I'm seriously starting to regret reviewing all of these movies. This movie is a total disaster. Attack Of The Clones is much worse that Phantom Menace for a great number of reasons. In fact, I consider it to be one of the worst movies I've ever seen.
I actually have been putting off this review off because I have no idea where to begin. I guess I'll talk about what gets me the most, although again, a lot of it has been talked about. Look at the poster: who's front and centre? Anakin and Padme. This was really set up to be a love story between the two, and make us care. After all, if we don't care about them, why would we care when Anakin turns evil? We know what's coming, we know Anakin is going to become Darth Vader, so George Lucas had a unique chance to do something interesting. It doesn't happen, the love story between the two is shockingly awful. I don't buy for a second that these two would love each other. I guess I kind of buy that they're attracted to each other, but attracted is not even close to being the same as full blown love. I don't buy that Padme would fall in love with Anakin, not with his constant whining about Obi-Wan and his life, his obsession with death and self centred attitude. I guess Lucas is trying to set up that Anakin always had darkness in his soul. That's fine, but that's a very fine line to walk. If you add too much darkness, then the audience will just say "Yeah, he was always evil" when he puts on the costume, and not care that a "hero" has fallen. That's exactly what happens: Anakin is a horrible, vile, arrogant, irritating, forced, unlikable, uncharismatic, uninteresting and downright disgusting excuse for a main character. The whole point of the prequel trilogy is to show how Anakin Skywalker, the great and noble Jedi Knight met his downfall and became the ultimate villain. Well I found myself hating Anakin in this movie more than I ever did when he put on the Darth Vader suit. It starts off bad where we see him become an agonizingly arrogant character. He does nothing but brag about himself and try to show off for Padme. He blatantly ignores Obi-Wan (The only likable character, more on him later) early on, and comes off as overall unlikable. The writing is so bad that the character is beyond saving, but a good actor may lessen the pain. Yeah, you knew I was getting to this... Hayden Christensen. He's not good in these movies. At all. We're talking not good enough for an Uwe Boll directed soap opera levels of not good. I'll admit I haven't seen any of Christensen's non Star Wars work, but I've actually heard really good things. I know he got a Golden Globe nomination fore Life as a House, so that's certainly something. It seems Christensen is a decent enough actor, but he was in a bad situation here. First of all, he just isn't right for the role. His voice is the main problem: it sounds whiny way too often, to the point where I just can't buy him as this great, promising young Jedi that they keep saying he is. Show don't tell: that's one of the great rules of storytelling, and these movies violate that.
Christensen may be weak, but the script does nothing for him. These lines are beyond saving. Couple that with some weak direction, and I don't blame Christensen's performance on him. Beyond that, I just can't accept Anakin as a hero. Again, these movies are supposed to chart the fall of a great hero. Remember in the original Star Wars movie, where Obi-Wan remembers Anakin. "And he was a good friend," he says, more to himself than to Luke. We don't get that. Instead we see the two of them bicker constantly to the point where I feel they have some genuine animosity towards each other. On top of that, Anakin is a monster. The sand where he kills the Tuskan Raiders in inexcusable. He openly says to Padme that he killed the woman and children like it was nothing. I'm sorry, but no. This is not a hero! This is a monster! I don't feel sad to see him go the Dark Side, he was already there! Not only that, but he than proceeds to blab on about death, and how he will commit himself to seeking power. Forget that this not contradicting the whole point of the trilogy, let's remember this happens maybe halfway through the movie. How can we cheer for him after he does this? Why should we care when he's in danger throughout the movie when he's the biggest monster in the whole thing? Even Tony Montana wouldn't kill woman and children. This extends into the next movie. Why should we care about him? Why should we root for him? We don't watch in horror when he "falls from grace," because he did that a long time ago. Anakin alone is enough the destroy this movie, but I'm not done. Not even close. This is no longer a review, this is a rant. Did I mention that I despise this movie?
The other characters all suck. Ewan McGregor I guess is the best of the worst, although he's pretty dull. He is clearly giving an effort though, and he would recover in the next movie. He is a great actor, and the fact he turns in a weak performance is more a commentary on the dialogue than anything. Every line of dialogue sounds stilted and unnatural, and the same is true of every actor (Except for Christopher Lee, but that's because he can make even the dumbest of lines sound brilliant and epic) The lack of good direction clearly doesn't help. Every time an actor opens their mouth, the scene automatically falls flat, and it's impossible to get engaged in the movie when this is happening. They try to cram in classic Star Wars imagery like Boba... errr... Jango Fett. I actually quite like the Jango Fett armour, so there's that. But did we really need him here? It was just classic Star Wars imagery that really added little to this movie. Speaking of that, there really was an abundance of Star Wars imagery in this movie. There was a Death Star cameo, and the Storm Troopers... ahem.... CLONE Troopers were introduced. Decent touch I guess, and I admit I didn't see the Troopers working with the Jedi coming. We also saw force lightning introduced. It would seem Lucas tried to cram classic Star Wars imagery in here just for the sake of it. And that brings us to another point.
Remember when I said I liked the 35mm photography in the Phantom Menace? Well that changed here. Lucas decided to get rid of film and make Episode II with digital cameras, a trend that would carry into Episode III. It looks awful. The Star Wars movies had a certain visual style that was completely discontinued here. The original movies were done in the 70's and 80's, and took full use of the camera technology available then. The film grain was incredibly important in the look of those movies. The Phantom Menace at least looked like a Star Wars movie with that film grain. A Star Wars movie overloaded with CGI, but still a Star Wars movie. Besides, the Special Editions had gotten us used to this. The digital photography here flat out sucks. First off, it looks nothing like Star Wars. It doesn't look like a big epic space opera, it looks like something out of a web series. Digital photography has made great strides in the last few years, but this was 2002. Things weren't ready yet. To see classic Star Wars imagery in a movie that looked nothing like Star Wars was really jarring. It made it look like the movie had no clue what it wanted to do: embrace the classic Star Wars look or create something new. It just doesn't fit. Furthermore, the visual style looks bad on its own. There's no life to it, no charm. It looks bland and flat, and the overabundance of CGI makes it look even more lifeless. The CGI is too clean looking, and never looks realistic. Does the CGI Yoda look anywhere near as good as the Yoda from Empire Strikes Back? Yoda's voice also seemed to change here, even though Frank Oz reprised his role as Yoda. Maybe he could only make the character sound right when he was actually on the set operating the Yoda puppet, rather than just standing in front of a microphone. The argument of practical effects being better than CGI is old as the hills, but it's fitting here, in a franchise that once revolutionized practical effects. The practical creatures had life. They were dirty, they were rugged, they were actually THERE. They were there in front of the camera, as real as the actors. They could be lit and filmed at the same time as the performers as set. Now, they were just added in later on a computer. The CGI was bad. I guess it was okay for 2002, but it doesn't hold up. It looks like a made for TV movie. I guess you could say that I shouldn't expect fourteen year old CGI to hold up but hey, the practical effects in the original trilogy hold up. Or besides that, the CGI in Jurassic Park and Terminator 2 hold up decently, better than this movie, and they both came out years before.
Finally, there's the stupid scenes in this movie that drive me crazy. Yes Lucas, we know you made American Graffiti, but did you really need to reference that in a Star Wars movie? I find it funny that the gritty young filmmakers would made that movie would one day pay homage to that movie with a CGI heavy scene with a robotic waitress and a computer generated monstrosity named Dexter Jettster. Seriously, why would a 50's style diner exist in the Star Wars universe? Would a droid waitress clearly reference Earthly dialogue? And then there's Dexter who's just... oh man. Next. There's the scene where C-3PO gets his head stuck on a battle droid in a scene so bad even Anthony Daniels spoke bad about it, calling the computer generated C-3PO from the scene "awful." There's the idea that a bounty hunter like Jango Fett would hire an assassin to kill someone when he could the job himself. The fact that Obi-Wan talks about Anakin in Episode IV with great reverence, and yet this movie seems to say the two hated each other. There are some throw away lines that try to tell us about their past adventures, but they don't really make much of an impact. Show, don't tell.
I'm out of stuff to talk about. This movie is an absolute catastrophe on every level. This is one of my most hated movies of all time, and I actually kind of hate writing about it. Avoid it all costs.
