Spoilers Below
For a while I've wanted to talk more about Star Wars on this blog, since along with James Bond and Planet of the Apes, it's probably the most important film franchise for me. With the second installment of the Prequel Trilogy, Attack of the Clones, turning 20, I've decided this was a good opportunity to discuss more of my feelings on the series. Attack of the Clones is perhaps the most maligned of George Lucas' maligned trilogy, though the trilogy now has the same nostalgic reverence of the Original Trilogy. If the older generation hated these films then the younger generation, people my age or younger, really took to them. I still consider myself an OT fan but I was at the right age to like these films when they came out. However, over time my feelings have grown increasingly complicated. I like things about the PT and dislike others. And you know what, often they're the same things. The PT have great ideas and are conceptually brilliant but the execution of the story is were many of the problems lie. It feels like the scripts are all a couple of rewrites from being really solid, especially the first 2. However, I don't want to focus too much on the PT overall. Instead, let's talk about Attack of the Clones.
As Scott Mendelson points out in his retrospective piece, by the time Attack of the Clones was released, there were challengers to Lucas' blockbuster throne such as the first The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter films. The first Spider-Man came out several weeks before Attack of the Clones and became the highest grossing film of the year, the first time a Star Wars film wasn't the number one grosser. Attack of the Clones also didn't have the novelty of being the first Star Wars movie in 16 years like The Phantom Menace had. That, and since Phantom Menace burned people so badly there was trepidation about this film. Moreover, during the whole prequel era these aforementioned were better received by critics and audiences.
For those who need a refresher on the plot, it goes like this: Former Queen of Naboo, now senator, Padme Amidala (Natalie Portman) survives two assassination attempts and is taken back to Naboo to hide by Jedi Padawan Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen), who has grown infatuated with Padme over the last ten years and is struggling with being so close to her again. Meanwhile his master Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) tracks the dart that killed the would-be assassin to the cloning facility on Kamino, where they've been creating a army using the bounty hunter Jango Fett (Temuera Morrison) as a DNA donor. Jango even had the Kaminoans make him a son, Boba, who we know will be the future bane of Han Solo's existence.
If Phantom Menace was an ensemble piece then then Attack of the Clones is the closest the Star Wars series has gotten to a character study. It asks the question we came to prequels to find out: who is Anakin Skywalker, the future Darth Vader. The answer wasn't what fans expected. Making Anakin a nine year old boy in Phantom Menace was Lucas' first subversion of fan expectations. Then in Attack of Clones, instead of a noble, good-head on his shoulders young man with some personal flaws, this Anakin was all flaws. He's petulant, whiney (though I guess that's where Luke gets it from), disobedient, overly infatuated with Padme, and in one scene, murders a bunch of people. Lucas doesn't portray Anakin as a mythic, larger than life hero, the badass warrior who becomes a badass villain. Instead, Lucas saw Anakin as a "pathetic individual."
I'm conflicted about Anakin's portrayal in this film. It's certainly a unique characterization and psychologically complicated. Anakin definitely had psychological issues which demanded serious therapy. The characterization does a make certain kind of sense. Unlike the other Jedi who were taken from their parents before they grew attached to them, Anakin left his mother when he already formed a bond with her. He grew a crush on Padme and then spent the next 10 years being taught to suppress his emotions. He was never in a relationship with a woman so I can see how his crush grew until it became an obsessive infatuation. Anakin has no idea how to talk to women so his creepy/stalkerish behaviour towards Padme is fitting.
The problem lies in the execution. Lucas could've gotten away with Anakin being immature and angry if we saw him mature throughout the film and become the noble warrior and friend Obi-Wan looks back on fondly in the original film. That, and if his infatuation towards Padme was examined and called attention to as being unhealthy. Either that or you establish Anakin as a heroic warrior, albeit a little arrogant. Then you show him crumbling upon meeting Padme again. Despite his confidence in every other area, when it comes to romantic feelings he's very awkward but in a charming and un-stalkerish way. Padme would deal with her romantic feeling in a more diplomatic (since she's a politician). Lucas also could've fleshed out the idea that neither of them had a normal upbringing, having sworn themselves to their duties.
The romance would've made more sense if Anakin was a little older in Phantom Menace. We could've seen more of Anakin and Padme's friendship grow, allowing Padme to have similar romantic feelings towards him. Since he was a little boy in the she could've never had those feelings; and she definitely wouldn't have feelings for Anakin now, not the guy who extolls the virtues of fascism. That's a weirdly handled scene. It's supposed to be cute and is set against the backdrop of hills from The Sound of Music but when he says "If it works" as a response to Padme saying his preferred style of government sounds like a dictatorship it's very dark foreshadowing for what is laughed off and forgotten.
Then there's Anakin's murder of the sand people for the death of his mother, Shmi (Pernilla August). Anakin going off to save Shmi is one of the strongest parts of the film, with Anakin on a speeder bike set against Tatooine's twin sunsets being a visually potent image. It's a shame Lucas is a such a flat visual stylist when he's shooting dialogue scenes. Shmi's death is honestly effective, showing us hints of an emotionally stronger and better film. Anakin's Kubrickian stare before he murders the sand people also showcases Christensen's acting ability which are often lost under Lucas' dialogue. But what I want to get at is Padme's reaction to Anakin telling her about killing "Not just the men, but the women and the children too." She's way too relaxed and even more so than him championing fascism, it makes usus question how Padme could fall in love with Anakin.
I also feel like Anakin pretty much becomes Darth Vader when he kills the sand people. When you give in to hate and anger is when you turn to the dark side. In Return of the Jedi Luke's pivotal moment is when he almost kills Vader but then grants him mercy. I understand Shmi's death is crucial to Anakin's choices in Revenge of The Sith. His dreams of her dying which came true and he's scared of his dreams of Padme's coming to fruition as well. However, the murdering of the sand people just feels like too much too soon.
Coming back to the romance (there's a lot to talk about regarding the romance), David Lean's Doctor Zhivago was an influence on the film. Lucas even wanted the poster for Attack of the Clones to mimic the poster for Lean's epic romance about the Russian Revolution and Russia's role in WWI, the backdrop for a romance between a Doctor Yuri Zhivago and Nurse Lara Antipova. While Lean was a director who was able to make the scenes between his characters as powerful and memorable as his grand compositions (he also directed one of the great romances with the smaller scale Brief Encounter), Lucas' scenes between characters are often his weakest, due to the dialogue, blocking and compositions lacky dynamism. I know the dialogue in the Star Wars was always intended to be hokey and melodramatic but since this is more complex story, I think the dialogue and the performances should've been on a higher level than in the OT.
The PT is at its most powerful when Lucas allows the images and music to tell the story The image of Anakin and Padme in silhouette being led out to an arena to be executed, with John Williams' love theme playing, says more than Lucas' words could ever do. I wish Lucas did rely less on dialogue to sell us on this romance. Anakin's and Padme's actions should have spoke for them as we saw them grow closer because of the threat on her life. They never feel in danger though, not until they're led out to die with Obi-Wan on Geonosis.
Speaking of Obi-Wan, we unfortunately don't get to see enough of his friendship with Anakin in this movie. I always feel Phantom Menace could've focused on Anakin and Obi-Wan becoming friends, ending with them becoming master and apprentice. Attack of the Clones would then show us how that affects their relationship. There are moments of warmth between Anakin and Obi-Wan but it'd been nice to see more of that great friendship. It's important to remember that Obi-Wan was never supposed to train Anakin. Obi-Wan's master Qui Gon Jinn (Liam Neeson) was going to train Anakin against the council's wishes. When he was mortally wounded by Darth Maul his dying wish was for Anakin to be trained, to which Obi-Wan agreed. Both Obi-Wan and Anakin lost a father figure, and father/son relationships are obviously an important theme in Star Wars. So, both Anakin and Obi-Wan are both living in Qui-Gon's shadow and attempting to live up to his high hopes for both of them. I think it was a missed opportunity not to mention Qui-Gon at all in this film. It would've been a good bonding moment if these men reminisced about their surrogate father.
Obi-Wan gets more to do in this film since he got the shaft in Phantom Menace, with arguably Qui-Gon taking on some of what his role originally supposed to be. His sub-plot in this film ties more in to the larger story of the film, the beginning of the Clone Wars. The Clone Wars were name dropped in the original film but we never knew exactly what they were about. Essentially they were a piece of world-building that made the Star Wars universe more alive, that it was a piece of history everyone knew about. It's established Attack of the Clones and paid off in Revenge of the Sith that the Clone Wars were the beginning of the end for the Jedi. There was something insidious (Darth Sidious) about the creation of the clones but the Jedi were too-shortsighted to truly to see it. It's an idea that I wish was better presented. The way Lucas portrays it makes us question the Jedi's intelligence. It shouldn't have been so obvious how shady the cloning operation was. However, I love the Imperial March playing over the Clones getting ready for battle at the end. It's another example of how great a filmmaker Lucas can be when he's not relying on dialogue to tell the story, just images and music.
I think Lucas is often a better conceptual director than he is a narrative one. He always been an experimental filmmaker at heart, from his early film school films, including THX 1138, which became the basis for his first feature film of the same name. However, he's not always great at crafting character or story arcs, The plot is driving things rather than the characters' choices. Anakin doesn't really have a character arc here. He doesn't mature and he's already so infatuated with Padme from the beginning there's not much room for him to go anywhere regarding his feelings, at least not how Lucas goes about it.. Stuff happens in Attack of the Clones but it doesn't feel like there's a real arc to the story. Lucas creates a sound structure but doesn't always know what to do in that structure.
Attack of the Clones does at least give us a clearer picture of how things will connect to the OT, with the beginning of the Clone Wars and Anakin's romance with Padme. The film in several ways is the key to understanding Anakin's story, the middle chapter and heart of the PT in the same The Empire Strikes Back is the heart of the OT. Though I'd argue Attack of the Clones- as I did earlier- suffers from having to re-introduce Anakin. It would've made the flow of the story from Phantom Menace to Attack of the Clones tighter and stronger if we had the same actor continuing their performance from the first film. So, in cloning, I mean closing, Attack of the Clones is the awkward first step towards Anakin's downfall in Revenge of the Sith. We see the beginning of man's obsession with preventing those he loves from dying, which will lead to death of whom he loves and his own spiritual death.
So, is Attack of the Clones an underrated masterpiece or does it rank low on your list of Star Wars films? Comment and let me know.
No comments:
Post a Comment