Shroud. Marriage. And End Credits. A few final thoughts on Attack of the Clones.
Star Wars Episode Two: Attack of the Clones (02.11.24-02.22.21)
Lord Tyranus, aka Count Dooku, arrives on Coruscant after fleeing Geonosis to tell Darth Sidious, aka Chancellor Palpatine, what is happening on Geonosis even though they both know that Palpatine already knows this.
In the Jedi Temple, Kenobi Windu and Yoda are discussing Count Dooku’s revelation. Kenobi asks, “Do you believe what Dooku said about Sidious controlling the Senate? It doesn’t feel right?” (02.13.09). Oh really? What part of an illegal war, an immediate vote of emergency powers, or a convenient clone army does feel right, Obi-Wan? Nothing about this is right on any level, and yet, the Jedi Council does nothing about it, not even question the very convenient clone army created by a dead Jedi!
Yoda dismisses Dooku’s words with a reassuring “joined the Dark Side, Dooku has. Lies, deceit, creating mistrust are his ways now” and all Windu thinks is that they should “keep a closer eye on the Senate” (02.13.24). Really, the lack of any action here on the part of the Jedi Council is just criminal. A “wait and see” policy during an inexplicable, galaxy-spanning war fought with unexplained clones is not logical, reasonable, or realistic for what is self proclaimed to be the highest moral authority in the galaxy. But, Lucas wrote the Jedi Council this way which is why they go from mystical warriors in the original trilogy to the dumbest of dupes and pawns in the prequel trilogy.
No, Yoda, the “shroud of the dark side” fell long ago (02.13.57).
Senator Organa watches the clones board ships for battles abroad with more than a little regret. Too late, buddy. Your failure will be complete when that same army destroys your home world, and you along with it.
Anakin weds Padme, and she does not look happy to be married to Darth Vader while the galaxy plunges into needless war. Who can blame her?
(02.15.56)
I have said why I think Anakin is already Darth Vader, why the Clone Wars began impossibly, and many other things throughout my Deconstruction of Star Wars Episode Two: Attack of the Clones. There is no more to say about that, but what surprises me are my feelings before and after the deconstruction. When I started, I thought that Clones was going to be much better than Menace, and mostly that is still true. More of the story makes more sense, and the characters act a bit more rationally, but I discovered that there is much to this movie that is strong evidence of a fundamental failure of re-writing. Even in composing my previous blog post, hardly itself a masterful work, I spent almost as much time re-writing and editing as I did in the initial draft. I ended up restructuring paragraphs, adding bits, deleting phrases and rabbit-trails (probably not enough), and shaped what I finally published. It again seems like Lucas did none of those things to improve the story of Attack of the Clones, especially when entire sequences are added after the movie was 80% finished in post-production. Sadly, it seems like Lucas’ dependence on technology to help him tell his story only made things worse because nothing was finalized until days before the movie shipped to theaters. Anything was changeable, and anything was possible, which meant that the story was never going to be coherent or logical. A movie shot on location in a very small amount of time needs a much more rigid script, and needs to be much more thought out, because if something doesn’t make sense in post there isn’t time or ability to change it, but a movie shot entirely on green screen (with the exception of the homestead scenes) does not need to be thought through because any decision can be overturned at any time.
Film is a medium by which a story is told, and it seems to me that as Star Wars has progressed, the story has taken a tragic back seat to the special effects and the magic of modern-day movie making. George Lucas is a genius at special effects and a pioneer of digital filmmaking and has left his indelible mark on world cinema, but at the cost of the ability to tell a good story.
Compare Star Wars with Tron for a moment. Both were revolutionary in terms of scope, story, and special effects, and both had lasting effects on their generation. Tron is the story of the world inside the computer, and Star Wars is the story of the world a galaxy far, far away. Both have strong characters that carry the story and both have indelible images. Fast forward to 2003/2010 and compare Attack of the Clones with Tron: Legacy. Both were lightyears ahead of their origin movies in terms of scope and effects, but only Tron: Legacy kept the same strength of story, really the only thing that lasts for generations. Attack of the Clones‘ story was drowned and choked by the demands of the effects, and of the shock and awe. Tron: Legacy made the shock and awe subservient to the story. Watching Tron today is possible because the story overshadows the old school effects. What intrigued me about Tron: Legacy was that there were only one or two more action sequences, and the pacing stayed about the same as Tron. Watching Star Wars today is very enjoyable, because the effects were limited, and the story was paramount (because the effects literally could not carry the picture), but today, watching Attack of the Clones is painful because the awe of the effects is gone, and only the story remains, and that is sadly lacking.
Story is what matters, not how flashy or amazing the digital part of the film is. In the end, people will watch the movie decades from now and smirk at the early effects, but they will never smirk at a good story. Why is the original Star Trek still popular forty years after it was canceled? The characters, not the salt shaker props. Decades from now, when I am old, the original Star Wars will still be the most popular three of the six, and I doubt that many will cling to the prequels when all is said and done because the story of Star Wars, the Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi is so much stronger than that of the Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, and Revenge of the Sith.
End Credits.
(02.22.21)
a simple man 