LogFAQs > #908486456

Awful.

Admittedly, not all of that is the movie's fault specifically - Lucas left way too many important things to the last movie and basically had to stuff them all in at the end - but even acknowledging that, the movie takes way too many missteps.

The acting and storyline are better than AotC, but not by much and only because it would be difficult for them to be any worse. The pacing is atrocious, as the movie spends far too much time on pointless dalliances like Coruscant, Kashyyyk, General Grievous (a completely unnecessary character that we're never given any reason to care about and that was seemingly tossed into the movie at the last minute when they realised they didn't have any new characters they could make into toys), and Utapau, while critically short-changing important scenes in the film of necessary screen time. Anakin's fall to the dark side took less than 30 seconds; the purge of the Jedi temple, arguably the most hyped event of the PT with the possible exception of Obi-Wan and Anakin's duel, was conducted almost entirely offscreen. That is simply indefensible.

It also featured some of the series' worst lightsaber duels, from the overblown mess that was Anakin vs. Obi-Wan to the gimmicky trash of Obi-Wan vs. Grievous. Palpatine looks like a bad cartoon after his disfiguration and the overuse of CGI in battles like Coruscant and Kashyyyk makes them look like video games rather than movie scenes.

Padme had almost nothing to do in this movie except stand around and cry, Hayden Christiensen's Anakin continues to come off like a whiny, cringey, angsty, spoiled teenager, despite supposedly being a young adult now (although thankfully someone apparently taught Lucas what a "second take" was between this movie and the last one), and about the only actor who seems to be putting in a decent performance is Ewan McGreggor, whose efforts are largely wasted because he's lamenting a relationship that's never been properly established and that we are never given sufficient reason to empathize with.

RotS avoids the distinction of "Worst Star Wars Movie" only by dint of the fact that AotC exists, but it is basically AotC-lite, committing many of that movie's same mistakes, just not quite as egregiously.
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