Wish you could say the same for Samuel "you are a racist" Jackson. Ironic, the part he played in Die Hard as a bigot, required no acting on his part; he just played himself.

Agree Ace. I'm really pessimistic about this movie.

My vision: Vader becomes Vader about 30 minutes into the film and spends the remaining hour or so hunting down and killing the Jedi council (save yoda and obi-wan).

The probable reality? Computer generated muppets, and a painful 2 hour emphasis on the anakin/amadala love story.

Ace:

Sorry to get off-topic, but I smell a Top-Ten List, don't you?

Since Eps 1 & 2 sucked as hard as two movies can possibly suck, it's going to take more than a slick trailer to entice me into seeing 3.

I'll go, because I'm one of those suckers that George "P.T." Lucas counts on being born every minute. I invested countless dollars and years into the movies and toys as a child, I figure I can swing a couple of hours and a few bucks now.

How could we not go and witness the intricacies of Galactic Senate procedure?

Sen PhilABuster's right, though. The long, boring development of the "relationship" bullshit, puncutated intermittently by some mildly interesting action sequences.

I'll go, and expect to be disappointed. That way, I'll only be pleasantly surprised, if surprised at all.

Man, did Ep 1 suck donkey dick . . .

You wanted Wookies? You got Wookies. No Ewoks.

But come on, don't tar Ep. 2 with post-hoc disdain. Admit it: when you saw the thing, your reaction was like this.

If Angry Black Jedi isn't wacked by Vader, the movie will totally suck, no matter what diabetic coma inducing visuals Lucas throws at us.

I figure Anakin faces Dooku, and pulls a "fallujha" special on his head, then has a confrontation with Obi-bin-lying-my-ass-off Kenobi and gets his ass kicked and morphed into Vader. Then Vader goes for ye ole payback slicing and dicing his way through the Jedi. Of course this is the Tarantino version of the film.

Oh, and I did see leaked footage of the duel between Anakin and Obiwan. Even without special effects, it looks intense!

It's gonna suck.

I thought Ep 2 sucked nearly as hard as Ep 1. The only reason Ep 1 gets the slightly suckier rating was the excruciatingly annoying Jar Jar. And what's-his-name, the Jedi guy who was killed and spent the entire movie looking pained to be there.

Ep 2 was just boring. And if I thought that Lucas couldn't have done worse in picking the young Anakin in Ep 1, I was wrong. He out did himself when he cast Hayden Christenson in the second.

The suckiest suckfest that ever sucked a suck.

I have been imagining the light saber duel amidst the erupting volcano ever since I heard the whole backstory rumors that began circulating circa 1978. (Of course, the rumor also included Episodes 7-9, and that turned out to be a fat lie.)

Needless to say, Lucas has created more crap-on-a-plate movies than good ones. And I include ROTJ in that assessment. Han lost his edge and became a fat loser, muppets apparently took over the galaxy, and it went downhill from there, straight to Ewoks. I am told that even this cinematic fart in the face of a whole generation wasn't enough, as Lucas added a scene to the celebratory end-of-empire scene where Jar Jar yells, "We-sa freeee!" Such blasphemy will not enter my house, I tell you.

But I will be there for EpIII, nonetheless. Lucas had me from age 8, so I cannot say that I wouldn't be willing to chip in another afternoon and 7 bucks to the cause.

EpIII is reputed to be 95 minutes of fighting and 25 minutes of dialog, which suits me just fine. One astute observer commented after EpI, "They should have just had Jango Fett and Darth Maul fighting for two straight hours." Now, it seems, we will have something close to that.

Can someone tell me what the actual plot of EpII was? What the fuck is going on with the political intrigue? This is what I've got -- Palpatine is the future emperor, and he engineered a phony separatist movement to trick the Republic into confiscating the clone army (which the would-be separatists would have used on their own??). Does this make any sense? Is it all some strained, warped science-fiction version of Republicans that I'm not seeing? For the life of me, I do not know what the hell is going on. I got the feeling I was being insulted, but the stilted dialogue and mind-numbingly dull exposition caused my eyes to glaze over.

George,

Please explain this to me:

R2-D2 is on sensor/sentry mode to guard Amidalla (or whatever her name is), and yet it doesn't detect:

1) A flyin' robot outside the window

2) Said robot cutting through the window with a laser

3) Said robot inserting a steel cannister in the room

4) Said steel cannister opening up to unleash two foot-long assassin-worms

5) Said assassin-worms getting into bed with the Princess

Can I just ask-- what the fuck kind of sensors does this fucking R2 unit have, exactly? What sort of event would have been large and loud enough for this stupid little trashcan to fucking notice?

R2-D2's sensors have an effective range of, it seems, two and a half fucking feet.

And yet he can fucking fly, huh?

I did not know that.

That's a plot hole I hadn't noticed before -- there are so many things wrong in the movie that I hadn't given much thought to the nitty-gritty.

I always saw R2-D2 as kind of a bumbler -- in the same league as C3PO, but slightly more competent. His extinguishing the fire on board the Falcon was a rare triumph (and more exciting because it was against type). But, he/it is the kind of guy/trash can that would try to save the day by talking to the master computer and end up nearly frying himself on an electrical socket.

The real foolishness here was for the humans to put any sort of faith in R2 as a security guard. He has anxiety issues, for Pete's sake! Whenever he gets nervous, he teeters back and forth (remember when Uncle Owen bought the other droid from the Jawas and almost separated him from C3PO? He had to be restrained, he was so upset.)

You need something repaired in the vacuum of space? Call on R2. You need a sentry with nerves of steel? Even the Ewoks were tougher.

LOL. I always thought R2 had stones, actually. Just off the top of my head....

1. He made C3PO get in the escape pod with him;
2. He conned Luke into taking off his restraining bolt;
3. He set-off alone across the hostile desert twice (after the pod crashed, and when he went looking for Obi Wan)
4. He fixed the Falcon fire
5. He fixed Luke's Xwing stabilizers
6. He got blasted all to shit by a tie fighter, but got fixed up and was ready to go fly again.
7. He was always up for action. C3PO always tried to avoid danger/risk and R2 always seemed to throw himself into the mix.
8. He smuggled Luke's lightsaber to him so he could take out Jabba's crew;
9. He stopped the trash compactor in the death star.
10. He was secure enough in his droid sexuality to be seen as C3Po's friend (OK..I made that up cause I'm starting to run out of stuff).

R2 had stones is all I'm saying.

God, I'm a dweeb.

Yeah, I think R2-D2 was always supposed to be heroic. "The brave little droid" and all. He was the heroic one, C3PO the comic relief.

Know who should have played Anakin? The dude who played Pyro in X2.

Don't get me wrong -- I'm with you guys on the brave little droid angle. Don't forget the Falcon's daring escape from Cloud City when R2 blasted a shot of fire-extinguisher as a smokescreen that gave them precious moments to get on board. And he tried to sneak the lamp from Yoda's grip and took a few whacks from the old dude's cane before giving it up. That's gotta hurt.

But R2 as a bodyguard? Mistake. Remember, this is the droid that soaked all of Leia's clothes on Hoth by cranking up the heat (occurring off-screen, but C3PO mentioned it in the opening moments of Empire).

Ep3? Nothing good can come of this. It's pre-ordained. The making of Star Wars is like some Greek tragedy where everyone knows it's going to end horribly, and that the only person who will walk away happy is the Fool who's too fucking stupid to realize how much pain and suffering he's caused.

That's the worst part too. It didn't have to be this way. If Lucas was aware of his own limitations he could have hired a better Director/ Writer team to handle it. He's clearly only interested in doing special effects, he should have just stuck with that.

Ace - Lucas confirmed in an interview a couple years ago that Vader would only be in the last couple minutes.

Joe R. - What are you smoking? Pyro was a 2D punk. A good Anakin would have to play immensely powerful/ angry and strangely vulnerable (to both the Dark Side's temptation and Amydala's love) simultaneously. It would take a good actor with a good director's help to do that. Hayden/Luchas' complete inability to do this is what makes the movie completely inexcusable.

This thread reminds me of a scene from the brilliant sitcome News Radio:

Beth: "Is this like that episode of Star Trek where they're in a parallel universe and everything's the same except they're all on heroin?"

Dave: "There was no such episode."

Jimmy James: "Woo! Geek test!"

I remember the summer of '77 when I was 12- the kid across the street invited me and my brother to go see a movie with his parents. The nearest theater was also the only moviehouse in Columbus at the time that had a newfangled sound system called "Dubly" err... "Dolby".

"Wow"!

It made me so much of a sci-fi fan that I read a ton over the next couple of years- and by the time the (first) sequel was released, I realized how pathetic the original movie was...

I still have never seen Episodes 1, 2, or 6.