Star Wars: Attack of the Clones
Directed by George Lucas
Behold
Attack of the Clones! Intro
bit of plot: the benevolent galactic republic
is under threat from a mysterious enemy. Entire
civilisations are rebelling. A beautiful princess
is the target of an assassin. Cue crisis management!
The "Jedi Council" doles out
damsel
in distress protection duty to Obi-Wan Kenobi
and his acolyte Anakin Skywalker - or "
Annie".
The audience sniggered when people in the movie
referred to him as "
Annie".
As I pointed out in my review of -
hhnnnngg
-
Star Wars Episode
One The Phantom Menace: it's
no wonder
Anakin gives the finger and goes into tyrannical
Darth Vader mode. Anyway - or should that be
Annie-way - Anakin falls in lust for
the Princess, and there ensues a rather stilted
and drawn out romance.
Yaaaawwwwwwwwwwwn.
This is
Star Wars. This is silly
crap right? No one in their right minds takes
this nonsense seriously. And yet…
Attack
of the Clones is stunningly good! The
movie is more than generous in skewering a million
action and effects scenes down our overheating
optic nerves.
Star wars is successful
because it is fantasy sci-fi done properly.
It isn't uncreative, gloomy post apocalyptic
crap like you see in
Blade Runner and
its countless rip-offs. Nor is it touchy feely
shite like yer post-first-gen
Star Trek.
Attack of the Clones, like
Lord
of the Rings, is the sort of fantasy that
I loved as a kid. For that I can forgive
Star
Wars anything. You get ludicrously awesome
aliens and monsters and cortex-frying planets
and action. Everything is generally well lit,
only rarely are these fantastic creations dark
and depressing. (And what dark, depressing scenes
are presented are all the more effective
for their scarcity). OK,
Attack of the
Clones has faults. But to grudge it
seems somehow niggardly. (For the illiterate
thought cops out there, niggardly is a genuine
word by the way, it means miserly, and not what
you are thinking).
The most incongruous aspect of
Star Wars
is the incongruity of the technology. In the
Star Wars Universe they are good
at what we are bad at, and vice versa. They
have robots with AI and freewill so incredible
that they are of almost human intelligence,
think R2D2 the brilliant engineer, think 3CPO.
(Yes, 3CPO is as thick as Ewock shit, but then
again, so are most humans. And why did the ten-year-old
Anakin build a homosexual robot?) By contrast,
our own machines are incapable of matching the
intelligence of an insect.
Star Wars
droids fight, where as we can barely get a bot
to balance on two legs. Star Wars civilisations
have spaceships that can speed across half a
galaxy (Think 50,000 light-years) as easily
as our planes can cross the earth. Yet their
guns shoot ammo more slowly than any gun I know
about here on Earth. Those droopy energy beams
can be intercepted with a swipe of a light sabre,
which is good because sabres are more fun than
guns on the screen. (In contrast, in computer
games, guns are much more fun than hand melee
weapons, strangely). Even the Jedi Library has
computer screens are two dimensional, not unlike
an average notebook display. There are some
holograms in
Star Wars, but for
such technologically advanced civilisations,
holographic displays would be the norm; or technology
that directly beams images into your brain;
or something we haven't even thought of. The
technology of Star Wars is actually an artefact
of what they thought the future would be like
back in the 1970's when they made the original
movie. (Some
Star Wars technology
is retro; the spaceship weaponry of
the early movies were inspired by WW2 tech).
The evil dude in
Attack of the Clones
was played by Christopher Lee. He is bloody
excellent. Bizarrely he is called
Count Dooku
- why didn't they just name him
Darth Dracula
and have done with it?
And oh the joy of the
Star Wars
fauna! The more teeth a monster has the more
I am unable to tear my eyes from it. Back to
humanoids: I can believe that the stiffness
of the acting was probably intentional to an
extent.
I actually like *some* of the acting, which
was hamstrung by the god-awful unnatural and
horribly clichéd dialogue. Most of the
time the actors performed in isolation in front
of blue screens. This type of acting requires
extra skill and in AOTC not many of the actors
pull it off. Ewan McGregor, Ian McDiarmid and
Lee come off best. Take McGregor. As Obi Wan
he is cool without seeming to act cool. He doesn't
to pose or to use props like shades that lesser
actors rely on. Hayden Christensen did act well
as Anakin. His character was robbed of his
childhood and so it might be partially intentional
that he seems stilted. He has presence
despite the constraints of Lucas's bloody awful
lines. Queen Natalie Badactress is cute but seems
lost at sea, as does Samuel Jackson, who wonders around the place looking
bemused as Jedi Mace Windu. As for the gibberish-spouting
Yoda, the little muppet spends most of his protracted
screen time looking like he's taking a dump.
More on Yoda in the spoilers... Although
AOTC is often spectacular,
my memories of this movie
are dominated by the cardboard performances by the young
lovers, so I feel I must downgrade the score a little.
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spoilers corner
Spoilers!!!!
Warning: this box contains a movie post-mortem analysis that freely gives away important plot twists and details. If you have not yet seen this movie and intend seeing it, avoid this spoilers box until afterwards. Bookmark the page, see the movie, see if you agree with my review then write an arsy comment saying I am talking total b*ll*cks :-)
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Fett Senior had the most cold-blooded
job imaginable and his clone "son(?)"
Boba cheered on his murderous pursuits
with enthusiastic innocence. There was
something moving about that. And when
we saw the poor scamp retrieve his "father(?)"'s
severed bonce we were meant to feel a
pang of sympathy. What is this? Undercurrents
of ambiguity? In Star Wars?
What is going on?
Crying shame we didn't get CGI spurts
of blood during the decapitation scenes.
An 18/R-rated Star Wars would be fun.
Talking about CGI, that bit where the
gal takes a "bite" out of the
fake fruit that looked like it was hovering
about an arms-length in front of her was
a terrible bit of artwork.
Anakin Skywalker's wrath over his mother's
death was genuinely powerful. I wanted
to see him take vengeance on a few more
Tuskans, but this was not shown. The imagination
filled in the gaps based on hair-raising
exposition: he slaughtered the women and
the sprogs too, just like the Japanese
in World War II. No doubt the whole charade
was set up to drive him over the edge,
but no explanation was offered.
Incidentally, I noticed the monster that
attacks Obi in the arena seems to have
been "inspired" by a Starcraft
(a mid-nineties computer game) monster.
I suppose I'm not the only one to have
noticed. It was a damned dangerous critter
even by mother-in-law standards.
Then you have the infamous duel between
Yoda and Count Dooku. Wow, that was just
hysterical. We were all laughing at this
comic spectacle. It's the funniest, most
ridiculous thing I've seen in a movie
all year. And to top it all, a subsequent
scene showed Yoda once again hobbling
with a walking stick! Heh!
Count Dooku was just magnificent. It came
as a genuine surprise to see him piss
all over the Jedi finest and live on for
another episode. We have an ambiguous
ending on our hands! Wow! Star Wars
has improved no end. But it could have
been better. Suggested ending by BlackCastle:
"I think best ending is the Amidala
wont give Anakin nooky-nooky, then he
wastes her".
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There are no more spoilers below this
point, except maybe in any user talkback
comments.
End of spoilers corner
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None. What could one wish for? Well, apart from
some gratuitous sex and the mercy killing of
Jar Jar Binks...
Add your comment to this page
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| From: |
clonie | Subject: | 2002-05-21 16:42:25 |
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| From: |
Darth Stiffy | Subject: | 2002-06-06 10:40:40 |
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| From: |
True Critic | Subject: | 2002-08-23 02:13:41 |
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| From: |
Jake | Subject: | 2006-01-10 00:17:22 |
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| From: |
jake | Subject: | 2006-01-10 00:18:26 |
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