The classic trilogy bristled with seat-of-your-pants filmmaking, our heroes bouncing from cliffhanger to cliffhanger, and in the final section of Episode II – almost four hours into this prequel enterprise - Lucas at last cranks up to this Saturday morning serial pace: from the Tex Avery goofiness of the droid factory, to the Cecil B. Matters improve greatly in the final forty minutes: Christopher Lee’s Count Dooku arrives to provide some much needed gravitas, C-3PO turns up to do his C-3PO thing and Padme puts on a skin-tight white leotard. There are pleasures (Obi-Wan squares off against Jango Fett) and pitfalls (Anakin and Padme have a picnic) in roughly equal measure throughout this flabby middle act but as with Episode I mostly you get a sense of drama that is willed into being, a necessary bridge to Episode III that requires Lucas to traverse territory – romance, politics – he is simply not comfortable in. On Coruscant we also meet the grown-up ‘Ani’ - okay so he’s a whiny teenager but that’s still a vast improvement on the bowl-haired moppet the world was asked to root for in 1999.Īlso more powerful than when last we met is Ewan McGregor’s Obi-Wan, the Jedi who was simply wan in Menace is a much more forceful presence as a full-bearded Master, struggling manfully with the endless exposition and even landing the odd punchline.Īs with Empire, the protagonists are separated for the second act: while Obi-Wan is busy uncovering the conspiracy of the Clones, Anakin and Padme turn into colourless clones of Han and Leia in the romance stakes.
Thus, Jar Jar is quickly sidelined, the upgraded CGI Yoda gets a showcase and those damn Amidala-clones are killed off on page one. Empire hits the ground running on ice planet Hoth, Clones however, has a truly cold start to contend with, aware perhaps that the movie’s most pressing task is to simply atone for the more egregious sins of Episode I. Where Episode V fairly zipped around the galaxy with all the breezy confidence of youth, unafraid to travel anywhere, even dark places, the second middle child of the saga is saddled with an altogether heavier burden from which it struggles to escape. But, as the little Jedi might say, in doubt it was. Indeed, when Yoda finally unsheathes his mini-saber and kicks Sith ass the faithful can reliably be found standing on seats hollering as if the outcome was never in doubt.
There are certainly stretches in the patchy Attack Of The Clones when Lucas’ flat-packed dialogue struggles to keep the hecklers quiet – Anakin’s seduction of the former Queen has all the charm of a teenage lunge behind the bike-sheds and none of the feeling – but by the time climactic ‘reel six’ cranks into high gear the saga’s reputation as the godfather of modern sci-fi spectacle is more or less restored. Casual spectators, once stung, had decamped en masse to the newly discovered Middle-Earth, leaving George Lucas with just the few million hardcore fans - true believers who, with all the apprehension of parents at a nativity play, willed their defrocked hero back towards respectability. The collective fever that characterized the countdown to The Phantom Menace had long since dissipated by the time the first sequel prequel rolled off the ILM production line.
0 kommentar(er)
