Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones Review
by Karina Montgomery (karina AT cinerina DOT com)August 16th, 2002
Attack of the Clones; Star Wars Episode 2
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I have spent so much time defending poor victimized Hayden Christensen and Natalie Portman that I forgot to tell people how absolutely embarrassingly horrible this movie was. If you had any interest in seeing it I am sure you already have so what I have to say is old news, but you young moms and other "I can wait for video" types out there, let me try to protect you at least! And recall that Prodigy prevented me from warning you in a timely manner!
At the time, I felt that this one was better than Episode I, if only because it wasn't about abstract trade agreements, it had way less Jar-Jar, and a lot more ass-kicking. I also appreciated that finally this film seemed to finally tie into the first three movies (exCUUUUUSE me, numbers 4-6) so that I actually had some perspective enough to decide to care or not. We saw greedo-people and Tattooine. More stupidly named characters (Luminaria, Darth Sidious - come on!) and less straightforward plot.
George Lucas cannot write and he cannot direct. All he can do is hire a battalion of amazingly gifted programmers to create photo-realistic worlds and come up with the cash to force gifted actors to give up any semblance of the talent they have previously exhibited in order to be permanently geek-shrined as an action figure. Lord, even John Williams didn't care enough to give it his very best.
Episode 2's subtitle, Attack of the Clones, while an awful name, actually does the film some justice. There is the cartoonishly ridiculous scene in the smelting factory which is straight out of the pie-machine scene in Chicken Run. There is the stupendously boring "climax" wherein our heroes, despite having all kinds of mental powers, are chained to a pole (Gladiator) and forced to battle with increasingly biologically unlikely predators (Star Trek original series). It was actually unreal how unpleasant the film was to watch. Unlike when I was watching Battlefield Earth (shudder) I was unable to keep up a barrage of jokes to stay alive.
If Episode I and II had been released as is, without totally banking on the mythological power of their predecessors, I think Lucas would have been stripped of his DGA card and sent to work at some video game company programming. The visuals are peerless. But when will they realize that you can only flash pretty lights for so long before we want a story and people we believe in? What happened to Han Solo's wit? Even Luke's peevish whining about the cooling towers would have been refreshing? The bad guys drop foreshadowing hints and aren't really all that menacing.
The underriding mythology seems to be that order, lawfulness, and diplomacy (the Senate) is less desirable as a leading body than a biologically elitist vigilante crew of holier-than-thou Muppets. Oh, and Yoda's not even a Muppet, he's CGI too. Which helps, because he actually gets to show us why he is so revered (though that too was more funny than cool). I have no religious fanatacism for the Star Wars ouevre as many do, but why beat the corpse like this? Would you dress up your dead mother as a hooker and parade her down main street just so people thinks she's alive.
People have complained about the acting, but let me tell you now, Hayden and Natalie and Ewan McGregor and Samuel L. Jackson can all act the pants off each other, but when you are stuck in a totally green room - no sets AT ALL - given no direction, given plenty of heinous dialogue, and are not allowed full access to the story, what else can you do? Yes, those lush sets were all fake fake fake. The actors gazed off at nothingness and tried to imagine. Unlike Ep. 1, they were allowed to read more of the script, and he wrote the script in slightly more time, with someone's help, but the improvement was negligible. Please, see Natalie in Beautiful Girls and Hayden in Life As A House before you judge them! Ewan proved that the acting was strong within him when he went to the water-covered planet and was allowed to be by himself and actually act. I saw a twinkle in his eye. He saved small bits of the film. But no one can save this mess.
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These reviews (c) 2002 Karina Montgomery. Please feel free to forward but just credit the reviewer in the text. Thanks.
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