Frosstbyte

I was underwhelmed. I enjoyed the action, but the rest of the movie was just...bleh. Bottom line: Lucas can't write a script and he can't direct. He neither wrote nor directed ESB, he just wrote the story for it, and it's the best of them all. Padme and Anakin's interactions were painful. NO ONE talks like that. Ever. For any reason. Sure, they were better than Eps. I and II, but that's not really saying much. Christensen even managed to screw up being Vader in the damn suit. He didn't even have to do anything but look powerful and menacing! Instead, he looked like whiny Anakin Skywalker wearing a big black suit. The kid just doesn't have any presence.

The fight sequences were all very enjoyable, particularly the dual duels (heh) at the end. I also loved Obi Wan's speech to Anakin at the end as he lays "dying." Ewan McGregor's face, priceless.

Other than that, though, I just don't buy it. Anakin gets turned so easily. Palpatine doesn't even have to try. This is someone who was brought up from basically day one by the Jedi and he turns from it so very easily. Anakin's emotional and angsty and it doesn't make sense that the Jedi would've kept training him hoping he would change when he clearly had all of the wrong attributes needed to become a Jedi. Even so, he's spent his whole life hearing about why the Dark Side is bad and training (we can only assume honestly) to become a Jedi Master. I don't see any real justification for why he tosses all of that aside. Being scared for Padme is one thing, deciding that everything you've spent your whole life working for is a lie is quite another.

There's also some serious timing problems going on in this movie. The pacing is such that the action appears to happen over the course of a few days or, at most, weeks. This is a fast movie and the events which occur could happen over a very short period of time. However, you get the natural clock of Padme, who goes from not showing to full term in the course of the movie. I'm sorry, but while I can make the movie be nine months long, it works much better as a few weeks and is presented as if it is a few weeks.

Additionally, the people who carry over just aren't old enough in this movie to be set up for the next. Badass flying all over the place Yoda gets crippled and dies in twenty years. Give me a break. That's a damn fast decay for someone who is 900+ years old. Ewan McGregor does not become Alec Guinness in twenty years. Owen and Beru clearly aren't old enough.

And as a final gripe. What the hell was Lucas thinking when he decided the "She's lost the will to live" thing was a good idea? How Ewan McGregor didn't laugh hysterically when he heard that I will never know. I can only assume those parts were filmed separately so that he had no chance to respond. It's perfectly reasonable for someone carrying two full term children to have complications in childbirth that lead to death. That would've been fine. However, if "she's lost her will to live," she better put a fucking blaster to her head and pull the trigger. What they showed was incoherent and inane.

Better than I and II, a far cry from IV, V and VI.