Hey, guess what? A Star Wars veteran did not like it

Rating: 3/10 (24 May 2005)

There is always one isn't it? Always one which disagrees with the crowd...But remember this, I saw Star Wars in 1977 in the big screen and have been a big fan since then..so you can say I belong to the old guard!
THE GOOD AND THE UGLY
OK, I won't beat around the bushes...bad news first:
-The dialogs are still appalling. Lucas may be a fantastic visionary and a great story teller but he can't write a screenplay -The fall to the dark side: badly managed/acted and badly structured. I could not feel the anger in Anakin
-Story structure was awful (once again!) with poor transition from one scene to another and frankly a boring 20 minutes stretch...
-The emergence of Darth Sidious and the Sith dominance of the senate was not handled smoothly
-The manner of Obi-Wan and Yoda wondering about while Jedis are decimated was out of character.
-Another stigma from ATOC: planet hopping! Good points...Err...General Grievious (see below) and the poignant scenes of Jedis falling in the battlefield...
SFX
Sure the special effects were great, you would expect from this kind of movie but...similar to ATOC, they were too distracting from the storyline
SPACE BATTLES
In my opinion, among the 5 previous movies, ROTJ had the best battle scenes though both TPM and ATOC followed closely. After watching ROTS, my opinion still stands...Actually looking back, ANH was as good because of its simplicity. True, the opening battle is great but too short.
HAYDEN CHRISTENSEN
After hating his performance in ATOC, I have to admit he was better in ROTS though he was let done by the terrible dialogs and confusion over his transition to the dark side.
FAVOURITE CHARACTER
Lucas developed an art in coming up with fantastic villains in TPM (Maul) and ATOC (Jango). He once again reached new levels with General Grievious. GG's sheer complexity (size/movement/texture) could not have been achieved with movie technology even present during TPM. So it was fitting for Lucas to leave GG for the last movie. No wonder that GG's scenes were the finest of the movie...
THE DUEL
Well, yes, the duel between Anakin and Obi-Wanwas good. The sword fight was mesmerizing though the latter part was not as good.
CONCLUSION
Let's face it, when it comes to the crunch, screenplay is important. George can't cut it. Look at ESB, two superb scriptwriters (Brackett and Kasdan) making it the best movie of the franchise...
Harsh would you say? Well, I did mellow after watching ATOC (besides Hayden's performance and the dialogs) several times so I am willing to give this one another chance...
Found this review on UK's Daily Mail: " Episode III has the same faults as episodes I and II (terrible dialogs and worse acting) plus two brand new ones - a confusing lack of geographical sense and a tendency to leave gaping plot holes.
If (Hayden) Christensen is poor, (Ewan) McGregor is abysmal.
I found the whole thing a colossal disappointment. Lucas' dialogs is more banal than ever and his sense of structure has largely deserted him "