Who was the retard that designed the Federation Battle Droids? Most US military equipment is double or triple redundant(with the exception of Battleships running Windoze NT). You'd figure that if the base of operations was destroyed, these seemingly intelligent(and sentient) droids would be programmed to attack anything non-Federation. Instead, they just shut down. Real useful military equipment that is. Why bother to leave ANY troops on land? Why not just focus ALL of your forces at the mothership?

And what's with R2-D2 getting an award from the Queen? This is a military droid that did was only doing the job it was designed to do. I don't think there's a military in existence that ever gave an award for simply not getting shot. Hell for that matter, might as well make it Commander-In-Chief of the Gungin Army.

What disappointed me was what that I LOVED in the first movies was the cross-language communication between different races. Han could understand Chewie, Han could understand Greedo, Luke could understand the Jawas, etc. However, in Phantom, everyone speaks on the same plane. Watto speaks English to English characters, and yet speaks Watto-ese to Anakin? As for Gungin, it's just garbled English. It was a minor thing, but with the exception of the Ewoks, nobody ever needed a translator in the first three.

It also could have done without the Greg Proops commentary during the pod race. I don't mind the guy comedically, but his voice I found really annoying during the race.

The virgin conception was a little pretentious. Yes, I know that Lucas has said that the force represents God, but to those of us who are atheists, it's a little cheesy. It would have been better had it been explained in a later movie, having Anakin "discover" it rather that it being common knowledge.

In many ways, this movie was a big disappointment. Yes, I know, many have said that our expectations are too high and that it's "just a story", but even from a stand-alone perspective, this was not a well-thought out movie. It's quite ironic, that it's been in the works (more or less) for twenty years.

If I wanted to take the movie entirely in the context of the other ones, I'd comment on the fact that YODA was supposed to have trained Obi-Wan, not Qui-Gonn; and that neither C3P0 or R2-D2 seem to have ANY memory of Obi-Wan in "A New Hope."

Just my 2.6834 cents.

-Zang