I suppose I could have just not gone to Star Wars Episode Two: Attack of the Clones, but really, the idea never occurred to me. Not see Episode Two? Not an option. I have an eight-foot cardboard Darth Vader looming over my apartment, for God’s sake. Nailing a replica of the Sith Lord up on your wall is a statement of purpose, a pledge to go down with the franchise, fiddling grimly on the deck as it sinks into a frozen sea of poor execution and wasted opportunity.

I had high hopes after seeing the preview last fall. I forget what I’d originally gone to see — The Last Castle, maybe, another good idea mangled by lazy writing and direction — but I do remember standing in line and shaking my head at the light-sabered, Jedi-robed fans who’d bought tickets only for the thirty-second Star Wars teaser. Then the screen went dark and the sound of Vader’s infamous wheeze filled the auditorium, and as a slideshow of significant moments unfolded in that eerie asthmatic vacuum, I laughed and clapped my hands in spite of myself. Lucas is back in the zone, I thought.

Now that I’ve seen the film, I can safely say that he’s back in the zone, all right — the zone of stultifying pacing, careless missteps in the backstory, bizarrely apathetic direction generating arthritic performances by the lead actors, and asteroid-sized hunks of microwaved Gorgonzola masquerading as dialogue. Granted, the reviews I’d read — a disheartening string of weary shrugs and complaints, most of which seemed to imply that the reviewers would have hated the movie, had the experience of sitting through it not sapped them of the necessary energy — hadn’t led me to expect much better, and I’ve never likened Lucas to Alan Ball in my mind anyway, but I’d braced myself for “not that great.” “Weak in spots, but worth seeing,” maybe. I hadn’t prepared myself for “terrible.” And it’s a terrible movie, Attack of the Clones.

Not that a terrible movie is always an unenjoyable movie, of course, but terrible movies tend to fall into one of four categories: the terrible movie that pretty much knows it’s terrible, but forges ahead anyway and has fun with itself (Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls); the terrible movie that doesn’t know it’s terrible, and throws itself with such earnestness into entertaining you that you can’t help but grow fond of it (Big Trouble In Little China, and to some degree the first Star Wars); the terrible movie that tries way too hard, overextends itself because it’s, you know, terrible, and thereby becomes unintentionally hilarious and a fertile breeding ground for drinking games (Showgirls, Cleopatra); and finally, the terrible movie that believes itself to be Great And Important Art, but has spent so much time staring at itself in the mirror that it has no idea how a movie is traditionally supposed to work and can’t get out of its own way, and is therefore so terrifically boring and annoying that the audience falls asleep as a defense mechanism (insert Costner vehicle here). Attack of the Clones falls into that last category. Only cringing spasmodically with my entire torso at the wretched writing kept me awake.

But should I have expected better? Bleary C-minus reviews and inflated expectations aside, could I realistically have assumed that Clones would improve on the cynically substandard Phantom Menace? Because I thought it would; I thought it had to. I figured that the excision of Jake “Particle Bored” Lloyd from the cast, not to mention a drastic reduction in screen time for the despicable Jar Jar, would perk up the second prequel significantly. Natalie Portman had already apologized profusely for her phoned-in acting in Phantom Menace and promised to turn in a more professional performance this time around. But George Lucas has a tin ear for the spoken word and a notorious inability to manage actors, both proven weaknesses testified to by those who have worked with him and both evident in the original trilogy. What led me to believe that he’d mastered the arts of dialogue and direction in the last three years?

Because I assure you, he hasn’t. The dialogue consists primarily of lumbering, yet utterly unenlightening, exposition studded with vague pronouncements about the Force, with the occasional foray into banalities so simple as to verge on the nonsensical. The plot, tiresome and picayune to begin with, dawdles and lurches by turns, but without ever clarifying exactly what’s happening or why we should care; it seems to serve primarily as a backdrop for set pieces even more tedious and futile than itself. (The fact that the plot has to heave itself numerous times out of the saccharine quicksand pit of John Williams’s screechily unsubtle score doesn’t improve the pacing.) Presumably, the function of the second installment is to show us the coalescence of the Empire, the forging of the relationship between Anakin and Amidala, and the origins of Anakin’s turn to the Dark Side, but it fails in various degrees at all of these things. The formation of the Clone Army is hopelessly muddled, not to mention marred by the presence of inadequately CGI-ed alien creatures who look like Greta Van Susteren by way of A.I.. The “love” “story” is neither credible nor compelling (more on that in a moment); ditto the so-called groundwork laid for Anakin’s later slide into evil.

The development — or sad lack of same — of the Anakin character is the primary problem. Darth Vader is a towering villain who resonates all the more because he sided with good in the past, an anti-hero whose vast power exists side by side with human flaws. Vader’s origins as a baddie remain mysterious for much of the original trilogy, which only adds to his mystique (although the black cape doesn’t hurt), and the task of creating a plausible story arc for that particular character isn’t an enviable one, but Lucas clearly needs help mapping Anakin’s journey to the Dark Side. In Attack of the Clones, Anakin comes off by turns as impatient, petulant, grudging, and deaf in one ear. At one point, he throws things and whines about the strictures of Jedi life as enforced by Obi Wan: “It’s not fair!” No, really. That’s the line. Then Lucas expects us to believe that the massacre Anakin perpetrates on the Tusken raiders as payback for their kidnapping and torture of his mother is a key turning point — never mind that the killings take place almost entirely off-screen, that the death scene of his mother is not very moving and timed cheaply, or that Anakin narrates the Tusken slaughter to Amidala by pouting that he killed the women and children, too, not just the men. Ohhh, I see. He’s so angry that he’s not even a male chauvinist about it. That’s…wait, what is that? And another thing — I don’t know who decided that “Annie” would do as an appropriate nickname for a young man who goes on to strangle people with his mind, but I must strenuously disagree. What’s next — Darthy Warbucks shows up for a big dance number on the steps of the Death Star? A little dignity, please. He’s evil.

Hayden Christensen does the best he can with the lines he’s given, but the declarations of long-lost love he’s forced to utter in Amidala’s direction have all the dramatic heft of a gum wrapper; it doesn’t help that Lucas elects to tell us everything instead of showing us, because the idea that Anakin has longed for the queen since their parting years ago feels tacked on. But that doesn’t make the acting any less rancid. Christensen and Natalie Portman have the chemistry of stale crackers, and Portman seems to have mixed up “acting” and “looking up from under lowered eyelids” in her mind. I can forgive a mediocre performance opposite a blue screen, but that excuse doesn’t apply to the love scenes between these two, which the audience can smell decomposing. It’s a movie populated by the worst performances of several careers. Ewan McGregor flinches visibly after every line — not that I blame him; Obi Wan gets a few of the biggest clunkers in the script, probably because he’s the only one with a prayer of handling them with any decorum. Samuel L. Jackson keeps glancing off-camera, presumably to glare menacingly at his agent, then biting his lip, presumably to squelch giggles of disbelief. As Senator Bail Organa, Jimmy Smits (Jimmy Smits?) actively resents having to wear an Elizabethan collar while apparently smelling cat poo somewhere nearby. But Portman is the most egregiously dreadful, evincing an almost total lack of affect; she musters up an approximation of “put-upon” when death seems imminent, but spends the rest of the film in a Stepford torpor reminiscent of Andie MacDowell.

Just when I’d written the whole thing off as worthless and settled in for a nap, the action picked up a bit; Christopher Lee does a nice job as Count Dooku, and the fight scene with Yoda finally roused the audience from its trance of boredom. I liked that moment, Yoda pushing aside his robe to unsheathe the light-saber and announcing his intention to kick ass; it lends credibility to his status as a respected sage in the earlier films. Christensen has a couple of scenes where the blocking reflected forward to the physical space that Vader inhabits — the long dark robe, the bulk of the shoulders — and those played well, too, as did the times when Anakin’s peevishness brought to mind the same bratty quality in his son Luke. And there’s a scene with Anakin in a workshop, reminiscing about fixing things, that reminded me of Vader’s pod, the plates and masks of his exterior, and how he must have literally built himself around his scars. Deft, those touches…and so probably unintentional.

Lucas has said a number of times that he makes these films for kids, and that adults shouldn’t read so much into them or subject them to such scrutiny. Well, okay, but it’s entirely possible to craft a tightly plotted, well-written, funny, touching, and technically demanding movie for children — Pixar does nothing but — and Lucas’s comments smack of defensiveness as a result. Yes, he’s set himself a difficult task with the prequels, and yes, the fandom expects perfection, which isn’t a fair standard…or is it? Should we demand as much from Lucas as we got out of the first three films? Sure, I grew up with those, and I don’t know if I’d like them as much now if I hadn’t already seen all three of them a hundred times by the age of fifteen, but the original three have a certain something that the prequels just…don’t. Maybe it’s that we already know what happens, but I don’t think that’s the reason; the how of a story can be just as interesting as the where. Maybe it’s the acting, but Mark Hamill is no Olivier, and he did a fine job…and Ewan McGregor tunes his Guinness inflections perfectly, but even he can’t trump the awful writing. So…it’s the writing, then? No, not necessarily. The writing in Episodes 4-6 is uneven at best, sometimes stilted, other times gawkily colloquial and anachronistic. But something about the trilogy lets it work, and something about the prequels doesn’t. The movies move differently. It’s like the difference between Robin Williams’s eighties stand-up and the cheerlessly sticky films he’s in now — his comedy routines, manic and hairy, rushed from one joke to the next, hitting or flopping but never falling off the pace. Compare that to lugubrious crap like Jakob the Liar, a completely different performance from the same man, one that limps and preens and bogs itself down. You can see him thinking, and it’s the opposite of fun.

I don’t know if that’s the trouble with the prequels. I don’t know if Lucas had too much time to overthink them or doesn’t really care so much anymore or what. But it seems to me like the older films light the fuse on the story rocket in the backyard, point it in the air, pray it won’t go through old Mrs. McAlary’s portrait window by mistake, and launch it, and maybe the window gets broken or that kid from down the street burns his finger, but the rocket’s whizzing around and everyone’s yelling and jumping up and down and whatever happens, it’s not dull. The new ones just kind of lie there, pretty and shiny and sputtering, and they don’t fly. Lucas isn’t a good writer and he isn’t good with the talent, but he’s gotten these things up in the air before with the same limitations, and it’s all the more maddening that he can’t do it now.

It’s not just that the prequels suck, although they do. It’s that they don’t suck with any flair. The trilogy kind of sucked, too, in its way, but it also swooped and crunched and flailed and kept our attention. The prequels don’t, but they could — they just don’t try. If they would just try a little harder, we would love them too. We want to love them so much. That’s really why Attack of the Clones is so terrible, I think. It doesn’t love us back, not even a little bit.

May 20, 2002

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