Ciao!

How about the line "Either you are with us...or you are our enemy"? *Too* many parallels with the War on Terror.

They should have just showed the movie with no dialogue.

read somewhere that Lucas was the writer for this script. Didn't he learn his lesson from the second movie?

LALALALALALALALA

(Haven't seen it, yet.)

Agreed on Battlestar Galactica. New season starts in June, right?

Wow, i agree with all of that. Its almost as if all your complaints were my complaints.

i also didnt like the final lightsabre battle. Its either it was too anticlimactic, or i was desensitized by all the lightsabring earlier in the movie. Remember how excited we were to see lightsabre duels in the last movies? This oine was just "eh".

Yes, Hayden Christianson's (sp?) acting was atrocious!

Here I go...

1) Agreed. Padme took a surprisingly nominal position in this film. I would have liked to see more of her. My complaint isn't that she wasn't active in the senate or whatever anymore, it's that--hey! This girl has like a dozen little clones and servants and droids around her all the time...NO one noticed her pregnant??? No one noticed that Anakin kept sleeping over at her apartment (I assume her apartment is in the poshest area of Curosant (sp?)).
2) I agree with your protest, but I do think that she's justified in how she handled things. She had said earlier that she thinks this senate is a farce. It makes sense that she would back off if she thought it had no real power.
3) Organa is disturbingly underrepresented in this film--and the preceeding three. When I saw it, I thought, "HEY! I know that ship!" when I saw the interior of his ship--the setting of the opening for A New Hope. I thought it was a really cool touch. However, I then realized that the guy from LA Law, though he appeared in earlier movies, was never named until this one--and certainly not given any particular attachment to Padme. It was terrible plot work--something that should have been hashed out in about 1998 or so.
4) I liked the treatment of the temple, personally. Obviously, all the trained jedi are off fighting. Only the younglings ('younglings' should have been introduced in the last movie when Yoda was training them--we should have had this jargon already, before this movie) would be left in the temple. I'm fine with that. My big bitch about this scene is the alien girl on the Willy Wonka planet. The girl has a lightsaber--she's a goddamned Jedi!--yet, these clones make their betrayal known to her...and she realizes it...and then the kill her with barbaric blasters?? I doubt it--even if she is the crappiest Jedi. And we can't even assume that! They show like four Jedis get killed in that montage. I would have preferred an extended scene of ALL the Jedi getting wiped out--no dialoge, just a thirty minute Jedi-vs-clones montage with kickass music. Fine by me. Anyway, that scene just irked the hell out of me.

I do agree with you about the defiant lightsaber thing--that would have rocked.

5) No comment. Didn't really notice it, myself.

6) Jedis are traditionally terrible at warfare--they always choose the worst route. I offer the example of Kenobi-vs-Vader. Kenobi basically stands there--gives up the fight (though neither are fighting particularly well or hard) and lets Vader cut him down. Bad tactic. Here's another one: Yoda KNOWS that Luke is far too old--not too old like Anakin was at 6, but too old like Mark Hammil at 30--to begin Jedi training; he also knows that he has much fear and anger; and he knows that he will probably follow in his father's footsteps and become a planet destroyer for the darkside. What does he do? Train him anyway. Kenobi trains people against obvious better judgement, as does Qui-gon and Yoda. Idiots.

7) Actually, I think that Anakin was better acted than any character in any of the movies--except Han Solo, of course. When he is turned to Vader and has already committed those atrocities, he looks out on a pool of lava with--not just anger or rage or regret or sadness or whatever--he looks out on it with such a complex look of--something. It's awesome: the tears and rage and love and all that--it shines. However, I agree that the dialogue that Lucas writes is terrible--straight out of trashy romance novels. I found myself asking, "How can Anakin and Padme be in love? Have they ever teased each other? Is it purely physical?"

Really, look back at the first movies though--I think you will see that there is terrible acting throughout.

8) Remember, though--the Sith were apparently eradicated before these movies. The fact that there are any left at all is a surprise, let alone one right on the very doorstep of the government (Sith art? What Sith art--it's all futuristic).

9) An interesting suggestion, but as storytelling goes, I don't think it works for the main tale--maybe a mini-series.

10) No comment.

As to your conclusion, rather than feeling cold, I think you are just feeling old. These were movies made for young boys, not Poli-sci grad students with an affinity for sci-fi. You need to learn the force--feel it flow through you--and realize that that word, "Force", merely means "cool".

Love,
Micah