Attack of the Middle Movie

Rating: 6/10 (23 August 2005)

Stuck between The Phantom Menace(99) and Revenge of the Sith(05), this one-sixth of the Star Wars saga may end up being the most forgettable of all. There are no scenes which seem to stand out and at least embed themselves in the memory. Phantom Menace may have been a bit slower going but at least you had the devil-like Darth Maul killing a Jedi Knight and the first glimpse of a planet-sized city. The climax here is still my favorite sequence of this film, with Chris Lee showing off his still-formidable chops, but this doesn't say much for the rest of the picture. Annakin Skywalker has grown up from a cute little boy of Phantom Menace into a pouting young man (Christensen), mentored, with difficulty, by Obi-Wan Kenobi (McGregor). The Jedi Knights (led by Yoda) deal with mysterious plots to create an army of clones, which are scheduled to fight some war for some reasons unknown. Annakin learns about loss, in a couple of different ways, and begins a slight turn towards the dark side, in the form of vengeance. It looks like Christensen was instructed to act younger than he is because that part does work out - he comes across as very immature. Meanwhile, the clone army wears the same stormtrooper white armor we all first saw in Star Wars(77 aka A New Hope), which means they were all clones...? Darth, where are you when we need yuh? The pic is naturally hampered by being the middle one in the 2nd (1st?) trilogy, with no real beginning or ending. All you can do is look forward to Darth Sidious doing his thing in the next installment.