We actually did watch this a couple of days after Episode 1 and Episode 2, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to write about it at the time.

Movie whose name I couldn’t initially remember: things that weren’t too bad:

• The opening fight scene is quite nice.
• Christopher Lee. Again.
• Anakin’s robotic arm is nicely styled.
• Samuel L. Jackson
  • Samuel L Jackson fighting with a light sabre.
• Ewan McGregor is way better in this film.
• You gave General Grievous four light sabres. That was a stroke of genius.
• Ian McDiarmaid is scenery-chewing good, for most of the film.
• Yoda’s suffering as the Jedi are killed. True pathos – and in a puppet. Very nice.
• A Wookie army!
• Jimmy Smits!
• Your classics is showing, George, moving from republic to empire.
• I finally realised that Anakin’s costume journey parallels Luke’s (ooh, spoilers). That’s quite a nice touch.
• Anakin and Obi-wan fighting is really pretty cool.
• The parallel of the twins being born with Vader being born is obvious, but still kinda cool.
• James Earl Jones.
• Jimmy Smits.

What were you thinking, George?

• In the opening credits you say there are heroes on both sides. Why are you confusing the young people with this even-handed post-modern crap?
• Your droid general sounds like he has emphysema. Or possibly TB. If he was in an 19th-century dress and sounded like that, you’d know there was a death scene coming up. DROIDS DON’T COUGH, GEORGE.
  • ETA: Thanks to Grant I’ve discovered that Grievous is actually a cyborg, who coughs because Windu shot him. In the Clone Wars cartoon. Which just transfers my annoyance: nice little plot point for those in the know, but for the rest of us it’s just confuses. Bad, George; bad.
• Why wouldn’t a queen let a female senator continue to act in a role she’s clearly been good at just because she has a baby? No, seriously George, why is this a problem?
• Tell me, George, how exactly is destroying the Sith going to bring balance to the Force? Balance implies, well, balance – stuff on both sides. Without the Sith doesn’t that mean it’s going to be all one-sided? I’m not saying I like the Dark Side, but balance is not the word you’re looking for here.
• Anakin’s petulance moves his well-founded angst and concern for his mother away from Macbeth or Hamlet and more towards many ten-year-olds I know (and, let’s be honest, Luke in Episode 4).
• Ian McDiarmaid’s make-up after being beaten up is really, really bad.
• Anakin goes Total Evil way too quickly.
• You reduced Padme to weeping and fretting. From elected queen to senator to weeping and wailing. This is not an adequate plot arc, GEORGE. Very disappointing.
  • Also Anakin treats Padme as property. I understand he’s evil but that’s still not cool.
• “Only a Sith deals in absolutes.” Do you even see what you did there, George?
• I wrote “No respect for traffic patterns” in my notes. I don’t remember what I meant, but still, TRAFFIC PATTERNS, George.

But finally, my biggest gripe, George, is that you did not include Han Solo anywhere in these prequels. You included Boba Fett for heaven’s sake, and Chewbacca, and ANTILLES, but no Han. No moment in a bar where a grizzled man claps a hand to a young boy’s shoulder and says “this is my nephew, I’m teaching him about smuggling”? Why, George? Why?