> My wife, two of my children and I went to see it this morning. > > Charlene and I had much the same opinion. It's clearly better the TPM, if for no reason other than that Jar Jar is barely in it. Sadly, we both felt that it didn't *engage* us in any way. That is, while some of the events were cool, and the effects were neat, there was little visceral thrill to it. No feeling that you were invested in the goings on. > > Other thoughts: I don't get where some of this acting crap is about. I thought Anakin was fine, for one. You could see that he's letting his emotions run the show. (And you can see why Luke's such a friggin' whiner. Now we know where he gets it from. :) ) A few of the scenes were corny and cliched, I'll grant you, like Shmi's death scene. That was pretty bad, and there are a couple of other scenes that will make you wince with "My God, George, put the megaphone down and back away slowly." > > Yoda kicking ass was great, and Christopher Lee was fine too. Sadly, though, again, I just didn't feel like I was emotionally involved at all. It had no impact that way. It was an OK film, and that's all. Although I do believe that unlike TPM, I won't come to hate this AotC the way I do that one. > > Jim
Perfect description of what I thought. I can't type what I'm thinking...well I can: it's called STAR wars, not LAND battles. I can see the point of the ground assult in the beginning of TESB and the moon battle at the end of RotJ, but what's the point of having all these massive armies duke it out on some planet? (To better show off the toys?) It was just so draining. The skycar chase at the beginning was good (Fifth Element anyone?), the one on one asteroid chase (um, ring system?), the Obi-wan - bounty hunter in the rain fight, the Indiana Jones style scenes on the conveyor belts, (obviously a plant. People know going in Anni is going to lose his arm, and this adds to the suspense. When he does lose his arm it's anti-climatic). So right up until all the extra troops come into the arena, it's a so so movie; what follows blows. Suddenly Yoda is a blade master? Yeah right. The CP3O dialog? Now I know where the Rosanne writers went. I really thought 'Clone Wars' meant something. So they breed a bunch of super soldiers, BFD. They still have slavery, but people are upset over clones? Really no one was upset about the clones, just that they didn't know about them. So to sum: visually it was a great movie, the plot started great but fizzled by the middle, the all-thru-all-movies thread picked up well from there, but never got to a point. The writing was bad throughout. Some imagination in the locals, but not much. The final 1/3 of the movie was fast paced, but draining. Kevin T.
