Category: Star Wars

I should mention, before I really get going here, that the novelization of Revenge of the Sith, written by Matthew Stover, is a valiant attempt to reconstruct Revenge of the Sith in such a way that things sort of make sense and are the logical result of humans being humans (in most cases: some of the characters are not human, obviously). Stover completely ignores some events in the movie, and totally reinterprets others, and, if given the choice, I would rather read the novel than watch the film because the novel is endurable and, dare I say, enjoyable. The reason why? Good writing.

The film, however, is full of bad writing, and so I begin…

Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith (00.01.50-00.08.05)

As it is almost two minutes before there is any dialogue, I will take these moments of eye candy to wonder what the heck is happening. According to the opening crawl which just faded into the stars, General Grievous has “swept” into Coruscant and kidnapped Chancellor Palpatine. It is strongly suggested later that Palpatine orchestrated this entire event simply to have Anakin Skywalker recalled from the front lines so that he could kill Count Dooku and be ripe for the turning to the Dark Side.

While this sounds good in theory, there are simply too many places where such a cunning scheme could go wrong for the Chancellor. Security would have to be told not to fight back, ships would have to be rerouted, and the Jedi would have to be kept out of the loop and somehow out of the fighting. Put this in terms of WWII and England. If Sir Winston Churchill were actually in league with Adolf Hitler and wanted to orchestrate a plan in which an elite team of Nazi soldiers kidnapped him and tried to make it across the channel, I highly doubt he would succeed without his connection to Nazi Germany being discovered, given the intense security around Churchill and the British Army stationed around England for the purpose of repelling any invasion force.

Furthermore, the recall of Kenobi and Skywalker, and their entire battle group, apparently, would be like Churchill recalling a battle group from the South China Sea. Unanswerable questions would be asked and the gambit would fail. The plausibility of Palpatine’s actions here are very much in question, especially given that at this point he hasn’t yet tried to give orders to the Jedi Council, who seem to be running the war, and it is they who would have to recall Kenobi’s battle group. I wonder if his was the closest most convenient group to recall, especially since there should have been defenses in place already.

I suppose it could be argued that the Republic cruisers we see actually are the orbital defense group and that just Kenobi and Skywalker were recalled, in their Jedi starfighters, to infiltrate Grievous’ ship, but why? Mace Windu and at least one other Jedi Knight are already on Coruscant and available to fly up into the melee, so why recall anyone from outside the system? This entire chain of events makes no sense at all. But, it is what exists, so assuming the extremely unlikely, Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi finally quit their pointless acrobatics and are staring down the gullet of spacial chaos at Grievous’ ship.

I must say, apart from being slightly overwhelming, this space battle is very well done, from a technical point of view. It is many things that the comparable battle in Return of the Jedi was, with a few homages to the attack on the first Death Star thrown in (ie Kenobi being Red Leader, and the early X-wing like fighters). It is clear this sort of chaos and setup is what Lucas wished he could have achieved for Jedi because he recreates it so well, down to the Emperor being seated in a throne on a ship with the battle raging behind him and a duel of the fates being fought in front of him. I’ll say this for Lucas: he never stops trying to perfect his films that were, in his mind, incomplete due to rudimentary special effects. That single minded pursuit of perfection is a good trait, for the most part, and one I can respect.

Anyway, at this point Kenobi’s squadron is under attack and a few of their disposable clone pilots are being blown up. For some reason Anakin wants to “go help them out” (00.04.04). Kenobi has to remind him to do his job: rescue the Chancellor. I think this is thrown in here to emphasize the trouble Anakin has letting people in his life die, but it doesn’t work because 1) Anakin has been fighting a war for three years with troops he has come to think of as disposable and 2) given the way he thinks about Palpatine throughout the rest of the film, one would think the Chancellor would rate as slightly more important.

Also going on here is a little banter between Kenobi and Skywalker. it sounds a little forced and superficial, and no doubt was added because, after Attack of the Clones, some audience members had trouble believing that Anakin and Obi-Wan were in fact friends. I’ve got no trouble with the banter, per se, as it isn’t really any worse than any other horrible prequel dialogue, but I point it out as one more thing added to revise what has come before, which is a direct result of failing to plan and write well in the first place.

Anyway, there is some drama with some missiles and buzz droids, and for some reason one of the best star pilots in the galaxy thinks it is a good idea to fire on his master’s fighter and/or physically bump into it. Other than that, I like the idea of the buzz droids because someone was thinking about the infinite options available with an army of droids. Why shoot a normal missile when you can shoot a missile full of droids that create havoc?

Finally the Jedi manage to land in the main hanger bay, and while they chop up some useless droids, Artoo finds the Chancellor. The Jedi immediately sense Count Dooku (and somehow not the evil Darth Sidious) and rightly figure it is a trap and decide to go anyway. Artoo naturally wants in on the fun, but is told to “go back” because Anakin needs him to “stay with the ship” (00.08.00). Um, why? Are they really planning on leaving in one and a half starfighters with three men? Wouldn’t Artoo prove useful? I understand that practically the droid would get in the way of all the running and fighting and madcap elevator fun, but there had to be a better way of getting the droid out of the way, like having him be separated from Skywalker and Kenobi like he got separated from Luke on Cloud City, or something. And then Kenobi tosses him a communicator as if a droid of Artoo’s specs doesn’t have one built in. (How else does Skywalker talk to him while he is sitting in the starfighter wing?)

Anyway, the Jedi go to spring the trap, and Artoo goes to pout about being left out of the action.

(00.08.05)

I am jumping into it with both feet, by which I mean that Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith does have its moments. Like Leia says, “Not many of them, but you do have them.” But, sadly, I also mean that Revenge of the Sith is bad, and not just bad, but atrocious. I begin, as always, with the opening crawl.

Star Wars Episode Three: Revenge of the Sith (00.00.00-00.01.50)

The crawl of Revenge runs until one minute and fifty seconds into the movie. Rather than reference time codes as I normally do, I refer you to the StarWars.com page that includes the entire text and will reference line numbers, as if this were poetry (but horribly bad poetry).

“War!” it begins (1). I suppose that Lucas felt, perhaps rightly so, that Star Wars had become As the Star Turns, or All My Squabbling Delegates, or Jedi Of Our Lives, or whatever clever soap opera title one wants to adapt to accurately describe the degeneration of the saga. Star Wars had gone from a stirring space opera to a lethargic soap opera in space. There was no real war in the Phantom Menace, just a few battles. There was no real war in Attack of the Clones, just a pointless, unjustified attack on a backwater planet that was not part of the Republic. Lucas, rather deftly, actually, manages to skip almost the entire war that should have been what Star Wars: the Prequels was all about: The Clone Wars. The Clone wars were alluded to in A New Hope with mystery and weight and feeling, as if it were World War II and women married the men that came home because they came home and there wasn’t anyone else. Lucas, for whatever incomprehensible reason, allotted the Clone Wars to the dark gap between movies and is now giving it the kiddy treatment over on Cartoon Network (and doing a bad job of it). So I suppose that Lucas wanted to remind people that his saga was about a galaxy spanning war, after all.

The entirety of the first paragraph of the crawl reads like it was written by a five year old. Descriptions are cliche and the sentences are as simple as those one reads in kindergarten: “See Vader run. Vader runs fast. Evil is everywhere. The Republic is crumbling. There are heroes. Padme is sad.” It is dreadful. Each of the next paragraphs is a single sentence, so why is this one four sentences long? And, my beef is not just with the structure of paragraph one, it is with the content as well. Apparently the war is being run by the “ruthless Count Dooku” (2-3). All well and good, except that we haven’t seen him be particularly ruthless, more gentlemanly and only slightly evil. And, as far as that goes, he captured a whole 20 minutes of screen time in Attack of the Clones and will have even less in Revenge of the Sith. The next two sentences are contradictory: “There are heroes on both sides. Evil is everywhere.” (4-5). To whom is the “ruthless” Count Dooku a hero? The thousands of star systems that think the Republic is corrupt and just want to secede? I doubt they would condone his “ruthless” actions. The council of toadies that are his financial backers? In my experience those who are out only for profit and career advancement only make heroes of themselves or their bank accounts, not some “ruthless” political figurehead. And, evil, by definition, is not heroic. It is craven. It isn’t courageous, it isn’t bold, it slinks and it snarls, and nothing about that is heroic. This is non-sequitarian.

Finally, however, we move beyond the sort of general plot that Lucas has been stringing loosely together over the past half a movie, and into the direct set up for this movie, and we learn that a “fiendish droid leader, General Grievous” has kidnapped Chancellor Palpatine (7-8). Again, this does not fit at all with “heroes on both sides” as someone who is “fiendish” is not heroic.

Furthermore, who is this guy? Up until now, it has seemed that Count Dooku is running the war. He seemed to be the ringleader or kingpin in Clones, and this first paragraph has told us that the attacks which are crumbling the Republic are “by….Count Dooku”. I understand that Grievous could be the commander and Dooku could be the chief, but that has to be established and documented otherwise the audience becomes confused. In the Original Trilogy, we knew there was an Emperor who ruled the galaxy, and that Vader was his right hand man running the war. We didn’t get the Emperor for part of two movies and then suddenly get Vader for half a movie and be expected to make the jump. But, not to worry, because I actually do know why Grievous is suddenly introduced here when he, perhaps, should have been around since Episode One. The reason for Grievous is this: Lucas had a brilliant idea two movies too late. General Grievous is a direct analogue to Darth Vader (Lucas has said this several times in interviews, forgive me, as I don’t have references handy). Both are “more machine than man” and both are “twisted and evil” and both are “trained in…Jedi arts” and the list goes on. Lucas had a brilliant idea to foreshadow Vader with Grievous, but if that were the case, the main villain from the beginning should have been Grievous and he should have been a blend of Dooku and the General. A force wielding mostly machine Sith hunting down the Chosen One would have been fantastic, especially since we know the formula works, and when Darth Grievous dies unredeemed, it would give much more credence to Kenobi’s belief that Vader is unredeemable.

But, because Lucas did not bother to stop and think anything through or work with more than one draft, he thought of Grievous two movies too late, quickly inserted him into the thick of things and killed him too quickly for anyone to really get it. This is an argument I have been making since Phantom Menace and Darth Maul: too many guys who are not really that bad. The Original Trilogy had exactly one: Vader. It was always and only Darth Vader. He fired first, he strangled second, he dismembered third, he trapped fourth, he taunted fifth, and he never ever showed any hint of goodness until the very end. Darth Maul said nothing, but was a bad ass animal. Darth Tyrannus/ Count Dooku seemed like a good, misguided gentleman and wasn’t particularly scary or bad ass. Greivous is so over the top and cliche that he is boring. There is no one to care enough about to hate as a villain, and a space opera, heck, even a soap opera, needs an obviously evil villain. You know, the guy who is trying to kill the kids who don’t actually belong to their parents but are actually twins, and are actually the heroes’ twins who everyone thought was dead but who has been alive all this time and is really the bad guy himself! *gasp* Or something. Point is: clear villain.

Lastly, the film begins with a “desperate mission to rescue the captive chancellor” (16-17) and, in addition to the massive star fleet, the Republic sends exactly “two Jedi Knights” on this desperate mission (15). And, we learn later, they apparently had to recall Kenobi and Skywalker from the Outer Rim. What?? What about Mace Windu and Yoda and the (it looks like hundreds of) Jedi right there on the planet from which Palpatine is being kidnapped?

Sure, the mission is desperate, but only because the Jedi are total morons.

(00.01.50)

After a two month hiatus, during which I pondered the meaning of life and the worth of continuing this blog series, Star Wars: Deconstructed is back!

After I finished deconstructing the Phantom Menace, I was actually excited and energized to continue into Attack of the Clones, but I found that about halfway through Clones I became overwhelmed by the sheer amount of bad writing, thoughtlessness, poor planning, and half-hearted work that had become Star Wars: The Prequel Trilogy. The more I thought about the films and tried to comprehend the bizarre characters, strange plots, and haphazard story elements the more I just could not find a coherent line of reasoning or a reason to continue. I was forced to come to the decision that no one had really cared enough about the story to actually make sure that it was a decent one, much less a good one.

If George Lucas, the creator of Star Wars, could not be bothered to imagine a good story, I wondered what exactly it was I thought I was doing when I was deconstructing his films. Was I wasting my time? Was I wasting effort on something that was/is irrelevant? Perhaps.

But then I took a miniature vacation while my wife was sent away on a business trip. It was a very early flight, and the airport was mostly deserted. I walked right up to the ticket counter and began the usual handing over of my ID so that my reservation could be called up, and hefting my bag onto the scale so that it could be tagged for the flight. The woman who was assisting me was probably in her mid thirties (about 10 years older than me) and I really didn’t pay much attention to her. I’ve flown many times in my life, and the process is so routine that I can go through it pretty much on auto-pilot (no pun intended). Anyway, I had to pay for my checked bag, and I pulled out my wallet and handed over my Mastercard, which has a picture of Darth Vader on it. (This fact really shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone, and actually this was my first credit card which I applied for through StarWars.com….also not surprising.)

Over the years that I have used this card, it is either ignored, or I get a “hey, cool card!” but this time the woman behind the counter glanced at my card, then at me, then said “I just let my son see that movie for the first time last night. I thought he was finally old enough, so I showed him the original Star Wars. My husband and I had a hard time deciding whether we should show him the old ones or the new ones first.” Just like that, without preamble or introductory remarks. So, me being me, while she finished the transaction on the computer, printed out boarding passes, and tagged my bag, I engaged in a brief conversation with her about why it was a good decision to start with the Original Trilogy and why it was an even better decision to think seriously about ignoring the Prequel Trilogy completely. The airport was still empty, and I had enough lead time before my flight, that I actually stood at the check-in counter for a few more minutes rounding out the discussion. She had as much to say to me as I had to say to her, and in those few minutes, I realized why this blog series was so important:

Connections.

Shakespeare’s plays, the Bible, and the earliest stories told by man are not really about the characters, the plot, or the story lines. The stories are about connections. They are about one human connecting with another human, and about how and why both react to that connection as they do. This is true: it is impossible to encounter another human being without having some reaction. Even willful ignorance of someone is a reaction. Therefore, in understanding and deconstructing exactly how the connections in Star Wars are or are not flawed is another step in honing the ability to understand the connections of every day, real life. Literature has always been a lens through which writers and readers understand the world around them. In the 21st century, film and television is our literature, just as books, and campfire stories were once the dominant “literature” of their eras (not that oral stories or written stories are passe, just not so dominant).

And, by having an understanding of something as hugely popular as Star Wars, I have an immediate connection point to other people, and a way to meaningfully interact with them, even if it is through a picture on a credit card and a ten minute conversation about children and Star Wars and a minor discussion over “correct viewing order”.

As is often the case, the people who helm the check in counter are usually the same people who take your boarding pass, and in my case, the very same same woman was also a flight attendant on my flight. I knew her, however superficially, and when I saw her later at the gate, and later still on the plane, we were able to share a smile, and a connection. That was important to me, and I would like to imagine that it was important to her as well. I was happier that morning and had a smoother flight than I think I would have ordinarily. Extrapolating to a larger scale, I know that that was an important connection, irregardless of the minuteness of it, because humans are social animals, and we live and grow through the connections we have with other people. Even a small interaction can produce positive feelings of confidence, belonging, and success, and those feelings can go a long way towards how a day, or a life, turns out, at least mentally and emotionally.

With that in mind, I continue my deconstruction of Star Wars, not only to analyze them as literature on an intellectual level, but also to evaluate them as tools with which to understand the connections around me, and to evaluate them as schemas through which to view the world (or not, depending on how badly Star Wars is or is not written). I hope that as you read these blog entries, perhaps some of what I write can enrich you, even if it is just a tiny bit, like a brief conversation at a check-in counter.

Star Wars Episode Three: Revenge of the Sith (00.00.00)

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)

Anakin and Obi-Wan confront Count Dooku and fail. Yoda confronts Count Dooku and fails. George Lucas fails.

Star Wars Episode Two: Attack of the Clones (02.03.01-02.11.23)

The lightsaber battle between Count Dooku and Yoda was the reason why Yoda needed to be done digitally for Attack of the Clones, though, to be fair, the animators also created digital Yoda to advance their craft, and for that, I salute them.

The action picks up exactly where it left off, in the middle of a chaotic, pointless battle. Obi-Wan Kenobi, Anakin Skywalker, Padme Amidala, and a few clone grunts are flying high above the battle in a Republic gunship. Out of nowhere, Kenobi spots Dooku fleeing from the arena on a speeder flanked by two fighter jets. This is miraculous because Dooku is flying through a canyon and Kenobi is flying over a massively flat desert, but anyhow…he and his gunship give chase. Anakin, clear on his objective, shouts “Shoot him down!” to which the clone pilot replies, “We’re out of rockets, sir.” Then Anakin shouts the next obvious thing, “Use your laser cannons!” and Dooku is shortly shot out of the…oh, wait, this is a prequel, and nothing makes sense (02.03.10). The only reason the gunship doesn’t shoot Dooku down with rockets is because then there could be no (anti)climatic lightsaber fight(s). Just another reason in which things happen or don’t happen so that other things can happen. Sigh. Also, the gunners in Dooku’s cover fighters have the aim of stormtroopers: conveniently bad, because they can’t hit the gunship until it offloads its Jedi. Sigh.

So, what happens instead is that a near miss and a collision with a sand dune knocks Padme out of the gunship. Again, to set up a lightsaber duel, because the obvious thing would be to have Padme shoot Dooku in the head while he is distracted by two Jedi assailants. Also, Padme is dumped so that there can be some sort of weird argument between Kenobi and Anakin to foreshadow Anakin’s utter dependence on having Padme as a trophy (as if no one got that before now). Anakin is crazy with Padme, so crazy that he is screaming incoherently about needing to pick her up out of the sand. Kenobi is making the tactical, and the Jedi, decision: sacrifice the one for the many. And, Kenobi probably figures that Padme will be just fine, after all, she can handle herself in a fight and she does have clone trooper backup. Amongst the inane babble and shouting, I discern Kenobi saying something about Anakin being “expelled from the Jedi Order” if he disobeys Kenobi, or goes back for Padme, or something (02.04.05). I am not really sure what Anakin is doing that warrants expulsion that he hasn’t done before. Perhaps Kenobi means that if Anakin marries Padme he will be expelled from the Jedi Order, but that doesn’t really fit the context. Also confusing is the little hint of the Imperial March heard during this argument. What? Is Lucas trying to imply that Anakin being (overly) concerned for Padme is indicative of his status as Darth Vader? It is through insane attachment that he is said to fall to the Dark Side, but still, such a foreshadowing makes little to no sense.

Yoda seems to be inordinately attuned to Anakin, and he calls for a ship so that he can arrive to distract Dooku from killing Anakin and Obi-Wan. I wonder why this is the case.

I’ve said this before, but in the original trilogy, every single lightsaber battle happened for a reason. Each of the battles was an extension of the dialogue, of the confrontation between characters: Obi-Wan confronting Vader again, Luke confronting his father, Vader trying to entice Luke to evil. The battles in the prequels happen arbitrarily. Maybe something could be said for Darth Maul just trying to wipe out Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan, but actually engaging Count Dooku here seems premature. The Jedi would not want Dooku dead, they would want him to stand trial for his crimes and to have his Sith-ness revealed. An entire clone army is just beyond reach, so all they need to do is stall him until troops arrive (because it is unthinkable that the clone pilot would not have called in a report about Dooku during the pursuit). Actually, they are closer to the ship than Dooku is when they show up, so why not just throw a lightwrench into the engine and end the conflict right there? They still might fight, but then it could be a Sith outpouring of rage from Dooku, and could be at least analogous to Darth Maul on Naboo in Phantom Menace.

At any rate, Anakin stupidly rushes in and gets zapped by Force lighting, all because Dooku is not Maul, and Anakin and Obi-Wan would have easily defeated Dooku. Dooku then plays with Obi-Wan before slashing his leg and arm. Sigh. Look, I know Dooku is supposed to be uber powerful in the Force, but Obi-Wan is easily 60 years younger and pretty Force strong himself. I simply don’t buy Dooku’s easy victory, especially in light of how ferocious Kenobi was against Maul. In every lightsaber battle in the prequels, except for the Anakin vs Obi-Wan in Revenge of the Sith (because then they are as they should have been: roughly equal), each combatant is only as skilled, or strong, as the script requires them to be, which means, logically, there is no reality to these fights at all. The audience is frustrated by inaccurate portrayal of strength, speed, or skill, which, in turn, makes the fights completely meaningless and yanks the audience out of the experience of the film. Quod erat demonstrandum: these lightsaber battles are the epitome of bad writing. As Lucas himself reiterates time and time again, this is more because “everyone has been waiting to see Yoda fight with a lightsaber” and not because these fights make any kind of contextual sense.

Which brings me, in a round about way, to my biggest gripe here: the endless, meaningless, pointless dialogue between Jedi/Sith in the prequels about their “powers”. Forgive my crassness, but this is like the Jedi version of “bigger is better”. Dooku: “As you can see, my Jedi powers are far beyond yours.” (02.05.17). “I’ve grown more powerful than any Jedi, even you” (02.08.45) Yoda: “Powerful you have become, Dooku.” (02.08.34) . Seriously, this is like a fanboy discussion. What is it doing in the movie?? Besides which, Dooku’s claims (especially) are ludicrous because Kenobi absorbs the force lightning with his lightsaber, and Yoda deftly catches it and sends it back. He just sounds like an idiot. And then he goes and says “It is obvious that this contest cannot be decided by our knowledge of the Force, but by our skills with a lightsaber” (02.09.12). Yeah, because, if it comes to throwing rocks around, Yoda totally can kick your butt.

What I hate most about this: it trivializes the Force. Telekinesis is not the point. Mastering one’s self is the point. Moving rocks is simply the outer demonstration of the inner calm and focus. That is why Vader threw stuff at Luke during the duel on Bespin: to prove that Luke was too unmastered to be either Sith or Jedi, and to prove that Sith can be more focused than Jedi. Vader threw stuff to distract Luke, to make him angry, frustrated, and to goad him towards giving in to hate and falling to the Dark Side. Not to win a “contest” or prove his skill was at a higher level than Luke’s. All the posturing and throwing lighting around is elementary school yard strutting and not something a venerable Jedi Master or a venerable former Jedi Master would do. Lucas’ inner fanboy wrote this scene, and he made Yoda sound and look completely ridiculous.

To say nothing of the fact that a 2.5 ft hobbling old alien fighting a 6.5 foot old man is the stupidest idea ever.

There is no way that this fight could actually be realistic at all. And Lucas knew it. In the “making of” material on the Attack of the Clones disc, Lucas says over and over that to do this wrong would make it look ridiculous. I would amend his theory to say that to do it at all makes it ridiculous. This is why, during the whole of the Lord of the Rings, there were no actual serious sword fights between the hobbits and anyone else: because little people fighting big people just looks silly.

The age thing also makes this fight preposterous. Christopher Lee, the actor who portrayed Count Dooku, was so infirm that he only performed the scenes in which he was standing still. He was unable to actually fight, and Lucas even considered replacing him with a digital Dooku. Yoda’s age also is a negative factor, which is why in every screening of Attack of the Clones I went to, people laughed when, after the fight, he uses the Force to pick up his cane and proceeds to hobble over to Anakin and Obi-Wan. If seconds ago he was leaping and spinning about, why does he hobble with a cane? It is so ludicrous it is laughable. Every single time.

Last quibble: as soon as Dooku turns his attention from Yoda to toppling the big column thing, Yoda could have totally leaped up and cut his head off. End of Story.

Well, almost. I know that Padme shooting at Dooku’s fleeing ship with a look of desperation on her face is supposed to mirror Leia shooting at Boba Fett’s ship with a look of desperation on her face, but here is the difference: Leia had an intensely personal reason to fire. Han was on that ship and she was too late to save him. Padme doesn’t even know, for sure, that Dooku is on that ship. This is just Lucas copying from himself shot for shot without once thinking about why things happen the way they happen.

Dooku flies off to his master, and Anakin and Obi-Wan hobble away from a pointless lightsaber battle.

(02.11.23).

And now I come to the final three posts of Star Wars: Deconstructed for Attack of the Clones. I am covering a lot of screen time because little of what happens for the rest of the movie is real, or realistic. Never before have so many pixels fought over so little since the days of Atari and Space Invaders.

Star Wars Episode Two: Attack of the Clones (01.35.29-02.03.00)

This part of the film begins with Padme and Anakin arriving on Geonosis, so while they make their approach, I want to talk about why starting the Clone War as it happens in the movie makes no sense.

First, this is a rescue operation, not an invasion. Second, there is no clear enemy. Third, this is not a just war.

1st) Anakin and Padme, who are homing in on some exhaust vents of some kind, are trying to rescue Obi-Wan Kenobi from an unknown threat, and they are rushing to do so because the Jedi Council (and therefore help) is much farther away and unprepared to mount a rescue on the spur of the moment. All that is known to all concerned is this: Obi-Wan is on Geonosis, having tracked Jango Fett there from Kamino. He told them that Count Dooku, so far the peaceful leader of a movement to secede from the Republic, has made some sort of alliance with some large businesses, and that the alliance is building an army of droids. After that he was cut off by a droid attack.

2nd) Who are the Separatists? In the opening crawl, the Separatists are “several thousand solar systems” which have only declared their intention to leave the Republic, and haven’t, apparently, made an actual attempt to do so. The audience never actually sees this body politic because the films portray the Separatist leadership as those seen here in Attack of the Clones: a bunch of businesses. So, as the Clone War begins, the “rescuers” are actually an army which invades a neutral system and proceeds to attack people they are not officially even at war with, and potentially people who they are supposed to protect, ie, their own citizens, and they destroy a bunch of property belonging to legitimate business owners. There are no real Separatists or enemies here.

3rd) This is not a just war. Unfortunately, I do not know enough about Just War Theory to expound upon it at this time, but I do have a few observations. Geonosis is neutral territory, not being part of the Republic. What happens on Geonosis is outside of the Republic’s jurisdiction, which is probably why Count Dooku is there, outside of the fact that the Geonosians are building battle droids, a commodity that he needs. Second, he can make any business arrangements he wishes to with any corporate entity he wishes to on two grounds: first, he is a Count, meaning that he has some royal standing on wherever he comes from, and second, he represents an ad-hoc government, or at least a committee of some sort, and this seems to be just a business arrangement whereby some droids are transferred in ownership. Sure, this seems like a bid to create an army to force the issue of secession, but right now it seems to be entirely legal, and without overt aggression towards the Republic. Even the “attack” on Kenobi is not clear provocation because Kenobi is most likely trespassing on foreign soil as a spy. If anything, what the Republic is doing is illegal.

Now, I am unsure what America would do if they caught, say, DHL stocking up on tanks and automatic weapons, but I would hope that the American army would not invade their headquarters in Bonn, Germany. (One could say that America did this in Iraq, and they would be right except that DHL is a company, not a country, and Poggle the Lesser doesn’t seem to be a dictator a la Hussein who is wiping out his own constituents and he hasn’t actually built the weapon of mass destruction yet [again, neither did the Iraqis, apparently]. But, say Geonosis is Iraq, and Palpatine is former President Bush, and maybe you understand another reason why Lucas is a bad writer/director: he copies stories from the news and he makes his films political.)

Basically the Republic is proving the Separatists’ main point for them. This is not an evil Empire stamping out freedom, this is senseless aggression and malcontent. Palpatine refuses to acknowledge corruption or deal with the problem directly (mostly because he is corruption) and therefore he chooses to simply kill those who disagree with them. Lucas tries hard to make the Separatists the villains, but in fact, they are the heroes. (An odd choice if you interpret Episodes II and III according to the American politics of the time, because then Lucas would be saying that Bush was the hero when he obviously thinks otherwise. Or does he? There don’t seem to be any heroes here because Palpatine is evil, the Senate is weak, Anakin is a child murdering child, the Jedi are dumb dupes, Kenobi is narrow minded, Padme is a self-righteous enabler of evil, and Dooku is one dimensional – in fact the only hero seems to be Artoo Detoo.)

Beyond that, I only have a few loosely connected thoughts about what happens before and during the battle:

Anakin and Padme land in some exhaust vents, which they inexplicably think is a good place to be. This is just stupid. How do I know that? because months after principle photography was finished, Lucas added this entire sequence because he felt the film needed more senseless action. There is absolutely no story reason for this droid factory debacle, which makes it even more amusing when Padme tells Anakin to “follow my lead: I’m not interested in getting into a war here; as a member of the Senate, maybe I can find a diplomatic solution to this mess” because just who she thinks she is going to have a diplomatic conversation with in a droid factory is beyond me (01.36.07). Also, her naiveté is overwhelming if she thinks she can avoid a war which Palpatine is so clearly itching to start.

The dialogue between Anakin and Padme before entering the arena is just execrable, so I am going to ignore it, and anyway, it is a rehashing of stuff they have said before. No new material there, same old…

I do like some of the interplay between C-3P0 and R2-D2, which for me was always a delight to watch in the Original Trilogy. And, I always smile when Anakin and Padme are led into the execution arena to a sarcastic Obi-Wan, “I was beginning to wonder if you got my message” and “good job!” with a pointed look at his shackles (01.45.08). Clearly he expected Anakin to rush to his rescue, despite all orders to the contrary. Finally, I like that throughout the entire battle in the arena, the acklay (the beast that looks like a praying mantis) has it out for Kenobi. The creature goes after Obi-Wan with a singular passion until the Jedi handily dispatches him with a borrowed lightsaber.

I wish there would have been a scene that explained how we get to a gladiatorial execution. Somehow it is assumed that our heroes were going to be killed, but I don’t get there, logically. It seems to be: these are our film’s villains, so they kill people, but in the Original Trilogy, there was very little summary execution of anyone who wasn’t an Imperial star destroyer officer. Also, it is very convenient that Padme has a lock pick in her utility belt.

If Mace Windu is able to sneak up behind Count Dooku, why not just kill Dooku? He just lets Dooku and Co. walk away after some inconsequential posturing, while waiting for Dooku’s droids to arrive. He just waits. And Fett waits to douse him with fire. If anyone was seeking an immediate end to this “war” Windu would have taken Dooku hostage and used him as a shield between himself and the droids/Fett and forced a surrender, or cease fire, or negotiations or something.

Tthe Kaminoans must be into manufacturing weapons and materiel, not just clones, because the clones that Kenobi saw have armor and weapons, and somehow they have an entire army’s worth of transportation, munitions, and sundry vehicles of war by the time they arrive on Geonosis. If the Kaminoans did not manufacture all of these, which seems rather unlikely to me (because companies tend to specialize what they make, and manufacturing on that scale seems to be beyond the scope of a single planet in the Star Wars galaxy), then where all that war stuff came from is left unexplained.

Yoda shows up with the clone army, and everyone forgets about trying to get Dooku and the other Separatists who are still in the arena somewhere. Yoda even says, “If Dooku escapes, rally more systems to his cause, he will.” (01.57.58). I totally agree, because the Republic’s invasion was unjust and illegal, and that makes for good “Republic is Corrupt” propaganda. But, if this is true, why did everyone just vacate the immediate vicinity of Dooku’s last known position? He doesn’t turn around and walk off his balcony until after the last Republic gunship flies off. This is just stupid. Everyone just rushes out to fight a war already in progress (when did this battle start? how? why? why didn’t the Republic fleet just fire from space and wipe out the droids, Separatist ships, and everything else on the ground?). Furthermore, I don’t understand why the Jedi lead the clones into battle? Windu made a point at the beginning of the film of saying that the Jedi are not soldiers. The clones seem perfectly capable of fighting a war. I know that Clone Wars are Palpatine’s way of killing all the Jedi, but as I’ve said before, this is clumsy, and it doesn’t make sense that the Jedi would assume command, especially since the entire order has made a point of renouncing aggression as the path to the Dark Side.

The Death Star’s cameo in this film is confusing because it somehow takes the Empire 23ish years to build the first Death Star and only 3 years to build the second Death Star. Does that seem off to anyone else?

The only win here: the image of Boba Fett finding his father’s helmet amid the carnage. That was a moment of quiet poetry amid a cacophony of hack writing.

Finally, this battle is overkill. Way too many droids to believe anyone could survive, even Jedi. Or, way too many Jedi to appreciate their singular talents or believe that any useless little droid could survive. Way too many computer generated images and nowhere near enough reality. After a certain point the viewer is just overwhelmed with the digital unreality.

There is just too much going on to really focus on any of it, which is sad because Lucas and the people at Lucasfilm somehow thought that a single shot packed with so much action was a good thing. In the words of the immortal Dr. Ian Malcolm from Jurassic Park:

“You stood on the shoulders of geniuses to accomplish something as fast as you could and before you even knew what you had you patented it and packaged it and slapped it on a plastic lunchbox…your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.”

At any rate, the battle between expendable digital armies is about to become secondary to two really lame lightsaber fights.

(02.03.00).

Anakin just murdered an entire clan, or tribe, of Tusken Raiders and is returning to the Lars homestead with his mother’s body. Padme cares very little for this fact, shrugging off their deaths as a natural result of human anger. And, as if that weren’t disturbing enough, from this point onwards, the galaxy runs headlong for civil war, though that course of action is not the logical result of anything.

Star Wars Episode Two: Attack of the Clones (01.23.09-01.35.28)

Anakin rides up, and carries his mother’s body into the homestead. He still looks pretty pissed while he does this. Meanwhile, one thing to notice during this scene, and remembering the rest of the scenes on Tatooine: everyone wears one change of clothing, except Padme, who here, like everywhere, changes clothes every ten minutes. When does she do this, and why? And how much of her taxpayer’s income goes toward funding, and transporting, her obscenely massive wardrobe?

Anyway, on to the true horror of this section of Attack of the Clones. Padme finds Anakin in the shop, the very same workshop in which Luke will fiddle with an older Artoo and find a message from Leia to Obi-Wan Kenobi. Anakin is fixing the shifter on the speeder, and Padme offers blue milk and cookies. Anakin talks incoherently for a few minutes about nothing before exploding into a small rage and blaming Obi-Wan for his failure to remake the universe as he saw fit. (By the way, this discussion is very much a rehash of the earlier conversation in Padme’s apartment back on Coruscant.)

Anakin is acting like a five year old who has never seen death before, which is impossible. He has been living at the Jedi temple ever since he was “rescued” from Tatooine by Qui-Gon Jinn, and given the way the Jedi celebrate death, I find it hard to believe he never once attended a bonfire funeral and learned about death. Or his mother’s death has forced a psychological break in which he has reverted to a child-like state, which could explain his temper tantrum, ie, mass murder. Padme even responds to him as she would a child: “sometimes there are things no one can fix” before trying to gently crush his thoughts that he can stop death: “you are not all powerful” but Anakin isn’t listening: “well, I should be!” (01.24.37). What? Where does this idea come from? The quiet whispers of Palpatine?

At this point, Padme should be starting to seriously reconsider her relationship with, and physical proximity to, Anakin. Delusions of grandeur and megalomania are signs of an increasingly unstable person.

Anakin continues to sound like an angry little child when he insists that he will be “the most powerful Jedi ever!” I mean, I would expect to hear this from a kid throwing a tantrum, but not a 19 year old (01.24.48). I am starting to think that while George Lucas was writing this dialogue he was thinking of the 9 year old little kid Anakin was in the Phantom Menace: “I’ve built the fastest pod ever!”

Padme asks what is wrong. And gets this reply:

“I…I killed them. I killed them all. They’re dead. Every. Single. One of them. And not just the men. But the women. And the children, too. They’re like animals, and I slaughtered them like animals. I HATE them!” (01.25.50).

Padme should be running, not walking, back to her ship and blasting the heck away from Tatooine, or calling the Jedi Council for someone to come and lock up her boyfriend before he slaughters anyone else like an animal.

“To be angry is to be human,” (01.26.09). What? what is she doing? Sitting down, talking gently, rubbing hair, giving Darth Vader safe haven? No. She is a senator of the Galactic Republic, a person of annoyingly high moral character, outraged over the littlest form of injustice and a human being, and she shrugs off an admission of wholesale slaughter of innocents with a trite platitude. Murder may be the natural human response to a great injustice, but it is one almost every civilized nation on this planet condemns and expects its citizens to restrain from exercising. We lock up and execute people who refuse to follow this mostly universal and very simple rule. Nothing explains why Padme absorbs and promptly forgets Anakin’s admission of heinous guilt. But, she will do the exact same thing several times again in Revenge of the Sith. More and more I think Padme is as tweaked as Anakin.

Artoo interrupts a funeral, and more pathetic whining and self-aggrandizement from Anakin, “carrying a message from an Obi-Wan Kenobi” in a cute little foreshadowing of a New Hope (01.28.06). I want to draw attention to Lucas’ editing style in the next little sequence: he tends to leap from point to point in a story while skipping as much of the connective tissue as possible. This is a tendency that he has carried for a while, a fact confirmed to me when I recently read a transcript of a story meeting between Lucas, Spielberg, and Larry Kasdan in which they discussed Raiders of the Lost Ark scene by scene. To whit: Anakin and Padme suddenly appear inside Padme’s ship, and then a few Jedi and Senators suddenly appear in Chancellor Palpatine’s office. There is no farewell scene between Anakin and the Lars family. There is no explanation as to why Kenobi’s voicemail is relayed to the Senate building instead of the Jedi Temple, or what this group is even doing there. The setting of these scenes is convenient, and the jumps between them designed to waste as little time as possible, but sometimes those connective moments need to remain. Rather than have Indiana Jones immediately appear in different countries, someone (I am guessing Spielberg) put in travel montages overlaying a map to imply travel time. It wasn’t much, but I think it was more elegant than “Scene Cuts to Morocco”. Personally I think that Anakin just walked away from the Larses without a word, much in the same way that he arrived, but seeing that would reinforce just how much of a dick Vader is. But, I think it is much more important why that particular group is assembled in Palpatine’s office.

Why does Padme react with more horror to Kenobi being attacked in his video voicemail than to Anakin’s admission of mass murder?

Anyway, Yoda says something very obvious: “more happening on Geonosis, I feel, than has been revealed” and like Windu replies, “I agree” (01.28.59). Right after this plans are made to vote Palpatine emergency powers so that he can approve the creation of a clone army that already exists so that the Jedi can take it to Geonosis and start a war with a political group “within” the Republic over the incarceration and planned execution of one Jedi who was probably trespassing.

I don’t know where to begin. Hmm. Ok, back to Anakin: “if he’s still alive” (01.29.29). Good point. Before launching the galaxy into civil war, why not ascertain all the facts first? The Jedi Council, Palpatine, and Padme all jump to conclusions an decide on lethal action before any attempt at all is made to actually figure out what the heck is going on. Isn’t this a Senate sanctioned Jedi investigation? Isn’t Palpatine in negotiations with the Separatists? Couldn’t he open talks with Count Dooku about the events and get his side of the story? All of these people assume that Kenobi is about to be killed, or is in danger of death, but he could be A) already dead or B) incarcerated. And even if he is important enough for some sort of military action, wouldn’t a covert operation with Jedi commandos be better than a full scale invasion of what appear to be completely legal droid manufacturing plants on a planet that may never have been part of the Republic? I know that Palpatine is eager to launch his Jedi killing war which will vault him into emperorship, but is no one else realizing what is blatantly occurring? Even the good Senator Bail Organa is simply looking for a loophole that will short circuit the debate in the Senate that has thus far stonewalled creation of a Republic army. Obviously many Senators are still against an army and open war with the Separatists, and I fail to see them all just quietly going along with this grave miscarriage of justice and governmental responsibility.

And another thing, what would make perfect sense is for Anakin to rush off to try to save Kenobi after being given strict orders not to interfere because the Republic doesn’t want to start a war, but he does so anyway because Obi-Wan “is like [his] father” (01.29.35). Padme has to convince Anakin to do something he just did. Anakin disobeyed strict orders to protect Amidala by high-tailing it to Tatooine to save his mother, so why does he need to be convinced to do the exact same thing? Come on, Lucas, this was an easy scene to write!

One more thing, back in Palpatine’s office, during the discussion of how to hoodwink the Senate into allowing the creation of an army, Palpatine’s advisor laments (in one of the more ridiculous exchanges in the movie) “if only Senator Amidala were here” in an attempt to get Jar Jar to volunteer as political pawn (01.30.46). That makes no sense, because Amidala was, in the beginning of the film, flying to Coruscant to vote against the Military Creation Act. She was the strongest opponent of such action, even. She would be the last person to give Palpatine that power. This writing/internal logic/plot planning is so bad it hurts.

Lastly, there is a little scene between Count Dooku and Obi-Wan Kenobi which is meant to mirror the confrontation between Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker in Empire Strikes Back, but without the emotional weight, drama, and high stakes. Much is revealed, but because Kenobi is a fool and an idiot, all the truths are dismissed as outright lies. Count Dooku tells Obi-Wan all of this as plainly and as honestly as possible and Kenobi hums and puts his fingers in his ears. If this weren’t so stupid (I mean, at least pretend to believe and pump for information to be verified later!) it would be laughable how obstinate Kenobi is being. Dooku tries to recruit him, somewhat lamely, and mentions that he thinks Qui-Gon Jinn would join him, and given my examination of Jinn during Phantom Menace, I believe him completely. Jinn would definitely have joined Dooku, and that would have been an interesting wrinkle in the story.

But, while Kenobi spins in disbelief, Anakin flies to his rescue, Jar Jar votes emergency powers, and the galaxy drives towards senseless war on the wings of Mace and his Jedi and Yoda and his clones.

(01.35.28).

Anakin Skywalker returns home to Tatooine to find that not much has changed, except that his mother has been tortured to death, and he takes that rather personally. Meanwhile, Obi-Wan Kenobi does some super sleuthing on Geonosis and uncovers an evil plot.

Star Wars Episode Two: Attack of the Clones (01.11.19-01.23.08)

Watto was able to find the bill of sale for Shmi Skywalker which helpfully included the address to the Lars Homestead: somewhere in the desert on the other side of Mos Eisley. Anakin is reunited with his droid friend, C-3P0, as he approaches the familiar homestead, but as with everything and everybody in this scene, Anakin does not care. He appears to be consumed with finding his mother, but really he is consumed with himself: his pain, his anger, his insecurities, his frustrations, his desires. This theme continues through the next segment and into Revenge of the Sith, but it is begun here. Notice: Anakin descends into the Lars homestead and is introduced by Threepio, and Owen in turn introduces himself and Beru, but Padme is left to introduce herself while Anakin glowers around at everything, barely acknowledging anyone’s presence.

I find myself wanting to find fault with Anakin’s behavior while at the same time excusing it. He has a terrible premonition that something bad is happening to his mother, but at the same time he doesn’t know anything concrete. I compare this to Luke’s vision about Cloud City from Empire Strikes Back, since this is obviously the same exact sequence (for the most part) and while Luke was tormented by his vision, tight lipped, and conflicted, he was ultimately able to function. Anakin barely functions, but that fits his obsessive, brooding nature. Still, not introducing Padme and not engaging with people who have invited you into their home (especially when they are family) is the purview of a jerk.

Cliegg Lars, Anakin’s stepfather, then appears and tells the sad tale that Shmi was kidnapped by the local Tusken Raiders. (Aside: given Lucas’s out-of-control copying of himself, it is rather shocking that Beru is not pouring blue milk for her guests.)

I like the fact that the Tuskens are involved in this tragic little sequence: they move from minor antagonists in A New Hope to a group of people that have some sort of culture, place on Tatooine, and a back story. Lucas establishes that the Tuskens are people: savage, maybe, but people.

A few more homages later (“Where are you going?” and Anakin staring at the suns – 01.13.48) Anakin takes off to find his mother, following some internal Force compass. Again, I like the quick scene in which Anakin seems to be getting directions from a group of Jawas: it reflects back to A New Hope while flushing out the Jawas just a bit more.

But, this is where things get bad: Lucas has built the tension, the mystery, and the agony of Anakin knowing his mother is in some sort of danger, having those fears confirmed, and then racing off into the night to find her in a desperate, hopeless journey and then Lucas just kills it by arbitrarily cutting to Obi-Wan on Geonosis. The audience has connected with Anakin’s mounting anxiety and fear, and is on the edge of their seat (sort of) wondering if Shmi lives and if Anakin will find her when all of that investment is cast aside.

Obi-Wan looks around, sneaks around, and eavesdrops on Count Dooku and his posse of Separatist collaborators. This scene is slow, expositional, and political all of which equal: boring mood killer. Besides which the political stuff is confusing. It is something about pledging support, signing some undefined and never mentioned again treaty (I wonder if this treaty includes a clause that legalizes the Trade Federation’s occupation of Naboo?), and putting together an army of battle droids to overwhelm the Jedi, thereby forcing the Republic to capitulate to a series of “demands”. Perplexed? Me too.

I thought the Separatists wanted to Separate from the Republic because they believe (correctly, by the way) that the Republic is corrupt, unable to function, and in need of serious reformation. So, why is Dooku allying with a bunch of corporations? He talks about tens of thousands of star systems joining his cause, but he has not one single political entity on the Separatist council. Why would a bunch of concerned politicians join with a bunch of corrupt and sleazy businessmen? Especially since a major player is Nute Gunray who is still in charge of the Trade Federation and who is still responsible for the largest galactic outrage in the past ten years (who is also still somehow blaming Amidala for his loss at Naboo instead of Sidious even though doing so makes no sense) (but it is nice that someone is remembering that someone is supposed to be trying to kill Amidala instead of letting her picnic in open fields and take a little jaunt over to Tatooine).

You see why this totally kills the Anakin-desperately-trying-to-find-mother-in-distress tension?

But, just as soon as Obi-Wan conveniently hears everything he needs to hear, the audience finally gets to catch back up with Anakin who is sneaking into the Tusken camp to find his mother, which he does, and she dies in his arms having apparently held on to life in order to see his face once more.

Touching. Tragic.

And then Darth Vader appears in all of his horrific, evil glory.

This is the moment in which Anakin Skywalker turns to the Dark Side of the Force and becomes Darth Vader. Sorry, Obi-Wan, he was not seduced: he chose it. Killing Dooku on the bridge of Greivous’ ship is a mere formality. Stopping Mace Windu from assassinating Sidious is beside the point. Slaughtering Jedi children and the Separatist council are just two more heinous war crimes yet to be committed. This is the moment. Right here Anakin closes his mother’s eyes and chooses to punish an entire clan of men, women, and children for the crimes of a few, or perhaps even just one. Anakin chooses rage, passion, wrath, and revenge over serenity, compassion, understanding, peace, and forgiveness. Anakin chooses Sith over Jedi.

Anakin murders everyone. Anakin deliberately chooses to commit horrible evil. Anakin deliberately chooses to become Darth Vader.

(I know that Anakin just tragically witnessed his mother dying. I know that Anakin has unresolved mother issues. None of that excuses wanton murder. At all. Ever.)

That part of this sequence makes sense; it has been building for quite some time. What doesn’t make sense is that George Lucas once again kills all emotion, tension, and suspense by cutting as quickly as possible from Anakin’s unleashing of hell to a completely superfluous and unnecessary scene in Yoda’s quarters where he senses Anakin’s pain. The other horrible consequence of framing Anakin’s murderous rampage this way is that it distances the audience from what he has just done and seeks to excuse it. Immediately the focus shifts from the unjustifiable killing of many to Anakin’s pain, to Anakin. Poor Anakin who has just lost his mommy, not poor Tuskens who didn’t ask for genocide.

And, even if the scene shift to Yoda was for story reasons, for instance, teasing Qui-Gon Jinn’s return from death (“Anakin! Anakin! Noooo!” 01.20.54) and Obi-Wan’s subsequent Force-ghost existence, that is a very, very bad reason to cut because that is a very, very minor technical world-building detail afterthought. Even having Qui-Gon’s disembodied voice in this scene at all is confusing, jarring, and never explained until the end of Revenge. It is a “huh? what was that?” moment that pulls the audience out of the story completely.

Anyway, Anakin’s decent into evil is distanced some more and the emotion is scattered a bit wider when the scene cuts back to Obi-Wan who is fiddling with his CB radio, which he does for far too long boring the audience completely.

At any rate, Anakin is traveling back to the homestead while Obi-Wan leaves a message on his answering machine instead of calling any other Jedi that might be in the area.

(01.23.08)

Having almost ground the movie to a dusty halt over the past half hour, Lucas and Co. throw in a fight scene and a chase-through-asteroids scene in a bid to regain some momentum and probably wake up the audience. I think it is certainly better than Anakin and Padme trying to have an adult conversation.

Star Wars Episode Two: Attack of the Clones (00.58.59-01.11.18)

The scene opens with Anakin in bed, having a nightmare. After the rough, emotion filled evening he just experienced, it is hardly surprising that he is not sleeping well. I wish that Lucas showed the dream rather than Anakin dreaming, but only because watching someone have a bad dream feels awkward and voyeuristic. Also, seeing the dream requires additional thought and creativity which Lucas apparently didn’t feel like exerting. Furthermore, I strongly feel that this scene is supposed to mirror Luke’s vision in Empire Strikes Back, but in that scene, there were other things happening because Luke wasn’t, strictly speaking, dreaming and that gave much more depth to the scene. As this is part of a larger point I want to make, I will come back to it in a few moments.

Anakin, it seems, doesn’t return to sleep but spends the rest of the night meditating. When Padme wakes up and stumbles outside, she seems him, but turns to go. Anakin requests that she stay because her “presence is soothing” whatever that means (00.59.54). Padme merely comments on Anakin’s obvious bad night, trying to get him to talk about what is bothering him, but Anakin reverts to a twelve year old state when he tries to deny his bad night by snarling “Jedi don’t have nightmares”; a statement that is as inhuman as it is false (00.59.52). Padme patiently points out that she heard him having the bad dream, but it still takes Anakin a few moments before he admits the truth. Why? Because Anakin possesses unrealistic ideas about what it means to be a Jedi. Padme’s cold dose of reality breaks through his feeble defenses, and he confides in her. Given half an inch of freedom Anakin runs to find his mother, which I believe he would have done eventually, even without the bad dreams, but the premonitions give him a good excuse.

And there endeth the plot development for this part of the film. Obi-Wan brawls with Jango on Kamino, and then chases him through an asteroid belt in orbit over Geonosis. Meanwhile Anakin tracks down his mother through Watto, who sold her years ago, business being business.

One amusing tidbit: when Obi-Wan flies over Geonosis before landing to check things out, he mentions that there is “an unusual concentration of Federation ships” but what he means by this I have no idea (01.10.45). Is there some sort of galactic rule that says there should only be four Federation ships at one place or something? This line, I think, is supposed to be a clue to audience that something sinister is going on, but it actually is quite meaningless and makes one scratch their head while trying to figure out what in the galaxy Obi-Wan means.

But, on to a more troubling matter: Lucas copies himself way too much. In the behind the scenes material for the Phantom Menace, Lucas discusses Anakin blowing up the droid control ship as a future echo of Luke blowing up the Death Star and says that such tropes are “like poetry…they rhyme; every stanza rhymes with the one after it. Hopefully it will work” (3.29 “A Beginning…”). Unfortunately for Lucas, I don’t think it works. Because…

Lucas is not a poet. He is not a writer. He is a special effects wizard who had a great story idea. What he doesn’t realize is that rhyming is a very subtle thing, used too obviously or too liberally and it disgusts rather than delights. Poetry is about seducing language in order to seduce, delight, and tantalize the reader. Lucas’s poetry is not tantalizing: it is a kick in the face. Almost every single thing in the prequels is an echo of the future: you cannot escape it, you cannot excuse it, and you cannot ignore it. Consider Attack of the Clones: First, a love story is a strong secondary story, just like in the Empire Strikes Back. Second, a dangerous bounty hunter is introduced, and it is even the same bounty hunter. There is a chase through some asteroids. Obi-Wan hides out on the back of rock with all systems shut down to confuse his pursuer just like Han does with the Imperials. Anakin has dreams while Luke had visions. There is a big battle at the end instead of the beginning. There is a wampa and there is an acklay/reek/lexu. There is even a father figure revealed: “Watto never told you about your step-father. I am your step-father!!” And Cliegg is even missing a leg like Anakin will be soon. You get the picture? (Honestly, it is hard not too).

Lucas’s problem is not that he mirrors the original trilogy. I have said before that it is a very good thing to do. People see sequels for the express purpose of seeing a film like unto the original film, in fact it tends to be the major draw to a sequel. But, what makes a successful sequel is not a carbon copy of the original: that is, by definition, a failure. (To be fair, people disagree with me about this.) For instance, I believe the endless horror sagas that are popular today are failures because, while the first film might be an innovation, every successive sequel uses the exact same setup and tells pretty much the same story. Lucas does manage to weave new material into the prequels, but not much, which is why I think the Star Wars sequels are better than they otherwise would be.

My point is that one or two major references to the original trilogy would have been expected, needed, and perfectly ok, but mirroring each film so closely just shows a lack of imagination and finesse. Yes, Anakin and Padme are fated to fall in love and produce Luke and Leia, but making that a hard-to-get I-admit-I-love-you-because-we-are-about-to-die love story (a la Han and Leia) was a bad idea: it should have just been a classic fall-in-love romance. Jango Fett’s entire role is unnecessary, and even if it were, forget the whole idea of a clone son, just have it be Boba Fett and get it over with. No asteroid chase, no bad dream, and no step-father, either. Write new chase locations, new ideas to drive the story, and forget awkward psuedo-family encounters.

Futhermore, how exactly was Kenobi going to get Jango back to Coruscant for a Jedi interrogation? I submit that a plot device that is impossible to achieve, even one that never is achieved, is badly written. I find the whole fighting/chasing Jango thing to be an obvious sham because 1) there is no physical way Kenobi could have taken Jango into custody (there is no back seat to Kenobi’s ship, or was he supposed to hope Jango had a suitable ship to “borrow”?) and 2) he forgets about that mission just as quickly as Lucas forgot that Jango was supposed to be trying to kill Amidala, not whatever it is he was doing instead. Jango’s escape is nothing more than an elaborate plot device to get Kenobi to Geonosis, a place he otherwise would not end up.

Anyway, Kenobi explores Geonosis while Watto hunts for Shmi’s bill of sale. The plot thins…

(01.11.18).