Warning: Contains possible Revenge of the Sith spoilers.
I’m a big enough man to admit when I’m wrong. Actually, I’m a big enough man to get winded walking up a flight of stairs too, but that’s another issue. The point is, I totally trashed Star Wars before I went to see it, and then George Lucas smacked me in the face with a great movie.
Alright, sure we have to overlook little details, like the fact that Padme dies in childbirth, despite the fact that in Return of the Jedi, Leia tells Luke what their mother was like. And the fact that R2-D2 and C3PO perform vital roles in Obiwan’s life, yet when Luke brings R2 to him in the original Star Wars, Obiwan says, “Strange. I don’t remember ever owning a droid.” I’d better stop there, because the list of massive plot holes can fill pages. Besides, that’s nit-picking. For the sake of willing suspension of disbelief, let’s ignore the fact that Annikin is about 6 years old in The Phantom Menace (and building pod racers!), yet he’s about 16 only a few years later in Attack of the Clones, and then by Star Wars, apparently he adds about a foot to his height and develops a gravelly, bass voice.
Setting all that aside, I have to say that I enjoyed the show very much. It wasn’t deep, or particularly thought-provoking, but its pacing moved the plot along quickly, without dallying on the mysteries of life, the way the previous two movies did in such depth. And the movie sprung so many surprising plot twists on the audience too. For example, at one point, a woman nearby leaned over to her husband to ask, “No way… Annikin is Darth Vader?”
Oh. I hope I didn’t spoil the plot for anyone there.
If I have a serious complaint, it’s that Luke Skywalker was a bit flat in his performance, and the actor was, I believe, a little too old for the role, and didn’t bear even the vaguest resemblance to Mark Hamill.
In the end, I left the theatre feeling that I’d gotten my money’s worth. My dollars had been far better spent on The Revenge of the Sith than on, say, food for a couple of days. George, I was wrong to doubt you.