I am torn on how to talk about this movie. I respect every intention this movie had, and I do feel that it deserves the prequel & sequel that George Lucas promised if this one performs well... but the story was very broken. That and most of the film feels like the audio had to be rerecorded (ADR), something the mixer did not do a good job blending into the film. All of the talking bits consistently felt like they were just sitting on top of the movie and not actually part of it. At times, the movie felt like it was something out of the early 90s, just redone with modern day graphics.

However what really killed the movie for me, were the performances... Cuba Gooding and Terrence Howard did more to detract from the film than they added. I would swear that both men were told to suppress a smile every time they were performing for the camera. Really both actors should have played the other guys part... I have seen Cuba and Terrence both play roles far more convincingly than this.

The White name actors who were casted, did not need to be in this film unless they worked for free. For as little screen-time as they had (which is fine) they could have easily cast a random actor to fill the part and the role would have likely had more impact.

Almost anytime the actors were in a plane, it was golden. This may be due inpart to these being the most visually interesting parts of the film. Making it easier to overlook their dialogue delivery.

Now I understand this movie had to cover a lot of ground in a relatively mall amount of time. But too many times in the movie the characters are treated like they didn't care or weren't phased by what just happened. Had this been a tv series, you would think they needed to kick someone from the series or that the writers screwed up and were having to write themselves out of a hole... but a script for a film like this has to have been QC'd to death.

Now if there is another cut of the film that fills in those blanks, I am all for seeing it, but if not... I have to worry about anyone who was in-charge of approving this script for shooting.

In the end, this is a film that needed to be made, I just believe the end result could have had a much higher degree of quality than what ended up on the screen. This is a 5 star concept that im forced to give 3 stars due to the execution.

(second draft)