2 strikes

Rating: 2/10 (18 May 2002)

I've never had a problem with CGI before but after watching Star Wars I feel like the movie beat me over the head with it and then shoved it down my throat. This movie is just a training exercise for CGI students. The character development? Who cares? I mean who can you actually care for in this movie? The dialogue? Horrible. Serious scenes brought tons of laughter from the crowd. And people were nearly falling out in the aisles during Anakin's bad dream sequence from laughing so hard. I guess they needed something to laugh at because this was the most boring, tedious attempt at a storyline ever.
How did the love story end up?
Anakin - "I killed not only the men but the women and children as well...I hate them all".
Padme - "OK let's get married...fa la la la la".
Lucas spent all his time and energy on a visual accomplishment and forgot that he actually had to tell an interesting story. That was not Star Wars I saw. It was Starship Troopers, 5th Element, Gladiator, and Blade Runner re-mixed with a weak Titanic love story. Lucas slapped a Star Wars label on this mess and the Star Wars fans are eating it up just like they did Phantom Menace. The action had such little payoff after that long, boring setup that came before it. The Gladiator-ish battle was just a repetitive mess of Jedi slaughtering droids over and over and over...and then some more. Yoda's duel in the end gave me goosebumps but it's over before it even gets started and 2 minutes of Yoda fighting is not worth it.
One of the great things about the original trilogy of Star Wars was the characters and story came before the effects...the effects were just there to serve the story. In Attack of the Clones the special effects ARE the story. The characters are there to say their forgettable lines and be a backdrop for Lucas's CGI show which looked more like a cartoon as the movie went on. Nothing in that arena battle looked believable. The CGI was so obvious it just took me out of the movie. And losing interest in this movie was too easy. Like I said before, I didn't care for any of the characters so there's no danger factor or excitement factor here. The only saving grace I can take from these new Star Wars movies is it just making me appreciate the original trilogy more and more for how great those movies truly are.