attack of the clones
I cut this out of my journal because it's longer than a lot of the actual movie "reviews" I've done in the past. Below: my take on Star Wars, Episode II: Attack of the Clones. (It even sounds like a B-movie, doesn't it?)
May 22, 2002
Saw Attack of the Clones last night. And...dude. Dude. That movie...oh my God.
Warning: this post contains spoilers, which trust me, you really shouldn't care about, because that movie...oh, God, that movie was BAD.
On behalf of the fair city of Toronto, I apologize heartily for Hayden Christensen. I don't know where he got that accent. I swear. He spoke like someone in a boy-band video. I wanted to add the word "girl" to everything he said. "You're exactly the same as you were in my dreams, girl." "Obi-Wan's gonna kill me, girl." "Girl, I killed them all. Not just the men. The women and the children too, girl."
As you can probably tell by now, the dialogue? SUCKED. Really. As Amy observed, the movie was just fine when people weren't talking. But when they were, it was absolutely awful. George Lucas, obviously seething with contempt for his audience, has become (or perhaps always was?) a Master of Stating the Obvious. No, the Really, Really Obvious. Check it out:
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OBI-WAN KENOBI and ANAKIN catch a HIRED ASSASSIN.
ANAKIN: Who sent you?
The assassin says nothing.
ANAKIN: WHO SENT YOU?
ASSASSIN: A bounty hunter named-
Someone fires a DART GUN at the ASSASSIN, who DIES. OBI-WAN KENOBI extracts the dart from the assassin's chest and holds it up to the light.
DROOLING, MORONIC AUDIENCE (as envisioned by George Lucas): What happened? Why is the bad guy dead? Is that a button or something? Where are my glasses? I need to pee. This popcorn doesn't have enough butter. What movie am I at again? What's that?
OBI-WAN: It's a poison dart.
DROOLING, MORONIC AUDIENCE (as envisioned by George Lucas): Ohhhhhh. Now I get it. A POISON dart.
NORMAL AUDIENCE: Duh.
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Anakin, Amidala and Obi-Wan Kenobi are led into a BIG-ASS ARENA. UGLY ALIENS cheer. Our three heroes are then chained to some POSTS.
ANNOUNCER (on loudspeaker): Let the executions begin!
Gates open, and three HUGE, UGLY, SHARP-TOOTHED BEASTS charge into the arena. Ugly aliens poke at them with sticks, filling them with FURY. They rush towards the posts to which ANAKIN, AMIDALA and OBI-WAN have been chained.
DROOLING, MORONIC AUDIENCE: I don't understand. Is this bad?
OBI-WAN: I have a BAD feeling about this.
DROOLING, MORONIC AUDIENCE: Oh. Guess it's bad then. Oh no, look at the scary beasts! Kill them! Kill them!
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ANAKIN is TRAPPED in a BOT-BUILDING FACTORY. Enormous ANVIL-TYPE THINGS are trying to CRUSH him. He almost DIES, SEVERAL TIMES. Then his LIGHTSABER stops working. DEATH is IMMINENT. OBI-WAN KENOBI is nowhere to be found.
ANAKIN: Obi-Wan's gonna kill me.
DROOLING, MORONIC AUDIENCE: What? Aren't the anvil-type things going to kill you? Obi-Wan's not even here.
GEORGE LUCAS: That was irony, you diaper-soiling simpletons.
DROOLING, MORONIC AUDIENCE: What's that?
GEORGE LUCAS: I made a funny.
DROOLING, MORONIC AUDIENCE: Oh. Ha ha ha! This movie is sooooooo good!
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Moving beyond the terrible dialogue, we get to the acting. Hayden Christensen tries, he really does, but he can't trump his accent or the fact that Anakin Skywalker, as written by George Lucas, is an incredibly whiny, corny little dork. As Obi-Wan Kenobi, Ewan McGregor tries, and he comes off better than Hayden, but not much. Nobody else tries. At all. Natalie Portman and the other actors just recite their lines in a monotone, collect their paycheques (off-screen, barely) and go.
The Attack of the Clones plot is actually better than the plot of Phantom Menace: for one thing, it actually exists. But it's obvious that Lucas has no idea how to make it move. The army of clones and the army of bots get hopelessly mixed up. The future Darth Vader, as I mentioned, comes off like a whiny little brat when he doesn't seem to be turning schizophrenic. I mean, really. Check out this character development: Through the Force, Anakin senses that his mother, whom he hasn't seen in ten years, is in pain. He goes back home to find her, only to discover that she has been sold and freed. (Real concerned son, there, not even knowing where his mother IS.) He eventually learns that she has been kidnapped by Tusken raiders, he finds her and watches her die (in a two-minute scene that makes no sense), and then he kills all the Tusken raiders (including the women and children - how could he tell?), and then he brings his mother's body home and buries her (remarking that he misses her "so much," which makes me wonder what he was doing in the ten years he was away from her and had no idea where she was). Then he goes on a confused rant about how he likes fixing things but he couldn't fix her broken body (did he try?) because he's not all-powerful (duh) and he wishes he were (ooookay) and one day he will be, oh yes (is this foreshadowing?) and it's all Obi-Wan's fault (which makes absolutely no sense, but I suppose it's also meant as foreshadowing) and he killed the entire village of Tuskens, girl, and now he's racked with guilt, bay-bay, oh yeah.
So we're supposed to believe that Anakin, who didn't even KNOW where his mother WAS for the better part of a decade, cares enough about her to murder an entire village on her behalf, and that he could blame Obi-Wan Kenobi for it despite the fact that Obi-Wan Kenobi has NOTHING to do with it AT ALL, and that this somehow predicts his eventual turn towards evil. Right. And then what happens? That's right. Everyone forgets all about his mother and the stupid little Tuskens. (By the way, what's up with George Lucas and the names that sound like Italian place-names? Tusken this, Padawans that. Coming up: a pitched battle with some Fransiskons and Vineeshans, followed by a meeting with the leader of the Nia Paullet'n race, who want to embrace all that is fine and decent and join the Republican P-er, the Republic). Epic drama this is not.
Then there's the 9/11 shout-out where the Senate decides that certain democratic rights have to be suspended because this is a time of war (Jar Jar Binks proposes this change, and come to think of it, he does bear a certain resemblance to George W. Bush), and we all luuuuuurve democracy and will restore it as soon as the crisis has passed (right). Then there's bunch of boring shite that has nothing to do with anything. Then there's the seduction line "I don't like sand. It's rough and gritty and it gets everywhere. But here everything is soft and smooth." Then there's some more boring shite. Then there are some truly terrible love scenes. (I've seen laxative commercials that were more romantic than this crap. I'm not kidding.) Then there's some cool stuff with Yoda that doesn't go on long enough, and some cool stuff with the robots that makes no sense, and then there's more boring shite, and then the movie ends with a wedding and OH LORD HELP ME IT WAS REALLY BAD.
The only stuff that's any good in Attack of the Clones is the stuff that was in the original trilogy. And there's not much of that. Seriously. It sucks. Don't go. Or go with your rudest, snarkiest friend and crack jokes all through it, because otherwise you'll die of embarrassment or fall asleep.