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George Lucas delivers with Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones, giving fans an episode that combines the best elements of his first Star Wars films.
By STEVE PERSALL, Times Film Critic
© St. Petersburg Times, published May 16, 2002
George Lucas puts away childish things and gets down to business with Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones, the movie Jedi disciples waited 16 years to see and got Episode I instead.
Lucas delivers what we wanted three years ago, a state-of-the-art souffle of the best elements of the first Star Wars films (actually Episodes IV through VI). Nothing that happened in Episode I turns out to be necessary, exposing that movie as a flashy miscalculation, with Lucas begging for the attention of children and underestimating the tolerance of older fans.
Attack of the Clones is where the myth should have begun, with the kid stuff covered by 10 minutes of flashbacks. Like the original Star Wars (a.k.a. A New Hope), Episode II begins with a bang, yanking viewers into an intergalactic power play conveniently explained again for anyone who dozed through or dodged Episode I. From there, the movie blends the darkly epic scope of The Empire Strikes Back (Episode VI) with a more assured grasp of the Force and its Oedipal implications a la The Empire Strikes Back (Episode V), an element Episode I treated like fortune cookie wisdom.
And there is romance -- okay, too much -- as corny as the Luke-Leia-Han dynamic of the first trilogy. Anakin Skywalker's puppy crush on then-Queen Padme Amidala in Episode I turns into another kind of love triangle since the impetuous Jedi apprentice is showing signs of a personality split. Hayden Christensen (Life as a House) takes over Anakin's role, and he's no Mark Hamill, but he broods well and doesn't stumble over the Hallmark declarations of love assigned by Lucas and Jonathan Hales' screenplay.
Padme left the throne to become a senator whose stand on planetary separatism makes her an assassination target. Anakin and his mentor Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor, ably bridging the gap to Alec Guinness) are assigned to protect Padme, uncovering the political deceptions leading to the Clone Wars mentioned by Guinness in A New Hope. McGregor returns the cross-narrative favor with the film's funniest line, a deliciously prescient wisecrack.
Attack of the Clones is where the pieces of four movies start fitting together. The film is packed with identifiable references to the past (or the future, in Lucas' inverted time line), plus brief foreshadowing of the Death Star, Darth Vader's metallic nature and Princess Leia's adoptive father. We see why Yoda has a reputation as a great warrior, and exactly why Boba Fett carries such a grudge against Luke Skywalker. Open-ended questions (For example: How did Luke have an aunt and uncle to be murdered on Tatooine if his father Anakin had no siblings?) are now closed, replaced by new, refreshed curiosities.
Before we forget, Lucas is still the master confectioner of eye candy. Attack of the Clones makes Spider-Man look like a schoolboy's doodle, creating a totally enveloping atmosphere of an unearthly place and uber-human beings, as completely realized as The Fellowship of the Ring with better drama backing up the dazzle.
Lucas has a new techno-toy, a high-definition digital video camera that, combined with the computer artists at Industrial Light & Magic, practically "painted" the entire movie. Only the actors and immediate props are real. The rest materializes from boundless imagination and a determination to fill the screen with things that could never be real. Skies are filled with jet cars zooming through the skyscrapers of Coruscant, and an army of thousands looking suspiciously like Imperial Stormtroopers, cloned from the ruthless genes of bounty hunter Jango Fett, is a breathtaking sight.
These fabricated surroundings are much more interesting than the deserts and canyons of Tatooine and Amidala's overdressed palace in Episode I. But Lucas also has regained his action muse, setting up glorious chases and battles. A nighttime pursuit through Coruscant air traffic with Anakin driving fast and furious and Obi-Wan clinging to a villainous jet-droid gets your blood pumping, as does a Gladiator-style execution scene turning into a swashbuckling space rodeo. Lucas stages a stylishly violent skirmish between rebels and those clones, adding the promise that we ain't seen nothin' yet, but just wait until 2005 and Episode III.
Performances don't mean as much in these circumstances, but I wish Portman portrayed more authority than just tight-lipped line readings. The flatness shown by such usually vibrant performers as Samuel L. Jackson and Jimmy Smits is the result of reacting to the nothingness Lucas and his wizards colored in later, plus what he wrote for them. Those problems are only compounded for someone like Christensen. The best performances come from Yoda, more mobile, agile and hostile than ever thanks to digital tricks, and veteran villain Christopher Lee, who's malevolent just by blinking.
Attack of the Clones brings back the Skywalker franchise in full Force, getting back to the mythic aspects of Star Wars instead of selling video games. After Episode I, the prospect of sitting through two more chapters wasn't very appealing. Now I can't wait for Episode III and, just wishing, beyond to other chapters Lucas planned but swears he won't make. We'll see.
Grade: A-
Director: George Lucas
Cast: Ewan McGregor, Hayden Christensen, Natalie Portman, Ian McDiarmid, Samuel L. Jackson, Christopher Lee, Temuera Morrison, Jimmy Smits
Screenplay: George Lucas, Jonathan Hales
Rating: PG; sci-fi violence
Running time: 135 min.