not to mention Jar Jar.

The acting and the direction in the second spate of trilogies come across as WE ARE ACTING IN A MAJOR PIECE OF FICTION THAT WILL LAST THROUGH HISTORY (cue God like voice with plenty of reverb).

The acting and directing in the first, especially the first two movies, was more about "Let's tell a good story with good characters." And it helped that they cast Ford and Guiness, who are great actors, and Hamill, who was able to convey Luke's wide-eyed naivete very well.

To me the classic trilogy is better for several reasons.

First off, when they were made, these flicks were truly something you hadn't seen before. They were innovative in every sense of the word. The story, the characters, the sets, the effects, all of it was novelty.

Compare that to the prequel trilogy where all they care about is cramming a billion CGI characters into the background. The space battle in Episode I was a total disappointment. They can do all this amazing computer work and it's all freaking wide shots. And with ILM doing CGI work on basically EVERY OTHER summer blockbuster during this time period, it's not nearly impressive enough to fill the void of bad scripts.

I don't blame the actors. I actually thought Liam, Ewan, Pernilla, Ian, Natalie and Jake (ONLY in the scenes with his mother) saved the movie from being total crap. That and the lightsaber duel, which is still my favorite fight sequence ever. But in Episode II, even Hayden and Natalie couldn't save dialogue written by a man who you could tell hadn't been romantically involved for 30 years. I thought this was supposed to be some epic story of true love. Instead we get wooden dialogue and a girl who doesn't fall for him until he slaughters dozens of sand people. Huh?

Back to the effects, I'm still bothered by the Special Editions. I wish you had the option of also watching the original cut of the classic trilogy on the DVDs. Countless hours went into creating those epic space battles alone, and what does Lucas do? CGI over everything. To me that's a huge slap in the face to the people who made his freaking movie a success to begin with. Which goes back to a problem in the prequels, his mistaken belief that all the fans care about is fancy digital effects.

But ultimately, when all is said and done, I think the fundamental problem is that the question is proving to be more interesting than the answer. What I mean is, after the classic trilogy was played out, every Star Wars fan had their vision of how Anakin fell from grace. The mystery was a huge part of the mystique of the original films. But thus far the peeling away of that mystique has been less than satisfying overall, at least to me. He's got one more chance to salvage the story, but I made the mistake of being excited about Episode II, so I'll reserve judgment this time until I see the film.