In a happy turn of events, the Star Wars with the worst title turned out to be the worst Star Wars, though I appreciate that this is not necessarily a settled debate. Still, The Phantom Menace, once you shake the Jar Jar and the asshole little boy Vader out of it, has a striking bad guy, a fairly decent mid-film setpiece, and a truly excellent film-ending setpiece. Attack of the Clones has fuck-all. It is, in fact, so bad that it makes The Phantom Menace itself seem retroactively worse: among that film's litany of narrative shortcomings are some that I'd have never noticed if Attack of the Clones didn't obligingly founder its whole drama on exactly those points.
Chiefly, Attack of the Clones is the film where it becomes clear that the whole edifice of the Star Wars prequel trilogy is incoherent at the level of character. For all that we can slag on George Lucas for his fetishistic reliance on Joseph Campbell's concept of the "hero's journey" monomyth, there's little denying that the original trilogy of films follows a beautifully straightforward arc: farmboy Luke Skywalker learns that he has a great destiny, heads out into the wide universe to realise that destiny, comes close to imperiling himself spiritually in his impatience to succeed, and finally finds the patience and wisdom to achieve his goals and become a truly good person. The prequels have absolutely no overriding arc; it's slightly cleaner if we drop The Phantom Menace, which informs the remaining two films not at all (I don't endorse Machete Order - mostly because I don't endorse watching the prequels at all, and if you're going to bother, I think watching special effects technology evolve is the only real justification for doing so - but it gets that fact 100% right), but even within just the two remaining films, the questions still stand, "What are these films about?" and more importantly, "Who are these films about?"
Attack of the Clones is a film without a protagonist, and no continuity from the film before it, where the central figure of Qui-Gon Jinn, who has a protagonist's hubris in the most classical sense of the word, and is the primary agent through whom all of the plot developments manifest, ends up dead. And he does this without setting up his apprentice - beg pardon, "Padawan learner" - Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) as his narrative replacement, nor Obi-Wan's own apprentice Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen this time around). By all rights, the trilogy's arc should be centered on Anakin, the character that primarily changes over the course of the films, and who, in Attack of the Clones, confronts the great moral decision that is the cornerstone of whatever evolution the movie possesses, while Kenobi is off playing space detective.
That this fails to be so is less because of any particular structural deficiencies - the Anakin half of the film is no less prominent than the Obi-Wan half - than because it's such a damp squib in the writing and performance. We have in Attack of the Clones not just two subplots, but really two distinct genres, and only one of them fits the gung-ho Saturday matinee vibe that is Lucas's best trick as a director of Star Warses. That's the story of Obi-Wan visiting one extravagant pulp sci-fi location after another - the crazy alien diner! the ocean planet full of sinewy white aliens! the asteroid field! - and it's mostly... okay. The other genre, of course, is the Love Story That Spanned a Galaxy, as Anakin and Padmé Amidala (Natalie Portman), former Queen and present Senator from Naboo, find themselves falling in love as he spirits her across the Galactic Republic to keep away from assassins and find out what happened to his mother Shmi (Pernilla August), still a slave on the desert planet of Tattooine. Or rather, Padmé falls in love with Anakin - Anakin has been in love with her ever since they met ten years earlier, when he was eight and she was, like, 20. Which is, I think, the single best argument in favor of skipping The Phantom Menace that Machete Order has on tap.
Now, Star Wars is not very good at romance: the only other time it comes into play is in The Empire Strikes Back (a film which Attack of the Clones continuously echoes in oh-so-many ways - a Skywalker loosing his hand, an asteroid field, two characters and two droids staring into the distance at the end), where it took Irvin Kershner and Harrison Ford all their effort and creativity to extract something remotely adult from the gymnastic spectacle all around them. Lucas had already firmly cast his lot in the opposite direction from the Kershners of the world by 2002, and Ford at his weakest (which is none of the Star Wars films) still has more screen presence than the digitally promiscuous aesthetic of the second and third prequels permitted to any of their cast, but Christensen least of all.
I'm not going to say anything bad about Christensen, folks. The speed with which his career vanished after Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith came out in 2005 is bad enough without some blogger drifting around decade later to point and laugh. I think it's unfair to judge him for being the end result of Lucas's hands-off directorial style, coupled with the criminally unforgivable decision in the post-production of Clones and Sith (presented as though it was something to be proud of back in '02 and '05) to digitally tinker with the actors' performances, from where they're standing all the way down to where their eyes are pointing. The filmmaking technique literally rips the humanity away from the characters - how is somebody supposed to give a performance more than minimally passable under those conditions? So while there's not really a single moment in Christensen's performance in Attack of the Clones that rises even to the level of merely bad, I take him to be symptomatic of the film's disinterest in people rather than a cause of it.
Still, the really important part is that Anakin Skywalker is a horrible, awful character, and Attack of the Clones suffers for it to a degree that cannot be survived, not when half of the movie hinges on the rich, impressive love story between him and Padmé, who is in fact even worse. I think because we know that Portman is capable of acting well and Christensen's career flared out without him being able to prove the same, we can sometimes be harder on him than her, but there's nothing positive to say about her contribution to the film: it's all empty looks where ardor is supposed to be burning, and recitations of romantic dialogue that feel like they were learned phonetically. It is, of course, again the fault of Attack of the Clones more than Portman, though one gets the impression that she had already given up hope before the time came to absolutely shoot her impossibly awful scenes, which is where all of the worst characterisation and dialogue in Lucas and Jonathan Hales's screenplay lives.
Though even there, it's worth measuring out our hate. I will not pretend to deny that there's a reason that bit about sand has come to stand in for all the most loathsome failures of writing in the prequel trilogy. You know the one, right? "I don't like sand. It's coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere. Not like here. Here everything is soft and smooth." All while Christensen fondles Portman with his eyes. That's some bleak shit right there, but y'know what, as a parody of an 18-year-old, who literally doesn't get to talk to girls ever, trying to sound sensitive and sexy, it's not actually all that bad. The thing that's actually bad is that it works to put her in the mood. This is true, incidentally, for the whole film: if you think of Anakin as a bored, bratty teen, pouting and sighing with indifference for the whole stupid universe, Attack of the Clones snaps into place. Unfortunately, the film chooses to present the Anakin & Padmé love affair as a soul-stirring triumph of romance, and Anakin's gradual descent into his base emotions as the stuff of epic tragedy. Neither of those things attain - not even close.
Chunks of it are decent, anyway. This is the film where McGregor, presumably left to his own devices like the rest of the cast, figures out what he should be doing, and commits to it: he's playing young Alec Guiness, goddammit, and so young Alec Guiness he shall be. It's pretty great from the first moment he opens his mouth, especially on words that end in "F" or "V" sounds; he also nails the body language. It is, to be sure, skilled mimicry, not compelling character creation, but in Attack of the Clones, that will have to be enough, and it makes McGregor's Obi-Wan the only sapient being, human, alien, or droid, to emerge from the film having made an honestly strong impression (even Ian McDiarmid's scheming politician Palpatine, a clear standout in the other prequels, is bland and invisible here). Hell, McGregor even survives the shockingly bad line "I haven't felt you this tense since we fell into that nest of Gundarks", a wheezing attempt to imply the friendship between Obi-Wan and Anakin that has developed in the ten years since The Phantom Menace (the only point at which the two men having any kind of positive relationship is even hinted at), additionally hobbled by the curiously pervasive Star Wars failing in which dialogue that includes made-up words always sounds hilarious terrible in a way it doesn't typically in other sci-fi.*
So what else works, besides McGregor's performance? Damn little, even compared to The Phantom Menace - but not nothing. Most of the opening act is fairly successful, in fact, swiftly reintroducing the characters in a new context, immediately setting down stakes, and culminating in the one truly impressive set-piece in the film, an air chase through the crowded skies of the city-planet Coruscant; it's the one moment of action in the film that feels entirely original, and one of the only points that the CGI and digital cinematography have aged more than tolerably well. That does get in the way even of the film's world-building, which on paper probably seemed like it would be continued fun on the model of The Phantom Menace; the cloning facility on a stormy ocean planet is the kind of location that must have had killer concept art attached to it. The effects let the set design down horribly, though, with the facility appearing plastered atop a none-too-convincing CGI sea. And God forbid we ever talk about the asteroid field.
The film essentially reverses the quality arc of The Phantom Menace: everything worst is in the back part. And this is partially because eventually, Obi-Wan figures out what's going on and stops having to use his wits - let's scare quote that, "wits", truth be told, there are entire five-minute where the interplay is basically "Obi-Wan asks a suspiciously leading question and the big white alien beams at him and answers without hesitation, because screenplay" - and anyway, the point is that Ewan McGregor shuffling around with a concerned look on his face is easily the best card this movie has to play, narrative-wise. There are other good moments peppered here and there; at the end of that impressively original opening chase scene, I like the casual comedy of the old Jedi mind trick being played on the drug dealer Elan Sleazebaggano (Matt Doran), which is the all-time worst name never said aloud in the history of a franchise that also has characters called Sy Snootles, Mon Mothma, Sio Bibble, and Salacious B. Crumb. The scene where Anakin first lets his hatred flow is accompanied by an unbearably gorgeous binary sunset, bathing the desert blood-red. I imagine there are other things.
The good list is nothing compared to the bad list. At a certain point, the action arrives in a somewhat incongruous droid factory, and the film drops dead of an explosive aneurysm right on the spot. This is a truly, deeply useless sequence, boring and stupid and not remotely thrilling, between its weightless CGI (a problem throughout the movie - this film has easily the worst visual effects of the prequel trilogy), the thoroughly addled crosscutting (perpetrated by sound designer extraoridinaire Ben Burtt, taking on picture editing duties solo this time), and especially and above all the awful, awful, awful comedy centered around hapless and even more incongruous droid C-3PO, dragged along purely for fan service (Anthony Daniels's performance of the prissy droid was never more joyless than here), and to facilitate the worst comedy in the franchise - yes, worse than anything Jar Jar Binks was up to in The Phantom Menace. It lacks the squirrelliness of the truly awful Star Wars dialogue, but his "What a drag", as his disembodied head is carted around, is my least favorite individual moment in the totality of the Star Wars universe, give or take a couple of the most unforgivably dire sequences from The Star Wars Holiday Special.
The film improves from that point, but only relatively: it's like having having a compound fracture that subsides to a throbbing ache instead of lancing pain once you're given some morphine. We still have the whole matter of Count Dooku (Christopher Lee), the least-interesting major character in the trilogy, who does nothing of the smallest interest as a character and then becomes half of the worst lightsaber duel in the franchise, when calm, sagelike Yoda (voiced by Frank Oz, but played for the first time by a CGI model - one that looks way better than the nightmare puppet originally used in The Phantom Menace, I might add) turns into the Screw Attack from Metroid. It is terrible CGI used in service to chaotic and unpleasant fight choreography; and it's a damn shortsighted excuse to give Yoda his first big combat scene, given what Revenge of the Sith would prove to have up its sleeve. Other minor annoyances: the way that Anakin's traumatic experience on Tattooine fails to inform his character at all once he leaves the planet; the hilariously tacky and badly-edited moment when some big CGI monster cuts Natalie Portman's shirt, leaving her midriff exposed; and the weird intrusion of the Death Star into the action, maybe the most ill-conceived piece of fan service in a trilogy powered by pointless fan service. For new viewers, ignorant of the original films, the incredibly serious close-ups make no sense and call attention to themselves in the worst way. For those who've seen the originals, it comes indefensibly too early in the overall chronology.
Anyway, who comes along, riding to the rescue, but our old friend John Williams? The score to Attack of the Clones is better than miraculous - it might actually be the best in all of the Star Wars films. Not least because it is powerful and resonant enough to make terrible scenes look better and good scenes look astonishing - the movie's penultimate scene of proto-Star Destroyers rising into the sky as the "Imperial March" makes its first outspoken appearance in the prequels, right on the heels of the "Emperor's Theme" intoned by a male chorus as the camera tracks through a hellish factory all in shades of crimson, is so exciting and transporting that it's actually enough to send you on your way convinced you just saw something dramatic and intense and wholly enthralling. There's an impeccably-placed reprise of "Duel of the Fates" leading up to Anakin's murderous outburst; when he is making the reckoning of his sins, the music dances between the Emperor and Imperial themes reflecting whether his anger is inwardly or outwardly directed, ending in a light, even comforting statement of the "Imperial March" as Padmé comforts him.
The one major new theme introduced in this film, meanwhile, is one of the great achievements of Williams's entire career, albeit one that's hard to appreciate because of the dreadful film containing it (it took me years to separate the motif from the film). "Across the Stars" is the sweeping accompaniment to the film's undernourished love story, and by God if its dramatic scale and its echoes of Maurice Jarre-style old-school epic music don't come as close as anything possibly could to selling that awful trainwreck of underfed emotions as real movie magic. There is a moment where the "Force Theme" puts in its first appearance, bleeding invisibly into the first half-formed expression of "Across the Stars", and that one moment tells a more beautiful story of Anakin and Padmé crossing paths and falling in love than the whole of the film's screenplay could ever hope to do. Since Attack of the Clones does everything wrong it can possibly scrounge up, let us end on this note, its one truly, unreservedly great contribution to cinema and Star Wars: there might be almost nothing in the film worth saving, but what little good is inside of it counts for a whole hell of a lot.
3/10
Reviews in this series
Star Wars (Lucas, 1977)
The Empire Strikes Back (Kershner, 1980)
Return of the Jedi (Marquand, 1983)
Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (Lucas, 1999)
Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (Lucas, 2002)
Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (Lucas, 2005)
Star Wars: The Force Awakens (Abrams, 2015)
I feel genuinely bad for Hayden Christensen, not only was he thrown to the CGI wolves by his director, he was horribly miscast in the first place. Just look at him, there's no way that guy became Darth Vader. I remember he was much better in Shattered Glass, playing a character more suited to his physical type.
ReplyDeleteThere's a clip in the Plinkett reviews where you see Christensen and Lucas interacting on set and you can see in his eyes that he knows exactly where this is headed... RIP career.
Ay, Clones... What you observed correctly, is that many things the fans use to make it seem better then Menace, are not only not that helpful, they're actually points against the film. I specifically think of the aforementioned fan service. Given how Menace, a lot more so then Clones, stands without blatant fan service to the original trilogy, I believe Lucas worked it into this film to "appease" fans, which is exactly the wrong reason. We are given no opportunity to believe a lot of the original trilogy elements might have come about in the 19 years between Sith and Hope - no, they had to have begun beforehand!
ReplyDeleteGood to see we agree on 3PO's awful comedy. Guess fans were more able to see that stuff when it was on a new character like Jar Jar, but they're blind as bats when it's on an established one.
Otherwise, I can only add that, unlike the other two, this one gets worse for me every time I watch it, for the badness of nearly all of it. And as regards the visuals, I wonder how much that had to do with Lucas' decision to make the film wholly digital. I'm no expert, but I hear that the film, and Sith, as a result, can never be upgraded to 4K resolutions, and this may leave them in the dust many years down the line, far more so then the color correction problems that pop up with the original trilogy.
I cannot help but wonder what the prequels might have been like had Lucas constructed the base story but got another director and writer on board, like with Empire and Jedi. Perhaps he had to do it for Menace, as it was a new trilogy, but Clones could have been saved so much with someone who does proper actor interaction. It really could have.
Still, there's nowhere to go but up from here! Though given Sith still has a lot of problems, I'm real curious to see what you'll pick out for that, Tim.
Mike.
The only thing I consistently remember from this film is the coliseum fight at the end, and that was probably because I kept re-watching it for the alien animal fights and the battle involving the jedi, the droid army, Jango, and whatever animals have survived. You got the slow, hulking bull-like alien, the screechy, snippy spider-like alien, and that one feline alien that probably snorted something before coming on. Stupid comedy and midriff-exposing aside, I actually kind of liked the one-on-one battles, leading up to the free-for-all when the jedi show up, where it gets much better because of the chaotic animals just attacking anything and everything in the middle. If it wasn't for the stupid comedy and the context of the rest of the film, I'd probably rate that sequence alone a passable 6/10 for sheer action.
ReplyDeleteThe rest of the film I wouldn't bother with, though, except maybe for the opening and definitely for MacGregor's scenes.
Sometimes I wonder how we're watching the same movie. I've heard many people make the claim that Clones is worse than Menace; and I have never, ever understood that claim. Not in 2002, and not in all the years since. For my money, Menace had more wooden acting, a less interesting plot, more phony-looking CGI, lousier dialogue, lamer villains, less exciting action scenes (with the Maul fight being the one exception; and I think Tim is deeply underrating Clones's asteroid chase and climactic saber battle), and especially INFINITELY shittier comic relief. Yes, I cringed at 3PO's terrible lines here, but I don't understand how Jar Jar isn't even more soul-killing on every conceivable level. At least the droid wasn't shrieking all his lines in a mistrelized Rastafauxrian falsetto, and at least he wasn't constantly slurping around with a giant gooey tongue.
ReplyDeleteAnd for all the complaining that the Padmakin Amidywalker romance subplot gets: it only fills up twelve minutes. (Yes, I actually counted up the combined time of their scenes myself, for a similar debate on a different website; and the figure might be overly generous, since it includes stuff like the council meeting and Anakin's nightmare which aren't technically "love scenes".) Now that is admittedly twelve TERRIBLE minutes, containing some of the worst dialogue that Lucas has ever written and acted by deer-in-the-headlights performers who were either unwilling or incapable of breathing any life into the words. But still, it's just twelve minutes out of a movie which is over two hours long.
And oh yeah, episode 2 also has one further positive attribute: it's the only movie in the entire series where the Jedi Council don't look like a bunch of impotent fools. They sit around doing nothing whatsoever in Menace (while Rogue Cops Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan do all the work for them) and in fact make things worse by being such inexplicable pricks to young Anakin; and then they all get themselves killed in Sith. Not exactly a sterling track record for what's supposed to be the all-powerful stewards of galactic justice who've ruled with blazing swords for thousands of years. Attack Of The Clones is the only time we see them actively doing shit and actually winning their fights.
ReplyDeleteI'm usually a lot harsher on the opening action sequence and the Obi-Wan plot thread, because I think they're just as dumb and incoherent as anything else. The entire assassination sequence is ludicrous in the extreme: poison centipedes? And why is Jango subcontracting his assassination mission? The car chase strikes me as tedious and absurd: yes, Jedi are superhumans capable of performing impossible physical feats, but having Anakin freefall 3000 feet and land on a flying car is a good way to make me ANGRY about that, rather than amazed. Then there's the weird dead end where Anakin flies the car through a gate of purple lightning while Obi-Wan makes a big deal out of it, but nothing actually seems to happen.
ReplyDeleteAs for Obi-Wan's "detective story", I honestly don't think it's worth the name; Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys have had to put more effort into detective work than Obi-Wan here did. Obi-Wan's detective work, to wit, consisted of: going to an incongruous fifties diner and talking to a conveniently well-traveled fry cook (a scene which is guaranteed to keep my friends and I in stitches for its entire duration every time we hatewatch this movie); having one of the kids in Yoda's daycare class give an incredibly obvious explanation for why Kamino is missing from the Jedi archives (a scene which contains Yoda going over basic astral mechanics, something that's just a few notches below "screw attack" on the list of things I don't want Yoda doing, but in a movie where Yoda shouts "Around the Survivors a Perimeter create!" this is a relatively minor sin, I suppose); going to Kamino and having the admittedly well-designed aliens there explain the convoluted, half-baked backstory behind the Clone Army; and then following Jango to Geonosis, where he stumbles across the Separatist leaders cartoonishly plotting evil. Far from being okay, I think that the Obi-Wan plot is only a bit less groan-inducing than "I don't like sand" and Anakin riding the gigantic cartoon tick-pig. I'm sure the OT was chock full of dumb stuff like this, but I'll be damned if any of it is lodged so prominently in my frontal lobe.
The two biggest problems with Phantom Menace are pretty much any time when Jar Jar and Anakin are on the screen. At least there are fan edits that significantly limit the negatives to that film. Attack of the Clones is just off. Whole blocks of that movie suck.
ReplyDeleteAfter spending nearly 7 years in this excellent and informative corner of the web, it is wholly satisfying to see that you too hated Clones even more than Menace--I've been in the right place all along, Tim...
ReplyDeleteFor the record, I have embraced Machete Order and find it works reasonably well (if you are inclined to endure the prequels at all). Oddly, Menace comes off as a better film for me if you make the effort to not tie it in to the Star story arc in any way.
Heh. More like Timely Intervention Of The Clones, amirite?
ReplyDeleteBut seriously, I have one major beef that pretty much goes along with all of this in making this a terrible movie and series, and ol' Rape-eyes Christensen is just a symptom, and it's that the Jedi just don't WORK as a society. First they refuse to train a little boy because he shows fear even though all children show fear and pay off the work of training a Jedi would have to involve teaching them to overcome fear. This in a universe where the Dark Side is presented not as a choice but an inevitable thing you can fall into by accident if you're not careful, and a small child left to his own devices would almost definitely fall to the dark side without guidance. Then when they finally do train him they forbid absolutely every emotional release that might make him a balanced and reasonable person. Like you know he had to have been asking about his mother for frigging years before this, like hay Obi-Wan, being a Jedi is great and all but my mom's still, you know, a slave, and WE WORK FOR THE MOST POWERFUL GOVERNMENT IN THE GALAXY! Can we just go get her? Nope, we've got a meat of gundarks to fall into. Get your stuff.
And by the way, if you are a society of super-powered beings and you make a point of going around the galaxy and collecting all the super-powered beings into your group and then forbid them to date or get married, isn't that a really good way to breed yourselves out of the gene pool?
The worst film in the series by about a mile. The Phantom Menace was narrowly a success if you take it on its own debased terms, but Attack of the Clones fails in everything it tries to do. The romance storyline isn't convincing at any point, though like Tim, I am inclined to be easier on Mr Christensen given how the horrendous dialogue defeats even the seasoned actors in the cast.
ReplyDeleteMy main problem is that, for a trilogy that's supposed to be the origin story for one of the most iconic villains in cinema history, there's precious little Vader in the Anakin we see in these films. The Vader I know isn't a petulant whining teenager; he's a mysterious figure who can choke a man to death while not even raising his voice (or crossing the room). When I saw this movie, I realized that Episode III was going to have some heavy lifting to do in order to give us Darth Vader. I suppose I'll leave the rest of this thought for THAT review, though.
I agree with the above comment that says Christensen was pretty good in Shattered Glass. I was floored when I saw him in that, not because it was a mind-blowing performance, but because he actually acted like a human being, something that he seems incapable of here.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, discussing which of PM or AotC is worse seems to me a little like asking if you'd rather step in a big pile of cow dung up to your calf or if you want a bird to excessively poop on you from above. Either way, you've got way more poop than you want on your body.
I've noticed you didn't say anything about Samuel L. Jackson and his character Mace Windu. Is he really so bland, so insignificant, that he doesn't even get a quick mention?
ReplyDeleteThanks for pointing me to that music!
ReplyDelete"That's some bleak shit right there, but y'know what, as a parody of an 18-year-old, who literally doesn't get to talk to girls ever, trying to sound sensitive and sexy, it's not actually all that bad."
ReplyDeleteI have no idea what you're talking about. :P
Obligatory link to me and my friends' take on AotC in our own retrospective: http://twofriendswatch.libsyn.com/attack-of-the-clones
ReplyDeleteWe generally conceded that we preferred it to Menace, although deciding between the two is, as others have noted, a fairly dispiriting, self-negating task. Speaking for myself, I broadly prefer it because at least it has something to do with the broader arc of Star Wars as a series, which is more than Phantom Menace could claim. The absence of Jar Jar and getting to see Samuel L Jackson in action doesn't hurt either, although yes, it's generally a pretty miserable experience.
It truly blows my mind that they got Christopher Lee to come in as a Dracula. Who is that appealing to? What is that appealing to? It was totally over my head at age 14, and if the theoretical heart of the series is a throwback to the serial era of storytelling, why are you invoking a character from a completely different era?
ReplyDeleteNot that it's a debate worth having, but I'm glad you're on team Phantom Menace > Attack of the Clones. I've been saying that since 2002 - at least Phantom Menace enthusiastically sucks. Clones is so bitterly joyless. Obi-Wan and Anakin seem to genuinely hate each other (in script and performance) and Padme seems like she's cringingly humoring Anakin's attention (mostly falling on Portman, who was probably cringingly humoring the script). We're not there yet, but "you were my brother!" is probably my least favorite line in the series for exactly this reason - at no point does this trio feel like anything more than put-upon co-workers.
Someone above mentioned that the Jedis shouldn't exist because they can't marry and therefore should go extinct, something that I've also seen elsewhere and which I think needs explaining.
ReplyDeleteThe Jedis are not a species, race or a society, they are an order of warrior monks. In fact, George Lucas based them on the medieval Christian knight orders such as the Teutonic Knights, who also couldn't marry or have children.
Now, how could the Jedi Order still exist if they can't reproduce? Well, kind of like how monasteries and religious orders continue to exist even though they forbid their members from having children.
The difference between Jedi and warrior monks is that anyone can become a monk. Jedi are telepaths, telekinetic and more, all due to the talent, not trainable, of being sensitive to the Force. If you aren't Force-sensitive, you can't be a Jedi.
ReplyDeleteNow take all the Force-sensitives in the galaxy and lock them in a temple and tell them they can't have emotions or families, and tell me there's even a handful of Force-sensitive people left in a generation.
To be fair, do the movies ever propose the idea that only a specific subset of "Force-sensitive" people are able to become Jedi? You get "the Force is strong with etc.", but that seems more like a comment about destiny than an observation of genetics. Even if you haven't scrubbed the idea of midichlorians from your memory, it's still never implied that the average person is too scant on them to be trained with the Force, or even that they would be passed on. I mean, they're a symbiote - could that possibly be genetic?
ReplyDeleteThe original trilogy makes it clear that people just don't give a shit or take the idea of Jedi seriously (patently absurd considering the prequel revelation that the Jedi Council ruled the galaxy 20 years earlier, but that's not the OT's fault). The prequels gave it the weirder feel that it's just a religious order that takes in kids, like a Jesuit school or something.
"The Force is strong in my family. My father has it. I have it. My... sister has it." Also, though we roundly discount the Phantom Menace I'm pretty sure Qui-Gon says something to that exact effect just after the midichlorians fiasco.
ReplyDeleteI could never truly love "Across the Stars", good as it is, 'cause it's also blatantly a lift off his theme for Hook, which was always the preferred Williams score for me.
ReplyDeleteBut yeah, the film itself is awful. Probably the worst in the franchise, though I've always disliked Revenge more for how much it strikes entirely the wrong tone for a Star Wars movie. There's being dark, and then there's having your protagonist slaughter children.
This crap right here is why I will always favor the Extended Universe, and its Jedi more than what the universe became with the prequel trilogy. Jedi married, had kids. There were entire family lines of Jedi in the EU. And it was good. And then all that got thrown out the window just to create a little romantic angst.
ReplyDeleteHmm. Imagine an Anakin and Padme who aren't forbidden from having a relationship, but it's just not the right time. So instead of a secret marriage, they throw over their duties and responsibilities for their emotions. Needs a lot of work, and yet in three minutes I have come up with a more sensible idea than what we got here.
There's something kind of devaluing about seeing hordes of people waving blue and green light-sabers around, just as much as the demystifying of the force with midichlorian talk in the Phantom. Does Yoda's character need a light-saber too? Did George think this is what everyone wanted? Bleh. I also feel bad for Hayden.
ReplyDeleteThe prequels came out when I was at that age to accept anything on screen as good, and if I couldn't make sense of something or had difficulty making the connections to the original trilogy, it was because I guessed I was too young to understand. Now I'm come to see that they're just bad movies.
Haven't seen this since it first came out, and yeah, once was enough. It's past my bedtime now, and all of you who have endured Attack of the Clowns more than me have said most of the important things, so all I can think to add right now is: Sleazebaggano? Seriously? George, are you even try--no, no, of course not.
ReplyDeleteI saw this movie 5 times in the theatre. Do you want to hear more?
ReplyDeleteDid you see this with us in Evanston when it came out? I don't remember who all was there but I do remember being incredibly depressed about the future of Star Wars. I hope hope hope to not feel that way next weekend.
ReplyDeleteTIM! TIM! TIM! The liveblogging is beginning! :D
ReplyDeletehttps://twitter.com/HippyWizard, hashtag #worstTrilogy
You know... I wonder that if someone who doesn't know the films at all (yes, such people exist, I know two of them personally), listened to the soundtracks only, what kind of story they would make up based on it. In the case of the prequels, it would probably be better than the films themselves.
ReplyDeleteStar wars Episode II Attack of the Clones is the Worst thing ever made by a human...except FOR the Bag pipes
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