I saw it over the weekend. Frankly I think the popcorn at my local theater is getting better. Usually it has the same taste and consistency as salty cardboard but this time there was a little bit of butter flavoring to it that really brought out the subtlety of the cardboard. Not too salty either. I don't like it when you pop a piece in your mouth and the texture is gritty from salt. Sometimes when popcorn gets old and you crunch a piece just right it sounds like fingernails on a chalkboard and sends a bad chill racing down my spin and I cringe in my seat; has that ever happened to you? This time it appears the popcorn was some how fresher. Maybe they threw out the old stuff and started fresh, or maybe they got a different crew, I dunno, the popcorn was just better.

Oh yeah, and I saw Star Wars: Episode 3

I admit it, I can be hyper critical of movies. I have an MFA in Cinema-Television production from USC and I like to use it whenever possible - I mean the thing cost me $100,000 I really should get some mileage out of it, right? I can also be very forgiving of movies if I like the characters or story in general and believe me, I've liked some real dogs in the past. I LOVE the science fiction genre when it comes to books, but I have usually found the science fiction movies to be lacking. Lacking in science to be more exact. Star Wars is a fantasy science fiction series set "a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away", so theoretically we should be willing to accept a lot of things that we wouldn't in other movies.

Technologically speaking, the movie is a masterpiece. Lucas' use of special effects to create the story is spectacular. The marriage of real and FX is so seamless I can't tell the difference (admittedly, that's not saying much; special effects are not part of my training). I no longer look at Yoda and think "puppet", I think "wise old Jedi". I also liked the production design, the costuming, and the sound. All good. All thumbs up there.

And let's look at the story, shall we? Fantastic. Lucas spent time with famed comparative mythologist Joseph Campbell and structured Star Wars around the "Hero Myth", the archetypical journey of the hero. This structure has been around so long and permeates every part of our society until this structure resonates with us to such a degree that we generally feel uncomfortable with stories that don't follow this path. If you are not familiar with the hero myth, there is far too much for me to cover here. Try reading "The Hero With a Thousand Faces" by Joseph Campbell - or anything by Campbell for that matter.

Sadly, the acting was wooden in many places. This is compounded by the fact that the dialogue being delivered in the first place was not great. Simplistic, even. Almost as simplistic as this article. And although these things lessened my enjoyment of the movie, they were not the main problem.

Seeing a movie is a visceral, emotional experience. We must connect with the characters or the emotion falls flat. Especially in this case, the audience is more than ready to have an emotional attachment to the characters. We want to go with it - we want it so badly that grown men and women dress up and go out in public and smack each other with plastic toys.

Spoiler alert! I'm taking a page out of Zoomba's book. If you want to read the rest of this text you must click and drag over this empty space and highlight the text that is hidden there. If you do not wish to know about specific details in the movie, then don't read this part.

Anakin Skywalker goes over to the dark side to help save his wife. Although his transformation seems too fast to me, he always was quick on the draw. It's the bit that follows that is upsetting. First he goes and does murder in the name of his master. Ok. That's what bad guys do, right? And then he goes and kills all the Jedi younglings. This is serious. He has apparently lost his mind. Ok. I'm still with it. And then Obi Wan sees the instant replay of Anakin doing this. Obi Wan sees his boy, the one he has had charge of since he was just a little tyke, killing babies. And yet his reaction amounts to "oh no". The world should have stopped here. This moment is simply thrown away - not even a good close up. This moment is so bad, so dramatic, so heart wrenching that Obi Wan should have fallen to the floor senseless from the impact of it.    Anakin    Skywalker    kills    babies.    And yet, the moment is thrown away and we are on to the next scene. This doesn't happen once, it happens several times through the course of the movie. I would have forgiven wooden acting and bad dialogue (to some extent). I will not forgive emotional moments - the ones we most want to see - being tossed away on the wind.

This movie should have been better. This movie had all of the elements it needed to be better. I will not speculate here as to why it was not better: I didn't work on the production so I don't know what forces were moving behind the scenes. I only know that this movie made me very sad because it should have been better. Oh well, I'm already over it. I shouldn't be - I should still be thinking about the movie and how good it was, but instead, I'm already over it.