The Real George Lucas

Rating: Null/10 (19 May 2002)

I, like many of my generation, grew up idealizing George Lucas. The seemingly brilliant mind behind Star Wars and Indiana Jones was an icon for me even into film school. However, with the second installment of the spiraling disappointments known as the Star Wars prequels, we're beginning to see that George Lucas is far from a genius filmmaker.
Let's start with Attack of the Clones. Here is a movie that further does the job of making something as dreamily cool as the Jedi Knights and makes them dull, lifeless characters. Attack of the Clones is the result of a man who has spent too long directing special effects and left the actors drifting on their own.
I was worried when I heard Episode II was being "filmed" entirely in digital format that the switch to video would leave the image lifeless, as is video's reputation. But, this movie has so much more wrong with it than the stock it was shot on, things wrong with it before it ever moved onto the movie set.
The "story" centers around the further political machinations of the Sith and the crumbling of the Republic brought up in The Phantom Menace. However, stories about a setting are not interesting and Mr. Lucas seems to have completely forgotten what made Star Wars so cool in the first place: characters.
So the characters that were thrust together by dubious plot devices in the first episode continue to adventure through the galaxy in this one, except for the annoying Jar Jar, who is mercifully underscored in this picture. Even boring characters such as these would have been better served to be together, but within the first thirty minutes of the movie, everyone goes their own way and the movie stops nearly all action in favor of lecturing you about the events transpiring.
At least in the previous trilogy, when the characters got separated, it was to interact with other characters. It serves as a poor reflection on this movie that the best character in the whole movie is a now computer generated Yoda.
Everyone finally reassembles in the drawn out third act, which boils down to the now standard Star Wars epic computer generated battle scenes. The largely unmotivated third act seems to be an attempt by George to sell video games and more toys. During the ending battle, seven or eight new varieties of vehicles (aka toys) show up for no plot-driven reason.
It is clear to me, now, that everything that made the original Star Wars trilogy what it was are gone: the late, great Joseph Campbell and budget limits. Joseph Campbell made Star Wars the modern myth it is today and the limits imposed on Mr. Lucas in the early days of Star Wars forced him to streamline and focus.
The point is, nothing I can say will sway you from seeing this movie. I'm sure you'll see it eventually if you already haven't, but please do not pay full price for it. George Lucas has finally come too close to the Saturday Matinee B-movie source material he treasured as a child.