FlyingMonkey
Distinguished Member
- Joined
- Sep 5, 2011
- Messages
- 7,131
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Attack of the Clones last night... and you know what? For at least the first half, it's better than The Phantom Menace. Substantially better. Coruscant looks good. The attempted assassination of Padme and the business with the clone army are mysterious enough to hold the interest. The racism seems turned down to a minimum: there's hardly any Jar-Jar; no Trade Federation. And actually, Hayden Chistiansen isn't as bad as people said at the time. But you know what is bad? The script. That's why the young actor struggles. It's also why good actors like Samuel L. Jackson and Ewan McGregor struggle to produce anything like a 3-dimensional performance. George Lucas's lines are dreadful. He just doesn't seem to know how people talk. He has no sense of what makes a memorable line or how to use one. In A New Hope this didn't matter so much - everything was corny, endearing cliché recast in space opera so we were happy with that. But 25 or so years later, we've got more sophisticated and he's only got worse. And the love story between Anakin and Padme is still icky, just as it was in the first film, and still makes little sense given who they are and their characters as we see them. But still, the first half is okay - just.
However.. then there's the Geonosis half. This is when Lucas seems to try to make up for the relative quality of the first half by throwing everything at the screen as hard as he can: creatures, droids, aliens, Jedi, Sith in waves of CGI, one after another, without any really sense of pace or dramatic timing. It's written like my 10-year old son writes stories: this happened and then this happened and then another thing happened and there were explosions and everyone died... and none of it really makes much sense. FWIW the ending of the recent Rise of Skywalker is similar in that way, but at least it doesn't go on so long as this. Oh and the Trade Federation are back. Great. I just phased out and found myself going off to do other things while my son valiantly persevered until the end.
However.. then there's the Geonosis half. This is when Lucas seems to try to make up for the relative quality of the first half by throwing everything at the screen as hard as he can: creatures, droids, aliens, Jedi, Sith in waves of CGI, one after another, without any really sense of pace or dramatic timing. It's written like my 10-year old son writes stories: this happened and then this happened and then another thing happened and there were explosions and everyone died... and none of it really makes much sense. FWIW the ending of the recent Rise of Skywalker is similar in that way, but at least it doesn't go on so long as this. Oh and the Trade Federation are back. Great. I just phased out and found myself going off to do other things while my son valiantly persevered until the end.