Contains Spoilers! And from the 80% favourable reviews on this site, they seem to be correct. Sure, there were some whiz-bang special effects, some nice developments which gave fans of Episode IV something to relate to, the scenes with Palpatine were actually pretty good, but......
I won't even bother with the embarrassing dialogue, the lifeless direction, the complete absence of any reason why we the audience should care about any of this, the fakeness of any shot with non-human characters (and some of the humans didn't look so real either....), the 5-shots per second action sequences to hide the fact that hey, this is just one bunch of cartoons fighting another bunch of cartoon..... Oops, sorry, I couldn't not bother with them completely. But puh-leeeze :
R2 can fly?
3PO can swing like an Olympic gymnast?
Yoda can do a Sonic Hedgehog impression?
Jedi can sense poisonous centipedes in another room - but can't sense when 6 others are sneaking up on them from behind?
C3PO knew Lars and Beru before Episode 4 (where he didn't even recognise Tatooine, the planet he was made on)?
C3PO's can't function in "Empire" when cut apart, but his head a droid soldier's are fully interchangeable?
Anakin will have a very late growth-spurt to fill out that black costume?
Why is there a scene from Gladiator in the film? And why is there a creature from Lost in Space (or Starship Troopers) in Gladiator?
Apart from the video-game franchises, is there any point at all for the Coruscant sky-chase and the Geonosis conveyor belt episodes?
Who is paying for these clones, and how are they doing so without anyone knowing about it?
Does love only happen when you say it lots - until for no apparent reason the other person says it back. (A bit like Mr Freeze in Batman 4 with his anger.)
Isn't Obi-wan a little young - assuming Luke is born in a few years, then Ewan McGregor turns into Sir Alec in just 25 years?
How come when you fall a thousand feet and land on a speeder it doesn't hurt? Yet a slight encounter with a lightsabre later on renders Kenobi and Anakin motionless....
Likewise, you can fall off a platform attached to a rope and it doesn't break your wrist? (Do NOT try that at home....)
In a techno world like Kamino, why would someone be riding a large reptilian bird-like creature? In the rain. Exchange rates make fuel for a speeder / aeroplane-thingy expensive, perhaps?
Is it likely that having ignored her for ten years, after first travelling a parsec across the galaxy then zooming through the night across the desert, a young man will find his mother 35 seconds before she dies?
Does a senator and former queen really pack her own luggage?
In this advanced society why is there so little basic medical care - surely it was worth resuscitating Padme's dying double in the first scene?
Are Coruscant short-order chefs really the best place to find information about one planet missing from the databases - (if there are "thousands of systems" looking to leave the Republic just how many planets can there be in total)?
And, finally, my own personal favourite, the one thing which really really reeeeaaalllllly depressed me about this film....
In the high-tech world of Star Wars, they can make hand-cuffs which are immune to being opened by Jedi mind control, but by god, they haven't figured out how to make hand-cuffs which can't be picked by a lady's hair-pin!
The Star Wars philosophy is clearly to let know no illogicality, no completely and utterly ridiculous piece of plotline, stand in the way of a good action sequence or other excuse to show off your new computer toy (except, the action sequences aren't actually any good - Starship Troopers and most of the Alien films looked way way better....)
I won't even bother with the embarrassing dialogue, the lifeless direction, the complete absence of any reason why we the audience should care about any of this, the fakeness of any shot with non-human characters (and some of the humans didn't look so real either....), the 5-shots per second action sequences to hide the fact that hey, this is just one bunch of cartoons fighting another bunch of cartoon..... Oops, sorry, I couldn't not bother with them completely. But puh-leeeze :
R2 can fly?
3PO can swing like an Olympic gymnast?
Yoda can do a Sonic Hedgehog impression?
Jedi can sense poisonous centipedes in another room - but can't sense when 6 others are sneaking up on them from behind?
C3PO knew Lars and Beru before Episode 4 (where he didn't even recognise Tatooine, the planet he was made on)?
C3PO's can't function in "Empire" when cut apart, but his head a droid soldier's are fully interchangeable?
Anakin will have a very late growth-spurt to fill out that black costume?
Why is there a scene from Gladiator in the film? And why is there a creature from Lost in Space (or Starship Troopers) in Gladiator?
Apart from the video-game franchises, is there any point at all for the Coruscant sky-chase and the Geonosis conveyor belt episodes?
Who is paying for these clones, and how are they doing so without anyone knowing about it?
Does love only happen when you say it lots - until for no apparent reason the other person says it back. (A bit like Mr Freeze in Batman 4 with his anger.)
Isn't Obi-wan a little young - assuming Luke is born in a few years, then Ewan McGregor turns into Sir Alec in just 25 years?
How come when you fall a thousand feet and land on a speeder it doesn't hurt? Yet a slight encounter with a lightsabre later on renders Kenobi and Anakin motionless....
Likewise, you can fall off a platform attached to a rope and it doesn't break your wrist? (Do NOT try that at home....)
In a techno world like Kamino, why would someone be riding a large reptilian bird-like creature? In the rain. Exchange rates make fuel for a speeder / aeroplane-thingy expensive, perhaps?
Is it likely that having ignored her for ten years, after first travelling a parsec across the galaxy then zooming through the night across the desert, a young man will find his mother 35 seconds before she dies?
Does a senator and former queen really pack her own luggage?
In this advanced society why is there so little basic medical care - surely it was worth resuscitating Padme's dying double in the first scene?
Are Coruscant short-order chefs really the best place to find information about one planet missing from the databases - (if there are "thousands of systems" looking to leave the Republic just how many planets can there be in total)?
And, finally, my own personal favourite, the one thing which really really reeeeaaalllllly depressed me about this film....
In the high-tech world of Star Wars, they can make hand-cuffs which are immune to being opened by Jedi mind control, but by god, they haven't figured out how to make hand-cuffs which can't be picked by a lady's hair-pin!
The Star Wars philosophy is clearly to let know no illogicality, no completely and utterly ridiculous piece of plotline, stand in the way of a good action sequence or other excuse to show off your new computer toy (except, the action sequences aren't actually any good - Starship Troopers and most of the Alien films looked way way better....)