The first two Star Wars movies, way back when, were excellent. The third one started out great, and turned to shit. EWOKS?  EWOKS?

For the last episode, a bunch of dedicated goofballs camped out for WEEKS in front of the theater they THOUGHT might be the first place to show Revenge of the Sith. Weeks. These folks don't just need a hobby, they need shock therapy.
 

Episode One : The Marketing Menace

First off, George Lucas was quoted as saying the new Star Wars installment is "just a movie," and that people who make a religion of it "should get a life."  So even though he has very, very carefully controlled all marketing and related material, he wants to appear detached from the hysteria which he deliberately manufactured in calculated fashion.  In other words, "I am an artiste, not a ringmaster."

Lucas coughed up half his directing fee on the first movie, in exchange for myriad merchandising and sequel rights.  This was brilliant of him.  But now we're saddled with the blunt trauma of Star Wars crap all over the airwaves.

He's not perfect, of course.  Remember Howard the Duck?  Or how about the Star Wars Christmas Special from 1978?  That's the one where we meet Chewbacca's family, including his dad Itchy and his son Lumpy.   Lucas didn't even want his name on the credits for that one.
 

Damn those critics, damn them to death
 
 

Episode I was a piece of crap. Real simple. And some stuff about it really confused hell out of me.
 

It's kinda curious : if this thing is set forty or so years prior to the first flick, why is all the technology so much more advanced?

All the digital effects kinda make the thing more of a cartoon.  A lot of the scenes with a combo of real and animated characters are fuzzy.  Maybe Spielberg is right when he says that "filming" entirely digitally is "soulless."

No one talks in this movie.  They all pontificate.  There are no conversations, really, just soliloquies.  The first trio of flicks had some truly bad acting, and the third movie was freaking awful and cutesy, but at least you had some sorta likeable characters.  This one can't make up its mind if it's Shakespearean, or a Saturday afternoon serial.

The new droids make the old stormtroopers look lame. They're also no better shots than their predecessors. They also fall apart like balsa wood when shot. He couldn't come up with better bad guys?

Not to simply jump on the bandwagon, but the character Jar Jar Binks is a piece of shit. Annoying, hard to understand, condescending, and far too cutesy. Wasn't Lucas listening when people complained about the Ewoks? Apparently not.

Force fields are a pain in the ass. The master computer is shielded, but Obi-Wan gets through easily, and inexplicably, enough. The Gungans are protected from missiles by a force field, but the droids just sorta cruise through. And during the big duel at the end, the force field "doors" keep opening and closing, Ja knows why, and you're not really sure what they're protecting.

Episode II was as compelling as paint samples. I can barely remember anything about it, except that the big conflict was a trade war. Yaaaaawwwwwwn.
 

Episode III was just plain f___g awful. All the Jedi, even the old, creaky ones, can do all sorts of backflips and jumps, clear across the room. That was pure digital HELL. The dialogue is dreadful. Obi-Wan and Anakin land a gigantic spaceship that's lost its whole back half, and ain't exactly aerodynamic.Ob-Wan is flying all over the damned universe fighting all sorts of different people, it's hard to keep straight. The scene with all the fighting Wookies is unintentionally hilarious.

And then it turns out that Obi-Wan actually knew the droids from the very first movie, and that Yoda knew Chewbacca. What, they couldn't work in Han Solo's grandfather somewhere?

More typical Lucas bad character names. General Sidious? Christ. And it's a coughing robot. Why the hell would a robot cough?

Terrible cliche: Darth Vader gets his helmet and black cape, is told he's killed his own wife, and cries out, "Nooooooo!!!"

Crap you hear while waiting in line :

If I hear one more geekmeister remind me it's a prequel instead of a sequel, I 'm going to rip the tape off the middle of his glasses.

Why the hell did Lucas rename the first movie Star Wars: A New Hope ?  Now he's even got idiot magazine writers repeating this drivel.  Don't change the name on your flick twenty years later, to fit your new marketing campaign.  Because then it's NOT art; it's only commerce.