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ATTACK
OF THE CLONES
4/10
Star
Wars Episode II : Attack of the Clones : USA 2002 : George Lucas : 143 mins
We’re
always being told that the Star Wars movies are primarily aimed
at 10 to 12-year-old boys, and are supposed to be in the style of 1930s
adventure serials. So a certain amount of clunky cheesiness goes with
the territory. But when we’re dealing with something so grindingly inept
as Attack of the Clones, it’s debatable what’s being insulted the
most: the memory of the serials or the imaginations of today’s younger
moviegoers. Lucas may try to hide behind Yoda’s comment “Truly wonderful
the mind of a child is,” but he tells us more about himself when he has
Obi Wan-Kenobi (Ewan McGregor, on cod-Alec Guinness autopilot) tell his
apprentice Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen) that the ‘Jedi mind-trick’
“only works on the weak-minded.”
Phantom
Menace was Lucas’s first turn in the director’s chair for over 20
years, so a little rustiness was to be expected. And he’s never been much
good with actors, or with dialogue (it’s no coincidence that the excellent
Empire Strikes Back was the only one where he isn’t credited as
at least co-writer). But Clones plumbs a new low, suggesting that
the talent that produced American Graffiti has long
since dematerialised. The suspicion remains that a decent writer, editor
and director could rattle through the whole Luke-Anakin saga in a single,
two-hour movie. Instead, we have to endure a script like Clones:
relentless in its atrociousness – impossible
to follow, packed with the dopiest excuses for characterisation and dialogue.
The
only exception is when McGregor refers to the Jedi Council “the old folks’
home,” in an under-his-breath aside which must be an ad lib that
sneaked under Lucas’s radar. McGregor, visibly fighting a constant, losing
battle with boredom, never pretends to take the nonsense at all seriously
- and nowhere else do Lucas and his senior-citizen co-writer Jonathan
Hales display anything remotely resembling this kind of wit or originality
(perhaps he tried to get John Sayles, and ended up with Jon Hales
by mistake…)
In
terms of the series’ mythology, the functions of Attack of the
Clones are simple : (1) bring Anakin Skywalker and Padme Amidala (Natalie
Portman) together, (2) show the first signs of Anakin’s fall towards the
Dark Side and (3) kick off the Clone Wars. All three tasks are carried
out in the clunkiest, most unconvincing ways possible, summed up by a
roll-in-the-meadow ‘romantic’ interlude in which Anakin starts expounding
the virtues of dictatorship to an unimpressed Padme.
Lucas
is most comfortable with virgin births – it’s bizarre that, in a franchise
that boils down to various characters’ quest for missing parents, two
of the key characters (Anakin and bounty-hunter Boba Fett) are both the
result of ‘immaculate’ conceptions. But Lucas has painted himself into
a corner with Anakin and Padme, whose relationship should form the emotional
crux of these ‘first’ three episodes. So far, it’s an embarrassment -
Christensen and Portman have both showed plenty of acting ability elsewhere,
but Lucas makes both of them look and sound ridiculous. The pair are stuck
with characters whose non-existent motivations are purely a matter of
plot mechanics, padding things out until the next slam-bang effects sequence.
It’s
just as well that veterans Christopher Lee (as the very Saruman-ish
Count Dooku) and Ian McDiarmid (as Senator Palpatine) are around – they
can look after themselves, and whenever their villainous characters are
on screen Clones becomes miraculously bearable. And no film that
features the imperious, fighting-fit octogenarian Lee zooming over a red-duned
desert on a turbo-charged mini-chariot can possibly be all bad. But there
are too many long, boring stretches when we’re stranded in the barren
outer space of Lucas’s imagination.
Whole
sections desperately rip off other, better movies, with the Gladiator
‘homage’ in the latter stages being only the most blatant. Even the
special effects aren’t anything specially effective by today’s high standards,
Lucas’s cock-knocker
insistence on filming Clones with the latest digital cameras meaning
that, for the vast majority of the world’s audiences stuck with old-school
cinemas, the whole thing looks dank and fuzzy. We’re probably not missing
much, however – the only sequence with any real visual flair is Dooku
and Anakin’s light-sabre fight, which takes place in almost total darkness,
illuminated only by their flashing laser-blades.
There’s
another striking moment when a huge ballbearing-shaped spaceship slowly
takes off from a dusty desert floor then gets bombed messily back to earth,
but Lucas’s handling of the scene is so typically cack-handed it’s impossible
to tell whether this is supposed to be a positive or negative development
for the ‘good guys’. As an image to sum up Attack of the Clones,
however - clumsy, expensive, disastrously earthbound – it’s hard
to resist.
14th
May 2002
(seen 12th May, Warner Village, Newcastle)
by Neil
Young
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