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Finally went out to catch Send In The Clones last night and my one word review is:
Shit.
I'm very saddened by Lucas' public outing of himself as a man unable to communicate on any real level with other people. The guy's locked in his little Star Wars cage and just ain't getting out any time soon. Somewhere, on this thread or elsewhere, there was a quote attributed to Lucas in which he said that he'd no idea people didn't like The Phantom Menace. How can anyone be so insulated that they'd spend their entire life working on something and not listen to criticism? He doesn't have to act on it, but at least listen, fer crissake. The two new films show such a utter disregard for basic storytelling and audience connection that I can't imagine what it's like to live inside the head of George Lucas.
There's the defense that the films are essentially for kids, to which I say: bugger off. Philip Pullman's books are for kids, and I don't feel insulted at all whn I read them. Quite exactly the opposite. If Lucas was half the visionary he'd have people believe him to be, there'd be no hiding behind thin justifications for terrible dialogue and utter lack of character.
Lucas has only one real job in the three prequels: make Anakin Skywalker a sympathetic character so that we're hurt and saddened when he falls to the dark side of the force. There's no real mystery to the plot details. Anakin eventually gets together with Padme because they have to have kids, and then he falls, more than likely taking her with him. The Jedi fall through the Clone Wars and the Empire rises. Even the method in which Anakin becomes so physically destroyed that he must wear a walking hospital room to survive is known to the more, erm, dedicated of the fanboy contingent. There's fun to be had in playing that all out, but the important thing is that Lucas is telling a story we already know, so he's got three films worth of time in which to create and destroy his central character.
And he's blown it. Anakin is just a twat.
As written by Lucas, Anakin is just as whiny, petulant and generally irritating as his son. We've sat through Luke growing up; why is Lucas treating his audience to more of the same? I think the answer is that he doesn't know how to do anything else. AotC should present us with character who is strong and perhaps overconfident to the point of fault, in a way similar to that of his mentor. The similarities between Anakin and Obi-Wan are to be built upon; one goes in one moral direction and the other falls opposite. It's the same freaking preacher/outlaw character pair that's in every film Lucas is drawing on for the Star Wars mythos. Instead we see Anakin Skywalker, a selfish, arrogant little twat and it becomes very difficult to see exactly why anyone is putting up with this kid. That doesn't even get into the fact that he's supposed to make a former queen/galactic senator fall in love with him, but see the dialogue snippet below for more on that issue. There's no hope to be had here, and that's where the difficulty in writing up to a foregone conclusion becomes apparent. Because we know Anakin becomes the most evil bastard in the universe (or at least the second), Lucas has to work extra hard to make us believe that he fell in the first place. He's not doing it. As the first two films have gone, I'd be hard pressed to believe even that he was pushed.
I feel bad for Hayden Christiansen, because it's apparent that the kid's working here. But when you've got to speak lines such as "I wish I could wish these feelings away," what's a guy to do? There's just nothing for him to work with, and as this film went on (and on and on) I began to have the sinking feeling that Lucas really doesn't have a handle on this, that he's pulling it all out of nowhere the each day before shooting. I was deadened and finally irritated by the utter lack of conviction, of feeling of any kind, in this film.
A number of things that occurred to me:
Count Dooku. I mean, really. Why does this character's name have to be Count Shit? There was not a single person in my audience last night who was not laughing when the guy's name was spoken. NOT ONE. Can't imagine that's the point of the character. Get rid of an 'O'. Count Doku is fine - Japanese connotations, very powerful Samurai gone Ronin, trying to make himself a master. But Count Dooku? Jesus.
And more naming conventions: There just isn't time to have Palpatine be Sidious be the Emporor, for Dooku to also be Tyrannus. It's just confusing, as is all of the plot of this film. Or, to amend, the presentation is confusing. It's no problem to have Dooku be acting as a feint to draw out the Senate, etc. The way Lucas writes it reads like a fifth grader's story. And then, and then, and then, but suddenly! and then THE END.
That being said, Christopher Lee is really the only saving grace in the film.
Lucas also fails to recognize when he's got a good character on his hands. To wit: Jango Fett. The guy's got about fifteen minutes of screen time in this bloated, overlong film, before he's summarily dispatched. Utterly foolish. But that should hardly be a suprise, given that his son is treated the same way, years later. Er, was treated, years ago. And even then, when you get right down to it, these characters are great because they LOOK great. Boba Fett was never developed. He got to be a badass, silently, until a mistake by a half-blind old smuggler unceremoneously did him in. Well, OK, the couple of lines where he stood up to Vader helped. But still. A chance to further develop the thing and this is all we get? Bah.
A snippet of dialogue cut from the film:
ANAKIN
"Padme, I just massacred an entire villiage. Real Da Nang sort of stuff. But you'll still 'do' me, right?"
PADME
"Oh, Ani."
The reflexive stuff really got to me. It's so distracting to be continually reminded of other films by using the same fucking dialogue over and over. Parallels are one thing, but egregiously reusing whole scenes because you've got nothing else up yer sleeve is just sad. Did they have to fly through a giant asteriod in an asteriod belt? Kenobi hide on the back of another space rock? Anakin lose the hand? Anakin and Padme stand together as Ani flexes his new appendage? No. Probably not. With a bit of, what is it...oh. WRITING. It might have worked. Bah.
The droid assembly setpiece. Just a videogame, and an entirely pointless one at that, given how it ends. Perhaps in the Special Special Edition of ESB Lucas will have Han Solo make his way though one of Bespin's famous maze-like kitchens, avoiding cranky Ughnought cooks before arriving at the banquet hall to be confronted by Vader. Then the two films would be even more alike. And I spent that entire segment of the film waiting for 3PO to get onto a Battle Droid Commander line or something so he could get painted freaking GOLD and it never happened. Bah.
And the visual style of the film takes flat, needlessly distant composition to a new low. It's sluggish and generally uninteresting to look at. All the CGI detail is just noise. There's no need for most of it and I for one am not particularly impressed by seeing a new type of ship every 30 seconds. Sell More Toys! More than that, the action is slow, uninspired. I don't know if it's the high relieance on CGI that limits camera movement/angle/placement or if there's just a severe lack of imagination and filmic intuition on that part of Lucas and David Tattersall. I'd give 50/50 as to how that falls. And while the experienced actors do their best to work without physical sets, it's quite obvious that many of the ringers playing the backup Jedi force have no idea what they're doing. Some of those guys look like people who can't remember where they've parked the car.
The one thing I did like about the film is the way that, visually, the emergence of the Empire is becoming apparent. The Republic symbol, so similar to that of the Empire. The prototype star destroyers at the end of the film and, obviously, the stromtroopers. And I like the vague visual suggestion, begun even in TPM that Coruscant may in fact be the Death Star - because of the great circular motif seen on the planet and the very Death Star-like construction extending out from the citadel of Sidious. This can't be the case, since we see Coruscant in the shite SE's, but I'll live in my own world on this one. But in my own world, this film has always been called The Empire Strikes - ironic considering the references to TESB.
But that's all I liked. |
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