Posted by CaptainSolo at pd950a5af.dip.t-dialin.net on June 03, 2002 at 07:37:06:
Well... the opinions are parting more then I've ever thought, but for my part I've gotta say "Disappointing!"...
Storywise:
The first half hour really rocks... cool location of Coruscant, nice humour by Kenobi, and a really well written introduction into the movie.
But then the chaos starts: travelling. Maybe as a way to speed up the pace of the movie, our heroes start travelling like crazy! Ten minutes on Naboo, ten minutes on Tatooine... then Obi-Wan ten minutes at the clone-factory... for my taste too many and too fast changes of location. I don't consider myself as a very "settled" person, but a little rest here and there would've been fine.
Concerning the love story, I liked it. Heck, it's Natalie Portman, of course there's more than one reason for Anakin to love her! Together with the growing defiance and hatered in Anakin, which was very well played by Hayden, it made total sense.
What bothered me most was Lucas' try to add tons of connections to all the other films... that would've been nice, if he did it at the right dose. Wattoo was totally unncessary, as well as Jar-Jar. And though I LOVED Jango Fett, don't you think it appears to be MORE than just a coincident, that the Fett-family was responsible for the clones? Aah, whatver... I liked C-3PO and R2, finally those two are back.
But altogether the story was to thin to really catch me. The movie is a lot better than Episode 1, but the flair of the old trilogy isn't there yet... and there's still too little of Han Solo in it *g*.
The effects-side:
Weeeeeeeeeeeeell... let's say, each force has two sides... the downside of the force is in this case the AMOUNT of visual effect. Unquestionably impressive, but WAY overloaded... I've gotta confess, I'm an effects-guy. I work in that field, and I love effects in movies. But hell, couldn't they just build a few sets?!? The most ridiculous use of a digital environment was the sand-dune Amidala and one of the clone-troopers drop onto... WHY didn't they just use a real dune? They were in Tunesia, weren't they? And if not... what about a truckload of sand in the studio? Arrgh... it's again Lucas' "we CAN do it, so we WILL do it"-mentality... unfortunately they COULDN'T do it, it looked terrible. Now you might say "it's a SciFi-movie, you MUST have visual effects in it."... well, right, but do you have to create EVERYTHING digitally? Why was Dex (the cook at the diner) CG? That terribly animated hole in his shirt really distressed me... I was glad to hear that they used some models for Coruscant, which was in fact my favourite location... mostly because of the chase, I think. It's cool to have visual effects, no doubt about that. But obviously there were too many of them for ILM to manage getting them all done properly... or tweaking them...
OK, those are a few of my thoughts on the movie... beat me, burn me and do whatever helps you... but in my opinion Star Wars isn't ENTIRELY back...