The Movie: Episode II, I'm sure most people will agree, is much, much better than that horrid Episode I we got not too long ago. I mean, I won't even buy Episode I because I'll be damned if I allow Jar Jar Binks to live at my house! Even so, I'm sure there's a lot of people who won't like this movie, because lets face it -- and don't get me wrong, because I love the series -- Star Wars is now and always has been little more than some spectacular special effects coupled with campy dialog and acting... and that'll always turn some people off, but personally, I think the combination is great.

Here's where Episode II is better than Episode I -- #1 Yoda kicks some serious ass. #2 Fifty lightsabers blazing simultaneously in a huge battle. #3 The only reason Jar Jar Binks is in this movie at all is basically to briefly explain why he's not in this movie. #4 As the movie progresses, more and more of Natalie Portman's clothes get torn off.

But there's area in Episode II that fails miserably, and that's in the whole love story department. I think George Lucas has been living the last 10 or 15 years of his life so detached from reality and just how "normal" people live their lives, and that this loss of touch manifests itself mostly in the absolutely hokey and downright awful lines that Anakin uses on Padme when he's trying to woo her. Nobody in their right mind would ever talk like that in the real world. I mean seriously, I don't know what flies on Naboo but there isn't a girl on this planet that would fall for any of those lines... no matter how eager a girl is to throw herself at a guy... if she heard these lines, not only would they not work, she'd get completely turned off.

But the great parts of Episode II are really, really great. Light saber battles are taken to new levels which we haven't seen in any of the other films, and there isn't any cutting away from the action right when it's getting good like there is in every other Star Wars film, and visually, this movie is quite stunning, especially the backgrounds on Coruscant.

In the hierarchy of which Star Wars films are the best, I think I would actually rank this one higher than Episode IV -- the original movie... but I think the truth is, Episode I and II are basically all just building up to Episode III -- and that's where all the good stuff is really gonna happen... and I can't wait, I really can't.

The DVD: There's a big hubbub surrounding this DVD release because it was the first live action motion picture shot digitally in high definition, brought to DVD straight from the digital source. There's a lot of qualifications I threw in there, because well, first of all, we've seen a bunch of digitally animated movies that have been brought to DVD straight from the digital source, so we gotta make sure we specify that this one is "live action". And though the marketing would have you believe that it's the first digitally shot live action feature film, that's not entirely true, as actually, quite a few feature films have been shot on digital video and transferred to film in the past... so that's why I gotta throw in the "high definition" part.

But anyway. The transfer looks great, but to be honest, I think I set my expectations a bit too high, because I didn't get totally blown away either. I mean, yeah, it looks much, much better than just about any live action DVD I've ever seen... but... there is a noticeable difference in clarity between the live actors and the 100% digitally created spaces they moved in. Now mind you, even though I'm saying that the actors looked worse than the backgrounds, they still looked better than the best of the film-based DVD's I've seen... they just didn't quite match up to the 100% digital backgrounds is all I'm saying.

But yeah, overall the transfer is perfectly pristine, with no compression artifacts, deep, bold color, and amazing clarity, especially those backgrounds. The audio is also quite amazing with rich, immersive ambience and loads and loads and loads of surround sound effects which were mixed into one incredibly detailed sonic experience.

And now for the special features -- there's a whole other disc full of just special features, and you know what? I am not gonna sit here and list them all, but I will tell you that there's a whole boatload of stuff. Now I don't know exactly how it all worked out on the Full-Screen version since I only have the widescreen one, but I did notice that everything even on the supplemental disc was in big, beautiful anamorphic widescreen. No skimping out on the special features here. The only exceptions to this rule were the TV commercials (which were originally cut in 4:3 anyway)... and thankfully they did not include those horrid "YO-DA MAN" commercials that they used to push the DVD in the days before the DVD release.

So yeah... from a purely technical standpoint, this is a pretty darned impressive DVD release, and whether it's worth it to you or not really hinges on whether or not you're a fan of the series.