I didn’t see Attack of the Clones when it came out last May. I had felt so badly burned by The Phantom Menace that I decided I wasn’t going to see any more Star Wars movies unless Darin reported back that the movie was worth seeing. He saw Attack of the Clones and said that it was worth going to. I decided to go, but ended up having a baby instead. And after that, I just didn’t find the time.
I didn’t know when I would see it, but then my sister gave Darin the DVD for his birthday, and now we’ve finally settled in to watch it.
I am: underwhelmed.
It’s not as bad as The Phantom Menace. Thank goodness for small favors. There’s a clearer plotline in this one, though that’s not saying much. The acting is almost universally (ha, ha) atrocious and the dialogue is heinous. The visuals are nice, although on television many of the effects look exceedingly cheesy. But the biggest sin of all is the storytelling, which is unbelievably inept.
Attack of the Clones is the story of the political intrigues that lead to the fall of the Republic and the rise of the evil Empire. Two armies are being formed: a clone army and a droid army, ostensibly by two factions of the Republic — the Loyalists and the Opposition. Only the big reveal is that the two factions are being led by allies, who want to create a phony war in order to invest the Chancellor with dictatorial powers and create the Empire.
Interspersed with the revelations of the various bits of this political chessgame are scenes from the growing love between young Jedi Anakin Skywalker and Senator Padme Amidala, who are lolling around on some gorgeous planet for some reason or other.
Storytelling tip #1: If your trilogy is ostensibly focused on one character, please make that character interesting.
Hayden Christensen’s emoting as the teenaged Anakin is awful (although, given the general wooden qualities of everyone else in the movie, I am willing to blame director Lucas for that), but the character of Anakin is awful in and of itself. He’s callow, he’s impetuous, and worst of all, he’s whiny.
Why is he in love with Padme? Why is she in love with him? Because the plot needs them to be, as far as I can tell.
And the early intimations in the movie of how Anakin becomes such a horrible person are, frankly, cheap. His mother (who’s been left in slavery on Tatooine while Anakin goes off to Jedi H.S.) has been held captive by the brutal Tuskan Raiders for a month. Anakin shows up to rescue her, at which point she shows exceedingly poor timing and promptly expires. Anakin, upset about this, evidently slaughters the entire camp of Raiders. We don’t actually know that he does. He tells us about it later. Lucas wants it both ways here: he wants Anakin to begin the long slide down to the Dark Side, but he doesn’t want to risk alienating the audience.
Storytelling tip #2: If you really want the audience to feel the horror of something, you have to show it to them.
I actually am offended by the intent of the the prequel trilogy, which is to explain how Anakin Skywalker becomes Darth Vader. Darth Vader is a bad guy. He kills people left and right. Even if he’s not the one who blows up planets, he works for the guys who do and appears to approve of it. And he’s doing this because Mommy died?
Oh please. Please. Infantile. And insulting.
And then there’s the whole political intrigue part of the story, which is not particularly compelling. Ewan Macgregor, still doing a slight Alec Guinness impersonation, managed to hold my interest. Macgregor is the best thing about the movie. He, at least, seems to want something: he wants to know who is trying to kill Senator Amidala, and that leads him to the creation of these clone and droid armies. But the political machinations are dry and boring and hardly appear to be emotionally involving for the characters on screen.
Storytelling tip #3: Stories are about emotions, both those of the characters and those of the audience.
You should not have large sections of the movie where the audience is asking themselves, “And I care about this why, exactly?”
In my opinion, the Star Wars prequels are a testament to the necessity for collaboration in filmmaking. George Lucas needs collaborators for his scripts, his stories, his direction. On the second DVD in the set are a number of scenes that the creative team, one after another, describes as “not moving the plot along.”
I saw Star Wars three times when it came out and it will always remain an important, magical part of my childhood experience. But it’s definitely been diminished by these ridiculous, and unnecessary, prequels.
Regarding the DVD commentaries, those team members sound rather off-message, as we say over here. 🙂
Sorry, but I disagree with you almost point for point. The character of Anakin was boring and pointless in the first movie but I found him very impressive in the second. He does not turn into Vader because someone killed his mother. It is only one of several things you see.
1.) He is exceptionally talented and feels he is being held back by the jedi.
2.) The jedi have a foolish rule forbidding marriage or romance.
3.) He got a taste of how powerful hate is after his mother died horribly at the hands of Tusken Raiders.
4.) His favorite mentor is a Sith Lord powerful enough to fool Yoda.
Even all of these things do not turn him into Vader. His transformation will take place in the third movie.
Perhaps you belong to the blood and gore school of films but I believe you can get much further not showing something. You know exactly what he’s going to do once that lightsaber ignites. The scene where Anakin confesses his crime to Padme is the most powerful of the movie. It would have lost something if we had already witnessed the crime.
Darth Vader is a bad guy. He kills people left and right. Do you believe he does this because it looks cool on the screen? I believe such a powerful bad guy requires some internal logic. The Republic is chaotic and can’t protect people. Order is good and the Empire represents order. The Rebels oppose order so they must be stopped at all costs.
Only the love he feels for his son is enough to stay his hand. When he is forced to choose between the Emperor and Luke, he chooses Luke and redemption.
The political intrigue was fascinating to me because it was so believable. Senator Palpatine engineered a crisis that led to his election as chancellor. Adolf Hitler had the Reichstag burned down for the same reason. Chancellor isn’t enough power for him so he decides that he needs a personal army. Where does Palpatine go? He goes back to the people who helped him before. They produce the need for an army and for a powerful leader. Voila! Palpatine has his emergency powers and his personal army.
If the political machinations seemed dry to you, there was a reason. The good guys were fooled. They believed that they won so there was no reason to oppose any of what happened.
“The Phantom Menace” was a horrible joke but “Attack of the Clones” was a good movie. Better yet, it was a good “Star Wars” movie.