Were you surprised that we thought Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace wasn’t as bad as everyone makes it out to be? Well, prepare to be surprised again, because Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones, is a bad, bad movie. Welcome to Trekabout Presents Attack of the Clones.
Trekabout Presents Attack of the Clones
Lev
-Great show! Two points however:
1) Lucas had some pretty crappy character names in the original trilogy. The bounty hunter who only cares about money is named Greedo! The fat guy is Porkins! Admittedly, others were better, but it’s not like it came out of nowhere, and like seemingly everything else about Lucas, it degraded over time.
2) The one thing I’d change from Star Wars is Padme’s reaction to hearing about the slaughter of the sand people. In the film, she’s gently understanding, a very odd reaction from someone portrayed as moral and intelligent. I’d have her be shocked by it instead, enough to jeopardize whatever budding relationship was developing there. Then suddenly the rest of the movie is Anakin struggling to be better and overcome his dark side with some real stakes, and a simple built-in arc. I think that one change would go a long way to redeeming the movie.
Eric Brasure
-There’s a fat guy in Star Wars named “Porkins”??? I’m sorry, that’s just amazing.
I would probably change Padme’s whole arc (if you can call it that.) There’s a different, better version of these movies that treats Padme’s journey from bad-ass Queen to meek and dying as a commentary on abused women.
The Pensky File
-From the wiki, “Dooku” had to be renamed “Dookan” in the Brazilian release, because “Dooku” in Portuguese means “from the ass”.
The more you know.
Jonas
-As usual, I disagree, and I wonder why we have such different views. It’s some kind of fundamental thing to do with style, I think, where not everyone enjoys a more… theatrical kind of performance, I suppose. See, the only two characters in this movie I don’t really like all that much are Anakin and Padme – because if anything the actors are playing them in a way that’s not theatrical *enough*.
A lot of the other criticisms you have pretty much come down to the same thing – to me this is pulp fairy-tale, and a lot of what you mention is precisely what I enjoy. I enjoy the silly names, the unexplained worldbuilding. (I need to know Count Dooku’s backstory as little as I need to know who Ming the Merciless is.) And I don’t mean I enjoy it ironically, I just think it’s great fun. I don’t get the feeling that I’m missing out on something because I don’t think the movie *wants* me to know these things. It’s just sort of there, like we’re watching parts of a long-forgotten old serial. And I think that’s very, very intentional, and actually really well done. I think George Lucas did an excellent job writing and directing these movies. The only thing he misjudged, apparently, is how many other people are into this style.
Of course, if a French director had made this exact movie on a smaller budget and with worse CGI, critics would be lauding it as an amazing tribute to the early days on cinema, but… well.
(Though what seems weird to me is that the older Star Wars movies aren’t really *that* different in terms of their gloriously silly worldbuilding, so I don’t understand why they are treated like they’re some kind of super-serious grimdark Creation Myth of the Geek People.)
I also think the central story is actually pretty clear – Palpatine continues to engineer crises in order to con the Republic into becoming increasing militarized, which he will later use to end democracy. Pretty much what’s happening all over the world today. And if you think it’s odd that an idiot like Jar-Jar plays a part in this, you haven’t been watching the parliamentary debates about Syria. It’s not that Jar-Jar convinces anyone – the political conditions are already set up. Palpatine just needs an idiot to set everything into motion.
The slow visual transformation from the rich, colourful world of the Republic to the more-or-less monochromatic Empire (the ships, the proto-Stormtroopers) is very effective, too.
I also have to say that Ewan McGregor is fantastic as Obi-Wan. He’s charming, funny, a pleasure to watch, including in the fight scenes, some of which are straight out of an old adventure movie.
The only parts of the movie I find less enjoyable are the Anakin/Padme scenes. Both actors are doing their best, but Christensen in particular is woefully miscast. The dialogue is far from realistic, yes, but I think different actors could make it work. They’d need to employ a completely different style of acting, however, one which has been out of fashion for a long time. (Mostly for good reason, I should add, as it would be quite awful in something that’s going, say, for social realism.)
Finally, and this is slightly off-topic, I’m always kind of irritated by how much criticism this movie gets for its CGI, while the effects in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings are always praised. When the truth is that both movies actually use a mix of CGI and miniatures, and the effects in LOTR end up looking way more like out-of-place videogame characters. And the cinematography? The SW prequels are full of utterly glorious shots. The choreography also deserves praise. The fights are so much more interestingly done than Jackson’s “wave your swords around and we’ll shake the camera so much nobody will be able to see anything.” Hell, even the sound design is awesome! (There’s a great special feature with Ben Burtt talking about the scene with the seismic charges.) In a way, some of this is much closer to Lucas’s old experimental movies.
I really get that this movie doesn’t appeal to everyone, and it’s certainly flawed, but I think it’s obvious that a lot more love and care has gone into it than into Jackson’s lazy adaptation, but somehow the latter did a much better of job of selling itself (bigatures! gollum! we’re so indie because we don’t even have a finished script!), while the amazing effort that everyone put into SW just gets dismissed. That makes me sad. I wish that at least the intent was recognized, even if the result was disputed.