Star Wars Episode II: Attack of The Clones
Okay, so part two of my master plan to review all of the
Star Wars films ahead of giving my thoughts about part eight leads me to having
to think again about “Attack of The Clones”. Unlike Phantom Menace I remember
having mixed feelings about this one when it came out, there were elements that
I enjoyed, but the romance put me (and audiences worldwide) off, and overall
this entry was a cringe-inducing nightmare, and now I will tell you why.
The film starts off with an intriguing opening set-piece
where Padme (Natalie Portman) is almost blown up. This makes it clear that
people want her dead setting up an important plot point early on. Unfortunately,
this swiftly descends into clunky exposition for a good chunk of the rest of
the film. Episode two starts badly by being set ten years after “Phantom Menace”.
This might be realistic in terms of the story George Lucas was trying to tell
but it’s immediately off-putting as the characters we started getting to know
in the previous film are nearly all drastically different. When we last saw
Anakin in Phantom Menace, he was a pure innocent. He was a little annoying at
times, mostly as a result of bad dialogue, but fundamentally he was generous
and smart, as well as being a fast learner. He was likeable, or at least that
was the intention. The Anakin we meet at the start of “Attack of The Clones” is
none of those things. He’s jealous, surly and really rather dim “I am a slow
learner”, and maybe that is what the weight of expectation and puberty in a
celibate order of super-powered monks does to you, but we don’t see that
transformation, so it is grating and hard to accept. Obi-Wan too is different.
In Phantom Menace he was a bit sarcastic, but ultimately good natured, and he
decided to train Anakin in deference to his dead master. When we see him again
here, he’s a bad teacher/parental figure. He berates his student in public, in
ways that reveal a sense of inferiority towards Anakin and comes across as
mean-spirited. This could have been interesting if we’d been able to see this
relationship develop, and therefore been able to understand this change in our
main characters, but we don’t. We are (mostly) told things about these people,
not shown them, breaking story-telling’s cardinal rule. When we are shown
things, they are shown through frankly embarrassing dialogue that makes it hard
to sympathise with our protagonists. This cripples the film out of the front
gate and it doesn’t really improve much as we go through the rest of the
feature.
By starting en media res, Lucas has chosen an off-putting,
strange, and poorly explained time to begin this story that Phantom Menace didn’t
give us adequate grounding for. It really feels like there needed to be another
film between these two that allows these characters to have room to change in a
way that makes sense to the audience. I’ll come back to this idea when I talk
about The Clone Wars film and TV series, as well as episode three, but it
really feels like the Prequels needed more than three films to tell this story
properly. So many plot threads are poorly explained through exposition, or
rushed, or barely explained at all, and considering the amount of screen time
given to the awful romance plot, this is a real shame, and a missed
opportunity, as there are plenty of interesting plot threads in this episode.
Okay so I’ve moaned about the main characters and the setting, but I should also talk about what is good here. There are some good performances in this film, and they’re rare, so they stand out. Christopher Lee shines as Count Dooku (who could have been much more interesting if we knew anything about him), and Ewan McGregor makes most of his lines work, even though those lines are a bit lacking. There are also some good action scenes. The fights between Obi-Wan and Jango Fett (Temuera Morrison) were well done and felt very visceral and real. The first fight was good mostly due to a lot of it being hand-to-hand. That’s not something we’d seen much of in Star Wars before and it worked well for me. Their chase through the asteroid field with the sonic bombs is also cool and I remember watching that part in the Cinema and really enjoying it. John Williams’ score, and much of the cinematography, world design and such like is also excellent as always. Other than that, there is really not much about this film that works well. One or two moments between Anakin and Padme (the ones where they don’t talk) are okay, Samuel L Jackson and Yoda have one or two cool lines and the Bounty Hunter mystery with Obi-Wan has some good elements, but beyond this the film is just bad.
The Philosophy of “Clones” is hard to pin down because most of it is so rushed. It attempts to show the dangers of attachment through Anakin’s story with his mother, and is reasonably successful, but the dialogue seriously detracts from the impact of this, along with the seeming plot hole of why Anakin and Obi-Wan waited ten years without trying to free Anakin’s mother from slavery. The themes of a corrupt democracy return, and try to paint the rebel systems as sympathetic as a result, but it’s hard to take this seriously as we in the audience know the rebel movement is being controlled by the Sith. Perhaps this is an attempt to explore the idea of villains cloaking their villainy in moral ambiguity, but Star Wars makes moral ambiguity almost impossible with a literal light and dark side of the force. Finally, I take issue with this film’s portrayal of love. I can believe that Anakin fell in love with Padme at first sight, but we are given very little reason to think that Padme could love this man. His actions towards her in the film veer between clumsy and outright creepy. It may be the case that destiny (or the Force) want this couple to be together, but unless we are shown a convincing romance (or begin the film with them all ready a couple) it is almost impossible to believe that these people love each other. Love is something that rarely happens immediately. It takes work, a back-and-forth, chemistry and time. Little, if any, of this is displayed. For all Lucas’ attempts, (this story is a huge part of the film, and there’s a considerable amount more that was cut) he fails to make this convincing.
One or two final things to mention. Yoda should not, in my opinion, have a lightsaber. Yoda should be so powerful with the force that such things are frankly beneath him. It was a cool segment visually, but I feel it betrays the fundamental message of Yoda's character. That he is a master, not a warrior, a sage, not a samurai, a priest, not a knight. I much preferred the dialogue and force power exchange between Yoda and Dooku, and prefer to skip their saber duel every time. The duel between Anakin, Obi-Wan and Count Dooku is okay, but the choice to zoom right in on Anakin and Dooku so we can barely see their swords was a mistake in my opinion. Generally the action is too CGI heavy for me, and not very engaging aside from the fights between Obi Wan and Jango Fett mentioned earlier.
Action: 7/10
Plot: 5/10
Message: 5/10
Dialogue: 5/10
Characters:5/10
FX: 6/10
Overall Enjoyment: 5/10- Bad Film with some redeeming moments.
No comments:
Post a Comment