DaForce1, I agree with just about everything you mentioned, but I agree with EagleManiac about Maul.  Lucas shouldn't have killed him off.  Honestly, Obi-wan should have lost that fight given the way the rest of the fight went.  I also whole heartedly agree with Eagle's assesment of how Maul should have been used had he stayed alive.  Hell, they could have even "cloned" him and he would have been an interesting villian... more so than Count Dooku

As far as best lightsaber duel, my favorite is ESB.  It had the most emotional impact for me out of all of the movies.  Luke wanted to avenge Obi-wan, but had no idea what he was getting himself into facing Vader.  Vader's trash talking throughout the entire fight showed how sweet of a villian he was.  Not only could he kick some butt, but he'd tell you how pathetic you were while he was about to do it.  Maul was a great "Menace", Dooku... doodoo (and his geriatric lightsabers... bent for ease of grip), General Grevious, were ok, but none of them measured up the Vader in the Original trilogy.

 Inoticed someone at the start mention the Q bout using the force on the little droids at the start of ROTS, lead me to one of my most asked Q's bout the movies...  in PM, at the start the 2 jedis use superspeed to get away from shield protected destroyers... why didnt obi use superspeed at the end to catch up with qi through the red barries to help him with maul??? always buged me..

And side note, i play TOR and fan of the movies and something i hear alot is the jedi fights, how the old jedis were so uber to say luke. but we should remember the story of luke shown in the movies it had been how many years since the jedis were destroyed??? no temple or training for him since youth... so truthfuly if luke would have had mad skilz like in the prequals it wouldnt have looked/felt right. So in all the luke fights werent as energetic as the prequal scene but for his training it fits best for the way it was done.

Showing luke some love in a SW with so many old 3000 yr old dead jedi/sith catching attention.

 oh and agree wth goldeneyez,  ESB, scene had emotions in it.

and as referd: maul was as under used as boba fett, and both are two of the most talked about players from the movies...

 BTW,  it's been out for a while, but there's a REALLY funny 7 part review on the Phantom Menace on Youtube.  Part 6 talks about the sword fight in the Phantom Menace in relation to the other sword fights.  I think it's pretty spot on.

I thought this gem from a younger George Lucas was pretty true as well:

"Special effects are just a tool", "Special effects without a story is a boring thing." - George Lucas

Let me start by saying that it's been years since I've seen any of the prequel movies.  I didn't much like them so I haven't rewatched them since they were in the  theateres.  So I may get some of the details wrong.

But the prequel movies were all about the corruption and fall of the Jedi order.  Now, when I say "corruption" I don't mean that they became evil.  I mean that they became beurocratic nincompoops.

When Qui Gon brought Anakin back to Corruscant with him, what did the other Jedi say?  Did they say "This kid has so much talent!  He could be the greatest Jedi ever!  We should have our best instructors train him."?  No, they said "He's too old."  Anakin was what?  Six years old?  That's too old to begin Jedi training?

My deduction was that they located children with a talent for the force when they were in diapers, removed them from their parents' care and raised the "younglings" themselves to be the perfect Jedi.  But since Jedi weren't supposed to form emotional attachments the children were trained to be stoic and unemotional, not compassionate or caring.

Is emotional detatchment really what you want from somebody with powerful talent in the force?

When Qui Gon rescued Anakin from slavery on Tatooine he didn't rescue Anakin's mother.  It's not really that the Jedi couldn't aford to buy a slave, but Qui Gon didn't want the mother in Anakin's life any more and had no use for her.  Why not just leave her where he found her?

Once Qui Gon had brought Anakin back to Corruscant the Jedi faced a problem, what to do with him.  They didn't want to train him as a Jedi (being too old and all) but if they didn't, they had two other choices.  Either kill the kid or allow him to remain untrained and unguided by them.  How do you think THAT would have turned out?  (Though on reflection, it couldn't have turned out much worse for them.)  But leaving a six year old with tremendous talent in the force on his own to develop his talents by himself would have been a humongous mistake.  He would soon have become a pawn of someone unscrupulous who would have used his talents for evil.  Much like what ended up happening anyway.

The tragedy is, Qui Gon could have made it work.  He had the intelligence and the wisdom and the humor that  Mace and Yoda (who used their Jedi talents not to roam the galaxy, righting wrongs and bringing justice to the multitude, but to live in luxury in the capital and hold meetings and play politics) had forgotten how to use.   Qui Gon could have raised Anakin to be a good Jedi.  He did a decent job of mentoring Obi Wan.  But Qui Gon was killed and instead of finding Anakin another teacher who could have raised him right, they dumped him on Obi Wan who had just been promoted to Jedi himself and was, quite frankly, wet behind the ears and self involved.  I wouldn't have trusted the Obi Wan from TPM to look after a houseplant, much less raise an orphaned six year old with tremendous power in the force.

I'm sure that Obi Wan did his best but he had been raised to be emotionally uninvolved and never understood the seething emotions which Anakin felt.  Anakin felt love for Padme, but had to hide it from all his Jedi friends and coworkers because it wasn't allowed.  Anakin felt anger over his seperation from his mother and rage when he discovered she had been kidnapped by sand people.  Obi Wan didn't understand that either.  Anakin felt jealousy and felt that the Jedi council, who had never liked him much anyway, were prejudiced against him and trying to keep him down.  I can't say he was wrong.

Anakin was completely unable to control his emotions because the Jedi who raised him had never trained him to handle them.  Jedi were supposed to be without emotion so they ignored Anakin's emotional turmoil as a lapse in good taste, rather  than seeing it as a crippling weakness.  Even supposedly wise mentors like Yoda and Mace.

All this left poor Anakin easy prey to a master manipulator like Palpatine.  The once and future Emperor saw exactly what was happening and encouraged Anakin's estrangement from the other Jedi.  He fed Anakins doubts and exploited his emotional weaknesses until he could turn Anakin to the dark side.

Poor Anakin never stood a chance.  He was like a little baby bunny being faced by a cobra.

And it could all have been prevented if the Jedi has seen Anakin as a child to be loved and guided instead of a future soldier to be trained and molded.  There wasn't really a lot of difference between the brainwashed clone soldier children and the Jedi younglings.