The story of a young man with the potential for greatness who falls into bad ways - George Lucas, I mean

Rating: 6/10 (22 May 2002)

An improvement on The Phantom Menace. I was entertained for most of the way, but a lot of the flaws of "Episode 1" and in George Lucas' films generally are painfully apparent. In the end it was disappointing to see so little interest in characterisation and good story-telling, and it all felt a little bit second hand.
In 1977 George Lucas and Star Wars were the leader in a field of one. The Seventies was a time for some fascinating cinema but no one was making the kind of swashbuckling entertainment or films suitable for children with anything like the verve and charisma of the "old days." The splash that Star Wars made on its release was heard around the world. A phenomenon was born and a trend was set, even if purists were alarmed that one day there would be no room for thoughtful adult fims among the blockbusters. At the end of the day, though, "Star Wars" was entertainment for all ages, with adventure and excitement to the fore and everything else second - and throughly enjoyable on that level. The next two instalments showed a real talent (especially in "Empire") but a talent all too ready to forget good cinema and concentrate on juvenile fodder (like "Jedi"), but he still did it better than anyone else.
When "Phantom Menace" was released people were full of expectation, hoping to see the mythic storytelling of the first two films taken to a pulse-quickening max by state-of-the-art special effects. What we got was a few good sequences and a succession of nicely rendered CGI images and nothing else. Lucas obviously found characterisation and the human side a distraction from the technology that he was more interested in. There was no way Lucas could live up to the reputation that the early films had rather spuriously gained as classics to rival the all-time greats, but he was supposed to be able to make a straight-ahead entertaining film instead of an infantile effects picture that tried to pass off its lame plot and funny names as ambitious mythic cinema. Worst of all, it just seemed like a procession towards Episode 2 with almost no sense that anyone was in any danger or that anything bad was going to happen unless our heroes save the day.
"Attack of the Clones" is a big improvement on "Phantom" but still suffers from stunted ambition in terms of story and character, with the usual clunky dialogue that pervades all Star Wars films less easy to forgive when you haven't got Harrison Ford and a walking carpet making it fun for us. At least there is more of a sense of danger and people who have to be rescued or confronted, and there is more variety to the scenes instead of the endless, boring sunny backgrounds of Naboo in "Phantom." However, it is very hard to forgive how utterly perfunctory Lucas is with the characters and the story line. OK, Anakin is angry and rebellious, but we know WHAT'S going to happen to his character because we've all seen the "first" three films, so how about making us interested in HOW it happens? Also the true identity of one of the characters is kept a "secret" when it's fairly obvious who the person actually is, which frankly felt like an insult to the intelligence. I don't mean to sound like a moaner and wanting every film to be a piece of Indie Art, but by the same token Lucas seems to think that he is producing an epic saga that rivals "Lord of the Rings" and "The Godfather", and let me tell you George, you aren't even close.
The biggest problem for George Lucas is that there is a big body of opinion ready to forget that he (like Spielberg to a lesser degree) always shies away from applying his considerable talent to something more complex instead of serving up puerile goo to five-year-olds, and will say that he is the greatest film maker of all time. He thinks what he does is good enough for his audience, but it isn't and it is a shame to see a talent go to waste. It is put into even sharper focus by the fact that "Lord of the Rings" and "The Matrix" provide entertainment, story and action for his older audience that puts anything he has ever done to shame, and the likes of "Toy Story" and "Shrek" are much better as films for children.
In the end what we got was an OK movie, but I couldn't get over my disappointment that it could have been so much better and more entertaining.