Overall Rating
 Awesome: 27.22%
Worth A Look: 17.47%
Average: 16.3%
Pretty Bad: 13.97%
Total Crap: 25.04%
23 reviews, 549 user ratings
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| Star Wars: Episode 2 - Attack of the Clones |
by billypilgrimnz
"Atrociously written and directed cartoon"
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The best thing you can say about the fifth film of the series is that now there is only one more to suffer through.What began in 1977 as a rollicking saga of good versus evil set against the backdrop of jawdropping miniature work has devolved into an essay on the inherent instability of galactic political systems, set against the backdrop of computerized cartoon images. The creator, director and all-round self-appointed ruler of all things Star Wars, George Lucas, has repeatedly bemoaned the lack of technology that was available to him back in the late 70’s when he was making the original Star Wars. But the last two films have demonstrated that unlimited technical proficiency is Lucas’s enemy – gone are the light touches, and all-round sense of fun that allowed the original trilogy to capture the hearts of millions of teenagers, replaced by scenes cluttered with things, just because George can put them there.
Take the faux-SOUND OF MUSIC scenes on Naboo. There’s a scene with a waterfall in the background, but it has to be a three-sided waterfall. Not only are there wide expanses of green grass, but they have to be populated by wandering herbivores that look like whoopee cushions with legs, and they have to be ridden by an obviously CGI Anakin, and we have to wonder why. Lucas is far too concerned with showing off his hard drive to worry about the flow of the story, and as a result CLONES almost comes across as a parody of the classic Star Wars story structure. You know the one: an action scene involving most characters, followed by a separation and some individual adventures, completed by a reunification and a final, all-out battle. Here, you can almost hear the film creaking as it tries to shoe-horn the plot into this shape, and suddenly you’re aware of how artificial the whole process is, not just the blue screen backdrops.
There is also something arrogant in the way Lucas continues to deliver the flattest, most clichéd dialogue to our ears, despite the unrelenting criticism that followed THE PHANTOM MENACE. It’s either an unwillingness to accept valid criticism, or a perverse experiment in seeing how bad dialogue can be before it ceases to be rescued by bravura action sequences (and I thought MENACE provided the definitive answer on that). It’s fair to say that children probably won’t notice how the entire screenplay is constructed from statements, rather than true verbal interplay, but quite how they are expected to get excited by lines such as the now infamous “sand” one is beyond me. Sitting in a Korean cinema, I couldn’t figure out whether the audience found the dialogue as hard on the ears as myself, as it is possible that the sub-title writer possesses some degree of verbal poetry that Lucas lacks. I certainly hope so.
The acting is, well, it’s hard to criticize, considering what the actors have to work with. There’s a reason why politics professors have a reputation for being boring, and it’s demonstrated here. Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher and Mark Hamill didn’t have to worry about explaining the machinations of the galactic senate, instead being allowed to act like petulant children thrown into a dangerous situation, and we loved them for it. Han Solo was a scoundrel, Princess Leia a spoilt brat and Luke Skywalker was the whining teenager – character types one and all, but a better alternative than otherwise fine actors like Jackson, McGregor and Portman being neutered by stiff, expository dialogue and thereby not having any character at all. Newcomer Christensen is not too bad, except when it comes to trying to demonstrate his immense internal struggle with impending corruption and a trip to the dark side – here, it appears, Lucas gave him a one word direction: pout.
By the time the action kicks in late in the piece, it’s far too late to wash away the memories of the scenes that proceeded it, and I doubt it would have done so anyway, even if it had reared it’s head earlier. The action scenes, while kinetic and visually superior, are eventually enervating because they serve no real purpose other than to self-consciously ‘jazz-up’ the film. Witness the deliberate build-up of the scene set in Jabba the Hut’s palace in RETURN OF THE JEDI and the subsequent encounter with the sandworm. This is action as exposition, a slow burn with a satisfying pay-off, something that the new movies just can’t touch. Contrast with the coliseum scene, where there is absolutely no set-up or any effort at all put into framing the sequence as an important part of the story. Padme and Anakin are caught. Cut to the arena. Wait for the deux ex machina to arrive. It’s an action set piece of the hey-look-at-me handwaving variety, sticking out of the main narrative in attempt to hook the wandering attentions of bored movie-goers. This, to my way of thinking, is the major difference between the original trilogy and the new one: Lucas has ceased to be able to handle the action and narrative as a whole, but rather creates in blocks, piecing them together haphazardly with threadbare plot twists.
There is an exceedingly misjudged action scene set in the droid factory that revives fond memories of the days of simple platform computer games. Pity that it doesn’t generate fond memories of the film itself, breaking the cardinal rule of film-making of never making a viewer wish they were playing Super Mario Brothers instead of watching your movie. After this, the move plays like video game versions of other recent films: look there’s GLADIATOR, but with a crab and an ox, rather than Joaquim Phoenix in a cod-piece. Then it’s a BLACK HAWK DOWN fight scene between droids and clones. Finally, finally, Lucas decides to throw something innovative at us, something for the fans like me who cherish the original trilogy for what it is – unpretentious coolness. Yoda fights. Perhaps this is the one thing that noses the film ahead of THE PHANTOM MENACE, the one bit of inspiration in an otherwise rote, overly managed four and a half-hours of cinema. When he picks up the light-saber, your first instinct is to laugh – it’s like seeing your Granny enter a rave club. But then you should see her dance. Unfortunately it’s the only time the film truly flies, and it lasts fifteen seconds.
Writing this, I struggle to remember anything else that I liked. I can’t get past the fact that everything Lucas did alienated me, threw me out of the Star Wars universe and into the role of cynical film critic. It’s not the way it’s supposed to be. It’s partly my fault, as I am no longer the imaginative kid I used to be. But Lucas deserves a lot of the blame, because in the 16 years between JEDI and MENACE, he has lost something, and I don’t think it (whatever it is) is coming back. And the sad thing is, now that the second prequel has rolled around with all of the flaws of the first still present, I don’t think Lucas is all that bothered with finding it again.Time to pack away the director's chair, George.
link directly to this review at http://efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=5827&reviewer=397
originally posted: 01/31/05 21:44:31
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USA
16-May-2002 (PG)
DVD: 22-Mar-2005
UK
N/A
Australia
16-May-2002
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