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He hates sand you know. Anakin puts the moves on Padmé in Attack of the Clones |
Director: George Lucas
Cast: Ewan McGregor (Obi-Wan Kenobi), Hayden Christensen
(Anakin Skywalker), Natalie Portman (Senator Padmé Amidala), Ian McDiarmid
(Chancellor Palpatine), Christopher Lee (Count Dooku), Samuel L. Jackson (Mace
Windu), Temuera Morrison (Jango Fett), Frank Oz (Yoda), Anthony Daniels
(C-3PO), Kenny Baker (R2 D2), Jimmy Smits (Bail Organa), Ahmed Best (Jar Jar Binks),
Pernilla August (Shmi Skywalker), Joel Edgerton (Owen Lars), Silas Carson (Nute
Gunray/Ki-Adi-Mundi)
Nothing could be as bad as The Phantom Menace. Surely? Well, umm, Attack of the Clones is pretty bad, but it’s not quite as stodgy
and racist as the first one. It really isn’t. But don’t get me wrong, it’s
still tone death, poorly written, crappily directed, poorly assembled, textbook
bad film-making disguised under a lot of money.
Anyway, ten years have crawled by since Phantom Menace. Padmé (Natalie Portman) is now a senator
campaigning against a revolutionary Separatist movement in the Republic, led by
mysterious former Jedi Count Dooku (Christopher Lee). After a failed assassination
attempt, Jedi Knight Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) and his Padewan pupil
Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christiansen) are assigned to protect her. After
another assassination attempt throws up a strange link to a mysterious planet
of industrial cloners, Obi-Wan investigates leaving Padmé in
Anakin’s care: but the two of them are falling in love, strictly against the
rules of the Jedi order.
Sigh. Attack of the Clones
is once again a mess, overly computer engineered, badly directed by a director
with no knack for visual storytelling other than throwing special effects at
the screen. It has a densely disinteresting plot about shady dealings around a
mysterious Clone army that eventually the film doesn’t bother to resolve. Lucas
shoots the entire film in a shiny, sterile, entirely computer generated
environment that looks worse and worse the older the film gets. It builds
towards a series of clashes at the end that have impressive spectacle on first
viewing, but are hugely empty viewing experiences the more you come back to
them. But all this isn’t even the film’s main problem.
First and foremost, the most egregious problem with this
film is the romance at its heart. This romance, whose impact is meant to be
felt through every film is to come, is as clumsy and unconvincing as anything
you are likely to see. Not for one second are you convinced that this couple
could ever actually be a thing. For starters Anakin is a whiny,
preening, chippy rather dull man who over the course of the film murders a
village full of people. Hardly the sort of character to make women swoon. On
top of this, his romantic banter and tendency of staring blankly and possessively
at Padmé
has all the charm of a would-be stalker, mentally planning out the
dimensions of the basement he’ll imprison his love in.
Padmé is hardly much more engaging. Her way of handling this
love-struck young man, who she claims she doesn’t want to encourage? To flirt with
him in a series of increasingly revealing costumes, while constantly telling
him “no we can’t do anything” – for unspecified reasons. But then as she says “you’ll
always be that 12 year old boy to me” (Oh yuck
George!). Portman looks she can barely raise any interest in holding Anakin’s
hand, let alone conceiving future generations of Skywalkers. The desperate
attempt to create a sense of “love across the divide” falls flat, flat, flat
with all the sweep of a Casualty romance
of the week. Put it frankly, we are never ever given any reason at all for us
to think that they have any reason to be in love.
Despite all this the film desperately tries to throw them
together into a series of clichéd romantic encounters, from candle-lit meals to
gondola cruises around the lakes of Naboo. Jesus the film even throws in a
flirtatious picnic (in which, true to form, Anakin espouses the benefits of totalitarianism, hardly the sort of
thing to get a young girl’s heart fluttering!) followed by a roll around in the
long grass after a bit of horseplay. To be honest it’s sickening and all the fancy
dressing in the world never disguises the utter lack of chemistry between
either characters or actors. And you’ll suffer with the actors who are trawling
through the appalling “romantic” dialogue. The infamous “I don't like sand.
It's coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere. Not like here. Here
everything is soft and smooth” sums it up – especially as Anakin ends it with
stroking Amidala’s exposed shoulder possessively. Late in the film Padmé says
“I’ve been dying inside since you came back into my life” – I know how she
fuckin’ feels.
But then to be honest nothing really works in this simply
terrible film. Of course a lot of the blame rests with Lucas whose overwhelming
ineptitude as a writer and director is exposed in scene after scene. Most of
the dialogue lacks any wit or lightness at all, constantly straining for a grandeur
it can’t deliver and reads like George simply knocked out the first draft and
left it at that. As for his directing: the camera positioning lacks any
imagination what-so-ever. Most scenes that don’t have lightsabers feature
characters sitting talking at each other to fill in plot details (I’m not
joking here, there are so many different designs of chairs in this film it’s
like strolling around IKEA). Sometimes George spices it up by having characters
work slowly and aimlessly from A to B telling each other the plot (I’m failing
to resist saying this is a pretty decent metaphor from the film).
The film shakes this up with a few action sequences which
either tediously ape things we’ve seen before, but not-as-good (a chase through
an asteroid field smacks of Empire
Strikes Back) or having a computer game realism to them that never involves
you. A prolonged sequence in a battle droid factory literally looks like a computer game from its hideously shiny lack
of realism, to its logic, to the way George shoots it with the conveyor belt
moving relentlessly forward visually like a dated platform game.
In fact computer game is a pretty good way of thinking about
this film. When making this film, Lucas was convinced this would be the start
of a new age: that only dull, traditional directors would be building sets and
that all the cool kids would make
everything in computers. Watching this film today in hi-def blu-ray does it no
favours. Lucas’ computer generated sets (in most shots everything except the actors and their costumes are not real) look
ridiculously shiny and unrealistic. There is no weight and reality to anything.
Instead it all looks like some sort of bizarre, wonky computer visuals. How can
you invest in anything in this film when even the goddamn sofa they are sitting on is a visual effect? How can anything have
any weight or meaning? Compared to the lived in appearance of the Millennium Falcon, nothing looks
realistic or carries any weight at all.
George Lucas isn’t really a director of action either. It’s
hard not to compare the epic battles here with the style and substance of the
(equally effects filled world) of Lord of
the Rings being released at the same time. There, the battle scenes not
only carry real emotional weight and peril but also have at least some sense of
tactics and story-telling. This is just a collection of special effects being
thrown at each other, like an exploding fart in a special effects lab. This
makes for events that look impressive when you first see them, but carry no
lasting impact: when you revisit the film, nothing feels important or dangerous
or coherent – instead it’s just a lot of stuff
happening, loudly.
This goes for the famous Yoda-Dooku light saber duel. Sure
when I first saw this, seeing a computer generated muppet take on a stunt
double with an octogenarian’s face super-imposed on his felt really exciting.
But again, on repeated viewings, it’s just a load of wham and bang that kind of
leaves you cold (not least because the fight is a showy bore-draw). It’s as
ridiculously over-made and over stuffed as half a dozen other fights in the
film. It’s almost representative of how crude these prequels are: a character
always defined by his intellect and patience in Yoda reduced to a bouncy
special effect for a moment of cheap “wow” for the fans. I’ll also throw in the
lousy fan service of turning Boba Fett (a character who has a fascination for a
lot of fans for no real reason) into an integral part of the Star Wars backstory
– as if George intended this character at any point to be so popular, until he
released the merchandising opportunities…
Lucas’ direction fails time and time and time again. Even
small scenes fall with a splat or feature moments that get the wrong type of
chuckles. The moment where Anakin embraces his dying mother? Forever ruined by
the snigger worthy collapse of Pernilla August’s Shmi in his arms, looking like
a primary school child miming playing dead (tongue out and all) in a school
play. Obi-Wan and Anakin’s chase through the skies of Coruscant packed with
“jokey” attempted buddy cop lines that never ring true. The film has even more
skin crawlingly embarrassing scenes than Phantom
Menace, from a sickeningly cutesy room of “younglings” learning Jedi skills
to Obi-Wan’s bizarre encounter with a greasy alien in some sort of American
diner. There is precisely one moment of wit in the film (Obi-Wan using the
force to tell a drug dealer to “You want to go home and rethink your life”).
Other than that – nope, it’s poorly made, poorly written, poorly assembled
rubbish.
None of the actors emerge with credit. Pity poor old Hayden
Christiansen, left to his own devices by Lucas’s inept, direction free,
direction. But he is absolutely, drop-down, unreedemably awful in this film. In
fact Anakin, far from being a jumping off point, was the death-knell of his
career. Was there really no other young actor with charisma who could have
stepped in to take this role instead? Portman fairs a tiny bit better, while at
least McGregor, Jackson and Lee have enough experience to take care of
themselves. But there is no sense of relationship between any of these
characters. The two most important relationships Anakin has in the film contain
no chemistry: he and Padme and he and Obi-Wan (neither of whom seem to
particularly like each other).
Attack of the Clones
could never be as disappointing as Phantom
Menace (what could?) but it’s far, far, far away from being a good film.
It’s got a simply terrible script, is directed with a dull flatness that all
the CGI flair and shouting can’t distract you from. There is nothing in there
for you to invest emotionally in. It’s built around a relationship that quite
frankly doesn’t work at all on any levels. It builds to a random ending that
feels like George ran out of ideas rather than because it meets any thematic
reason. How could it all have gone so wrong?
The series was originally conceived as a loving homage to the black and white episodic sci-fi series of Lucas's youth and starting at episode 4 was a masterstroke as it meant he could fudge backstories without anyone noticing or caring. No one ever asked why the entire galaxy was being defended by a rebel force no bigger than British Gas. It didn't matter because we were already partway through the saga and just accepted the clear lines of good and evil as they were presented. When it came to retrospectively filling the gaps he’d created, George just wasn’t up to the task. I’m not sure anyone would be- too much is taken for granted in episode 4 for prequel films to cover everything adequately and satisfy the nit-picking of the fans.
ReplyDeleteAnakin should have been written like Han Solo was in 4, 5 and 6; the charismatic, dashing hero with a charming swagger and cockiness. He should have been the second best character in the entire series so that when he inevitably succumbed to the dark side of the Force, it was as devastating as seeing Han frozen in carbonite. They could have been the greatest and most heart-breaking “buddy movies” of all time so when you re-watched ObiWan saying wistfully to Luke, “He was a good friend…” it carried even more impact.
As they are now mining every off-hand reference and minor character to create entries in a franchise that will live forever, here’s a chilling thought: They could produce films of Obi Wan and Anakin’s early adventures set just after the Phantom menace conclusion. It doesn’t bear thinking about.