Well folks, I have to say I thought it was pretty weak. The action and spectacle were good, sure, but that's a given with George Lucas. The dialogue, drama, and general storytelling were as bad as in Eps I and II-- I felt that they were worse, but that may have been because my expectations were higher. Overall, I felt the movie was rather like a souffle that falls-- all the right ingredients are there, but something about the way they were put together just doesn't work, and the entire thing falls flat.

I could say a lot of things about it, but the biggest one that struck me was the pacing. Nearly all the dramatic scenes felt extremely rushed or choppy to me. It was as if, in the writing or directing process, Lucas said, "I know what's going to happen here, so let's make it happen," without any feel for flow or dramatic integrity. I've seen movies where it was clear the actor was just going through the motions, speaking the lines and performing the actions without a sense of the feeling behind it, but this is the first time I've felt that a writer was doing that.

Which leads me to speculate about causes, and maybe about the reason Eps I-III were so bad and IV-VI so good. You can say Lucas had help writing and directing V and VI, and I think that was beneficial, but he apparently did IV all by himself, and it had what the entire prequel trilogy lacks: a sense of vitality, of warmth, of genuine drama that makes itself felt, regardless of the occasional corniness.

And here's my guess about why: in writing the original trilogy, Lucas was much more attached to the story as a story, to the characters as characters. He spent a lot of time on it, and I'm guessing that much more of that time was spent in detailed work on the characters and dynamics. It was the story he cared about most-- that's demonstrated by the fact that he chose to tell it first, before the backstory. And so (this is speculation) he worked at it, dug into it, probably let it surprise him once or twice.

With the prequel trilogy, I'm guessing he got lazy. The kind of groundwork it takes to write a story well is difficult and often tedious, and it's very tempting to skip over it. I suspect that Lucas, as a proven and madly successful filmmaker, forgot that the same kind of intense labor was necessary if he was going to achieve the same level of quality. Also, knowing already what was going to happen in the story, I suspect he didn't leave room for surprises-- twists that come to you in the writing process that you never would have expected or planned. The result: a set of three movies that felt like a history rather than a story.

I've seen the same thing happen with other successful writers-- Lloyd Alexander comes to mind. Late in their career, they write the same kind of weak, lifeless stories that many beginners write... because writing that way is much easier than really digging into a story, and wrestling with it, until it blossoms out into surprising and unique shapes. Much easier to just sketch out a story, and it's hard to pinpoint exactly what's wrong with the sketched version. Beginners can't get away with sketching, but established writers can, and many of them do.

Anyway, that's what I think.

Lirelyn