Star Warrrrrs… fab-u-lous Star Warrrrs…

I know that people are waiting to hear all the news of Attack of the Clones, but even as I watched it, I realized how anxious I wasn’t to do a full scale review of the film… at least not yet.  Even though I could split out the overall comments from the spoilers as I did with Spider-Man, somehow I don’t feel a need for it here.  Spider-Man was a giant question mark.  Was it loyal to the comic?  (Pretty much, yes.)  Did Sam Raimi do his best work ever?  (Yes.)  Were people going to walk out unhappy?  (No.)  But Star Wars: Episode Two – Attack of the Clones doesn’t have that same sense of boundary issues.  The only real question is, does it work?

And the answer is, unequivocally, yes.  There are dead moments and too much expositional dialogue at times and Hayden Christensen would be a lot better if he had 20 percent as much on-screen charisma as he has brooding skills, but… George Lucas takes a movie world obsessed with CG and big images and tops every single film ever made going away.  Does Clones have the heart of a Titanic to go with the stunning – and I mean stunning – images?  No.  The love story is a little soft and there is a distinct lack of a Han Solo or even a good Lando Calrissian.  I really would have loved a little rogue action somewhere in there.  Hell, maybe even a little competition for “Ani.” (Yes, they are still calling him that, even if they stuck a Quaalude in Jar Jar Binks’ freak chow.)  What if ere was an edgy charismatic who could actually make Amidala laugh while Anakin is supposed to be keeping his distance, literally and emotionally.  Wouldn’t her choice of Ani be even more significant than destiny and all?   At one point in Clones, I was horrified and excited (not sexually) by the sense I was getting that Luke & Leia might actually be a product of an enraged Anakin’s rape of Amidala.  I know… it’s a horri-fucking-fying idea.  But it would fit the urge to be epic that Lucas seems to have.  Very Greek.           

The first big action sequence of the film is so remarkably well made that it made me wonder whether LucasFilm effects people are really THAT much better than everyone else (read: Dykstra’s Spider-Man CG team).  The way Lucas did it, the characters and their surroundings always had real weight and velocity and movement.  It never felt fake, at least not as effects work.  (Jeff Wells will rail against some of the action choices Lucas made… but discussing George Lucas with Jeff is impossible.  Anything positive is someone else’s fault and anything bad is more evidence against the convicted.)  Later in the film, there is some slightly weak work in the “Coliseum Sequence,” where characters jumping on and off of CG animals and vehicles look like they came out of a Harryhausen movie.  But that is a minor thing in light of the breathtaking work throughout the movie.  There really hasn’t been a film yet as sophisticated visually as The Phantom Menace and this one feels like another 50 percent improvement. 

Back to the story, I don’t want to tell you very much at all.  I want you all to discover the surprises for yourself.  Knowing ahead of time would suck.  It’s already a bit odd, knowing where every element is headed.  But some of Lucas’ choices and how they are already bending in small ways towards Episode Four – A New Hope are wonderful.  Some aren’t.  The Jedi aren’t quite as insightful as you (or they) might expect.  And one major plot point involving Anakin’s family seems contrived and then Lucas compounds the problem by shying away from the horror that the moment brings, leaving Anakin to talk about it when seeing it would have been so much more satisfying dramatically.  But, overall, you can feel the heavy breathing building. 

The most ironic thing – and this takes me back to Wells aka The Ultimate Lucas Basher – is that the supposed source of improvement from the last film to this one is Lucas’ new screenwriting partner, Jonathan Hales.  But the dialogue is the weakest part of the picture.  Attack of the Clones is a visual feast.  The story moves in surprising and clever ways as well as in obvious and expected ones.  And the love story is first-love infantile, which may not have been the best choice as the foundation of an epic evil.  (On the other hand, it does suggest that Anakin will be even more sympathetic when Luke takes off Darth Vader’s mask in Return of the Jedi.)  In term of crowd pleasers, it has one sequence - which most of you have probably heard about but I’m going to keep it to myself anyway – that offers about the biggest audience reaction moment since the T-Rex showed up in Jurassic Park… people who weren’t planning going to see Clones will show up at the theater just to see this. 

I’m going to try to see the film again before next Thursday so that I can do a complete review.  But I am pretty confident in guessing now that Attack of the Clones will be the summer’s highest grosser by a substantial margin and has a real shot at the $1 billion mark worldwide.

PAGE TWO:  “The Opposite of Star Wars”