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Review: Star Wars Episode II, Attack of the Clones
Much of the cast from Menace is back. Unfortunately none of the major actors manage to pull of a standout performance. Anakin is little improved from menace. I know he's supposed to be full of anger and angst, but mostly he just comes off as constipated and bitchy. Amidala seems to be taking a bit of a nap. Their romantic scenes together are the Jar Jar binks scenes of this movie: It just pauses the action, and the acting is so bad that the movie stalls until something interesting happened.
The rest of the cast is much better. Ewan McGregor has finally grabbed onto the role of Obi Wan. He's a bit preachy, but it works. Samuel L Jackson is the badass Jedi we want him to be. Senator Palpatine is pretty much the same guy as last time around. And Dooku, the flick's major bad guy is pretty excellent too. Its nice having villians with faces since they actually get to act a bit. The Fett family felt a little forced, but it was interesting.
Most notable this time around is the CGI characters. Episode I of course had Jar Jar, Watto, and many other CG chars, but Menace is literally crammed full of them. And the technology and animators have improved substantially since the last showing. No longer do they stick out like sore thumbs- now they merely stick out like a thumb with a little bit of a sliver. Yoda is of course the most important of the CG chars- everyone probably remembers the horrible animation on his one CG scene in Menance, but in Clones he is CG all the way. This is a huge deal since unlike most of the CG chars we've seen so far, this one works almost perfectly. There are a couple of shots where it doesn't seem quite right... but those are the exception, and not the rule.
What I'm saying is that CG characters have finally come into their own. In Menace, all I could think about is the fact that they were CG. The fact that they didn't looke quite right. This time around they are just part of the show. Another cast member delivering mediocre dialog. Ironically enough, several of the CG chars outshine their human counterparts.
The movie as a whole looks great. Many of the costumes look a lot more like Star Wars. From the clone army, to Amidala wearing a white costume for the last act, things just look like I would expect them to. We get to see some sets familiar from A New Hope as well as Menace, and that all really contributes to making the movie feel like a Star Wars flick. It also helps that the CG has continued to improve.
I'd also like to note that I didn't get to see it on the digital screen. I plan on seeing it digital in the next week or 2... I figured I'd see it at the local theater and make sure it didn't suck before I bothered driving to Southfield to see it in full digital splendor.
The rest of the review will focus a little more on plot. You've been warned. The story is of course largely a love story. There has been a threat on Amidala's life, and her old friends Anakin and Obi-Wan have been assigned by the Jedi Council to protect her. Investigating the asassination attempt leads Obi-Wan to a far away planet where he discovered a clone army being constructed, and a conspiracy to suppress information about it. Anakin and Amidala spend time together and get closer through a series of awkward pseudo romantic scenes where they both look like they would rather have been in different movies. Their utter lack of chemistry is almost amusing.
Obi-Wan gets into some smack, and so Anakin and Amidala go to rescue him, only to end up compounding the level of smack around for the good guys. Meanwhile the Senate does its thing and a major shift in power occurs. We learn who is responsible for the clone army, and what the plan for it is.
The last hour of Clones is the Payoff. A battle worthy of the original trilogy. I'm not going to go into it becuase that might spoil it, but let make the following points. First, we finally have enough light saber action. The massive jedi fight that we all knew these prequels could offer us. And my god was it ever worth the wait. But we also have Mace Windu kicking ass, and at long last, Yoda gets his chance to prove why he is so highly regarded.
The parallels to other movies in the SW Series, especially Empire Strikes Back are many. I'm avoiding mentioning them here, but I will say that the film tries to end on a dark note which is cool.
The packed theater that I saw this really seemed to feel the same way as me. A few awkward laughs during the romance scenes- even snickers during the sound-of-music picnic sequence. But when the final battles came around there were cheers around.
And that really sums it up. It took 3.5 hours of prequel film to get us to the payoff. For some it might not have been worth the wait... but for me, I'm just happy to finally to see most of what was promised delievered. And I'm reinvigorated towards Star Wars. If Episode III can pick up where II left off, III should finally be the Star Wars Prequel that we've been waiting for.
Oh my god,
I still can't belief how frigging bad
this movie was. Star Wars is ruined
forever...
Way beyond garbage...
Must have been the cheesiest peace
of shit I have ever seen!!!!!
The theater was sold out and I had
the strong feeling nobody could believe
how bad it was!!!
People were clapping and cheering not
at the good things, but at that cheesy
smack shit...
Cause it was soooo bad!!!!!
remo
Right on... with all that americanization going on, that stick up your ass might actually get start to feel uncomfortable.
But like the cherished passions of first love, the fervor called forth by the landmark film is never coming back, and no amount of prequels or sequels is going to change that. Paradoxically, the fact that the latest prequel, "Star Wars: Episode II Attack of the Clones," is a bit better than its predecessor makes it clear how lacking in the things that matter these newcomers are.
Given its huffy 9-year-old protagonist and off-putting characters like Jar Jar Binks and Watto the junk dealer, "Episode I The Phantom Menace" was anything but a tough act to follow. Picking up the adventures of Anakin Skywalker 10 years later, "Clones" (which opens Thursday) has more menace and less Jar Jar, better battles and an impressive parade of eye-catching splendors. But like the Tin Man, "The Wizard of Oz's" C-3PO predecessor, it doesn't have much of a heart. Writer-director George Lucas' gift for animating the inanimate turns out to be paralleled by a tendency to deaden what should be completely alive.
As with "Phantom Menace," it is the pictorial element of "Clones" that makes the biggest impact. Production designer Gavin Bocquet, aided by four visual effects supervisors, three concept design supervisors, an animation director and a previsualization and effects co-supervisor (no, I don't know what that is either), has created some truly involving alternative universes, and costume designer Trisha Biggar has figured out what should be worn in each of them.
Some of the film's action is also well-done, especially a thrilling flying chase through the dizzying nighttime urban caverns of Coruscant, the "Blade Runner"-influenced capital city. But except for a climactic appearance by the venerable Yoda, whose computer-generated lightsaber skills got him on the cover of Time under a "Yoda Strikes Back!" headline, creating emotion is beyond this film's powers.
One reason is a script that feels, well, cloned, something Lucas and co-writer Jonathan Hales (TV's "Young Indiana Jones," story credit on "The Mummy Returns") threw together in their spare time. The plot is standard, and the dialogue, even for something intended for young people, is curiously flat. It ranges from the pious ("The day we stop believing democracy can work is the day we lose it") to the predictive ("Why do I get the feeling you're going to be the death of me," Obi-Wan Kenobi jokes to Anakin) to the pathetic, as when Anakin grumbles about Padmé Amidala, "I've thought about her every day since we parted--and she's forgotten me completely."
These stiff lines are matched by line readings so uniformly impassive that even such lively performers as Ewan McGregor (Obi-Wan) and Natalie Portman (Padmé) can't animate them. Only the veteran Christopher Lee, with experience of doing things on his own during his long career, gives a worthwhile performance as the villainous Count Dooku. For what Lucas gets out of his cast, the actors might as well be digital too, as is the rest of the film.
This dramatic stolidity underlines yet again how fortunate Lucas--and the world--was in the Harrison Ford-Carrie Fisher-Mark Hamill troika that animated the original "Star Wars." Ford especially brought the kind of wickedly nonchalant sense of humor to the proceedings that has gone missing this time around.
To be fair to the current "Clones" team, there's perhaps something more at work here. When that first film was being made, it meant less than zero to say you were part of "Star Wars"; the eyes of the world were not on the production, to say the least.
Now, everything has been close to sanctified, and those currently involved seem weighted down by the knowledge that they're part of a phenomenon. There's an unshakable self-consciousness about "Clones" that does not work to its advantage.
Still, the picture does start promisingly, with Senator (and former Queen) Amidala coming to Coruscant to try and preserve the Republic against a secessionist movement. She's quickly the target of multiple assassination plots, and the Jedi knight Obi-Wan and his Padawan learner-apprentice Anakin are called in to protect her.
Judging by his performance here (perhaps not a wise thing to do), young Canadian actor Hayden Christensen was picked for Anakin strictly on his ability to radiate sullen teen rebellion, something he does a lot. Anakin chafes like a grounded adolescent at the restrictions Obi-Wan places on him, grousing that the master is "overly critical. He never listens. He just doesn't understand. It's not fair."
This High School Confidential in Outer Space tone is continued in the forbidden romance (Jedis aren't allowed to fall in love) that develops between Anakin and the senator. As the young people hide from danger in an elegant Naboo retreat, they're burdened by a formidable lack of chemistry. (Where are Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst when we really need them?) And they're saddled with dialogue that might have been ransacked from old Harlequin novels: "I'm haunted by the kiss you never should have given me."
Everything inevitably ends in a climactic battle, where the senator gets to fight bad guys while showing off a Britney Spears-like bare midriff. Impressive though the computer work is, it soon descends into video game overkill. Only a teenage boy could find this kind of stuff continually diverting, and only a teenage boy would not notice flimsy emotions and underdeveloped acting. It seems George Lucas, like Peter Pan, has never really grown up.
Kenneth Turan
Your pizza just the way you ought to have it.
I agree, this scene was out of place, and did not belong...it's the same thing as in Episode I where Lucas put in the two-headed announcer at the podraces...those kind of things are familiar to us in a real life kinda way...but they don't fit in, in the Star Wars universe...actually, it's not that they don't fit in...it's just that the original 3 movies don't have anyhting remotely like that...they were made during a different time...and now, Lucas must feel like he needs to put those scenes in to appeal to a different generation of movie goers..personally i think it's a mistake, and they don't belong...
"Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true." - Homer Simpson
Or why not just push on the falling column using the force. It would have fallen where Yoda placed it in the movie. ... which may have been the point.
That would have given him enough time to stop Dooku
Btw. Why the strange expression on his face when he moved the column?
And why is Yoda bluer than in TPM or in the OT?
What's the deal with all that facial hair that couldn't be seen in TPM?
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
I'm sorry. The people I saw it with thought this scene was completely absurd. The CG-Yoda comes walking in with a cane, and all of the sudden he's bouncing around the screen like some green piece of flubber, while swinging a mineature light saber. Well, that much is forgivable, I guess. I mean we all knew that Lucas would incorporate a big "look what you can do with digital effects" commercial into the movie. Also, you shouldn't expect him to care that Yoda, the only character that managed to exhude a sense of dignity, should go bouncing around the room a green weasel to entertain children.
But seriously, this scence just exhibits the degree to which Lucas is out of ideas. I have no doubt that Yoda could always defend himself, but I expected him to do so in some more interesting way than just fencing. It's about as much of a letdown as watching a movie in which the Dalai Lama starts blowing away people who diss Tibet with a shotgun.
Even sitting here, I could come up with a much more interesting thing for Yoda to do than merely having an acrobatic sabre duel. I mean, we know that you can do a lot more with the force than telekinesis and telepathy, and I figured it would be Yoda, when his back is against the wall, who would show us. I'm talking about mind control, about creating illusions for Dooku, about working him into such a rage that he loses control of the force, you know, the sort of stuff that Yoda always talked about.
But no, instead Yoda takes out the "far far away" equivalent of the machine gun and goes at it. Never mind that he weighs about 20 pounds--he still manages to parry the kinetic energy of a strong man's blow without flying backwads like a batted muppet. This thought alone caused me to giggle when I saw this scene, and by the end, I was laughing. Not with Yoda, but at him.
That scene made the character lose a lot of credibility in my eyes, and I must say, I was always a fan of Yoda. I worry for the Jedi, because you just know that sooner or later, someone in that galaxy is going to discover actual lasers (you know, devices which emit energy that really travels at the speed of light!). I'd like to see Yoda parry that!