lack of a strong central villain, somebody the audience just loves to hate the same way that Vader was feared all those years ago. Instead we got 3 sacrificial lambs in the form of Maul, Dooku and Grievous.

They tried playing the 'Cool' angle with Maul, but while he certainly looked the part he didn't really get a chance to do much 'evil' apart from showing off his cool martial arts moves and his double ended lightsaber gimmick. probably sold a lot of action-figures but equally just as forgettable.

Dooku was a step in the right direction and one of the best casting decisions made in the prequels, but again another wasted opportunity, his character was a little too ambiguous, is he good?/is he bad? , I wish he'd been established in the first film and given a bit more of a chance for evil, they could've just replaced the bumbling Neimodians altogether with Dooku as the mysterious head of the Trade Federation, I always found it hard to believe that a wise old Jedi like Dooku could be so oblivious to the Emperor ordering his death at the hands of Anakin, His death should've been worked into Anakin's turn later in the film.

and finally Grievous , another 'cool' villain with no less than 4 lightsabers and guaranteed to sell heaps of action-figures, but anything even remotely scary or ominous about him dissapeared as soon as strode onto the screen coughing up a lung like a chain-smoker with 2 weeks to live.