Nathan Graham (jackthorn42)

I never understood why this one got poor reviews. It's not a perfect adaptation of the novel, but there are far worse adaptations out there, and at least this one seems to be earnestly trying; sure it's a little strange, a little jumbled, but so is the novel, that's part of the tale being told. This movie inspired me to love the book, and that alone makes it worthy in my book.

That said, however much I love the movie, I love the book so much more...

I really WANTED to like this one more than I did. I mean, it was substantially better overall than Episode I, right? It had a non-cutesy, angry Anakin, lots of time on Coruscant, more Jedi, a cool big battle between Jedi and droids... and most of all, there was more substance to the plot and the characters as well. But again, it just did itself in. Hell, even the cool lightsaber battles made me wonder why the fights in the original trilogy seem so comparatively lame. Did they want to make the original movies seem worse?

I suppose I can forgive the weird and forced inclusion of R2D2 and C3PO, they're popular characters, give the audience what they want, yada yada. But their main role in all the movies seems to be humor, and in this one their humor went from minor chuckles from personality quirks to just plain dumb jokes. Bringing Padme back apparently unaged, accompanied by Jar-Jar who has somehow become a planetary representative, well, I can accept that because it plays to the story and the Jar-Jar part is brief. The mysterious creation of a huge clone army, which apparently goes unquestioned by even the wise Jedi Masters is a little harder to ignore. Dooku's character, while overall very good, just isn't given the depth and substance one would hope for in a prequel trilogy. And why wasn't Dooku at least mentioned in Episode I? Similar plot holes abound.

I don't know why this one gets such bad reviews -- I loved it. One of my all-time favorites, in general.