Wasted time

Rating: 7/10 (4 October 2002)

What a shame, that they wasted so much screen time on the little cutesy-wootsey bears!
Gack. This could have been the crowning jewel of the Star Wars films; a movie about how the galaxy finds its way back to the side of the good guys and out of the clutches of Evil.
Instead, we get too much screen time wasted on cute little bears.
Lucas should have stuck with his initial instincts, which is why he didn't put Chewbacca's home planet (which was a hugely forested place, with Wookies living in the trees) in the original movie. (That, and a movie can only be SO long.)
Instead, given the money and indulgence to put it into the third movie, he decided to throw in the Ewoks. Yuk.
In any case, it's still a decent movie, tying up most of the story lines and showing Luke's faith in the inherent goodness of his father was well-placed. Darth Vader's final act, to reject the Evil of the Emperor and join the Good Guys, rehabilitates him back into the Anakin that we should have come to know and love in Episodes I and II.
(Too bad THOSE movies bit the big one, and never developed Anakin in the first place.)