May the Force be with you

(I'm going to try to keep this as spoiler-free as possible, in that curious sort of way that Episode III dictates: you already know perfectly well what's going to happen, just not how it will happen.)

Overall? Relax. Exhale. It's pretty darn good, almost up to the standard of the original trilogy. Even in those moments when it richly deserved some MST3King, I couldn't take my eyes off the screen long enough to snark to my neighbor. And by the end, I felt myself sighing with relief as we arrived back on familiar ground.

The bad? Everything you've heard about the awfulness of the dialogue, and the acting in general, is true and then some. It's way beyond Lucas just not knowing how to direct; it's as if he sucked the life and talent out of otherwise excellent actors. Suddenly they're on stage for the first time in their lives. It's hideous. The audience laughed at a number of points where they clearly weren't meant to.

And the writing itself... well, it's hard to explain. The overall script has been trimmed down to the barest essentials; every line serves to advance the plot. And yet there's still too much talking. A lot of things are said with words when a simple look would have surficed. I was reminded of something I learned in my first journalism class: never tell when you can show.

Random musings and ponderings follow. These are NOT meant to be rhetorical: I'm hoping for feedback.

• My, but Lucas is in love with his CG. Was the (helmetless) Clone Army general a computer creation, or was it just me? Wouldn't putting the actor in a costume have been cheaper and more convincing?
• I did notice the scene that people were saying was heavy-handed political commentary by Lucas. It's hard not to. But if you think carefully about who represents who and who's saying what, it's all so scrambled that it's useless as metaphor.
• Yoda's final words to Obi-Wan: the hell? Where did that come from, and how does it relate to anything in Episodes IV-VI? A friend suggests that it might help explain the non-vanishing of dead Jedi Masters in this film, but I'm not sure if that theory holds up in all cases.
• If you've ever seen the behind-the-scenes footage of Empire, you'll know about a certain lie that was told to the cast. Ponder the degree to which it wasn't a lie at all.
• Interesting choice of stories for Palpatine to tell Anakin; remarkably truthful in fact. Too bad he didn't pay attention to it himself.
• I'd often wondered what, in particular, they would have as the temptation that drove Anakin to the dark side. Luke's presumably parallel story offered several choices, but Lucas picked the saddest and most tragic of them all. Episodes I-III in general seem to suggest that whatever hope and idealism Lucas had in his youth is long gone.
• Did you notice what Obi-Wan took away from his final battle? It's extremely important later on.
• As a purely political and strategic matter, do Palpatine's orders to the droid army make the slightest bit of sense? I'm not sure how the places he sent them or the things he had them do advanced his agenda in the slightest.
• It seems as though for the Jedi and Sith alike, there is a difficult and very personal trial to go through before one can become a Master. It's just a bit more disfiguring for the Sith.
• Who was Darth Sidious's master, anyway? Now that the movies are done, will LUcas open the Extended Universe to books that are set before Episode I?
• It's cute and all to have distantly related characters turn out to know one another in Episodes I-III, but it's also distracting. It means that certain people should have commented on it in Episodes IV-VI, but didn't. Not to mention that certain cases of random chance become unbelievable coincidences.
• Prophesy and foresight are the most horrifically misleading things imaginable in these films; I swear that it was almost a nod to Dune.