Attack of the drones

Rating: 5/10 (8 June 2005)

A long time ago, in a galaxy not a million miles away from our own, Geroge Lucas made 'Star Wars'. Optimisitcally subtitled 'A New Hope', the film was an old fashioned, good-versus evil, rollicking adventure, with a cracking storyline and groundbreaking special effects. The huge success of the movie is widely believed today to have had a massive impact on Hollywood as a whole; but in a more local context, a direct consequence was the release of two sequels (though Lucas left the direction of these to others). Sequel number one, 'The Empire Strikes Back', added a layer of darkness to the story, but also a layer of pretension, and the episodic plot seemed to do little more than occupy the space between the first film and the third. And by the time of number three ('The Return of the Jedi'), it appeared that the concept was running out of steam; although still a huge box-office success, nothing new was offered to the audience except the abominably cuddly Ewoks. Even more worrying was that Lucas seemed prouder of the Ewoks than he was of the movie, and he was to spend some effort in the subsequent years attempting to promote them as the future of family entertainment. 'Star Wars', however, was placed firmly on the back-burner, and vaguely mentioned plans for three promised "prequels" appeared to be buried.
But eventually, in the late 1990s, Lucas became sufficiently enamoured of technological advances to be lured back to those prequels, newly confident he could make a film that would outdo the originals. Such had been the cultural impact of the 'Star Wars' phenomenon, that expectations could not have been higher; but film four (or episode one, to consider things chronologically) failed to meet those near impossible hopes. Lucas tried to keep the attention of his old fans (by now, really quite old fans) by adding a layer of political intrigue; but unfortunately, this proved vague and dull. While he attempted to bring in a younger audience though the creation of a "lovable" wholly computer-animated character,the insanely annoying Jar-Jar Binks. For all the brickbats, 'The Phantom Menace' is probably not quite as bad as its critical reception; those steeped in Star Wars lore can sit back and enjoy a movie much of which is comparable in quality at least to the 'Return of the Jedi'. But whereas the earlier films had broken new ground, the grimy, vicious world of 'The Matrix', released in the same year, only seemed to show how dated and cutesy Lucas's own vision had become.
Lucas ploughed on with his fifth film, 'Attack of the Clones', and essentially it's more of the same. Thenkfully, there's less of Jar-Jar, and there's also the interesting spectacle of Ewan MacGregor growing into the part of Obi-Wan Kenobi, a role immortalised in the first film by the late Alec Guinesss; he does rather well, in fact, although if anything he appears a trifle too camp. But the movie's younger stars, Hayden Christensen and Natalie Portman, are desperately dull and wooden (although to be fair, the script gives them little to work with). Also bizarre is Lucas's increasing determination to show us his galaxy as an inter-racial melting pot resembling a prejudicial distortion of New York City. In spite of this, I quite enjoyed the beginning of the film, but it ends (just like 'The Phantom Menace') in a wild orgy of special effects. Whereas in the original, each explosion was a thing of beauty, here we have thousands per scene, pure visual mayhem (and utterly pointless). The sense that this film needed an editor is emphasised by the fact that the best visual trick is still the light sabre, now over 20 years old, and it's when the characters fight at a human pace that the audience is able to invest some belief and passion in them. Otherwsie, what's amazing about this film is how little excitement the endless battle scenes actually induce, for all the expense that they must have cost to make.
A few final points. The enemy are clones and droids, presumably because if this many humans were shown being killed, the film would never have received its certificates. Secondly, I saw it on video, one which bizarrely chooses to begin with a short extra film summarising all five movies (including the one we're about to watch), which only goes to show how 'Star Wars' exists in a parallel universe, separate from all other movies. And thirdly, a minor continuity error: how come C-3PO, in 'A New Hope', fails to recognise that fate has returned him to the very same farm (and owners) where, we now learn, he once had lived? One thing's for certain: it's almost impossible to make sense of the fact that George Lucas is the same man who made 'American Graffiti', although, dare I say it, that was another film that could have used a few cuts.