Steven Spielberg once said...

Rating: Null/10 (30 May 2002)

Steven Spielberg once said that he rued the day when it would be more practical to design huge sets with a computer, rather than going to the trouble of building them. This film shows he had a point.
Think of your favourite scenes in a James Bond film: Blofield's mock volcano in You Only Live Twice, his alpine lair in On Her Majesty's Secret Service or perhaps Hugo Drax's space station in Moonraker. Now imagine if all of Ken Adam's set pieces had never actually been built, but done with CGI, as with Attack of the Clones. It would lose something, wouldn't it?
With actual set designs your enjoyment is on two levels. There's a sense of admiration at the real-life feat of having designed and constructed it. I'm not saying that CGI design isn't skilful, but it doesn't impart the same kind of enjoyment somehow - and, of course, it doesn't always convince. The same goes with stunts. 007's ski jump in the pre-credits of one Bond film is an audacious idea, made more enjoyable by the fact that we know a stuntman actually performed it. You could fake it now with CGI, but again, something would be lost.
That said, George Lucas could have a trick up his sleeve here. As noted, the effects in Attack of the Clones are far more advanced than those of Star Wars: Episode IV, which had a more beat-up look. But what if Episode III contains a scene of apocolyptic destruction, plunging the universe into the Dark Ages? That would account for the "backward" look of Episode IV. And the drift of events in Episode III foreshadows this - the overpopulation, the hi-tech prevalence, the sense of impending destruction, the fall of the Roman Empire and all that...
Just a thought.