Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones Review

by Eugene Novikov (lordeugene_98 AT yahoo DOT com)
June 5th, 2002

Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones (2002) Reviewed by Eugene Novikov
http://www.ultimate-movie.com/

"Begun, this Clone War has."

Starring Hayden Christiansen, Ewan McGregor, Natalie Portman, Ian McDiarmid, Samuel L. Jackson, Pernilla August, Christopher Lee. Directed by George Lucas. Rated PG.

Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones betrayed me both as a Star Wars fan and as a moviegoer. The franchise has become so enamored with its own unremarkable mythology that it has lost sight of what it's supposed to be first and foremost: a great story, dazzling entertainment that wraps us up in its universe of good and evil, heroes and villains, quests and journeys. The much maligned Episode I, for all its flaws, at least knew the meaning of Star Wars. This installment is all set-up and no pay-off.

The story picks up ten years after Episode I leaves off, and the Star Wars universe is in more or less of a holding pattern. Anakin Skywalker, played like a whiny little bastard by Hayden Christiansen, is in training to be a Jedi under the expert guideship of Master Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor). Queen Amidala (Natalie Portman) nobly fights for piece while fending off assasination attempts with the help of her faithful Jedi bodyguards. Chancelor Palpatine a.k.a. the Sith Lord Sidius (Ian McDiarmid) is plotting to control the universe even more obviously (and less interestingly) than in Phantom Menace.

We know the Big Events that have to happen in Episode II. We have to see hints of Anakin starting to turn to the Dark Side. We must see a romance begin to develop between Skywalker and Amidala. The door has to be opened for Chancellor Palpatine to become Emperor. And, if you were attentive during the original three movies, you know that Jango Fett, Boba Fett's father, has to die; the manner in which he does so is obvious and completely unsatisfying.

The movie attends to these plot points with a checklist mentality. Lucas gives us the usual franchise archetypes, but his heart isn't in it. It's all here -- the Yoda-speak, the Jedi posturing, the deadpan "Patience, young Padawan" delivery that we are all so familiar with -- but something is distinctly missing. All the digital effects in the world can't make up for the runaway innocence, the simple joy of filmmaking that permeated every Star Wars movie until now. Lucas has never been known as a master screenwriter, but the dialogue is impossibly dull, with a few lines sure to go down in the hall of fame as the worst writing in cinema history. (How's this for a pick-up line: "I hate sand. It's so coarse. Not like here. Everything here is smooth.")

Worse, Attack of the Clones doesn't tell a story. Nothing happens during the course of its two-plus hours. Everything is set-up for Episode III, which I am sure will be monumental, and as a buttress for the franchise's mythological base, this installment serves, though it reduces that grand myth to leaden pronouncements and perfuctory confrontatins. But while it's gratifying to see a blockbuster so intimately concerned with plot, I wanted to see a movie. I wanted to be entertained on more than simply a geek level. I wanted apocalyptic excitement, I wanted a hero quest, I wanted something to make my pulse quicken the way "No! I am your father," or even "Yousa people gonna die?" did. The plot of Phantom Menace, though it did curiously center on trade disputes, had an idea of what Star Wars was all about, and as little Anakin won his pod race, I felt like cheering. Here, the climax consists of the already notorious gimmick of Yoda picking up a lightsaber and kicking ass, and while the idea is nifty, does it really belong in the same league with, say, the duel between Luke and Emperor Palpatine in Return of the Jedi, or Obi-Wan and Darth Maul in Menace? Where is the justice for the characters? Why does Yoda get the glory?

To be fair, Attack of the Clones does do a good job of setting up the as yet unnamed Episode III, and my heart started to race at the images that flashed across the screen in the film's final 45 seconds. And if the entire franchise has been leading up to this supposedly final movie due in 2005, then I suppose this treatment is fitting. But no, I refuse to believe that this is Star Wars. I don't acknowledge that the legacy of the films that enchanted me as a tween has deteriorated to that of a Saturday-morning serial. With all of the new technology at Lucas's disposal, he has gained the ability to show us some truly amazing things; in many ways, this is an animated film, if a spectacular one. But as he gained expensive digital wizardry, he seems to have lost something infinitely more important: the power of myth, the draw of character, the appeal of a simple, riveting story.
Grade: D+

Up Next: High Crimes

©2002 Eugene Novikov

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