SO I SIT at my computer and try to come up with something new to say about this film. Impossible, of course. Every opinion about it had more or less been formed before release. If you feel the force, you'll go and you'll be relieved that it's better than the last two. If you're apathetic by now, you'll probably go anyway, be bored for the first 30 minutes or so, then enjoy the rest of the ride while trying to survive the cheesy dialogue. If you take the moral, anti-hype high-ground then you'll avoid it. Trust me, your first impressions will be more or less proved right. There's something vaguely comforting about that.

I could try and point out some of the spiritual parallels. There's the Fall. There's a saviour figure. There's eschatological hope. There's the Holy Spirit (sort of).

Or I could write about some of the ethical issues the film may be skirting around if you dig deep enough. There's ethnic cleansing. There's medical-ethical issues. The role of the United Nations. War. Peace. Weapons of mass destruction.

You may laugh, but all those things are there if you want them to be, and maybe even if you don't want them to be.

So what's left to say? Not a great deal. I paid my money on opening night, and was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed it. It won't get close to my top 50, or even 100 films, but it was better then some, worse than others. But after all this hype, all this money spent, all this hope built and drama promised, is this really all there is? Like I said, I quite enjoyed it. I have nothing against it. But really, is this all the machine that is Lucasfilm could summon up? Aren't we all left a little let down by it? And what does this leave us expecting from a summer of expensive, mega-hyped, 'movie experiences'? Some may be good -- I have high hopes of Batman Begins and Sin City when they finally open in the UK. But after this I don't want to let those hopes get carried away. I don't want to be disappointed. I think I would rather have hated it than quite enjoyed it. A strong reaction at least implies something is going on to respond to -- this sort of vague appreciation is feint praise. I'm not sure my love for films could stand a whole summer of that sort of reaction.

TS Eliot was right -- the world ends with whimper, not a bang. And what a let down it is. Doesn't the money involved in these things demand something more definite than vague appreciation and tolerance? Years ago I made choice when Someone invested everything in me and indeed all of us. It was a choice that I made subtly, gradually over years. It wasn't instantaneous. I grew into it, but the choice was no less real or definite because of that. There could be no worse response than refusing to choose. There could no more hollow act of service than just giving what I feel like -- giving grudgingly, in a manner that's vaguely satisfactory at best. I want to give the best, all I have, the top 100%. I know I usually fail at that, but at least I want, with all my heart, to try, try and try again. I know how it feels it to be let down. I don't want to pass that on. Do you?

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