During my second or third viewing of TPM, I found a useful
reason for the podrace scene: it makes a perfect bathroom break.
The biggest problem with AOTC is that there's no podrace for me to
use for the same purpose. The action never stops.
The movie brings back all the Star Wars action we remember from
times past, with a lot of other things we've never guessed at. I
don't think any of the complaints about Episode I can be applied to
Episode II. While I would not rank it a perfect movie, I can't
imagine any Star Wars fan not liking it. I've heard it said several
times that this movie is better than The Empire Strikes Back. While
I currently wouldn't rank it there (my rankings are subject to
change), I couldn't argue with someone who put it that high.
Of course, Star Wars is melodramatic. If you don't like that,
you might criticize AOTC for it.
There are a lot of interesting similarities to Empire in this
movie. I'll have to go see it again because similarities at the end
were so interesting I forgot about many of the ones at the
beginning.
I wish all you people who complained about Jar-Jar had just shut
up.
I wound up watching this movie from the front row because
arriving 30 minutes ahead of time was not early enough to find five
seats together. It was a little disorienting, and I'm looking
forward to seeing the movie from a better view. In particular, some
of the lightsaber action was too bright and too quick to follow
from the bottom of the screen.
Fans of the expanded universe novels will be surprised at the
significant amount of material that is contradicted by this
movie. You can throw a lot of those books out the window.
At any rate, there's only about 1096 days until Episode III. I'm
looking forward to it!