STAR WARS: Episode Two - Attack of the Clones.
Send in the clones! (Already here they are, hmmmm?)
Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones may have earned the dubious distinction of being the worst of the three prequel trilogy movies and that's saying a lot if you think about how very low Episode One set the bar! The sequel to the first prequel is here and all the characters you didn't give a hot crap about the first time around are back and are even more insufferably boring and wooden than the first time around. Plus there are clonetroopers; because a bunch of disposable battle-droids weren't uninteresting enough! This time we're going to have a bunch of disposable clones fighting the droids...for some reason or other. Yes once again from the fevered mind of George Lucas (or perhaps from some other organ lower than the mind) comes the follow-up to what was perhaps the most disappointing film in movie history; Star Wars: Episode One. This time around, it may be even worse.
As the movie opens we catch up with our heroine(I guess) from the last film Queen Padme Amidala who is now no longer an elected child Queen, but an elected very young Senator, elected to take the place of Palpatine who is now Chancellor of the big old Republic and definitely NOT Darth Sidious the evil Sith Lord. Natalie Portman's Padme Amidala the Senator, must return to Coruscant to vote on something controversial and there's a plot to assassinate her because obviously she's the only vote that matters. In reality it's only a plot (ha ha) device to lure all of the characters back together for a series of awkward, dull and poorly done non-action scenes followed by CGI madness that only George Lucas could enjoy. Anakin Skywalker is now all-grown up, as Padme' will observe in one of the movies most awkward moments, and now stiffly portrayed by Hayden Christensen. Also returning are Ewan McGregor's Jedi Obi-Wan Kenobi, Samuel L. Jackson's Jedi Mace Windu, and the previously mentioned Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid). The Rest of the surviving Jedi from Episode One also return, at least the CGI ones do, the Droids R2-D2 and C-3P0 (Kenny Baker and Anthony Daniels) and there are a few brief moments with Jar-Jar Binks (Ahmed Best) which is just a big F. U. from Lucas to the audience who hated him in The Phantom Menace. Joining the returning cast is veteran of bad sci-fi movies Christopher Lee as fallen Jedi Count Dooku a.k.a. Sith Lord Darth Tyrannus and Temuera Morrison as bounty hunter Jango Fett, father of Boba Fett and of a whole lot of clones.
Much of the story, such as it is, revolves around Anakin protecting Padme' from further assassination attempts while trying to resist falling head over heels for her and while that may sound like a lovely story of young love, it's done so badly, is so poorly written and contrived that it never feels real. While both actors are attractive young people, that's about all the audience gets. There are no compelling scenes which make us believe that these two people actually love each other. The dialogue during the "romance" scenes is stilted and is borderline ridiculous. As an example, I give you the following:
"Now that I'm with you again, I'm in agony, the closer I get to you, the worse it gets"
"I am haunted by the kiss you should never have given me"
"I'm hoping that kiss doesn't become a scar"
"I can't breathe"
These are actual lines spoken by Anakin during one particular "love" scene...is he in love or is he allergic to Padme? We are being told that these two are in love, but never shown anything that particularly looks like love, never shown any reason why. It's sort of like me telling you that this is a bad movie, without telling you why...so allow me to continue.
The balance of the movie is Obi-Wan heading off to Kevin Cosner's Waterworld to find the Clone Army, Anakin and Padme going off to Tatooine to (finally) save Anakin's mother. (too late) Eventually they all end up on termite-world to confront Count Dookula, the rest of the Jedi show up, Jango Fett flips his lid, Yoda arrives to send in the clones! (Already here they are, hmmmm?) and everything dissolves into a giant computer generated orgy of laser bolts and throwaway soldiers. The Chancellor gets his army which is what he wanted all along and the groundwork for the empire is laid, speaking of which, Anakin and Padme also get married secretly at the end.
Most notable among the reasons why Star Wars: Episode Two - Attack of the Clones is worse than The Phantom Menace is because of bad writing. Much of the story just doesn't make a lot of sense, and the finished film was more like an outline for a story than an actual story. As was true in The Phantom Menace, in Episode Two there is way, way, way, way, way, way, way, WAY too much CGI B.S. going on all the time. The relentless assault on the viewer via CGI is almost constant. In much of this film, Lucas has substituted CGI images for story. It's hard to see a lot of what's going on when one is being bombarded constantly with fast moving images, especially when it is hundreds of them all at the same time. In my review of TPM, I mentioned how I drifted off during the battle-droid scenes, this is the problem again in AOTC. There is just too much CGI which doesn't look real, and distracts rather than enhances the story (such as it is).
Prior to release, one might have thought that AOTC seemed like a sure thing. Because of all the mistakes made in Episode One, George Lucas and the rest of his production team had a road map as to what NOT to do to Episode Two! You'd have thought that would have been enough to ensure that AOTC would be superior to the Phantom Menace in every way. Unfortunately that isn't the case in Star Wars: Episode Two - Attack of the Clones as they instead took everything they did wrong in TPM and cranked it up a notch, creating a clone on steroids of Episode One that ends up being even worse.
posted by Jeff at 9:29 PM
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