Gungan

For the longest time, Attack of the Clones was considered my personal low point in the series, but after re-watching it during a palette cleansing session following the latest entry, I found that it held up a lot better than I thought. The biggest problem with this entry were some of the casting choices, poor acting, and excessive reliance on CGI for the more nonsensical action sequences like the robot foundry. A lot of people complain that there were too many CGI sequences in general, but the fact of the matter is that a lot of the sequences people think are CGI were actually done with real sets and real props. The blending at that point had just gotten to the point that the two were indistinguishable. Attack of the Clones fixed some of the problems from the previous entry, but added some new ones of its own. Regardless, I appreciate that George Lucas had an overarching story line for the trilogy and stuck to it. The story is consistent, and coherent, and even challenges your understanding of character motivations, such as with Dooku. The visuals are still on par with what modern audiences expect. Locations are once again fantastic, and we are introduced to more new settings. It progresses the trilogy, but doesn't really blow your mind with any revelations. Well worth watching, particularly if you have a soft spot for angsty CW quality romance.

I am re-watching all of the Star Wars movies to cleanse my palette from the most recent one. As much as this one in particular is panned, it had a well put together script, and the story was worth telling. The production values are easily on par with any modern movie, though the cinematography and storytelling is less bombastic that modern audiences are used to. The visuals and sound are fantastic as well, and really give you a good variety of settings to look at when the Republic was at it's height. The only real problems with this movie stem from two factors. The first is the use of a child actor for the part of Anakin. If he was aged up a bit into his early teens, I think the performance would have been more natural, less creepy when played against Natalie Portman, and more believable as a whole with other minor tweaks. The other problem was Jar Jar, because of the slapstick physical comedy. If they had toned him down instead of amping him to 11 for the kids, I don't think people would have been particularly bothered. It's still a very coherent story that sits firmly grounded in the universe enjoyed by many fans.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]