[L.N. Smithee]

Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker? Hamill was just fine. For all the slams Hamill's acting gets, you'd think he was Shatner or something. Luke was supposed to be a wide-eyed innocent, and that's what Hamill was at the time.

On the other hand, Hayden Christiansen as Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader...THAT was brutal. After Attack of the Clones, I almost gave up on the first half of the saga unless George Lucas recast a REAL actor as Anakin. But I ended up just walking in the theater for Revenge of the Sith knowing I would have to fight the urge to hiss Christiansen every time he was on the screen, and hope the rest of the movie picked up the slack. It did, thanks to Ewan McGregor, Samuel L. Jackson, Frank Oz, Industrial Light & Magic, and especially Ian McDiarmid's delightfully pathological performance as Darth Sidious.

I will be sorely disappointed if McDiarmid isn't nominated for an Oscar for the opera scene with Christiansen alone, which demonstrated the vast difference between a bonafide thespian and a pretty boy who remembers his lines.

"Not from a jed-iiiiii!"

[pissant]

I thought Hammill sucked. But that's just me. But you are correct, I watched the first of the new SW trilogy and that was it for me. I retired from being a Star wars fan.