The day I heard Yoda was going to be fighting with a lightsaber in Episode 2, I was shaking my head trying to picture the OT Yoda in a lightsaber fight, and the same thing happened during the filming of Episode 3 with Palpatine, I've always thought it was a shameless move to entertain, rather than to skillfully construct a story faithful to the OT without resorting to a cheap action gimmick, neither Yoda or the Emperor should have needed, or used lightsabers, it cheapens the characters and makes them far more generic, I've always pictured those two as teachers of dark and light side of the force who never felt they had to resort to that style of fighting, using their minds and mastery of pure energies of the force, adding to this was Count Dooku being able to use force lightning with further took away from the unique powers of the Emperor.

I believe McDiarmid wasn't thrilled about the lightsaber move either, but being the professional he is, did it without making a big issue out of it.

I understand the need to CG Yoda in the PT, because he does have to move around quite a bit, but I thought a more faithful way of doing this would be to take an exact replica of the original puppet, and use it for all closeup/talking scenes, then CG his movements walking from behind or a distance..ect.

I think the CG Yoda in ROTS is very well done, and at times doesn't even bother me that he is CG, but there still are times where his look and movement when compared to the puppet seem too far off, the AOTC Yoda is very inconsistant, and TPM Yoda looks completely different altogether (which they are changing for re-release thankfully).

There's no changing the CG aspect of Yoda in the PT, but hopefully using the Episode 3 model they will clean up AOTC quite a bit.

The ROTS Emperor acts far more over the top than I ever expected, and although McDiarmid face has changed a bit with age, the makeup is far more extreme...And if I may continue to bitch, I didn't totally agree with Palpatine's own lighting being directed back at him as the method for exposing his true identity, I've always liked the idea of the Dark Side decaying him over time, although it is a stretch to show an old normal looking Paplatine in ROTS, then in ESB showing a strange mutated Palpatine.

I have to think there was a more skillful method of revealing Palpatine's look.