the visual break the eye needs where a solo villain character marches slowly, menacingly toward its prey with nothing whizzing around it? Every scene is deliberately set in front of a large window or moving landscape solely for the purpose of allowing more effects to whiz by -- well enough is enough!! Sometimes movies just need to focus on characters for a few minutes, you know -- have them set in front of a static wall or something so you look at them... and in this one all we get of that is a few moments with Anakin/Padme mouthing awful love lines to each other (AWFUL!) and then the Jedi Council deliberating about Anakin -- yet again with all of Coruscant's traffic buzzing outside the window. Dammit George -- all that visual clutter just ruins things... and it makes me sleepy watching it all. Sleepy ain't supposed to happen in an action movie, but by the time the end was finally approaching I was zoned out and wishing it all to be over. Disappointing, disappointing, disappointing... ...and don't even get me started about the weaknesses in how it links to Ep.IV (an 18-20 year build time for the Death Star that began construction with no political rebels established yet not a single eventual rebel EVER knew of it's development in 18-20 years? That was what I call a weak, WEAK (a.k.a. "crap") way of linking forward -- 15 seconds of silent shot?! -- where was the creativity??