Kate and I have not seen Episode III yet, and probably will not have a chance to do so until the last weekend in May. I’ve heard from numerous sources that Episode III is light years (no pun intended) better than Episodes I and II, so we will want to see it eventually. However, we have found the perfect way to put our expectations in check and diminish our hope that the movie will be good.

Watch Episode I: The Phantom Menace.

We did that last night. It was a menace, all right. That movie is flat-out TERRIBLE. I didn’t remember it being quite so bad in the theatre. I think I was blinded by the Star Wars excitement that every geek experiences when these movies are released. There were a number of reasons this movie was bad. Shall I enumerate? Well, seeing as this is MY BLOG, I think I shall.

• Jar Jar Binks. Enough said.
• Terrible acting (apologies to the kid who played Anakin – maybe it was the directing that just made him look terrible).
• Writing horrific enough to make normally fantastic actors look bad. Only Ewan McGregor escaped unscathed. A true credit to his acting ability.
• Crazy accents for alien cultures. Must the imbecilic bad guys be made to sound distinctly Asian? No, that’s not quite right. They don’t sound Asian as much as they sound like someone doing a bad and ruthlessly stereotypical impression of an Asian-American.

We’re going to watch Episode II some time next week. I wonder how my impressions of that movie will change with a second viewing. Yeah. I’m hard up for stuff to blog about.