The film did open big and maintain the top spot for a good portion of that summer movie season.

The only point the detractors might get us on is this: George Lucas and 20th Century Fox held the theater owners feet to the fire. The owners were told that if they wanted to book the film they had to agree to book it for 12 weeks; and they were forbidden to move it to a smaller auditorium, after opening it in a large one.

These demands were unprecedented at the time and I do recall some dissatisfaction was expressed by some members of the theater owners group. However none of them wanted to miss out on the first Star Wars film in 16 years.

All in all I remember that as a great summer; and I personally saw the film 10 different times before it left theaters. so... thanks again for your post, kuguy3000.

I think the cast lined up for GET SMART are inspired choices. The most perfect choices possible actually. But the director is the problem here. Peter Segal? Still, Steve Carell is hilarious so there will be some laughs.

As was pointed out, theater owners were contractually bound to hold the film over for months. This gvave guys like me, who left the opening day screening wanting so desperately to have loved that movie that we were able to convince ourselves that we did...for a short while, time to reconsider.

After reading my review of Menace (which spent more time on how great it was to have STar Wars back in theaters than on the actual movie itself), a buddy asked if I'd take in a second showing with him. During that screening, I was struck immediately by how stupid the bad Charlie Chan alien accennts were and from there the rest of the threads holding together the illusion of appreciation quickly unravelled.

I can only assume others in the theater were also mostly second screeners (save my buddy, who wasn't as big a Star Wars fan going in and hasn't forgiven me for bait-and-switching him like that since), because that oddly quiet yet palpably dissatisfied atmosphere followed us out into the lobby and across the street to the bar until the silence was finally broken by my friend asking me how high I was when I wrote my review.

The Phantom Menace is actually the reason I stopped writing film reviews. It showed me in painful detail that my objectivity had been clouded by what I wished were true.

I wish the prequels were good movies or at least entertaining and engaging space fantasy. They weren't. They were a few spectaculatr lightsaber and space battle sequences imbedded in some of the worst movies ever made.

By the by, the FBI and CIA weren't allowed to share info. There was a virtual wall set up that prevented info sharing that would likely have stopped 9/11. Jamie Gorelick wrote the policy as a deputy AG under Janet Reno. Just sayin'.

An origin story is completely unwarranted, it sounds like they didn't know what to do and an origin story has a prefab template that fills up a lot of screen time.

In the prequels, aliens spoke (ridiculously accented) english. In the originals, most spoke in foreign or completely made-up languages.

One approach was creative and stimulated the imagination. The other was lazy and offensive.

I tend to agree that the original trilogy is somewhat overrated by nostalgia.

Star Wars (the first movie) was cool precisely because it was so different than most everything that had come before it (even while drawing on so many famuiliar sources for fodder and inspiration). It captured the imagination even if the writing was pretty poor and the acting spotty. But Empire was just a well conceived, written, acted and directed film. It transcended the genre and, I believe, elevated the other two movies by association. Jedi's a mixed bag. It's got some great story moments and real solid performances by a few, but others (like Leia and Guinness) seem to be phoning things in and some of the most dramatic reveals are handled in a very quick, half-hearted way ("Oh, yeah, Luke...all that stuff I told you about why you should kill Vader? It was kind of bullshit. He's really your dad and you've been trying to get in your sister's pants all this time.") to make room for a teddy bear fight designed to sell toys to a new generation (fans of the original two films were already outgrowing their action figures by the time Jedi came out).

So I don't place the entire original trilogy on a pedestal. I acknowledge the warts and adjust my expectations because I love the basic idea behind Star Wars. But the prequels completely failed to live up to those expectations or the name of the franchise. At least for me.

if you watch the phantom menace casting there were 3 kids short listed for anakin - and I can NOT for the life of me figure out why they didn't get the kid that was actually good! Personally though, I think Anakin should have been the age Luke Skywalker was, the only real difference being that Anakin was fully weilding of his force skills and already on the path to the dark side because he simply lacked the ability to control himself.

oh well. it's all done now. but before we keep knocking anakin, if you watch the OT and really listen to Vador... he is nothing but a whinging bitch.

...now, if someone could explain to me why that piece of shit of a trilogy, Lord of the Rings, was good (besides that big battle in 2 Towers)...I mean DAMN! its a FUCKIN EYEBALL IN THE SKY (you dont actually have to tell me why you like, just feel like bringin up that crap again)...

So it's Get Smart, but with male bashing.

That is all.

You're right that, as a movie, ROTS was better than the other two. It was paced better and there were some very solid performances (Palpy and Obi Wan). But I hate that one most of all precisely because all the potential that was there is completely destroyed by Lucas' inability to sell Anakin's turn.

There was no reason for him to turn when he did. Sure, he'd made a mistake and cut of Windu's hands in an effort to prevent the Jedi Master from killing what appeared to be a subdued opponent. But that doesn't make him irredeemably evil and it certainly doesn't make his next logical step the slaughter of a bunch of kids.

People argue that he turned because he thought it would save Padme, but even that theory is blown out of the water by the dialogue in that very scene, where the Emperor admits that he liead about knowing how to beat death. Why would Annie believe him when he followed that admission with the promise that, working together, they could unlock that secret?

WHat should have been the most compelling and heartbreaking moment in the entire saga -- Vader's turn -- ends up being comically pointless. And it didn't have to be. The seeds for a plausible turn had been sown with Annie's jealousy and the covert meetings between Padme and Obi Wan. Lucas wouldn't even have had to make Obi and Padme sleep together (although that wouldn't have been outside Obi's established character as the most evil, manipulative motherfucker in the universe). It would've been perfectly believable for Annie to leap to that conclusion and to tear through the Jedi temple looking for his "friend" to get some righteous payback. The Emperor should've been stoking that flame. The movie would've been a thousand times better and might even have elevate those other two pieces of shit by association (like Empire did for the rest of the OT).