Is the romance between Anakin and Padmé really that unrealistic? I think it is a psychologically accurate portrayal of a woman falling in love with a man suffering from Bipolar Disorder, an occurrence which happens much more frequently than you would imagine.
What?
I know right?
Of course the story makes sense. That’s not the issue. When I first saw AotC in cinemas with friends one of them quite confidently said it was their favourite Star Wars movie, and no one at all was disappointed in it.
I don’t think GL is trying to make any statement whatsoever about psychological disorders.
Normative life in films is boring, and if you look back to first movie what we see is that a farm-boy living a normative life is put into an extraordinary position in the first act of the movie. Yet in AotC, Anakin is very much living the “normal” Jedi life at least well into the second act. I don’t think it’s a bad movie, but there is clear room for improvement especially in the second act of the film. It does have a strong third act, I’m not sure that Yoda fighting Dooku was the right move, but let me tell you on premiere the audience loved it. But the reason they loved it wasn’t because it was a great scene - they loved seeing Yoda step outside of his normative behaviour.
Anyway, For a good while I used to think that AotC was my favourite prequel. I absolutely loathed Sith with its weak and predictable third act. But over time AotC has become my least favourite of the prequels. It was far less original than TPM,and ended on a really pathetic cliff-hanger that we all knew the outcome of. ESB ended on a real cliff-hanger. There was also a clear lack of new characters to the franchise. It would have been nice to have explored the back-story of Sidious, but that wasn’t done either.