Why does Obi-Wan look like Jesus Christ?

Rating: 1/10 (2 June 2004)

SPOILER! Picking up 10 years later, Anakin Skywalker is no longer an adorable if stoic little kid but now a tall, gangly, jerky young man (Hayden Christensen) with a tendency to whine and bitch about stuff for no apparent reason (takes things way too personally he does). Well, him and his master Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) are assigned to protect former queen turned senator Padme (Natalie Portman) after ten years apart from an assassin. This job eventually leads to Obi-Wan being separated from Anakin while he investigates the assassin who happens to be involved with a cloning conspiracy and this later leads him to a renegade Jedi master played by Christopher Lee. Guess what? Anakin still has the hots for Padme and whilst Obi-Wan is away Anakin would like nothing better than to strip her naked and get her in the sack. The future Darth Vader also has a nightmare about his mom's death back on Tatioone and he FINALLY goes to rescue her but by the time he gets there she's already dead so he goes and kills the cannibal Sand People who killed her.
This is one of those films that leaves you wondering "How did this EVER get green lit?" The answer is that it got green lit because of George Lucas's success with the original trilogy and the fact that he backed the film up with his own money and what not. This leads to another question: "How could anyone have thought that this was a good script?" The answer is no one, but they signed on to it anyway because they all knew they'd get paychecks and they knew people would come out in droves to see it and make it a hit regardless of whether it's good or not. I remember watching "Phantom Menace" and coming away feeling like "What happened? HOW could this have happened?"
How many things are wrong with this film? Well, I think we all agree that the title sucks so I won't dwell on that for too long. One of the big things working against this movie is the fact that the character relationships, which should be the meat of the film, are never fully defined and/or explored (a similar problem afflicted 2003's "Daredevil"). George Lucas keeps TELLING us a bunch of things in interviews, but he doesn't depict them particularly well. He TOLD us that Anakin and Obi-Wan were good friends and he TOLD us that Anakin and Padme fall in love, but the manner in which he plays it out is very forced, ersatz and unbelievable. At this point, Anakin's relationship with Obi-Wan is starting to deteriorate; this is a good thing, but it makes very little sense as depicted because the relationship between Anakin and Obi-Wan, which should have been the main focus of "Menace", was never explored or established in PM, thanks to the continuity error of Liam Neeson's Qui-Gon Jinn character. Ultimately what we're left with is the impression that these two never liked each other much; the only hint of friendship we get is when Obi-Wan tries to comfort Anakin about his nightmares of his mother's death.
Which leads to one of the biggest problems with the film - Anakin's mother. It was hard enough to believe that Anakin actually LEFT his mom in PM, but it's even harder to believe that ten years have passed and Anakin never bothered to go back and rescue her from Tatioone. Seeing as how the Jedi Knights are supposed to be great heroes and humanitarians, it's hard to believe that the Jedi - least of all Obi-Wan Kenobi - would not allow Anakin to go back for his mom, especially when you consider how much easier it would have made training him. Or the fact that Padme was rich from being an "elected queen" (I can't stand that crap) and could very easily have paid the money to free the Skywalker mother. And when he's too late to save her, Anakin goes on a killing spree against the Sand People; okay, they beat his mom to a pulp, I admit that will p*** a guy off, but the circumstances surrounding it simply make no sense, dramatically or logistically.
Don't forget the poorly illustrated relationship between Anakin and the future Emperor either (Ian McDiarmid, now playing the young version of his villain from "Return of the Jedi").
The much hyped love story is also unpleasant, despite a nicely done love theme by John Williams. The majority of it is Anakin leering at Padme like some kind of lusty, sex starved stalker who can't wait to tear all her clothes off and rape the hell out of her and she clearly doesn't like it. Then again, I guess it's hard NOT to leer at a girl like Natalie Portman when everything she wears is either strapless, backless, or gutless. For someone who's a proponent of anti-sleaze in films, Natalie goes out on quite a limb here, even donning black leather (it's like porn for Star Wars fans). The age difference is also an annoying little factor, thus spawning the question of what the older and considerably more mature Padme sees in the future Darth Vader. Bad boy nothing, he continually goes flying off the handle for no apparent reason, even by growing pains standards, and then he goes on the aforementioned killing spree and instead of horrifying her and revolting her it only seems to get her to fall in love with him. I'm all for tragic, doomed love affairs but the truth is that there's no real reason for these two to get together except that Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia need a mom. And what was up with the line about hating sand?
Politics are not particularly well done either. Having Jar Jar Binks back and having him play a key role in the rise of the Empire - convincing the senate to okay the creation of the Clone Army thus starting the Clone Wars mentioned in the original film - is quite insulting.
The acting is a mixed bag at best. Ewan McGregor manages to make the young Obi-Wan (who now looks like Jesus Christ) a somewhat poetic and likable figure, whilst Samuel L. Jackson is a capable Jedi and Christopher Lee does his usual larger than life villain. Natalie Portman, as cute as she may be, can't make heads nor tails of her Padme, always talking in a flat, high pitched voice that makes her sound too much like a girl and not enough like a woman. Hayden Christensen tries hard but he's either too stiff as Anakin or he's just annoying and, ultimately, he comes off as a sadistic creep. It's not like Al Pacino in the Godfather, where his character was a smart, honorable, well intentioned man who was blind-sided by his own ruthless ambitions. Then again, Christensen doesn't really have much to work with, does he?
There are a few neat sequences - the hover chase after Jango Fett, the gladiator arena pitting Obi-Wan, Anakin and Padme against a bunch of beasts, the sight of a bunch of Jedi lighting up their light sabers (don't miss the Jedi who looks like a cone head and the green Jedi with the dread locks), and of course, Yoda's fight with Christopher Lee (but I could have done without the Bruce Lee crowing). However, I have a hard time believing that all these Force powered Jedi could get killed by mindless robots.
Kind of makes you wonder how often George Lucas ventures out from his ranch.