TheRetroCritic

I talk about the "controversy" surrounding Star Wars: The Last Jedi .

And here's my review of Star Wars: Attack Of The Clones to end the week in style. Begun, the clone war has...

My video review of Star Wars:   The Phantom Menace comes rather late after Star Wars Month but hey, better late than never! I, for one, blame Darth Criticus.

After the runaway success of Star Wars , George Lucas handed the directing reigns to Irvin Kirshner for the sequel which is still seen by many as the franchise's best instalment. The Empire Strikes Back , as the title suggests, is not the upbeat adventure with the fairy-tale ending the first film was. This time, the Empire gets its revenge following the destruction of the Death Star in A New Hope and our heroes suffer for it. Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), after having a bad run-in with a Wampa (some abominable snowman-looking beast) and a chat with the ghost of Alec Guinness, departs for the Dagobah System to learn the ways of the Force from Yoda (Frank Oz) leaving Han Solo (Harrison Ford), Chewie (Peter Mayhew) and Leia (Carrie Fisher) to be betrayed by old friend Lando Calrissian (Billy Dee Williams). This gives ample opportunity for galactic badass Darth Vader to plot against our heroes. Character development-wise, a romance finally brews between Solo and Leia, Luke goes

After the mostly negative feedback The Phantom Menace received, George Lucas nonetheless continued his prequel trilogy with Episode II: Attack Of The Clones , a vastly bigger, slicker and more action-packed effort.  Anakin Skywalker now all grown up, it was up to newcomer Hayden Christensen to take over the role from the wildly unpopular Jake Lloyd and the result was... another wildly unpopular performance fans are still talking about to this very day in hushed tones. Anakin's courtship of Padmé, which inexplicably included talk of sand ("it's coarse and rough and irritating"), did not help matters as the script's more romantic scenes definitely stood out as slightly clumsy. That said, the film around poor old Anakin looked so good and was so entertaining, even a wooden Christensen couldn't hurt it too much even if it did rub quite a few Star Warsians the wrong way. The film means business from the get-go as it learns from The Phantom Menace's mist