Taste depends on expectation and convention. There's no absolute standard to apply, only local and traditional practices. As others have pointed out, the Star

Taste depends on expectation and convention. There's no absolute standard to apply, only local and traditional practices. As others have pointed out, the Star Wars transitions are part of the conceit of the movies. As an old fart, I grew up watching the movie serials that the Star Wars, and Indiana Jones, movies are made in homage of. If you aren't familiar with them then you are watching a very different movie than I am. This is probably one of the reasons that I rather like the prequels; I'm viewing them in the context that they were created in. If Lucas erred it was in expecting future generations to be aware of the context and not expecting them to simply take the movies at face value. Since the movies made a lot of money, I don't feel he erred by much. Lucas also is referencing a lot of post war Japanese film narrative technique; this is less critical to "reading" the film, though. I've never heard anyone who knows about film narrative technique say that Lucas was an "unskilled" film maker. As for the films literary quality, YMMV.