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I played a little hooky from Mullings Central yesterday afternoon to go see the new Star Wars movie, Episode II: Attack of the Clones.
Actually the matinee price was $6.50 but that didn't make a pun with "May the Force Be With You" like Four-Seventy Five did.
It was much, MUCH better than Episode I: The Phantom Plot, but still not as good as the three originals. I disagree with the critics who hated it because they wanted to hate it and there is enough wrong with the movie so if you do want to hate it, you can and get away with it.
Anakin Skywalker (played by 21 year old Hayden Christensen) is somewhere between 15 and 25. He is often referred to as "Annie" by the other characters which, as Turner Classic Movies is running a Woody Allen festival is a little disconcerting.
Skywalker's love interest is Senator Padmé Amidala (Natalie Portman), formerly the Queen of Naboo who, according to the script, served two terms as Queen and then was term-limited. So the new Queen of Naboo appointed her a Senator. She looks 12.
I had a friend, once, who claimed to be the Queen of Naboo, but he didn't look anything like Miss Portman.
Happily, Jar Jar Binks, the most disliked movie presence in the history of the cinema (if you don't count Pauly Shore), appears in the first few minutes, then briefly in a meeting, then is never heard from or seen again.
Frank Oz reprises the voice of Yoda, but Yoda is not a puppet this time, he is a Computer Generated character. For most of the movie he moves in that halting style with a cane. But there is one scene when he gets into a light saber duel and suddenly becomes the Old-Age-Mutant-Ninja-Jedi; jumping, spinning, twirling, running fast, stopping on a dime, and giving nine cents change. As soon as the fight is over, he calls his cane (the way those Jedi guys do) and it floats into his hand so he can limp around again.
Actually, the rending of Yoda is so good, it cannot be long until actors are not necessary at all. This is good news as George W. Bush is going to win (like the Queen of Naboo) a second term and all of Hollywood is going to make good on its threat to leave the country. Three guys without shoes sitting in front of Super-Macs will provide all the characters.
Ewan McGregor plays the young Obi-Wan Kenobi (he was in Blackhawk Down and Moulin Rouge). He has the proper accent, and for a good deal of the picture his voice has that unique timbre that Alec Guinness had, but sometimes that slips.
Anakin is Obi-Wan's protégé and talks a lot about how he is chafing under Obi-Wan's tutelage. Anakin is in love with the Senator and talks a lot about how much he loves her. Anakin's mother dies and he talks a lot about how much he misses her.
A Harrison Ford/Han Solo character would have been very helpful to verbally (if not physically) whack Anakin in the back of the head once in a while.
For much of the picture I could not tell who was doing what to whom. The principal reason for this is not a badly written script - although almost every scene seemed to be 20 percent too long - the principal reason is: I fell asleep for a portion of the movie.
Do not assume this means the movie was boring. I was discussing this with The Lad yesterday afternoon. He mentioned that I was sitting in a comfortable chair, in a dark room, with a huge television set, with popcorn in one hand and a box of Goobers in the other and what else would I do but fall asleep?
In this movie, I think the rebels are the bad guys. In episodes IV, V, & VI the rebels are the good guys. I might have that wrong, but I don't think so.
The movie ends with us still not knowing what caused Anakin to go to the dark side, but we are introduced to two characters - including the Ian McDiarmid character who ends up as The Emperor - and who, like Adolph Hitler assumes extraordinary powers in the face of a rebellion.
The special effects are fabulous. Too fabulous. In the early trilogy I remember an interview in which Lucas was very proud of the fact that notwithstanding how long it took to produce a special effect, they only used it for as long as the story demanded.
He has, apparently, changed his mind on that. When he found an effect he liked, we get to enjoy it for a very long time.
George Lucas wrote the story; wrote the screenplay; directed the movie; produced the movie; Industrial Light & Magic (his company) did the special effects; post-production sound is by Skywalker Sound (we assume this is a Lucas company).
Unlike Episode I which was on TV last week and which I could not watch again, this one gets another look when it shows up on an airplane or on TV.
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