Saw it tonight. It's not a bad flick. I'd hover between 2.5 and 3 stars, depending on my mood.
Hayden Christensen is MUCH better than last time, but still not quite good enough. It's not that I think he was the wrong choice. It's that I think Lucas chose the wrong director. And writer.
Natalie Portman is wasted (and not in the same way that Leia was wasted in Jedi. ;)-->) The chemistry with Christensen is better than Clones, but not much.
Threepio is down to virtual cameos. Artoo, on the other hand, kicks butt.
So does Yoda. His fight with the Emperor is terrific.
The execution of the Jedi is handled well, and the murder of the children is just chilling. Not very well acted: the one kid with a line is stiff as a board. But they're kids.
Did I mention Yoda kicks butt? He gets the one spontaneous burst of applause, and the one uncontrollable laugh in the whole movie.
Samuel Jackson... well... I feel bad for the guy. He's kind of irritating through the whole movie, and when he finally meets his doom (and we all knew he would), you're actually kind of rooting for the bad guys.
The Emperor's transformation from the dignified Palpatine to the deformed creep we all remember from Jedi is fairly credible. His seduction of Anakin is just downright creepy, and (AT LAST) he does sort of explain the laughable "immaculate conception" crap from Phantom Menace that would otherwise be unforgivably bad writing. Now it's just bad writing.
Let's see: who else is there? Count Dooku. What'ws with Christopher Lee? He keeps getting into third parts of trilogies and never survives more than a few minutes into them.
General Grievous is a waste of CGI. I was seriously disappointed. The cough was just too over-the-top.
Chewbacca's pretty much just a cameo, but it was nice to see him.
Look carefully after the end of the first battle, when the Chancellor, Obi Wan and Anakin are safely headed into some major building on Coruscant. As they land on one level, the Millenium Falcon can be seen coming in for a landing on a lower level. Blink and you'll miss it.
I truly, truly enjoyed the chemistry between Obi Wan and Anakin at the beginning of the movie. Ewan McGregor is fantastic in this movie, and when he and Anakin finally have their volcanic duel, you really get the sense of betrayal that he must have felt.
Finally seeing Vader in uniform is gratifying. Then he talks. And you remember that Lucas is still writing this crap. He juts out of his straps in a way that makes you think he's about to sing Putting on the Ritz with Gene Wilder.
There are some really bad writing moments, and I'm not just talking inauthentic. Obi Wan calls Palpatine the Emperor long before he should know anything about the rise of the Empire. And suddenly they're calling the Galactic Senate "Congress." When did it become "Congress?"
Seeing this movie, which was so good in so many ways, makes you wish that Lucas had taken that crappy script, given it to a real writer and said "I want this story, told this way. But make it so that real people are actually talking to each other."
Oh, and whoever thought to make Obi Wan ride that lizard should have his hands chopped off so he never writes anything again. Oh, it was Lucas? Why am I not surprised? Sigh.
So why the potential for three stars? Because the story is there, no matter how badly told. It's exciting, it's fun (remember fun? Star Wars movies used to be fun), and most of all, Ahmed Best gets no lines.
And that should make everyone happy.