A sampling of criticisms, now that “the saga is complete”…<\/p>\n
Rolling Stone<\/span>‘s Peter Travers<\/a> is right: Lucas is a “skilled producer, clumsy director and tin-eared writer.” And Travers is dead on with his assessment of the prequels as an “investment portfolio.” Star Wars<\/span>, the scrappy little movie that nobody believed in– not even Lucas himself– has become an institution, and nobody at Lucasfilm wanted to be the guy who came up with New Coke.<\/p>\n Roger Ebert<\/a> is smoking crack. He recognizes the film’s many flaws– for example, “[t]o say that George Lucas cannot write a love scene is an understatement; greeting cards have expressed more passion.” But Ebert still gave it three and a half out of four stars. Excuse me, but isn’t the love story supposed to be the central fucking theme of this whole tragedy? And you’re giving it a pass because hey, look at all the shiny spaceships? Smoking crack. And Roger, you need new glasses, because digital projection also sucks. Stop shilling.<\/p>\n The SF Chronicle<\/span>‘s Mick LaSalle<\/a> rightly calls it a swing and a miss: “the movie omits the one scene it most needs to show — the one in which Anakin commits an act of such evil that there’s no turning back. It’s the ‘Macbeth’ moment, the scene this trilogy has been leading up to, the dive off the moral high board — and Lucas just skips it.” Sad but true.<\/p>\n (I, too, felt like the script missed lots of crucial details and failed to explain important developments. But then I remembered that this is not a film for thinking adults; this is a film for thrill-seeking adolescents and malleable younglings. I wonder if the original trilogy will seem as empty when I watch them again– and I will, very soon. I’ve still got the original, unspoiled versions on laserdisc, where Han shoots first<\/a> and not every character is a digitized cartoon.)<\/p>\n