i just saw III and all i can say is OMFG!!!! that was laughably bad! at one point i nearly drew blood bitting my lip to keep from laughing. ok, i will consceed that it was MUCH better than the first 2. but only because there were more explosions and a lot less talking. the characters have 0 substance and elicite 0 sympathy. in fact, as people are dropping like flies i found myself just hoping they would hurry the fuck up and die so we could move on to the next explosion. it almost felt like i was in history class looking at a timeline.
to be fair, the movie on its own probably wouldn't have been as horrible if it wasn't for all of the undertones it had working for it. you have love, loss, betrayal, deciet, a gov. overthrown, a war, shifting alliances. for the love of god man! this is like bringing back antwone winfield, ahmed plummer, shawn springs and chris gamble for a farwell game only to play a team like purdue in a super soft zone all flippin game. i have to wonder if lucas is modeling anikan after himself in the development of these movies. by the end of the film i felt like obe wan! "lucas, you had everthing!!!! and you threw it all away!! this was the chosen one!!!"
this movie was straight black and white. as others have noted there was no progression for anikan to become vader. you don't just flip a switch and decide, "today im a bad guy". noone "chooses" to be evil. yet at no point do you ever feel that anikan wants to do the right thing. much to the contrary actually. the common theme throughout the movies has been that good vrs. evil/the truth is largely dependant on your particular point of view. yet the movie makes no attempt what-so-ever to blurr the line for the audience. the sith are portrayed as radically evil and the jedi as near angelic. at no point do you ever feel, "hmm, maybe the sith are just misunderstood". this movie needed to be darker. peolpe should have left the theatre feeling that they had been betrayed by their most loyal and trusted friend. not talking about the "really cool explosions".
the worst part is you chop the scenes up a little bit, edit the dialogue and tweek the story in about 5 places and you have quite possibly the single greatest story ever written. instead you have ken griffey whiffing 3 soft floaters right down the middle. lucas should be killed via papercuts from really really horrible scripts NOT written by him. that is the only fitting end to this tragedy.
not sure how much has been released from III to this point and whether or not its ok to do so in this thread. some people get pissy over such things. so ill keep my mouth shut about my shoulda been changes until its deemed "appropriate".
on the positive side, its worth seeing in the theatre if you want to see it. the special effects are VERY impressive. anikan vrs. kenobi, easily the best fight scene to date.