Lucas fails to deliver on the promises of Phantom Menace

Rating: 3/10 (12 July 2003)

In my review of The Phantom Menace, which was quite favorable, I stated that making any kind of a prequel is a daunting task, as your audience generally knows where you are headed. In order to do so and be successful you had better introduce some interesting, well rounded, well acted characters, and enough plot twists and surprises to keep the audience riveted and wanting to come back to find out what happens next. While I thought George Lucas was off to a fairly good start in The Phantom Menace, in Attack of the Clones, he seems to have lost his way. He now seems so intent to dazzle us with technology that he has forgotten some of the important things that audiences care about, such as a good script, good acting, character development, and having the audience actually care about what happens to those characters he puts in the middle of all those dazzling special effects. I can only guess that he has become so enamored of the technical side of film making, that nothing else seems to matter. If you want to tell your story, tell your story, but don't shortchange your audience in the process.
In the first film, we had a good rapport between Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon Jin, not unlike the relationship one would see in any good buddy movie. In Clones, we have the relationship between Obi-Wan and Anakin, who may be ten years older, but not ten years wiser by any stretch of the imagination. Most of their time together on the screen is spent with Obi-Wan chastising Anakin about this and that, and then Anakin whining and complaining about it like some sniveling little brat. Jake Lloyd gave us more maturity in Phantom then Hayden Christiansen does here. We are given no clue as to how Anakin developed his propensity for being such an annoying twit, since Lucas finds it necessary to completely skip over everything that happened in the ten years since the last episode.
Whereas Ewan McGregor was so good in Phantom, he is good here also, but only when he is out of the company of Anakin. On his own, he is fun to watch. With Anakin in the same scene, we just want them to get away from each other as quickly as possible.
Natalie Portman is back as Amidala, no longer a Queen but now a senator. She too seems to have lost her way. Where in the first episode her character was multi-dimensional, here it is peculiarly one note, showing none of the complexity or passion hinted at in Phantom. Because of this, the most important plot development in Clones, the love story between Anakin and Padme, completely falls apart.
I'm not one to beat a dead horse, or a good actor when he's down, but apparently Hayden Christiansen has the acting ability of a dead horse. His portrayal of Anakin in Clones is the worst thing to happen in a movie series since that alien creature popped out of Ripley's midsection in the third Alien movie. Whether it's just bad acting, bad directing, a bad script, or perhaps a combination of the three we may never know. We can only hope that by the time episode three rolls out in 2005, Hayden learns a few things, excuse me I mean a whole big lot of things about character and acting.

The love story between Padme and Anakin has about as much spark in it as an old episode of The Love Boat. I almost expected Lauren Tewes and Fred Gandy to make a cameo appearance at any second. Seems Anakin has had the hots for Padme since we left him in Phantom Menace when he was about ten years old. This becomes apparent when Anakin and Obi-wan arrive to protect Padme, with dialogue so silly and painful, we not only groan, we grit our teeth and grimace. There is no reason at all for any relationship to develop between these two, and as annoying as Anakin is about the whole thing, I half expected Padme to tell him to buzz off at any moment. If you can't believe the love story, can you honestly believe anything that happens here on out?
The other important thing that happens to Anakin comes about midway through the movie when he goes to visit his Mother. Supposedly this has a lot to do with his going to the Dark Side of the Force. We can only think that if he was intent on breaking a few Jedi rules, why did he wait so long? (These Jedi rules seem to pop up now and then as some kind of albatross to put around Anakins neck to help him to the dark side).
There are a few good things going on here. The most interesting characters are Jango Fett and his son Boba. The relationship here between father and son, is far more provocative than anything that happens between Anakin and Padme. Samuel L. Jackson is given a bit more to do as Mace Windu, and Ian McDiarmid as sneakily menacing as Palpatine as is Christopher Lee as Count Dooku. There are the usual great sequences George Lucas goes through great pains to but on the screen, a sky chase, a flight through asteroids, the fight between Jengo and Obi-wan on Kamino. It is as usual good eye candy and that is what draws most people including myself back to these, but after a while, even that becomes tedious. Even the battle between Yoda and Dooku did little to excite me.
So what about Episode 3? Lucas left a lot of questions and Plot points from Episode One unanswered, the main one being who is Anakin's Father if he has one? It is not even mentioned in Clones. He will not only have a lot of loose ends to tie up, he will have to give the audience a reason to care about it. My two biggest hopes are this, first that he consulted a good screenwriter about his script, and second, had someone give Hayden Christiansen some acting lessons. Make that a lot of acting lessons. Make that a great big huge bunch of acting lessons. Till next time..
Next class please.