It's always dangerous to turn up to a movie with expectations of a life-changing experience, doubly so when the movie in question is an American-made blockbuster. And yet that's what I (and I suspect many others) did, when Attack of the Clones, the latest instalment in George Lucas' cultural juggernaut Star Wars, opened a week or two back.

My excuse is that, well, I couldn't help it because I love Star Wars. Seeing the original movie on the big screen in early 1978 is not only one of my earliest memories but also probably one of the formative moments of my life. I have a Pavlovian reaction to the
exuberant bombast of John Williams' score. I even really liked The Phantom Menace, despite its flaws.

Yet I came out of the theatre with oddly mixed emotions. The initial euphoria due to simply seeing a new Star Wars movie faded and I was left feeling neither shaken or particularly stirred (sorry, wrong franchise). And I couldn't work out why. This seemed to
be an adventure in the classic style: the further escapades of our heroes Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor), Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen), and Padme Amidala (Natalie Portman), three people united by their love of freedom and democracy and their very dodgy
hairstyles. I won't trouble you with the traditional teaser of plot at this point, as a) if you're remotely interested in this film you've probably already seen it at least twice and b) its terribly, terribly complicated. Suffice to say there are chases galore, much wielding of fluorescent tubes, and some of the most spectacular battle scenes in cinema history.

Having gone back for a second viewing my considered judgement is that this is an immaculately made, highly entertaining blockbuster, packed with cortex-frying visuals and memorable moments. It benefits enormously from a full-throttle performance from Christopher Lee, who perfected the role of 'villainous Count with supernatural powers' in
about 1966, and who's as powerful a screen presence as ever.

I suspect my initial ambivalence was partly due to going in with such high expectations, because while Attack of the Clones is good, it's not great. There are serious problems with the script: the central love story is so flatly written and perfunctorily handled that it would take considerably better actors to make it remotely convincing. Natalie Portman's delivery of the line 'I truly, deeply love you' is almost bad enough to make you start cheering for the Trade Federation.

There's also the lengthy sequence set on Tatooine. While this is one of the most effective and impressive parts of the movie, allowing Christensen to show how good he can be, it could also be excised almost completely at no harm to the main storyline. As in The Phantom Menace, setting up the plot of the 'future' films seems to take priority over telling the story of this one.

I think I was also taken unawares by the sheer darkness of parts of the storyline. This film is even darker, in places, than The Empire Strikes Back, with a real sense of pain and despair and impending doom - partly generated through clever use of characters,
imagery and music from the Classic Trilogy. Episode III looks like it will be very bleak indeed.

Actually, I think I detect a certain lack of decision on Lucas' part as to what level to pitch this Prequel Trilogy at. We all know how this story ends, after all, and I would have thought the sensible response would have been to play the dramatic irony of the situation
for all its worth. But there are very few allusions to what lies ahead, and Lucas stubbornly sticks to his guns by pretending the true identity of Darth Sidious will come as a huge shock when it's revealed. It won't; even my mum figured out who it was and she keeps asking which one of the characters was Captain Kirk.

On the other hand, the film seems to assume the audience is already familiar with the Classic Trilogy when it comes to elements like the Sandpeople and Yoda (his big scene works because it plays against the audience's expectations of the character). Going entirely for dramatic irony would have worked fine, as would playing it all 'as new'. The mixture of the two in the finished movie smacks of confusion and a missed opportunity.

Expectations have never rested easily upon the Star Wars films and Attack of the Clones is no exception. It's not up to the same standard as The Fellowship of the Ring, but it is packed with thrills, spectacle, fun and humour. It may be only a movie, but at least it's a good one.

Awix

30.05.02 Front Page

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