Star Wars: episode 3. Oh boy. I'm slipping on my nerd membership. Everyone else at my Weekly Thursday Night Nerd Summit (we all get together and play Heroclix) had already seen it at 12am on Wed. night/Thurs morning. I'm sure I'll recover...

Me? I went to see it during a Monday afternoon matinee...

No sense in me recounting the plot, so I'll just skip to the reactions:

-Okay, at the end of the movie it's blatantly obvious that they're HIDING Anakin's kids, Luke and Leia. They're HIDING them..keeping them OUT of SIGHT or INCONSPICUOUS. So WHY did they name him Luke Skywalker?!! Sheesh.. no way Darh Vader would EVER come looking for someone with the SAME LAST NAME AS HIM!

-Related to that, check out Uncle Owen's farm. It appears EXACTLY the same as it does in "Star Wars". Lazy bastard doesn't do DICK to improve it for the next 20 years.

- About 1/3 of the way through, Padme had her own wrestling headgear (think: Rick Steiner's helmet). That's slick.

-At the end, when Padme decides to fly to Hot Flamy Planet to save Anakin.. "I must save him! We must hurry! But first..I must take time to change my outfit, put on go-go boots and braid my hair!"

-When all the Jedis are being killed by the clones, we're shown shots of battles on several different planets. One planet looks like Dr. Seuss's Who-ville!

- I checked the credits, and did NOT see James Earl Jones listed! Vader's voice sounded like a cheap knock-off. Or maybe Jones has aged and it wasn't the same. Either way, I'm curious if he contributted.

-Obi-Wan's pal on Planet With Dinosaurs and Big Hole in It was a clone trooper named "Commander Cody"?! Funny, but not exactly clever.

-When Anakin is suited into the Vader armor, wakes up and finds out his wife's dead..why didn't he flip out and kill the Emperor then and there? His whole switch to the dark side wasn't backed up with much. I was expecting a little more "sympathy for the devil".

-The Walrus Men were seen as part of the big Separatist gang. This justifies my screenplay for Episode 7- Malevolence of Walrus Man!! There's ALOT more to my proposed screenplay that ol' Walrus Man..so ask away if ya' wanna' know the rest!

- Since I resemble one, I wanted more Wookies. Yoda and Chewbacca teaming up and fighting? That was one of my dream teams from my early 80's action figure adventures! I suppose if I need to get my Wookie jones, I can always pick up...the Star Wars Holiday Special!

-Along those lines... I'm a Chewbacca mark, but did he really need to be named and included? For all 3 prequels, I'm sure George Lucas was resisting the temptation to drop in a young Admiral Ackbar, Han Solo's uncle, Lando's mom and Max Rebo's step brother.

-C'mon..no LOBOT cameo?!

-At the end, notice that ONLY C-3PO was set to get his mind wiped?! Cool! R2 remembers everything! See, the only things Princess Leia gave him in "Star Wars" were her recorded message and the Death Star plans. R2 KNEW where to find Obi-Wan. Re-watch the first 40 minutes of "Star Wars" and notice how R2 insists that he knows where he's going. Lucky break for Lucas how that ended up... and also a cool plot point that I called THREE YEARS AGO!

-Bail Organa/Detective Simone just wanted a girl, not the other twin. Gee, that was nice.

-General Grievous was incredibly lame. We were given no reason to despise him and he didn't do anything threatening, other than twirl his lightsabers like a kid with sparklers.

-The first 30 minutes were filled with too much cutesy shit. Especially R2's antics and the cutesy little bug droids that attacked the fighters. All the droid trooper dialogue was weak..they came off like Smurfs with stuff like "oww" and"watch out". I also wanted to go at least 3 minutes without R2's annoying "weeeeeeeooooo" beep of exclamation.

-Mace Windu, supposedly one of the top Jedis in the galaxy seemed a little too emotional and vicious when attacking Palaptine. I thought the whole idea behind Jedis was that they can control their emotions and don't give in to anger. Oh well... we never saw Windu's body, so he could still be alive!!! Hey, if fanboys can pull up a Boba Fett resurrection out of their colective asses, I can belive that Mace Windu, the Baddest MutherFuckah in the Galaxy is still out there. He'll be back for my Episode 7..along with his son, Doh-boi, played by Ice Cube.

-At the end of the movie, we see them building the Death Star (complete with a Grand Moff Tarkin cameo). I got the feeling that the Death Star was failry new in "Star Wars"...so are we to believe that it took them almost 20 years to build the thing?! Hey, that's government work for ya'.

-It's a common complaint, but dontcha' think Uncle Owen would at least remember C-3PO's name in "Star Wars", since 3P0 lived with him on the farm for a few years, as seen in "Episode 2"? Yeah, all the protocol droids look alike, so I could forgive the plot for Owen's lack of physical recognition. But when C-3PO introduces himself, dontcha' think Uncle Owen should have done a double-take at the name?! I'm sure Lucas's defense would be "he just saw the protocol droids as a tool, and he's used several over the years. Their names and identities are all similar, so it's a blur".

-Just like "Jabba the Hutt", I don't like how the prequels have made all Sith guys be a "Darth". What goes into the name? It's a good thing Palpatine had such a good imagination, otherwise he would've dubbed Anakin "Darth Jeff" or "Darth Steve".

Eh....oh well. Frankly, the movie played like a paint-by-numbers plot, tying things together in a rather predictable way. Here's a tip: this isn't the last we'll see of "Star Wars". Just like "Star Trek", as long as we have nerds, we'll always have more "Star Wars" movies. And video games. And shitty novels. And Action figures. And cartoons...