Ewan McGregor soldiered on as best he could as Obi-Wan Kenobi and was fairly likable, managing some enthusiasm and emotional intensity, though he sounded kind of like C-3P0 in the opening during the space battle. I always thought Obi-Wan would have been more the type to ride shotgun in a fighter ship as opposed to actually flying one. I couldn't help wondering why he was left out of the final frame just before the credits rolled while Aunt Beru and Uncle Owen looked off into the twin sunset (maybe it was their revenge for getting Kentucky fried in A New Hope).
Samuel L. Jackson once again had stiltled dialogue, but for me he had enough composure and dignity to let it slip by. His death was sort of over the top - he practically won the duel with Ian McDiarmid, used his shiny purple lightsaber to reflect McDiarmid's Force lightning back at him, thus making the frog faced fiend we meet in ROTJ, and then Sam gets his hand cut off by Hayden Christensen and he gets fried before being sent falling way way out of frame. That could have used some toning down.
Hayden Christensen fought and struggled and dug as deep as he could to make Anakin seem conflicted and menacing, but he couldn't quite pull it off (though I think he did try to tone down his whine factor for some shots). And he looked ridiculous in the end in the Darth Vader costume - Vader should not look that small! HC's just not physically imposing, sad but true. Where's David Prowse when you need him? For that matter, where's Kane Hodder, Ken Kirzinger and/or Daniel Cudmore?
Natalie Portman didn't really have much to do except be the lady in waiting, give birth and then die very quickly from grief. You'd think the mother of Luke & Leia would have hung in there a little longer... and what was up with the "You're breaking my heart!" line? Stress and shock can do a lot to your thought process and vocabulary, but that line was just unpleasant to listen to.
Ian McDiarmid had his moments, but he's still not my Emperor. Clive Revill will always be the Emperor to me.
The Jedi got killed a little too easily by the Clone Troopers. Even if they were caught off guard, you'd think all those Force powered Jedi would hold out longer against a bunch of clones with blasters. The cutting together of their deaths was edited competently enough, but they still should have done better.
Again with the anorexic Daffy Duck robots! ARGH! And if General Grievous was supposed to be the pre-Vader, it might have made more sense to have introduced a better version of him earlier on.
Yoda saying "Not if anything to say about I have" was a little... I don't know how to describe that. If Yoda was a friend of the wookies and Chewbacca, why does Chewbacca diss old Ben Kenobi in ANH?
The clash between Anakin & Obi-Wan on the lava planet reminded me of the Mt. Doom sequence from Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, so much in fact I almost expected to see Gollum in there stroking a lightsaber and calling it his precious. It also reminded me of the climax of Star Trek 3: The Search for Spock when Captain Kirk is fighting the Klingon commander Kruge on the deteriorating Genesis planet; again, I felt like Anakin should have been hanging from a cliff, grabbed Obi-Wan's foot and tried to drag him down, only to have Obi-Wan kick him repeatedly and shout "I... have HAD... enough of... YOU!" I guess it was supposed to be a Dante's Inferno-battling before the gates of Hell/pit of the Underworld sort of thing.
It was a pretty decent duel, but it felt weird for Obi-Wan to just let Anakin burn, even if he was a murderous sociopath who had no busy learning the ways of the Force. I know we need to let him live so we can have our beloved Vader in the original films, but for Obi-Wan to just leave Anakin there melting and suffering seemed a bit... unnatural. A better way to do it would have been for Obi-Wan to knock Anakin off the cliff and have him think Anakin fell to his death without seeing the bastard's charred remains pulling itself out of the lava.
So it wasn't a horrible experience to sit through, but I'm not sure if I liked it or not. I'm in a great state of ambivalence regarding this film, and I may never decide if I like it or hate it. I'll never be able to embrace the prequels, but part of me wants to forgive this film's failings. Maybe I'm being seduced by the Dark Side of the Force...
Now all that's left to do is see if George Lucas lives up to his promise to go back to directing low budget indie flicks, which I doubt he will (though hopefully it would throw a wrench into the talks of an Indiana Jones 4 - I say unto you, NO INDY 4!)
This post has been edited by Lord Aquaman: 26 May 2005 - 10:56 PM