Satisfaction

Rating: 9/10 (28 May 2005)

I have to say that I have very clear memories of seeing the first Star Wars back in '77 in the teeny tiny theater in my teeny tiny hometown, but that since that time I have not been a particularly big fan of the series. I barely remember the next two installments and found Episodes 1 & 2 to be remarkably unremarkable. So I didn't have the highest expectations for Episode 3.
I was happily surprised. I thought the movie did an excellent job tying things together. I think the thing I was most impressed with was the portrayal of Anakin by Heyden Christensen. It was easy to see his motivation for joining the dark side, in fact most people could sympathize with him. He also did a great job indicating that he never felt he was joining with evil, he completely deceived himself that he was fighting for the greater good in order to appease his conscience over the evil acts he perpetrated.
Why not a 10? I think they could have cut about 20 minutes of excess scenes from the movie without losing anything. And I found Grievous a pointless enemy. Not sure why he was there.