Attack of the Clones
Categories: Movie Reviews
Written By: Eric Jensen
Rating: 
I hope you guys appreciate all I do for you. I could review an easy movie—Stripes, for example, or Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. Watching those would be enjoyable. Heck, it would even be a downright good time. Instead, I am willing to put myself through the unimaginable terror of watching Attack of the Clones, the single most wretched movie ever made. I’m not sure I’ll have adequate words to describe the pain, the fear and the suffering that this movie causes, but I’ll try. It’s all for you.
This movie would have been more aptly titled The Alienation of the Fans. With this film, George Lucas completed the quest he began with The Phantom Menace to completely displease fans of the original Star Wars trilogy. So many things are wrong with this movie that I’m not even sure where to start, so I’ll just take it from the beginning (a very good place to start, Julie Andrews tells me, and she’s never lied to me before). When the film opens, it seems there’s potentially war brewing or something maybe, and Samuel L. Jackson says that the Republic doesn’t have any defense because the Jedi aren’t soldiers. This expositional scene also features everybody’s favorite wrinkly puppet, Master Yoda. Except wait! Something about him doesn’t seem right…could it be that everyone’s favorite wrinkly puppet isn’t a puppet at all? Of course not! Why have practical elements and effects in your movie when you can have distracting, fake looking computer images? Hooray! The last great thing about Star Wars has been destroyed in the first five minutes of the movie!
Just when we’re adjusting to the shock of the Yoda puppet being gone, the movie sucker punches us again by introducing its most annoying character. Believe it or not, it isn’t even Jar Jar Binks. No, the offender this time is none other than Anakin Skywalker. Yes, the central character in this movie, the guy I guess you would call the protagonist, is the single biggest cry-baby in cinema history. Somehow, Hayden Christensen manages to make even Darth Vader seem uncool. Not only is the performance he phones in completely dreadful, with his face displaying all the emotional range of igneous rock, he is constantly griping, whining, moaning and otherwise acting like a tantrum-throwing four-year-old. If I were Obi-Wan, I’d have sliced off Anakin’s head with my lightsaber years ago.
Speaking of Obi-Wan, he and Anakin are assigned to protect Senator Amidala, who you might remember from the last movie as Queen Amidala. It seems like going from Queen of an entire planet to one of thousands of nameless Senators is really a step down, career wise, but she seems to really dig it. Whatever the case, I really don’t have time to think about space politics, because I’m too busy being pissed off at these cartoony looking centipedes that an assassin is using in an attempt to kill the Senator. Oh no, not a centipede! Sure, they’re gross and everything, but they’re hardly life-threatening, especially when they’re obviously not real (“obviously not real“ is this film‘s bread and butter). Anakin rushes in and chops up the bugs anyway, and he and Obi-Wan speed off after the would-be assassin.
Suddenly, it’s a James Bond movie. Now, I love James Bond as much as the next guy. James Bond and Star Wars are both good, but hardly interchangeable. When I’m watching a
Anyway, after Anakin utters the line suggesting they can’t keep the chase going any longer, the chase continues for several more minutes, and the vomit rises in my throat several more inches. Also, they’re in a yellow car! How girly is that?
After approximately sixteen years, some more boring stuff happens. During this time, there are a few more golden lines. At one point, Obi-Wan says to Anakin, “Why do I get the feeling you’re going to be the death of me?” (Ha ha! See, we in the audience know something the characters don’t. So it’s funny! Isn‘t it?) When Ewan McGregor lets that particular jewel spill from his lips, you almost expect him to stop mid-stride and wink right at the camera. And then, just a few seconds later, a seedy character approaches him and attempts to sell him some cigarette-looking drugs that are called, with all the subtlety of being head butted by a mountain goat, “death sticks.” Oh Mr. Lucas, I can only dream of having your screenwriting talent.
I guess at this point they start trying to develop the plot some more. Obi-Wan and Anakin are supposed to keep protecting Senator Amidala while simultaneously trying to find out who was trying to kill her. Instead of following orders, Anakin goes off to chat it up with Senator Palpatine in his office. Throughout this movie, Palpatine comes across much more like a creepy pederast than the evil Emperor we know he will become. Fortunately, the scene with Senator Molester doesn’t last very long, and Anakin is finally ready to start protecting people like he was told. He and Senator Amidala do a little bickering and I guess it’s supposed to have undertones of sexual tension or something, but the only feeling the two performers manage to convey is, perhaps, mild intestinal discomfort. Both actors just seem unhappy about being there. And god, can you blame them? (Answer: No.)
Eventually, the two Jedi split up. Anakin goes off with the young lady Senator to protect her and/or get her into extreme danger on a whim, while Obi-Wan decides to try playing Sherlock Holmes. Master Kenobi’s first stop on the detective trail is in a seedy diner (naturally) where he talks to the most poorly rendered and unconvincing CG alien in a movie loaded with poorly rendered and unconvincing CG aliens. This guy is an Ernest Borgnine type (strike one) in a dirty shirt (strike two) whose butt hangs out of his pants (and you are outta here!).
Next, Obi-Wan heads off to the Jedi archives, where he learns some critical files have been erased. Only a Jedi could erase those files, he’s told. So what, is everyone in this galaxy far, far away a complete idiot? Only a Jedi can erase computer files. To me, that’s like saying “Only a Jedi could open this jar of pickles.” Puh-leeze.
Meanwhile, the awkward romance between Anakin and Amidala begins to fumble its way across the screen through scenes of stilted dialogue and lukewarm passion. Anakin says something stupid about sand (”I like my sex like the sand in the desert—a lot of it all over the place” or something like that) and then suddenly they’re kinda kissing and I’m kinda bored. There’s really very little to say about these scenes except that they sucked just as hard as they possibly could.
While those two are busy being terrible, we are treated to scene after scene of one or two actors standing on a blue screen stage interacting with computer generated characters. It really bothers me that the people at Lucasfilm don’t seem to feel it’s worthwhile to actually build sets or make real creature effects. Since that can all be done in the computer, that’s the route the production team has chosen to take, but this movie is nothing if not evidence that just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should. Because it might turn out to be lame ass, see.
The next actual plot point that crops up is that some gangly aliens have bred an all clone army for the Republic to use to their advantage. Could these be those titular attacking clones? Well, we shall see, shan’t we? The clones are more of those things that are unnecessarily computer generated. Not one clone soldier costume was created for this film; the whole kit and kaboodle was done through CG. We saw crowds of Storm Troopers in the original Star Wars movies and they looked perfectly believable. After all, they’re just guys in uniforms, that isn’t too hard to pull off. But for this movie, instead of just putting some uniforms on some extras, we get a whole army of goofy looking Buzz Lightyears. Huzzah!
During these clone scenes, we’re introduced to an old friend from the original trilogy: Boba Fett, the enigmatic and very cool looking bounty hunter. In this movie, however, he’s nothing but a kid—a mere Baby Fett—and he talks with a childish speech impediment. It seems that a major goal of this movie is taking awesome characters from the original films and turning them into laughable goobers. This goal is fully achieved, and each time I think about it I die a little inside.
Anakin finally decides that he’s kept the Senator out of danger for long enough, so the two of them set off on a trip to Tatooine to save Anakin’s mother, who he has “sensed” is in trouble. Go out and endanger someone you’ve been commanded to protect so you can potentially save someone from a peril you may have just imagined…that’s using the ol’ Jedi noodle, Anakin! He learns from his stepfather and stepbrother that he now has step relatives, plus his mother has been taken away by the dreaded, stinky Tusken Raiders, affectionately known as sand people. While he goes off to search for her, he leaves Senator Amidala, the woman he has sworn to protect, with a couple of creepy looking total strangers. In fact, he leaves her to stay in the same house with some of the same people Luke will later be hidden with. Knowing that, it really doesn’t seem like it was such a great hiding place for Luke, now does it? It kinda seems like it would be the very first place Vader would have looked. Thanks, movie, now you’ve ruined something else. Anyway, Anakin finds his mother just in time for her to die and become a grotesque looking corpse.
Back in the other part of the movie, Obi-Wan comes in contact with Christopher Lee, portraying exactly the same character he plays in The Lord of the Rings, only this time with shorter hair. With him is Nute Gunray, that lizard-man with the Japanese accent from The Phantom Menace. Except, somehow, his Japanese accent has mostly gone away. It’s a shame, really. The unscrupulous businessman with a Japanese accent was just the kind of sensitivity and subtlety I had come to expect from George Lucas, and now it’s gone.
Eventually, the two halves of the movie meet up as Anakin arrives on the same hard to spell planet as Obi-Wan. WIth him are Artoo Detoo and See Threepio. The two droids make up one of my biggest grievances with this movie. First, Artoo blasts off with some rockets he apparently has, but has never used before in any of the several times it would have been very convenient for him to do so. Where did he get these magic rockets? Why did he never utilize them to his advantage in the other movies? Threepio makes me just as angry, because not only does he reveal that his clunky, slow-moving, metal body is fifty times as flexible and spry as it ever was before, he has also turned into little more than Wisecrackin’ Pete, the Laff-O-Bot. He makes some of the corniest jokes in the history of mankind, even worse than that knock knock joke about the interrupting cow, which I frankly think is absolutely MOOOOOOO!
Sooner or later (it sure feels like later), all the good guys start fighting with more cartoonish alien monsters, and in the course of the battle Natalie Portman’s shirt gets ripped, making this the only watchable scene in the movie. I think it really says something when the best actors in your film are breasts. And I’m sure by the next movie, George Lucas will only be using computer animated breasts.
And now it’s time for the movie’s climactic battle, thank god this is almost over. On the one hand we have some Jedi fighting off about sixty billion battle droids. After several minutes of this tepid action, the clone soldiers come in to save the day. So really, the battle droids are attacking and the clones are merely defending. Even the title of this movie is a dirty lie. On the other hand, we have the lightsaber dueling between Obi-Wan and Anakin and Christopher Lee. The two young wieners are pretty quickly dispatched, so Yoda has to come in to save their bacon by getting rid of Christopher Lee once and for all. The two go about moving heavy stuff with their minds and shooting lightning at each other in true Jedi fashion. This all leads up to the lamest line in a movie series renowned for its pretty lame lines. In fact, this is almost certainly the lamest line ever uttered by any character at any time, and it comes out of the mouth of none other than Christopher Lee. He remarks: “It is obvious this contest cannot be decided by our knowledge of the Force, but by our skills with a lightsaber.” He might as well have looked directly into the camera and said, “Ladies and gentlemen of the audience, please enjoy the following lightsaber battle.” Man, I could cobble together a better script than this using nothing but excerpts from the phone book and my check register. Anyway, Yoda and Christopher Lee do have a lightsaber fight which, despite what you may have heard, is just as dry and unimpressive as the rest of the film. Then Christopher Lee escapes or something, there are a few more scenes to tie up loose ends, and finally the credits roll.
Well! The past two and a half hours have just flown by as if they were only 970 minutes. This movie truly saddens me. Star Wars is one of the few things I’ve loved in my lifetime, and the new movies were so bad that even I am questioning if maybe the time I spent enjoying the original films was time misspent. I hate having to explain myself now, having to say, “Yeah, I like Star Wars. Oh, except not those god awful new ones, heavens no.” I just don’t know what to think anymore. When you can’t depend on Star Wars, on what can you depend?
If you don’t like Attack of the Clones, good for you. Instead try:
If You Hated This, You Will Also Totally Hate:
- Improving the Prequels
- Bizarre Nostalgia
- The State of Star Trek
- Star Wars
- The Spirit of Obi-Wan Kenobi is a Jerk
July 5th, 2010 at 9:57 pm
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