| RavenBlog |
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| Comments on Sunday 19 May 2002: |
| I just saw Star Wars Episode 2: Attack of the Clones, and would like to disagree with the reviews I have seen. The reviews have said "better than episode one". I didn't think so. It was dire. Really really poor. Everything the trailer promised, that had me not wanting to see it. I shouldn't have let myself be persuaded by reviews. The actor for Anakin (or the direction that made him act so) was terrible - he was nearly as bad as Jar Jar Binks. And the movie still had Jar Jar Binks in it. And he didn't get exploded. And all the ships looked like Babylon 5 ships, but worse - what are they going to do in Episode 3 to explain why all the technology after that looks industrial, when all the technology before it looked computer generated? The movie was a showcase for stupid pointless not-even-very-good effects. Case in point - Anakin and Amidala eating some fruit. The fruit was computer generated. It looked like a pear, except obviously computer generated. And then there was a computer generated glass vase on the table, so the camera could pan round and show the fruit being refracted through the glass. Now, the reason the fruit was computer generated was so that it could be flown through the air using the Force. But they didn't computer generate flying things in Episode 4, did they? Wires are perfectly good for the purpose, and would result, much more pleasingly, in fruit that doesn't look computer generated. And then they could have used a real vase with real refraction and the whole scene would have looked real instead of stupid. Why won't movie makers stop using computers and making billion-dollar movies, and go back to using wires, blue-screens and stop-motion animation, and make better movies on a budget of a couple of quid? Gargh. On the up-side, the (computer generated, of course) planet of the cloners was really very nice, and I want one. Both the planet and a cloner. And all the Fett gadgets. Don't see the movie. Don't see it. Just get a screenshot of the cloner planet or something. And maybe one of Amidala, if you fancy her (though you'd do better to get a shot from episode one). Oh, the Yoda-with-a-lightsabre scene was quite good too. But it's not worth seeing the movie for that 3-second segment. [09:28] |
| MatrixRaven |
| Argh. Sounds like you've been having a bad day, Raven. By strict definition, just about /anything/ is better than Episode I in my opinion (the only things that were cool were the pod racing and Ewen McGregor clean shaven with his cute little Padawan braid). Jar Jar and Liam Neeson pretty much ruined TPM for me. THIS film, however... it was not 'teh suq' by any means. I expected to be disappointed much like I was with TMP, but I was pleasantly surprised. EPIC BATTLE. FEMALE JEDI. CHRISTOPHER LEE. C'mon. :) I have no idea who Hayden Christensen is, and even after looking at his IMDB resume, I STILL don't know who the heck he is, but he did a halfway decent job as did Natalie Portman. He got the whining on Tatooine down beautifully... like father like son, eh? This is no epic, that is for sure. But I don't think it's as lame as you make it out to be (in my opinion, anyway). It was a good ride, and a pretty good film. I'd give it a 3 out of 4 stars and I might go see it again at matinee price. "Why do I get the feeling you're going to be the death of me?" Master Kenobi to Padawan Skywalker |
| Rialian |
| ===Well, must admit I liked it too...I can understand the difference in looks between this trillogy and the original Star Wars. It is being used as a metaphor....The look of the Imperials would be a lot more industrial...while the tarnishing of the "golden age" would have the look that 1 and 2 have. You can already see the industrial look creeping in at the end of 2. ===I thought this one was well done...and I think the acting issues are actually intentional. (looking at this whole thing as intentional metaphor)....perhaps reading too much into things, but maybe not. Lucas is definitely making it apparent in how he puts all the parallels in between things...one could say that he was simply re-hashing, and not well..or perhaps he is trying to express metaphor, and not so concerned with making it strictly "coherent" in the strict sense. |
| RavenBlack |
| Oh yes, that was another part of the rant that I forgot. "Here is some subtle foreshadowing. Did you get it? Here it is again, without the subtlety. Get it yet? LOOK, DAMN YOU, FORESHADOWING! HERE! LOOK, A PICTURE OF THE DEATH STAR!" To pick one example. To give credit where it's due, there were only... ooh... about 15 examples of really bloody godawful how-stupid-do-you-think-the-audience-is foreshadowing. Of course, since it's a mass-market movie, he is right to do it that way. But that doesn't mean it won't alienate me. |
| RavenBlack |
| Oh yes, something to watch for if, against my advice, you go to see it anyway - watch for a cameo from Futurama's Dr Zoidberg, in the background of a meeting of some sort. |
| Nik |
| The third-party, post-first-trilogy books introduced and explained the more majestic pre-Empire mystery technology. It's all to do with the destruction and reduction caused during the takeover of the Empire from the Republic - lost skills and technologies, compounded by Imperial mystery taxes and oppression. And such. |
| RavenBlack |
| I suppose this also explains why food and people cease to be glowy and unreal-looking, too. Oppression will do that to a pear. |
| Digi |
| Worse than Wild Wild West? (If you havn't seen it, well... it's a Will Smith film) |
| RavenBlack |
| Yes, worse than Wild Wild West. |
| KJB |
| It was not worse than Wild Wild West. And did you know that the leather number Padme wears while the two of them are sitting in front of the fire and making inane comments about how life would be awful if they got it on? Well, George Lucas designed that piece of dominatrix teasing. Makes you think, don't it. |
| Kyle |
| Everyone I've talked to thinks Hayden Christensen was either A.) Cute B.) An excellent actor or C.) Both. Personally I almost wanted to laugh at him in several scenes. It's like he was trying soooo hard to be an angry litte boy that turns into the evil Darth Vader, but it's just so difficult to imagine. I think Lucas should have picked some names for these movies that were total unknowns. Samuel L. Jackson always makes me think Pulp Fiction when I see him, particularly that scene where he put the lightsaber to Fett's throat. It just didn't seem like a very Jedi-like act. That's my bit. I can't help but wonder though how 1 & 2 would have been accepted had there been no episodes 4, 5, & 6. |
| wyndenai |
| I did quite like it, as a Star Wars movie. It may not have been a Good Movie, but it was good Star Wars. And it entertained me. Which is really all it had to do. I also think Christianson did a good job of acting when he wasn't onscreen with Portman, as well. Which, unfortunately, was almost never. I still continue to be amazed that Yoda is the only person in the entire Star Wars universe with half a clue. "But he will bring balance to the force!" and yoda just looks at them like "You're all light-side, you dumb shits." Le sigh. Oh. and the purple lightsaber. How can I dislike a movie with a purple lightsaber? I want one. And a cloner of my very own. |
| Stephen |
| ummm i like your points very much, but from what i hear (from star wars fans such as my uncle) is that, like, after episode 3 theres like a great depression of sorts and they lose the finacial capability to produce all the fancy ships and what not. also, i completly agree with you on the floating fruit thing. you know they could have made a plastic fruit or sumthing, not everything has to be computer generated. oh and also, the guy that played Anikin, we he was in a movie called Life as a House or sumthing. was a pretty good movie...he played a prostitute punker or sorts. very entertaining and i highly recomend it. he smokes the "herb", lol<\/A>/. |
| RavenBlack |
| Yoda's half a clue: "Let's ask the children why there is a missing archive; children?" "Um, because someone deleted it?" "Ahh, children are so wise." So wise that they can see the most fucking obvious thing ever. What's wrong with these adult Jedi? Have they the BRAIN WORMS? |
| RavenBlack |
| "Hm, a missing planet, that someone told me is there, and there's a gravity well as if there were a planet there... What can this mean? I know! It must be A CONCENTRATION OF NUMINDORS, or, er, whatever we called those force particles that aren't mentioned at all in this movie because everyone hated them in episode one. Did we call them Metachlorians? Them, then! Yes! That explains it!" |
| MatrixRaven |
| My first guess was that the planet had been destroyed. When a star of sufficient magnitude goes poof, you get a black hole. Gravity well. *shrug* And it was pretty obvious, but adults take certain things for granted. One such thing, apparently, is that the archives could not be tampered with except by another Jedi. And what Jedi would do such a thing? Kenobi wasn't stupid, he was naive in this instance. It's perfectly reasonable not to consider that the archives were altered if the possibility for such a conclusion is almost nil. Then again, all these "good" Jedi who are talking about Anakin bringing balance to the force (yeah, I was wondering if I was the only one who caught that) are working right next to the farkin' EMPEROR and don't even know it. |
| Tom |
| /me is really looking forward to seeing this movie now. The last movie I saw as a result of RavenBloggedness was 'BlowFish'. Or 'PufferFish'. Or 'SpearFishing in Southern Iran'. Or whatever, it involved fish and John Travolta, I think. Most enjoyable. |
| RavenBlack |
| Oh yes, one more thing. The love-scene dialogues between Anakin and Amidala; I couldn't help but imagine their words transposed into purple-on-black Geocities goth-poetry websites. "Our love can never be, my love, for we would be living a lie; Without your stares, without your whining, I would surely die. But oh alas, it cannot be, for you are a Jedi - And oh for shame though I love you, a senator am I." |
| helen |
| I liked the first two episodes too - I didn't expect the high art of filmaking at its best so I wasn't disappointed... Anyway, do not dispair if you did not like the first two episodes. There's always the next episode, in which Padme gets pregnant, gives birth and dies, Luke is deposited on Tatooine, Leia is adopted by the Organas, Anakin turns into Vader, C3P0 loses his memory, and Jarjar somehow disappears from the plotline. |
| bv728 |
| To quote the Daily Show movie critic: "They couldn't have had less chemistry if they were in different movies". Lucas proves he can't direct actors worth a damn. But the fight scenes were nifty, and it was an improvement over episode 1, in that it celebrated nifty action sequences over plot. |
| wyndenai |
| apparently one of the major downfalls of the jedi was that they got so cocky in their knowledge they forgot to actually *think*. I wonder if that'll be an acceptable excuse for my finals. |
| Angelica |
| you guys are awesome. i personally liked the movie a lot, yoda with a lightsaber ruled. that fireplace scene, i was just waiting for them to make out and stuff but it never happened. maybe they needed some luther vandross. or luther calryssian, whatever the equivalent would be. the obvious foreshadowing and ties to the other films are what makes the prequels FUN. you can be like, hey, i get it, that's funny because i know what happens later on. but maybe that's just me. a lot of the things in Episode I confused me, thats one of the reasons i thought it blew. but this one was just cool. i had no idea that aliens and females could be jedi. i guess later they find out that they're incompetent and don't allow them to be jedis anymore. Ewan McGregor is SO fine, but his face was hidden by his beard :( i have a question: after you become a jedi master, do they stop forcing you to put your hair into that stupid ponytail? like, you could just shave it off like mace windu and be done with it. |
| Tom |
| "no idea that aliens and females could be jedi" Yoda. And Leia for that matter. I wonder what the effect of all this foreshadowing will be on people who watch the films in order, I - VI, once they're all finished. E.g. 'Empire Strikes Back' - "I am your father Luke", can hardly have as much impact on an audience that already knows this, maybe has even watched footage of the conception. Or birth (and don't we all really want to see that scene?). It's like that Simpsons episode when Homer walks out - "Who would have thought that Darth Vader was Luke Skywalker's father" "Oh great, way to blow the picture for us." It's like, Lucas is blowing 'Empire' for everybody, and in a number of ways, that's the best film in the series. It must be stopped. |
| Ahren |
| The movie could have been better if they had bothered to find real actors. Oooh, here's a thought: Instead of wasting millions on special effects, how about putting that money into salaries of people who can ACT? By the way, Jar Jar must die. Nuff said. Oh yeah, Lucas should quit directing. Too bad Irvin Kershner isn't working much any more. |
| Tom |
| Saw and enjoyed today. But then, I never found Jar Jar particularly annoying, so I guess my opinion doesn't count on such matters. One thing puzzled me though: did anybody else notice that in this film after the scrolling text at the beginning, the camera tilts up rather than down? In all the others the camera tilts down to the action. That threw me for a second. |
| Angelica |
| I didn't notice it in the movie but my parents said that at the end when the camera is panning up Padme's body there's a distinct "belly shot", indicating that she might have already been pregnant and it was a shotgun wedding. If so, i guess we can't look forward to a conception scene. It'd probably suck in a PG movie. I already knew Darth Vader was Luke's father cuz I wasn't part of the generation that got to see that film in theatres. But it was entertaining all the same. Um, no Tom, can't say that an unexpected camera tilt "threw" me. I didn't memorize the cinematography of the other Star Wars films, so it was really no biggie. |
| Richard |
| On the fruit issues... did you note how Anakin's knife went through it as if it were butter? Real fruit would actually offer some resistance to the knife! Real fruit would also not insert itself into Amidala's mouth which this one did. I feel quite sorry for poor old Count Duckula (said part being identical to Saruman in LOTR as far as I could tell). Having to tell his sith friends that he wasn't able to beat a small green hair frog... |