Star Wars II: Attack Of The Clones review

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Star Wars II: Attack Of The Clones

Video: 20th Century Fox: 22545S. 136 minutes. Price: varies from about £12.99 so shop around. Stars: Ewan McGregor, Natalie Portman, Hayden Christensen, Ian McDiamid, Samuel L. Jackson and Christopher Lee.

Check out website: www.starwars.com

'Is that a lightsabre in your pocket or are you pleased to see me?'

I have to confess to having mixed feelings about this film. This was hardly helped by all the media exposure it's had although strangely enough it didn't affect my objectivity when watching this video. I tend to be pretty detached when I watch or read anything. Saying that, I can hardly ignore some of the information I've gleaned from various interviews.

Star Wars II Attack of the Clones review 'Attack Of The Clones' is essentially the start of the decline of Anakin Skywalker to the dark side of the Force. It is also the romance between Anakin and Padme Amidala that will ultimately yield their famous offspring, Luke and Leia. All of this is background to another attempt by the Seth Lords to pervert the Republic and make it their own.

As I suspect the majority of you reading this have seen films 4 to 6, we already know the conclusions to all of this, so I'm not spoiling any surprises. These 'early' films are to show the how and why of the journey rather than the conclusion. The most important discovery from out of all of this is that the Clone Army was actually under the control of the Republic and Jedi themselves rather than the aggressors at this time.

The main misgivings I have about this film is how superficial the characters are to the story being told. Take actor Jimmy Smits who is playing an emissary or leader from Organia and is supposed to become Leia's step-dad someone down the line. It's only from the media mags that I even knew his role.

He was there but hardly spoke a word. Without something like UK's 'Star Wars Files' (has anyone worked out their odd index system yet?) do I have any inkling of his history or indeed any of the characters in this film.

Presumably him and other characters will get more lip-service in film 3.

Director George Lucas says repeatedly that this film is aimed at a young audience and that those of us who saw the earlier films are probably looking with too much of an adult eye. Maybe so, but we didn't have to worry about the ramifications of a trade treaty violation in the first film or a serious first love with this one which place it further up the adult scale for understanding.

In many respects, it wouldn't surprise me that Lucas, attempting to avoid any comparison to fan speculation over the years, thought that by going things that would otherwise be seen as not was expected on some issues just made it more complicated by default.

Likewise, realising that the Star Wars fans are going to be reading up on the subject of characters and everything let alone by the toys, didn't need to be handed everything in the film. See the film once, read up and watch it again and again to pick up everything else for knowledge. That's a very risky way about doing things when there is another audience out there waiting to see what all the fuss is about.

I liked the original three 'Star Wars' films and even have some of the original merchandise in my collection but I can't help but have some serious misgivings here.
That's not to say I didn't like the visuals. Industrial Light & Magic are still up to their usual standards in world design creativity and I suspect they'll be getting even more work based on their showcase work here. Hopefully, other directors might want to incorporate their actors better into the story.

Apart from the character under-action, there were a lot of things learnt from the film. The Jedi Knights were definitely more of a religious order which is in line with film 4's comments to Darth Vader. Padme's actions showed her to be more competent than the two Jedi who were supposed to be protecting her.

Both Kenobi and Skywalker frequently had their lightsabres destroyed and acted far too much like Keystone Cops than doing what they were supposed to be doing. The reckless behaviour they exhibited, let alone the possible emotional entanglements, wouldn't have made them my first choices to guarding the Padme.

Probably the biggest gaff comes from the opening text calling star systems 'solar systems' although it was rectified in the opening dialogue. Considering we are continually told this is happening in a galaxy far far away and a long time ago, the only star system that can be called 'Solar system' is our own as 'Sol' the name of our star.

Although it's not a serious distraction, it is something that should be spotted as it is also one of the ways to show a poorly researched hack SF writer. Now I'm not calling Lucas a hack but this is something that should have been picked up upon considering the number of times it must surely have been edited. Then again, it goes back to the time when Han Solo defined time and not distance in parsecs...

Regardless of what I say here, most of you are likely to see this film at some point. I'll probably give it another watch when the third film comes out. My main misgivings are 'spectacular' isn't enough and everything else needs equal serving.

GF Willmetts

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