Point of No Return, is absolutely when Mace Windu dies. There is no question about it. The choice Anakin makes at that point is what shapes the story from that point on.
Either he helps Mace Windu or he helps the Emperor. His act of hesitation sort of showed what was up and the Emperor got to manipulate him for it.
In Episode, when he has political talks with with Padme on Naboo, he sounds like a adolescent learning about politics from the first time. He is impatient, idealistic and thinks "someone" should be in charge who could cut through all the fat cats and their bureaucracy.
It's easy to see what Lucas went for with the trilogy. The idea was not stupid, but it's just not well told. Characters are reduced to talking heads. They say their feelings, they are not shown. This is poor direction and poor storytelling.
"From my point of view, the Jedi are evil" is a damnable line because you would say that to someone else. That is something you write underneath a youtube comment or above a gloryhole at a truck stop. What is more- Lucas should have shown it. The transistion was not gradual, graceful and made sense.
But the entirety of the prequels suffer from pacing issues. Episode 1 is like one long disjointed incohesive music video. It lacks a red cohesive thread that ties the things together like a 3 minute music video. Almost no characters grows, changes or learns anything insightful, and the one emotional and beautiful moment, result in the death of the two only decent characters in the film.
It kills me, because you know that if Lucas had just had that team of skilled writers collaborating with him on the chopping block. Sitting there for six months, killing darlings and kicking with it. But no. Lucas had to be enamored by yes men like Rick McCallum that feeded into his ego. Sitting there on Skywalker Ranch thinking he was gods gift to dramaturgi.
But of course Lucas would have all the confidence in the world. By the 90s he was viewed as one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, having coasted for decades on one film, while most people didnt know he didn't direct ESB and ROTJ. People just assumed that the mans talent existed in infinite proposition in relation to American Graffiti.
Coppola is on record saying that if he hadn't made Star Wars, followed by going home and being a family man (nothing wrong with that) Lucas would have been a much much better director. In that sense, Star Wars hurt his career. It's like a reverse Scorsese, who they say, was so consistently good because he always was snubbed of the Oscar. He has just been in the zone for so long.
