2002-05-20 - 10:59 p.m.
Well I�ll be dipped in shit--I actually liked Attack of the Clones.
Trust me, no one is more surprised about this than I am.
It�s probably because of all the mental preparation I put myself through. Before seeing a Star Wars movie, I�ve learned to do four things to prepare myself:
1. Remind myself that George Lucas does certain things very well and other things very, very badly. Dialogue and characterization are not his strong suits.
That said, I think the actors do good work with some the cheesy lines they�re fed. Sure, Anakin is a snotty, self-involved 18-year-old wanker, but that�s exactly what the story calls for, and Hayden Christensen does a good job with it. By the end of the movie he�s actually managed to make Anakin�s eventual evolution into Darth Vader make a lot more sense.
The other actors also evolve--or devolve--in interesting ways. Since we last saw Obi-Wan he�s grown an Al Gore beard and turned into a real control freak where his young apprentice is concerned. And Amidala? Her primary function here--besides wearing lots of skimpy outfits (like all Lucas heroines), doing up her hair to look like Princess Leia, and occasionally kicking some ass--is to play these weird passive-aggressive come-closer-go-away games with Anakin.
In other words, the good guys are all tragically flawed--an important matter, since we already know the next movie is going to end tragically.
Oh, and there�s minimal Jar-Jar--and a complete lack of some other things that annoyed me about the previous movie (not a single reference to "midichlorians," for instance).
2. Try to put myself back into the headspace of a 12-year-old and evaluate the movie from there.
Personally, I never bought into the whole Star-Wars-as-modern-myth myth (which was present from the outset but only got worse after Lucas became full of himself and befriended Joseph Campbell). "May the Force Be With You" made a good catchphrase in 1977, but even then I was puzzled by the beatification of what, to me, was just a fun kids' movie. Why were all these grownups elevating it to quasi-religious status anyway?
My inner 12-year-old doesn�t give a tenth of a shit about character development or expressions of the collective unconscious--he likes watching stuff get blown up. And scary villains whose black capes billow out behind them as they walk. And spunky rebel-chyks who tell off their mincing, sadistic yet ineffectual captors with over-the-top lines of dialogue such as, "I noticed your foul stench as soon as I was brought on board."
That�s what I most expect from a Star Wars movie, and this one delivered the goods. Hell, even Yoda did some fighting, and it didn�t look like Miss Piggy doing karate at all. That scene was one of the best in the movie, actually.
3) Keep my bladder full so that I have something to go and do during the love scenes.
Seriously. George Lucas cannot. Do. Love scenes. Period. As soon as you see Anakin and Amidala together and the camera work gets all gauzy, run--don�t walk--to the restroom. Unless you�re nostalgic for Herbal Essence commercials, or you enjoy making Beavis-y comments a la, "Heh heh, what�s he gonna do with his light-saber now? Heh heh. ..."
4) Go in with the lowest possible expectations so that if it doesn�t suck, I�m pleasantly surprised.
Post-Phantom Menace, this wasn�t at all hard to do. And hey, it worked.
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