I AM a Star Wars fan. I grew up on the Holy Trilogy. And while some would use that as their reason for loving the new movies, for me it's exactly the opposite. The delight I took in those classics all those years ago only makes it that more glaring how inferior Lucas' new movies are. Of course, there was no reason to imagine the new movies WOULD recapture the feel of old. It's not like Lucas has directed anything in over 20 years. Special effects are his domain, and always will be. Sadly, he's not content to stay there.
ATTACK OF THE CLONES, the fifth movie in the Star Wars saga (but the second, chronologically), takes place about six years after THE PHANTOM MENACE. There's dissension in the Republic, as more and more star systems splinter off from the group, led by the mysterious Count Dooku (Christopher Lee, slumming in between LORD OF THE RINGS movies). Natalie Portman's Amidala, now just a Senator (having been demoted from Queen due to a baffling system of government on her home planet Naboo) is spearheading the charge against the seperatist movement and, as a result, has become a target for assassination.
To protect her, the Jedi Council assigns Obi-Wan Kenobi and his student Anakin Skywalker (Ewan MacGregor doing his best to rise above the material, and newcomer Hayden Christensen in what will hopefully be his last acting role) to protect the winsome but tough-as-nails politician. Anakin has spent his time in Jedi training mastering his considerable powers, nursing a hopeless crush on Amidala, and becoming an insufferable brat. After a close call involving a pair of bounty hunters (including Jango Fett, Boba's father and essentially just a repaint of the original) the council, in their infinitely failing wisdom, sends Anakin to Naboo with Amidala to protect her better.
Naturally true love blossoms...okay, not love, but rather the most gnawingly painful facsimile of teenage lust that George Lucas, a fifty-plus geek, is capable of reproducing on film. Their courtship is one of the most painful and, alternatingly, hilarious romances in cinema history, beating even the Kidman/Kilmer coupling in BATMAN FOREVER. Every cliche in the book is trotted out in such insultingly predictable fashion that you start to wish Jar-Jar would come back.
Of course, there's lots more going on in the movie. One insult you can't lay on CLONES is that there's not enough going on. On the contrary, there's so MUCH happeing in the movie that no single storyline ends up getting the time it deserves. Obi-Wan discovers a secret army of clones (of the aforementioned Jango Fett) being produced on a hidden planet, ostensibly on Jedi orders but none that the council is aware of. And when I say 'hidden' planet, I mean someone erased the picture of the planet on the star-charts for it's system in the Jedi archives. Obi-Wan, scholar that he is, requires the aid of a group of five year olds to realize that he should just travel to the empty space with the moons revolving around it and there'll likley be something really big and planetary there.
It becomes rapidly obvious throughout the course of CLONES why the Jedis went extinct...it's called NATURAL SELECTION. They were idiots the lot of them, and quite frankly they deserve the mass extermination they've got coming. The secret power behind all these machinations is Chancellor Palpatine, eventually to become Emperor, a man who sits across a desk from Yoda every friggin' day. And does the little wonder-muppet eevn once get a hit on hs Jedi radar that something's up with this guy? Does even one stray midichlorant...or whatever the hell they're called...get noticed? Nope. Not even after he arranges events so that he's conveniently voted supreme power by the senate, or after Christopher Lee all but TELLS Obi-Wan that Palpatine is a sith lord. Maybe the Empire isn't so bad after all...
Meanwhile, young master Skywalker returns to Tatooine with Amidala, in a bizarre skewing of the 'bodyguard' concept, to seek out and rescue his mother, whom he left behind as a boy in MENACE. He soon meets up with her husband and his son Owen, and his gal Beru. Sound familiar? Yup, Luke's Aunt and Uncle. And just when it seems Lucas has actually done something right continuity-wise, guess who we see WORKING for the Skywalkers? C-3P0.
Okay, someone's retarded here and it ain't me. Are we saying now that Owen completely forgot that he used to own a protocol droid called C-3P0, and just didn't recognize him when he bought him from the Jawas in STAR WARS? Even though his own dastardly brother BUILT him? I mean, it was bad enough that Threepio conveniently forgot that he'd been beuilt by Darth Vader, but come ON!!
I digress. Anakin's Mother has been captured by Sandpeople (notice how Lucas keeps falling back on old creations? It continues further on) so he races to the rescue, but arrives too late. So he does what any level headed Jedi would do and commits genocide on their Tusken asses. Now I really don't have a problem with this from Anakin, as he IS destined to roll down the dark side like a cartoon snowball down a tall hill. A little more surprising is Amidala's reaction when Anakin confesses his crime. Does she run? Does she tense up and check her exits, worried for her life at being trapped in a room with a homicidal magician?
Nope. She pats him on the head and gives him a 'there, there'. Interesting reaction, that. But if you were hoping for logic by now, you're in the wrong theatre.
Eventually everything all comes to a head on yet another distant planet, where Obi-Wan is captured by Dooku. Anakin and the entire Jedi Council come storming to the rescue, which happily makes for a pretty exciting action sequence in which none of the characters have any time to actually speak. A massive and spectacular battle ensues with jedis, droids, dinosaurs, aliens, clones and, for some reason, R2-D2 and Threepio, making the worst puns since Robin in the old SUPER FRIENDS comic book.
The battle finally winds its way to Count Dooku, a former Jedi, who dispenses with Kenobi and Skywalker easily enough, only to face the little cheese himself, Yoda. You've all seen or heard of this scene, I'm sure. It is, to be honest, the comedy highlight of the cinematic year watching an eighty-year old man have a high-speed swordfight with a two-foot tall CGI muppet, bouncing around the room like a superball. It's telling of Lucas' current abilities at creating engaging characters that the biggest draw in his new film is one from 25 years ago, supplanting would-be superhunk Christensen as the selling point for the movie.
It's sad to me that this is what the STAR WARS franchise has come to. I'd have rathered Lucas had just walked away entirely after RETURN OF THE JEDI and called it a day. His writing is execrable, wooden to the point of literally being hauled away by the prop department when shooting wraps. And, as said, there's far too much going on in CLONES. Those bloody screen-wipes that seemed so cool a few decades ago are on this movie like a swarm of locusts, popping up and devouring scenes just when they were getting started. Actors are reduced to dialogue-spitting machines, tools solely existing to further the plot from one galactic conspiracy to the next at maximum speed. I know Natalie Portman can act, but you would never know it to watch this flick. And when Sam and Frodo from RINGS have more chemistry than Anakin and Amidala, then there is indeed a serious disturbance in the force, young padawan.
Still, let's look on the bright side...only one more to go! Hey Lucas, hurry up and get it over with, willya? We've got GOOD movies to watch.
Review copyright 2002, The Visitor
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