Well, I’m back from seeing Revenge of the Sith and…wasn’t that impressed. It was an improvement on the last two prequels to be sure, and the last twenty minutes or so was mostly what I’d been hoping the whole thing would be like, but the quality was patchy and I still wouldn’t mention it in the same sentence as the OT. If I had to give it a review score right now it would be a two, maybe a high three if I was feeling generous (that’s out of five, to clarify).

For anyone reading this who hasn’t seen it I’m going to block out anything that I’d consider to be a spoiler (highlight them to read), but these are my main complaints with it:

• The dialogue in the love scenes. Some of it wouldn’t fly on a crappy soap opera.
• Anakin’s motives for turning to the dark side – he kills Mace Windu, cries “what have I done!?”, and then acts like it’s nothing when Palpatine orders him to go and kill more Jedi. Did I miss something there?
• Padme’s destiny – we all know that she had to die, but what kind of explanation was that she’s medically fine but was losing the will to live? Wouldn’t it have been easier to have Anakin’s spousal abuse mortally wound her?
• The stuff with the wookies was a blatant nudge and wink to the fans and wouldn’t have been missed if it had been excised completely. They starred in a superfluous battle (complete with Chewbacca’s battle cry from Jedi) that could have been cut out with no great loss and then you get Chewie mentioned by Yoda as a little name drop when he leaves. Wouldn’t it have been better to leave Chewie’s introduction until A New Hope?
• I was really into the end, but then they spoil the winning run by giving Vader possible the crappiest line in the whole thing. His over-theatrical “NOOOOOOOO!” coupled with that little Frankenstein walk just made everyone laugh in what should have been an emotionally significant scene.

The saving grace was the last twenty minutes – it was (mostly) what I’d wanted the Star Wars prequels to be like with only the above couple of issues to detract from it. I was also pleased to see that Lucas didn’t feel the need to tone most of it down to make it a straight kids’ movie, especially in the last scenes involving Anakin. The rest of it had its moments (the Jedi purges were great), but ranged in quality from good to painful to watch.

The best thing about it was the Chronicles of Narnia trailer at the beginning.