The Unbearable Hotness of Hayden
Written: May 29 '02 (Updated Jun 18 '02)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Acting, Sets, Costumes, Mood, Special effects of every kind
Cons: Some script defects
The Bottom Line: On a ten-point scale, I give this movie a nine. It is held back only by some flaws in the script.
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| DavidK93's Full Review: Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones |
Hi everybody! It's been a busy week for me, let me tell you! After taking my friend Marissa to her high school prom (shared by juniors and seniors at her small school), I joined her and her friends the next day (Saturday, May 18) to see Star Wars : Episode II - Attack of the Clones. That evening, my father arrived in Pittsburgh to take me back home, and we left in the morning. On Tuesday, I saw Attack of the Clones again, this time with my mother. Then on Wednesday I moved to Stratford, Connecticut for my summer internship in Norwalk. In fact, I am writing this passage from a computer at the Stratford Public Library. I'm still there, in fact, only I've been back to New Jersey since then, and I saw the movie for a third time on Sunday, May 26. Okay, so let's talk about the movie.
I'm pretty sure I can give a good plot setup that won't give away any important details. Ten years after the events of Star Wars : Episode I - The Phantom Menace, Senator Padmé Amidala (Natalie Portman [Mars Attacks!, Where the Heart Is]), formerly Queen of Naboo, has become the target of violent attacks while campaigning against the formation of a Grant Army of the Republic. On the other hand, Supreme Chancellor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid [Sleepy Hollow, and--hello!--he was the Emperor in Return of the Jedi]) supports the idea of an army, in light of increasing strife within the Galactic Republic. In fact, the separatist movement led by Count Dooku (Christopher Lee [The Lord of the Rings trilogy, an eensy part at the very beginning of Sleepy Hollow]) threatens to rip the Republic apart. At the request of Palpatine and the Jedi Council, Padawan learner Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen [Life as a House, Higher Ground]) is assigned bodyguard detail while his master, Jedi Knight Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor [Moulin Rouge!, Trainspotting]), is sent to investigate the threat. While Anakin is plagued by dreams of his mother in peril as he and Padmé grow closer to one another, Obi-Wan discovers armies amassing in every corner of the galaxy. And the Dark Side of the Force clouds everything. So, I’m sure you’re dying to know: Which army will emerge victorious? Will the Jedi Council survive the machinations of the Dark Side? Will Anakin and Padmé find eternal love and happiness together? For these, and other exciting answers, you’ll have to go see Star Wars Episode III in 2005! (Yeah, this qualifies as a “bridge” movie.)
The main players here are really Padmé and Anakin. Padmé is older than the young girl we met in The Phantom Menace, and so is Natalie Portman. Amidala has clearly become a woman in terms of her intelligence and emotions. She is a decisive tactician who is aware of her abilities both mentally and physically. Even though she has weathered the rough seas of politics for many years, the return of Anakin Skywalker affects her in ways she is unprepared for. She clearly feels a strong attraction to him, but she is reluctant to admit it. Natalie Portman is a beautiful young woman, and one of my favorite young actresses in Hollywood today (alongside Kirsten Dunst). She projects the hardness that Padmé herself often wants others to see, but she is warm and emotional in scenes where Padmé has let her guard down. Most importantly, we see flashes of pure fire that shows us exactly where Princess Leia gets her indomitable spirit.
Anakin has aged as much as Padmé, but only chronologically. Physically, the changes are much more pronounced, since while Padmé has merely advanced within womanhood, Anakin has grown from a boy of ten to a man of twenty. No, make that a boy of twenty. Even though Anakin is the same age as me, he is still horribly immature (Whereas, as you all know, I am almost unbearably mature and responsible, right?). He suffers from the classic adolescent complex of superiority and misplaced overconfidence. Much like a child, he seems lacking in a basic understanding of the way the Universe works, in terms of relationships and causality. Still, he is extremely gifted in the force. Many of his feats astound Obi-Wan and other Jedi Masters, but his unstable nature makes him more susceptible to the lure of the Dark Side. Very early in the movie, Anakin clearly demonstrates anger, an emotion that is forbidden to true Jedi. As an advanced Padawan, he should already have learned this lesson well. I think that Hayden Christenson was perfect for this role. He is an utterly gorgeous young man (hence the title of the review) with full lips, alluring eyes, and a nice body (what little of it they show us). He carries off the petulance and immaturity of Anakin without being annoying, and he wrote the book on brooding. The way he talks reminds me a lot of Ryan Phillippe, with a distinct lack of sharpness in his pronounciations. Christ, is he ever sexy!
Obi-Wan Kenobi is a wise and emotionally stable role model for Anakin (if only the latter would follow the former's lead). The youthful overeagerness that he evinced in the previous installment is now gone, replaced by a greater sense of duty and purpose. Obi-Wan follows the edicts of the Jedi Council to the letter, not because he does not think for himself, but rather because he recognizes wisdom greater than his. Ewan McGregor is another major hottie. Even with his longer hair and the beard, you can see how totally cute he is. In fact, there's this scene where Natalie Portman is in a tight space between Hayden Christenson and Ewan McGregor, and me and my female friends all wished we could be her. Anyway, I saw Ewan on Conan O'brien (or maybe it was Leno) last week, and he's just got this amazing off-the-wall energy. So he's really doing a great job as the more sedate Obi-Wan.
Then there are the politicos. Palpatine seems to be an upstanding member of the galactic community, striving for an ideal of cooperation and freedom. However, for all his “reluctance” to accept emergency authority, he seems to seize the reins of power quickly enough. And his comments to Anakin seem somehow subversive. Could these impressions be rooted in my knowledge of what happens over the next twenty years? Probably. Ian McDiarmid has already played that future character (nearly twenty years ago, in fact), which makes his performance here all the more convincing; he’s really had a long time to work on it. In many ways, you can see what Palpatine will become and how it follows from what he is now. Dooku is Palpatine’s adversary in the political arena. Early in the movie, he is referred to as a “political idealist.” However, we never see any such side of Dooku. We are introduced to a cruel man whose manages to demonize what ostensibly is a just cause (given certain facts that he puts at the protagonists’ disposal), though the use of utterly unjustifiable means. Christopher Lee has been getting some juicy villainous roles of late, and he is damn good at them! I’m sure he’s a delightful person in real life, but he really sells the whole evil thing.
In major supporting roles are everybody’s two favorite Jedi. Well, after Luke Skywalker. And maybe now the uncorrupted Anakin Skywalker. Okay, and a big faction of guys that loves the gold-bikini-clad Princess Leia Organa, later Leia Organa Solo if you follow the books. And if you’ve read the books, then you might also bump Mara Jade, Jacen and Jaina Solo, Anakin Solo, or Corran Horn to the top of the list. Um, that sure makes Mace Windu (Samuel L. Jackson [Pulp Fiction, Changing Lanes]) and Yoda (Frank Oz*) sound anticlimactic, eh? Mace Windu is apparently regarded as one of the more powerful members of the Jedi Council. He is eminently rational, and never uses his abilities rashly. However, when he is threatened, anyone can see that he is a force to be reckoned with. Samuel L. Jackson makes it clear that nobody messes with Mace Windu (They say that Mace is one bad mother--Shut your mouth!--I’m just talkin’ ‘bout Mace...). Probably the most surprising character in the entire film is Yoda. From our earlier glimpses of him in the later episodes (The language of prequels is confusing, yesno?), Yoda was an old and wise teacher with a quirky sense of humor and a fundamental understanding of the secrets of the Universe but little connection to the corporeal world. Episode I did little to alter that perception. But for Episode II, watch out! Be inspired as Yoda takes command in a pivotal battle situation. Stand in awe as Yoda flexes his Jedi might. Go nuts with the rest of the theater when Yoda does the thing that you’ve probably heard about but I’m not going to ruin it for you now in case you haven’t.
*Oh, you did not just ask, “Who is Frank Oz?”, did you? Ugh. Well, let’s see. He’s a director (In & Out, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels), a producer (Muppet Treasure Island, The Great Muppet Caper), and the voice of countless Muppets (Bert, Grover, Miss Piggy, Fozzie, Animal, Cookie Monster, Sam the Eagle, and Aughra from The Dark Crystal). I can’t believe you didn’t already know that.
Also lurking in dark alleys is Jango Fett (Temuera Morrison [Six Days Seven Nights, Speed 2]), the bounty hunter father of similarly employed cult favorite Boba Fett, who appears here as a child. Jango is a pretty scummy guy, and Temurea Morrison makes him believable. Unfortunately, the major elements of Fett’s motivation are left largely unexplored. In addition, his presence in two different army camps (I don't want to be more specific, lest spoilers be revealed.) should be setting off some alarms for Obi-Wan and Mace Windu, allowing them to make some important connections, but there is no evidence of that happening.
Meanwhile, comic relief is supplied by (honestly) everybody’s two favorite droids, R2-D2 and C-3PO. R2-D2 continues, as before (I mean later), to demonstrate a great sense of expediency and utility. And, can he still do that thing that he does in this movie? I don’t think he can, but then when did he stop being able to. You’ll know what I mean after you see the movie. C-3PO is as effete and prissy as ever, as he valiantly attempts to talk everyone out of doing anything remotely dangerous.
So, how’s the plot? Well, it certainly kept me guessing, and there were sufficient surprises in store. Even though certain facts about the future are foregone conclusions, there was plenty left to work with. The script supports the romance between Anakin and Padmé, although the chemistry isn’t 100% there for me (the opposite of the way it worked out in Spider-man). The movie does a good job of setting up the questions that we know will have to be answered in Episode III in order to bring us to the state of the galaxy at the beginning of A New Hope. In fact, most of the major conflicts in this movie are left unresolved (at least in part), making it a “bridge” movie.
The script does have some weak points. In several places, the script makes things a little too convenient. Whenever characters arrive on planens that they’ve never seen before, they always manage to land within easy walking distance of wherever the action is. Obi-Wan arrives on a random platform on Kamino which just happens to also house the front door to the Prime Minister’s chambers. Anakin and Padmé are lucky enough to find the droid factory on their first try. Other things aren’t fully explained. If R2-D2 is supposed to be watching Padmé, how does he/it fail to notice the large droid hovering outside her window? It is stated that a peripheral character is a changeling, yet we never actually see her changle, erm, “change,” in any meaningful way. It’s almost like it was snuck in to make an interesting book tie-in. Also, the third movie had better explain how certain people that R2-D2 and C-3PO meet in this movie wind up not recognizing them in the future.
This movie probably has the highest action factor of any Star Wars movie to date. There’s a high speed chase above and through the bustling metropolis of Coruscant, which includes vehicular pursuit, vehicular invasion, and sniping. Battle is joined by droids, soldiers, and Jedi. A lightsaber duel features one man taking on three consecutive opponents, including one who innovatively uses two lightsabers at once. Two protagonists race through an obstacle course of a factory. Clones fight droids. Men fight droids. Men fight men. Men fight beasts. Women fight beasts. All hell breaks loose, and I couldn’t get enough!
The special effects were breathtaking. I could not get over how lifelike everything looked. There is a vast improvement over 1999’s The Phantom Menace, in that digitized creatures seem much more to truly be part of the scenes in which they appear. Jar-Jar looks less jar-jarring, and is thankfully much less of a presence. Yoda is perfectly integrated into all of his scenes, as are the beasts in the arena on Geonosis. Even the bizarrely shaped Kaminoans (Vicki (MrsNormanMaine) was right on when she said that they look like Giacometti statues.) seem to actually be present. The stunning visuals include the detonation of Jango Fett’s seismic charges, the storm-swept surface of Kamino, and a wide variety of spacecraft in flight. When it comes to Jedi, objects move fluidly under the influence of the Force, and the scene of the Jedi squadron launching itself against the droid hoards is a real tour de force.
The sets and costumes are stupendous. The pastoral beauty of Naboo was captured by filming in Italy, and the planet looks like a renaissance painting of a heavenly utopia. The Jedi Archives are majestic, and Mos Eisley is as bustling as ever. Erm, wait, is that Mos Eisley? I forget. Obi-Wan has cultivated a more mature look now that he is the Jedi Master, while Anakin has adopted the short haircut and long braided queue that Obi-Wan wore as a Padawan in Episode I. Some of my young female friends noted that "Anakin is special, because none of the other Jedi get to wear leather vests over their brown robes." Mmmmm, and the boy looks great! Padmé wears a wide variety of excellent costumes and intereting hairstyles. In an early scene, her hair is gathered into two very large buns that are shaped sort of like Bugle corn chips, and she is wearing large, triangular pieces of jewelry on her forehead. Later, she wears a diaphanous gown that wafts through several different colors on its way from her shoulders to the ground. Unfortunately, the cut of the gown leaves something to be desired, as it looks rather shapeless. Natalie Portman looks amazing in a dark evening gown that she wears when dining with Anakin, and she also looks hot (Wait, did I just call a girl, "hot?!") in her sporty white outfit, especially after her midriff becomes exposed.
As for the music, it is by the celebrated John Williams (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, as well as all previous Star Wars movies) and it contains his trademarkedly (not a word--I made it up.) theatrical strings and horns. However, the volume of the music is generally much lower than in Harry Potter. It's been a while since I saw The Phantom Menace, so I can't really compare it. Still, it accentuates the most action-packed scenes and sets the mood for romantic scenes. Also, The Imperial March is used at the just the right times to point out that the Dark Side of the Force is asserting itself.
I also want to point out a trio of errors that I have notice. Two are continuity, one is more deductive. First, when Anakin begins to cut a piece of fruit for Padmé, he sets his knife into the narrow end of the pear-shaped item. When he uses the Force to float it over to her, we can plainly see that it is the very widest end of the fruit. When we see the fruit again, it is otherwise uncut. Later, when Padmé hugs Anakin on Tatooine, we see it in the shadows on the building. The shadows are well into a flat portion of the wall (Otherwise, it wouldn’t be a very good shot, right?). When the camera angle changes, the two characters are in the exact same spot (They were in mid-hug, after all.), but their shadows fall on a concave angle of the building, where they cannot be seen very well. Finally, after Padmé falls in the sand, she says she is fine and she gets up. However, her back was exposed and their were fresh, deep cuts on it. Then she rolled around, hard, in the sand. She should be in agony!
Well, that just about does it for this review. On a ten-point scale, I give this movie a nine. It is held back only by some flaws in the script. But it has excellent performances and incredible technical merits, and in my opinion it preserves the spirit of the original movies. So go see it! Then go see it again! Then, keep on seeing it until you notice picayune continuity errors like I did! Then, see it a few more times for good measure! And then, tell all your friends to go see it! And go with them when they do!
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
DavidK93
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Member: David Kaplan
Location: Baltimore, MD
Reviews written: 119
Trusted by: 179 members
About Me:
Passions has been canceled, again. But I think I'll get over it; I've gained perspective.
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