[PvK]

My personal SW series ratings, on a scale from 1 to 10:

Ep 1: 3
Ep 2: 6
Ep 3: 8
Ep 4: 10
Ep 5: 8
Ep 6: 8

Order of favoritism: 4, 6, 3, 5, 2, 1.

Ep 3 has some of the best visual effects in the series, though many of them are (as in Eps 1 and 2) too hyper-active and cluttered. Plenty of action. I greatly appreciated the lack of any Gungans (I didn't see any Jar Jar) and painfully cutsie crap. There were places where the script was pitiful, and though it didn't utterly suck, I think the Anakin's transition to Vader was done very weakly.

The whole Padme/Anakin story was much weaker than I expected. I thought there was an obvious opportunity to handle that in a much more dramatic, interesting, and rational way, but oh well. At least it was short enough, since the chance of Lucas, Christensen and what's'er-name pulling a better story off well seems minimal.

Good point about Padme's death seeming to contradict Leia's statement in Ep 6 - guess Leia was wrong (more likely, Lucas just being inconsistent for no good reason).

PvK