DU at the movies: Star Wars: Attack of the Clones

[Bossy Monkey]

I never saw it; am inclined towards the reply mentioning Episode 1

[DS1]

1. I walked out vowing to never ever pay for another Lucas

movie for the rest of my life.

[jpgray]

2. Didn't like it--very similar to the Matrix films

Neat special effects and design, crappy acting and script. Sci fi cliches just all over the place. It was so hyped I think many people who just didn't like it will vote for 'hated it'.

[UdoKier]

8. No, the Matrix films had some exitement.

The new Star Wars flix are just plain boring. It's amazing how films that are so visually gorgeous can be so viscerally flat and empty. I hated the obnoxious little kid in the first one, and the petulant teenager trying to get into Amidala's pants in the 2nd one. Hated the Jewish stereotype Watto and the Jamaican idiot Jarjar. I did like Ewan MacGregor as Obi-Wan, which is probably why they gave him so little screen time. Hated the sterility of the beautiful but dead sets/CG environments. None of these places looked lived-in or real the way they did in the first flix. Why Lucas didn't just prroduce and turrn the reins over to a REAL director is beyond me...

I enjoyed the artfulness of the fight scenes in the Matrix flix, as well as the comic-book quality of the films. Sure, the gimmick began to get a bit old, but I thought they wrapped them up pretty well.

[jpgray]

9. The last two were disasters

Some of the action scenes were well-done, but the script? You have people saying 'Are you questioning my authority, Captain?' and the obligatory slowly-dying soldier who gives a four minute monologue while death and destruction conveniently miss him. Good art direction, neat action, crappy script and acting.

[Deja Q]

3. While the Ewoks were crap, at least RotJ had a decent subplot

with Luke.

Eps 1 and 2 were crap.

Also, as the 1977 "Star Wars" was never "episode IV" until it became popular, I find it hard to believe that Lucas wrote all of these episodes early on.

[mairceridwen]

5. hey...did you hear

lucas is cutting in images of Hayden Christiansen at the end of Return of the Jedi?

It's just like the South Park episode.

Actually, I believe he had a very good, strong backstory...but the dreck we see today are not the episodes he had in mind back then

[Deja Q]

12. Yup. I read it in an e-mail. A bit of a pity as the dude who played

Anakin in ep 6 is far better than the walking mold-infested cardboard known as Hayden Christensen.

Okay, Hayden looks hot in that image, but he couldn't act his way out of a mime's imaginary booth.

[UdoKier]

13. Hayden Christiansen...

Why did they picck such a wussy guy? They might as well have used DiCrapio.

I would have used someone with a hint of menace. Colin Farell, if it had to be a young guy.

[mairceridwen]

4. I see these things

I don't know why. Never before have I been so compelled to see something I knew was going to royally sucked.

Everything about it was bad, except...

when R2 and C3PO meet for the first time

and Yoda commanded a fighter ship

and even those were cheesy...just providing a few brief moments of relief among the crap


but ewan is still hot

[DS1]

6. Voting currently looks like a sideways middle finger to Lucas

:7

[WoodrowFan]

7. other

has its moments, not as bad as episode 1.

[LynneSin]

10. If you skip the love story and his mother dying....

...it was actually a pretty decent movie. Great fight scenes especially with Yoda!

[Bossy Monkey]

14. The Yoda fight scenes was the selling point my friends tried to use

to get me to go see it, but even there it seems more like something George threw in after the box office power of Matrix and Crouching Tiger. I like the idea, but just can't go through with seeing it. Maybe on cable.

[St. Jarvitude]

11. Would've voted "Hated it," but Natalie Portman saved it

I just voted for "disliked." if Natalie Portman weren't on the screen to distract me from the horrific movie that was going on... I may have torched the movie theatre on the way out.

[Lone_Wolf_Moderate]

15. I liked it, but...

the wooden dialogue, bad pacing, and wooden dialogue bothered me. Did I mention the wooden dialogue?

[liberalpragmatist]

16. It was alright

The first three are far better (sure, ROTJ has some poor points, but on the whole it's quite good). But even so, aside from the debacle that is the love subplot, I didn't think it was too bad - I enjoyed it, and I thought it was a much stronger, more entertaining film than Episode I, which was overdone and boring.

But I agree that what was probably Lucas' original backstory was far better. I can't quite remember who it was, but I remember reading some account by some former Lucas aide that the original story called for 9 episodes - Leah and Luke were NOT siblings (that was a last-minute copout b/c Lucas decided he didn't want to make too many films) - instead Luke's sister was some unknown character than was to emerge in Episode VI. The story wasn't to end with VI, but continue to the next generation - Vader was to die, but the Empire was still in power, so Luke was to go off, find his sister and the VII-IX trilogy was to feature the next Skywalker generation as the ones who destroyed the empire.

Episodes I-III in this original backstory were to have Episode I focusing on the history of the Jedi and the life of Ben Kenobi. Through the next couple of films he was to become close friend and mentor of Anakin Skywalker, who was to turn against him in the third episode.

[No2W2004]

17. StarWars Geek here.....

Lucas did have a backstory worked out. In 1977 I got the SW paperback adaptation and in the forward, he describes breifly about how Palpatine manipulated his way to become emperor,and something about the clone wars. He filled out some of the story with dialog from Star Wars i.e. "years ago you served my father during the clone wars" ect. Anakin falling into a pit of molten lava while fighting Obi Wan was first brought up (I think) in a SW book by Allan Dean Foster called "Splinter of the Minds Eye" in the early 80s.

As far as 1 & 2....Lucas had the basics already done, but needed something to flesh out the story lines and that, in my opinion, is where he fails miserably. In 2, you can cut out all the scenes where Anakin and Padame are fighting off their hormones and it would actually make the movie better! On the other hand, the scene where Anakin finds his mother is a key scene....he uses his rage to become powerful..it's his first taste of the dark side, and it also makes him desire to have control over life and death....something we'll see more of in 3.

[antigone382]

18. After the richness and complexity of the LOTR trilogy

The new Star Wars films just fell miserably flat, at least to me. I actually liked the Phantom Menace much better than Attack of the Clones...which is saying a whole helluva lot. It seemed more like a children's movie than one geared toward adults, and for that I could forgive some of its flaws. Attack of the Clones doesn't seem like it was really meant to appeal to anyone.

As a theatre student, it seemed to me that a lot of what Lucas wanted his characters to do was counter to the goals of theatre. For example Amidala is supposed to be a diplomat trained to keep her emotions hidden; but acting IS emotion, and as a consequence of this horrible character choice, a lot of Amidala's already uninspired dialogue comes out even more flat and wooden than it has to be. Natalie Portman is a decent actress, but what she is asked to do in this role is next to impossible to pull off.

That's just one example of things I found dissatisfactory in this movie. I think the actors get a lot of the blame that really needs to go to the director; they have to do what he tells them.

On the other hand, Ewan McGregor is extremely hot.