the inevitable star wars post II: the whining

[waider]

• Right, so as I said, I agree that Anakin’s turning was too quick. Actually, it was more than that. He basically does for Mace Windu, and then has a brief period of "Hply Sjot What Have I Done?" before being totally evil. And that’s it. There’s not even a hint, even though we-the-audience know about it, of this being motivated by his desire to keep the missus alive. Yes, sure, there’s dialogue, but this is one of those occasions where Hayden’s acting is just utterly useless.
• Palpatine’s post-zapping makeup. Crap. Rubbish. He looked like someone had wrapped his head in a sock filled with porridge, not like someone who’d just been forcibly aged by a couple of decades, or whatever effect it was supposed to be. I dunno, maybe porridge is what Lucas intended.
• The Kenobi/Skywalker fight was the business, but the ending was a complete letdown. Here are these two guys banging away at each other with lightsabers and The Force™, and the next thing one jumps up and the other saws off three of his limbs. Er. WTF? Would’ve been far better if they’d done something like using that moment where he overbalances on the flying platform (just before the climax) to have Kenobi try and save him, to, you know, hammer home the point that Kenobi really doesn’t want to kill him, and then have him fall in the lava. Or on it. Or, I dunno, close enough to it to get baked until crispy.
• I’m sure there’s some handwaving explanation for it, but I figured the rest of the Jedi should’ve felt their number being killed off, instead of it just being Yoda who’s staggering around like a drunk. They’re all supposed to be sensitive to The Force™, right?
• In the opening action (which was mostly brilliant) Grevious takes out the windows of the spacecraft and everyone starts getting sucked into the vacuum. Then suddenly they’re not getting sucked into the vacuum any more, and nothing obvious has happened to cause this change. That annoyed me, and I’m not usually bothered by continuity skips.
• You’d imagine Windu would have communicated with the council, or at least left them a note, before going off to take the Chancellor. Since, you know, they’re all so big on democracy and multilateral decisions and all.
• They messed up Rudi’s line. It’s "you’re either with me or against me", dammit, not "you’re either with me... or my enemy". That annoyed me, because the latter is clunky, not because I was hoping for the zinger.

I think that’s enough of that. I might have more complaints as I mull it over, but as Rands has pointed out, the fact that I’m mulling it over at all speaks volumes for the quality of this movie over the two that preceded it, which I’d forgotten huge details of (Anakin lost an arm? when?) by the time this one came around.