I’ve finally seen Star Wars Ep. II, and here are my thoughts: (this may contain small spoilers, but I think everything in here has already been spoiled)

So I finally “saw” it. I couldn’t wait till thursday so I had to see the “internet” version of it. Pretty crappy sound and picture, but still good enough to form an opinion. Already from the first scene with Natalie you can clearly see that Amidala has matured alot since her “I don’t approve”-pouting in TPM, although she does fall back to that childish behaviour once or twice (like the infamous rolling-in-the-grass scene). Other than that, Natalie does what she’s suppose to, but doesn’t excel. The only time she exerts any emotion is in her speech, borderlining whispers, just before the arena scene.

Anakin is just so easy do dislike right up, except for a line or two he’s just in the way! If that was intended or not… I don’t know. The chemistry between Obi Wan and Anakin is a bit better than the one between Qui Gonn and Obi Wan but still falls short of being credible as a Master – Apprentice one, and the first scene between them and Amidala is just… so scripted. Even their first argument is lacking of emotions, just people reading off a script. But I do like the fact that Anakin uses a word like “overkill” 🙂

The surprising highlight of this movie is Jango and Boba Fett, they rock, just downright mean! Then Sam Jackson who makes his best entrance in a while. The CGI – Yoda is more or less totally CGI and it’s frightingly obvious. Even if you disregard the fact that real actors eyes aren’t actually on the character, you can clearly see Yoda is CGI. Not to mention the sequence when Anakin is riding some animal, soooo badly animated. But while they were pretty bad at animating living things, they were pretty darn good doing the space-chasing scene, that was just visually stunnning (even in this version!). And the surface battles and the end was pretty awesome, much better than in TPM which was pathetic by comparison. And speaking of fights – the lightsaber fight in this one may not be up to TPM standard, but you can sense alot more emotions and motivations in it than the one in TPM. (and I think the CGI animators at ILM have been playing a bit too much Diablo II with “Whirlwind” ability…)

The script… Although it is suffering from the kind of fast-paced scripting as TPM did (cutting from scene to scene without any closure anywhere), it works a little better considering it is following what’s happening in three places at once. And the humor is back, atleast a little. Even I couldn’t help but to laugh at Anakins reply to Obi Wan’s “What took you so long?”. But then there are those just very stupid comments like “in that case, be _extra_ careful” when they’re chasing an assassin and “Jedi-business, go back to your drinks” to name but a few. And there are some typical US things in here as well – like the american football game on the bigscreen TV, and Amidala only being allowed to serve two terms because the constitution says so, those kinda things bothered me – a non-US citizen.

Then there are a few nice ironic scenes, like when Anakin is introduced to Owen and Beru Lars! But there are also small things that doesn’t make sense. For example, Jar Jar says he hasn’t seen Padme this happy for a long time, and this is suppose to be just after the first assassination attempt which kills her double? And Amidala telling the soldier they got to get to that hangar, but she was knocked out and unconscious so what did she know about a hangar.. The love story… it didn’t quite convince me actually. Everything seemed wrong, but then there was that scene just before the arena fight that made it seem good, but oh no, they ruined it in the actual arena scene with Amidala giving him a little kiss, that took it down a few notches.

All in all – a BIG step forward compared to Ep. I, but not the “WOW!” experience I was hoping for. I’ll give it a “@@@@” out of five.

On a little side note : Have you seen “Galaxy’s Quest”? one of my favorite scenes in that movie is when Tim and Sigourney are running throught the ship and encounter the “choppers”, big metal crushers that serves no purpose, and Sigourney freaks out – “there’s no logical reason for them to be here! This episode was badly written”. Well there is a scene here that’s exactly like that, just without the sarcasm.

And in case you’re wondering, I don’t have a bad conscious about seeing the pirate version, I already have my tickets for thursday’s premiere… perhaps I’ll get the “wow” experience then…