Star Wars Episode II--Attack of the Clones

In which we learn that too much of a good thing can be bad, or not enough, or maybe both at once. By now going to see Star Wars movies has become, instead of a treat and a delight, a chore of almost patriotic import. The stupid title aside (attack of the clowns would be more in order, but that’s a silly pun for which nobody should have any patience), the movie, while admittedly better than its immediate predecessor, retains the earlier movie’s lumbering, heavy-handed style. There is no denying the technical and visual accomplishments of “Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones.” The staff has created an entrancing assortment of spaceships, ray guns, aliens, buildings, monsters, and so on, and some of the action scenes are quite effective (though some could have easily been deleted, thereby shortening the movie’s rather painful length).

But the writing—particularly the dialogue—is awful, and the acting is the worst you are likely to see this side of your local community theater. Squadrons of gifted actors are squandered in a thespian slaughter that makes the climactic battle scene of the movie seem like a paddle ball contest. (Perhaps most painful is seeing Jimmy Smits, with a terrible haircut, reduced to a pathetic bit player muttering a half dozen meaningless lines.) Worst of all, though, is Hayden Christensen as the young Anakin Skywalker. It is obvious that he was badly directed (because he was quite good as the rebellious son in “Life as a House”), but that aside he seems completely at sea here.

He behaves like a sullen teenager, and while I realize that is partly the point (why else would he rebel against the teachings of the Jedi?), he displays none of the power, the gravitas, that the future Darth Vader should have been projecting at that age. (It also doesn’t help that people keep calling him by the nickname “Ani,” which has the regrettable effect of making him seem gender confused.) Not faring much better is Ewan McGregor as the young Obi-Wan Kenobi, who stumbles through most of the picture speaking and behaving like an entrant in a local Alec Guinness impersonator contest, and muttering less-than-hilarious jokes about how he hates to fly. It would be an understatement to say that the Star Wars series has lost its sense of humor, which has not been much in evidence since Han Solo left the scene (which is not to say that Harrison Ford has much humor left in him either, these days). Perhaps the worst of it, though, is the utter collapse of the narrative. “Clones” has so many villains, heroes, dukes, senators, guilds, alliances, rebels, clones, droids, and yes, even Jedi, that by the end I found myself wondering just who it was exactly I was supposed to be rooting for.

I was, not to put too fine a point on it, confused. This is an unthinkable turn of events for the movie series that returned the concept of clear, good guy-bad guy story lines to respectability. It may be time to face the fact that George Lucas, while arguably the most successful (not to mention richest) filmmaker of all time, and a man who revolutionized the movie industry in any number of ways, just doesn’t have the chops for this sort of task anymore. If he were smart he would hand the operation over to some whip-smart young firebrand, who could breathe new life into the doddering franchise, who could make it seem, perhaps, as fresh today as the first Star Wars seemed so long ago, in a galaxy far, far away. (5/19/2002)