My thoughts on Ep II. (Minor spoilers.)

Well I went and saw SWII:AOTC the other night. And I've been thinking about the movie ever since. I kept waving my hand in the air and going 'You don't want to dislike the movie. You want to say it was everything you'd hope it would be.' First off, visually it doesn't get any better. The chase in the city re minded me a lot of Fifth Element but taken to another level. So there's no gripes there. Not like the blatantly computer rendered 'Young Jabba' in the 'Special' edition of Star Wars. I even liked the CGI Yoda. I thought he was going to stupid and out of place (Like the CGI E.T.) but he was stunningly expressive. When I got to theater I saw the play time of 2 hour 39 minutes and I was thrilled. So much star wars. But fifteen minutes in I realized that the best actor in the movie was Yoda. Lucas can spend how many millions of dollars on special effects and can't even hire decent actors? Even Samuel L. Jackson, a normally superb actor, seemed to just walk through his part. Anakin started to annoy me by the end of the movie too. Oh look I'm foreshadowing my evil. Wait I'm good again. Oh wait more evilness on my part. Grrr. What is this? But heck. I can enjoy a good mindless flick too. Mediocre acting can't hurt a film too bad if the rest of it's strong. And some of it was. Like the city chase scene was mind blowing. But then holes started appearing. If you watched city backgrounds you'd seem the same damn ship pass by five times in one scene. A minor gripe, but George Lucas is the king of subtle details like that. Why is he skimping corners like that? Running out of money? It really seems like a lot of things never came to fruitarian. I heard beforehand that we would finally got to see a Fett kick some major ass and also see Yoda do his thing. Well the battle with Jengo Fett comes up and he flexes his superhero muscles (Doing his best impression of the Rockteer) and it's over in sixty seconds. Ok, no prob, I think. This is the teaser battle. The real meaty action is coming later. But it never does. We get to the arena fight and he shoots a couple of times (Doing his best impression of a gunslinger) and BAM he's dead. Sure it gives Bobba a reason to be a baddy, but we were promised a Jedi-rivaling-butt-kicking-flying-fett. He sort of stumbles around. It seems a little odd that Mace Windu just walks up and kills Jengo. What happened to a Jedi can't kill? What about Yoda's battle? It started off looking like it was going to be the battle to end all battle. We knew that Dooku was counting to escape for a latter battle but in the meantime all hell should have broken loose. And it seemed to gear up for an incredible battle. They both flexed their force muscles to tease the audience before the real action began. And for what? So Yoda can flip around like Spider-man for thirty seconds and then Dooku runs off? What is this? Episode one has its problems but no one can deny that the final confrontation with Darth Maul was mind-blowing. The break in the middle of the fight wasn't so much to prolong it as it was to give the audience a chance to breathe again. It seems the most unfocused of all of the movies. I'll admit that portraying a battle can be tough; however, the large scale confrontation at the end seemed to be nothing more than random images. Explosion here! Something crashing up there! Yoda barking orders to shoot a ship down. Why is he shooting this ship down? He just is. The title seems strange too. Attack of the clones. Now, I know that it's based off of one of the novels but I haven't read it. At first the Jedi seemed somewhat angered and appalled by the clone army. It hinted at some arguments between them regarding the morality of a clone army and the value of human individuality. But then at the end it seemed to be a 'Ah heck, we've got a clone army we might as well use it!' The power struggle of the Jedi council proved to be somewhat interesting. But it seemed that plot of the council and Anakin's struggles took far more precedent over some of the action. The race through the asteroid belt didn't leave you on the edge of your seat like Han Solo's escape did. Overall I left the theater with a bad taste in my mouth. It was star wars, but it wasn't a well developed star wars. Were my expectations too high? If you take the movie on it's rights it's a plot driven sci-fi movie hampered by some very average acting. Forgivable. But you can't take it by itself and for that it just left me unsatisfied. Oh well. Nemesis is going to an even numbered Star trek and you know what that means. <grin> My two cents.

My experience was completely different. I just loved it, every part of it. Even the love scenes that a lot of people here didn't like at all. I thought it was a great star wars film. I would even say better than ANH or ROTJ. I must add that I didn't know anything about AOTC. I managed to avoid all the spoilers this time. So every part of the story, dialogue and plot was a complete surprise. I think it makes a great difference.

Mad'moiselle

He did hire decent actors. But no matter how good an actor you are you can't make really bad, unnatural dialogue seem natural. The real question should be: Lucas can spend how many millions of dollars on special effects and can't even hire decent screenwriters and a director?

But he's directing/screenwriting it. Pride maybe? Although as many people have pointed out, I want this to be like the '77 release. And Mr. Lucas has obviously changed a lot in the past 25 years. Who doesn't?

This is quickly becoming a movie that either you love it or hate. Little room for inbetween. It's funny, because aside from Anakins horrible acting and Jar Jar I LOVED episode 1. <shrug> Like I said. My two cents.

On 5/21/02 9:38 AM, in article

That's because he was just walking through his part. To act, you have to have another person to work off of, someone to look in the eye, someone to say dialogue with. All of the 'actors' in Star Wars Ep. 2 were mostly working with blue/green screens. 'Acting' with nothing there. They were literally 'walking through their parts.'

On 5/21/02 9:38 AM, in article

MIB2 is even numbered too...

Bob Hoskins... Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Walt Disney... Any number of Cartoon/Real life combinations. Good acting can be done with nothing. And Jackson is a strong enough actor to do that. Oh well.