I'll get it over and done with real fast - I enjoyed Star Wars Episode III, Revenge of the Sith. Oh sure it had its flaws but really significantly fewer than I or II. Lets face the movie has quite an uphill battle - only three characters of any real significance: Anakin, Obi-Wan, and Chancelor Palpatine, and has an ending that almost everyone seeing the movie already knows and indeed the movie itself clearly "knows" from the start. So really it did a pretty good job to stay entertaining.

Could it have been better? Well yes of course - ditch Hayden Christensen for someone who can do a convincing transformation from light to dark sides, make Portman less of a doormat who just wants to go home and "get the room ready" for the kid(s) (sheez, don't they have birth control in the Star Wars era?), and maybe, just maybe, run the script by an average person or two (like me for instance) to weed out the worst of the awkwardness. We know Lucas pays amazing attention to the special effects - they are indeed top notch, especially the 100% CG Yoda, but does he and no one working for him just not care about crappy dialog? Didn't the dialog get panned enough in the first two for him to get the message? Well, perhaps - it was definitely better this time - in the first half there was even a line or two worthy of Episode IV or V banter.

It was also really hard not to read in some pretty strong political overtones in a few of the conversations about democracy, the senate and good vs. evil. He stopped short of having using the "you're either with us or against us" line from Darth Dubyous, but only just instead rendering it as "you're either with us or with the enemy". And when Padme watches the Chancellor declare himself Emperor she mutters the question "Is where liberty was lost - to rousing applause?". Sigh, I didn't think this was supposed to be a documentary...

I did like how Lucas managed to work in a good number of retro Star Wars visual themes. From bright white ship interiors, and clunky LED like displays and controls, to the wrinkling of Palpatines face, it all helped to remind us to we were on a journey to familar territory formerly known as Star Wars Episode IV, or just plain "Star Wars". Because back then we never even had an inkling there would be another five movies to follow it, and we never even minded that we were supposedly joining a story that was half way through. Indeed quite why Lucas choose to start the story at Episode IV I'll never know. Just how would it have all transpired it instead he'd stubbornly started with Episode I? Would we have had Harrison Ford as Obi-Wan, Mark Hamill as Anakin and Carrie Fisher as Padme? And would we all been bitching about how crappy Episodes IV and V were but that VI wasn't such a bad rousing finale after all?

Anyway, finally I should say that in the closing scenes where loose ends are not being tied up, but instead being hastily tied into the original Star Wars plot line, well I was definitely thinking back to a movie theater a long time ago in a country far, far away. Back then when I was fresh faced ten year old, my late father had, by some means I never learned (perhaps subconsciously, as if by a force unknown...) tapped into the zeitgeist of the time and decided that all the family should go see this hit new movie called "Star Wars". This was something our family just didn't do - it was rare enough to see a movie at a theater, (remember the late 70s were a very low point in theater going history), let alone drag our entire family to a sci-fi movie, a genre that was barely invented at that time. We had to drive to another town, the line was so huge I felt sure we'd never get a seat, the screen seemed emmense and I had no idea what I was in for. Who would think that almost thirty years on I'd still be going back for more of the Star Wars saga? I stopped collecting the Star Wars cards and lusting after Princess Leia a long time ago, but the fun still lingers on.

And you know what the best thing is about getting out of theater having just seen Episode III? It's that you know you're half way through, the going is pretty good and the best is yet to come. More to the point you wont have to wait another thirty years to get it!

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