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| Spoiler 2 |
This film, much more than THE PHANTOM MENACE, is a blast to watch unfold. The joy of the film is the rather circuitous way the story unfolds. There are some narrative beats that are quite nice, especially since not everything has been wrapped up by the end of the film. For example, I have one big question, and I think it will HAVE to be addressed in EPISODE III: Why did the Tuskens take Shmi Skywalker, and more importantly, why did they keep her alive? When that question is answered in the next film, I suspect some people will have to die. I suspect there will be great wellsprings of rage unleashed by a certain future Man In Black. Someone is going to pay. There is a moment here where Anakin unleashes his anger, and it’s a terrible thing. When he talks about it later, it’s chilling: ”I killed them. I killed all of them. Not just men. Women. Children. They’re animals. And I slaughtered them... like animals.” One thing’s for sure... this one’s not just for the eight year olds in the audience. The film gets off to a great start with a long, beautiful sequence of a ship approaching Coruscant, skimming along the cloud layer, the very tops of various gigantic structures erupting from the cover, almost like a schooner navigating a chain of tiny islands. It lands, and as people start to disembark, Captain Typho (Jay Laga’aia) says something to the effect of, “Thank god nothing happened...” and then a bomb goes off. It’s a startling, effective way to start the film, and it’s a reminder that there are more ways to fight a war than face to face. ATTACK OF THE CLONES deals with two major offensives, one fought on Geonosis, and the other fought in the shadows of the Galaxy. The sad part is, the Republic isn’t ready for either conflict, and they pay the price. The film gets moving quickly, with Mace Windu (Samuel L. Jackson) and Yoda (Frank Oz and Rob Coleman’s digital animation team) going to consult with Supreme Chancellor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) about the attempt on Senator Padme (Natalie Portman) Amidala’s life. These scenes are mainly exposition, a sort of slow immersion into the world of STAR WARS. I know that, for me, there’s always a few minutes of euphoria at the start of a STAR WARS film just because it’s a freakin’ STAR WARS film. It takes me a little time to settle in, and the film itself is a little spastic up front. For me, things started to click just before the first big action sequence got underway. The soundtrack cut “Zam The Assassin and the Chase Through Coruscant” is 11:07, and it plays long. Not in a bad way... it’s just that so often, we’re used to seeing a film get to a big FX moment and then rush through it. This takes its time, and the glimpse we’ve gotten before of Coruscant turns into a nice long leisurely stare. Impossibly vertical, a bright and shining version of Ridley Scott’s oft-imitated BLADE RUNNER cityscapes or Besson’s candy-colored Moebius metropolis in THE FIFTH ELEMENT, this is alive in a way that only George Lucas could ever afford. ILM doesn’t just raise the bar in this film; they have graduated to a different game than anyone else is playing. I love WETA and the effects work in LORD OF THE RINGS, but one of the reasons for that is the almost handmade quality of it. It feels like the ultimate marriage of low-tech and high-tech trickery. Lucas, on the other hand, doesn’t have any interest in low-tech anymore. When you see this film, get ready; this is your first look at the Hollywood of the future. I saw the film at the Loew’s Century City Cineplex, the one at the ABC Entertainment Center, and it was presented digitally. I know there’s been a lot of debate about whether or not digitial project is “as good as” film or even better, and many people have dismissed the technology, saying it’s still too young. Hogwash, I say. Unmitigated balderdash. Digital projection and digital photography come of age on May 16th, and to steal a phrase from another outer space franchise, “Resistance is futile.” There is a clarity of image, and a depth of field to the environmental work done by ILM, that is almost 3-D in intensity. When Anakin takes a swoop and heads out into the late-evening sunlight of Tattooine, there is an epic quality to the imagery that suggests a truly alien landscape. This is not Earth. This is not Monument Valley. This is not some Spanish plain we’ve seen in a dozen other films. It’s a completely “other” place, and the actors are integrated seamlessly. Shooting every element digitally seems to have actually made compositing more consistent. There’s a sense that everything we’re seeing is of the same world. The robots, the CG aliens, the spaceships overhead, the magnificent vistas, and even the rooms themselves. The actors vanish into this world that Lucas has constructed in a way that reminds me of the reason we go to movies. It’s like time travel and teleportation and the portal from BEING JOHN MALKOVICH all rolled into one when it works best. The romantic story thread is going to take the most fire, and deservedly. It’s like pretty much all Hollywood romance: all shortcuts and soulful looks, with tortured confessions of all-consuming emotion as both young lovers pout and preen in equal measure. It’s really not much deeper as a romance than your average Freddie Prinze Jr. film to start. But something changes midway through the film, and in the second half, things pay off. Padme sees Anakin through the darkest moment of his life. She’s the one person who knows the truth about him, and her reaching out to him is a gesture that falls in line with what we’ve seen about her nature. She wants to save this little boy she met so long ago, save him from his own pain and anger. She falls in love with the young man who protects her, who saves her life, but the entire time, it’s as if she already knows that they’re doomed, like she’s seen episodes 4-6, and she’s just trying to stave off the inevitable. |