This film takes 130+ minutes to say what Black Sabbath said in less than six with Iron Man...

Rating: 5/10 (14 April 2003)

I have one scenario in my mind that explains how George Lucas came up with the idea for this film. I can just picture him sitting in his office, trying to come up with the inspiration to write a "darker, less happy-meal-friendly" Star Wars. Since he didn't do most of the writing on The Empire Strikes Back, this would be a harder task for him than one might believe.
So one day, Rick McCallum hands him a copy of Black Sabbath's second album, Paranoid. Through the first three songs, Lucas has no idea what to make of it until song number four starts blaring out of the speakers - a poetic and guitar-riff masterpiece called Iron Man. Obviously, Lucas was so blown away by this song that he copied the concept and story described in the lyrics into his script. There is not a single idea in either prequel so far that hasn't been used as the basis for a song by at least Black Sabbath or half a dozen of the literally thousands of true doom metal bands that follow in their footsteps. No, not the poseurs like Slipknot or the likes of Rob Zombie, I mean the real thing such as Cathedral or Electric Wizard.
Of course, Lucas wasn't totally out to lunch when he made The Phantom Menace. There was one sequence in the original story treatment in which young Anakin finds a Tusken Raider who has been wounded in battle or transit, whom he sits with and tries to help until the Tusken's clansmen come back to reclaim him. Including this scene in Episode I would have made the scene in Episode II where Anakin kills an entire colony of Tusken Raiders without pity or judgement all the more ironic (something that the film could have used, in fact), but at the same time, it would have made the idea that Lucas was listening too hard when Ozzy Osbourne sang the words "...kills the people he once saved..." a little obvious to those who haven't been totally hypontised by eMpTyV.
Another area where Lucas errs is all this crap about a "prophecy" that Anakin is supposed to fulfil. The Jedi treat Anakin as if he is some kind of commodity, despite the fact that he has lived a large portion of his life as a slave and had none of the emotional comforts that most human beings should be allowed to take for granted. Not only that, but the apparent rules of the Jedi organisation completely and utterly contradict normal, healthy human behaviour. Whereas the Force and its users seemed more like a spiritual connection to the life of the universe and those who were in touch with it during the other three films, the Jedi order has so far been made out to be more like a violent offshoot of the death cult which has begun threatening democracy in America during the prequels. At least they are timely.
It is hard, therefore, for the educated, enlightened, thinking audience to give so much as a rat's about the idea that the Jedi will almost all be killed in the forthcoming episode. Just as I wouldn't give a damn if Pat Robertson or Kenneth Copeland were used as target practise by a mob of stormtroopers, I could not give a damn what happens to these high and mighty hypocrites.
It's hard to say where I stand on the romance subplot. On the one hand, I can understand why Anakin and Padmé are so awkward with one another. They've already been through so much together that any feeling they have towards each other is going to be to their emotions what a small dose of pure, hospital-grade Morphine is to the average human's sense of pain. On the other hand, making out like they've had no contact with other human beings of the opposite sex beyond what is permissible in a G-rated film (ironically, this is the first of Lucas' Star Wars saga to be rated above a PG in Australia) is a big, big mistake. Any human being above the age of 13 is going to find this just too unbelievable. And then Lucas commits the ultimate blunder - giving us no reason to believe that a strong, powerful woman like Padmé would fall in love with a whiny brat like Anakin. There ARE ways to display extreme negative emotions (which are a natural part of life, contrary to what the saga's mythos will tell you) without whining.
Barney, the purple dinosaur, would understand this update of the saga very well. He has said in many an episode that his wards are not good unless they have good feelings - if you substitute that for some of the dialogue in Episodes II, V, and VI, the story would make just as much sense. Lucas also seems to be into showing 19 year olds as having the same emotional and intellectual responses as nine year olds. Another Barney trademark. About the only time the level of this film is raised to something vaguely adult is when Christopher Lee is on the screen. Like Liam Neeson, he always manages to raise the standard of the film he is on a notch or three, and it is during the duel(s) with Obi-Wan and Anakin (plus the battle leading up to them) that this film manages to become at least partly satisfying on an intellectual level. The duel with Yoda spoils it slightly, with the attempt to show that training Jedi for 800+ years does make you a better fencer getting way too cartoonish and clumsy for its own good. However, the closing scenes with the clone army (by the way, why is it so trendy to portray a technology that could rid us of things like cancer for good in such a bad light?) and Anakin's wedding set a tone that should have been kept up during the entire film. It's as if in those closing moments, someone remembered what made Episodes V and VI so damned interesting.
To cut a very long story short, this is nowhere near as good as the people who say this is one of the better episodes would like you to believe, but it does constitute a valiant effort to deliver a more adult science fiction story, something that Lucas should know by now that he is incapable of. Overall, this episode gets a 5 out of 10 from me, and three of those points are for Christopher Lee. The climax of the film was great (if a little sloppy at times), it's the rest of it that is the problem.