Instead of freeing the others, Padme
climbs to the top of her pole and out of harm's way. That's quite
smart of her, figuring out that both Anakin and Obi are going to be
in the next trilogy so they won't need her help. One of the arena
monster scales the pole in pursuit and slashes at her, but only
succeeds in tearing her shirt into a belly-baring midriff.
Spellbound by the sight of Padme's toned abs, it decides not to kill
her and instead just descends to the ground to ogle her. Can't say I
blame it... Nute watches this unfold, suggesting someone just shoot
her. Congratulations Mr. Gunray, it took you nearly the length of
two films but you finally said something INTELLIGENT!
No one does though, because having
another boring battle is much more important than the carefully
crafted plan of the Separatists. Anakin and Obi manage to get free
while dodging the attacks of their monsters, and this goes on for
awhile as tediously as possible. Nute orders Jango to fly in and kill
them, but Dooku tells him to have patience. How is it Nute is
suddenly the smartest person in this movie?! And where does
Palpatine find these morons to serve as his apprentices, you'd think
after Darth Maul he would have really stressed that whole “kill
your enemies the first chance you get, DON'T give them time to
regroup because that never ends well” thing.
RIGHT ON CUE, here comes Maximus to
save the day! Wait, it's just Mace and the rest of the Jedi Council.
They all draw their lightsabers, and you know where this is going...
SEIZURE TIME! Bugs and battle droids storm the field, and the fight
is on. I can't even process any of because it goes too fast and
there are lightsaber and blaster blurs EVERYWHERE, I get overloaded
trying to focus on any of it. C-3PO is among the battle droids,
keeping up his rapid fire delivery of knee slappers to keep this
battle as epic as possible. Terrible jokes make ending battles good,
right? At least one positive comes out of all this, Mace decapitates
Jango as nonchalantly as possible for his only Samuel L.
Jackson-esque moment of all the prequels.
Lucas immediately ruins this by having
R2 roll up out of nowhere and attach a cable to C-3PO's head,
dragging it back to his body while C-3PO bleats “this is such a
drag”. Yes, yes it is. All hope looks lost as the Jedi get
surrounded by HUNDREDS of droids, who somehow can't land a shot of
any of them despite all firing at once. A Jedi can only swing a
lightsaber so fast, how are they blocking like five hundred laser
beams a second?! I get our main heroes not getting hit, but Stupid
Looking Jedi #13 and #17? How the fuck do they get Main Character
Forcefields? Their execution is imminent... until Dooku has the
droids stop and gives the Jedi a chance to surrender. Normally I'd
complain about this bout of infuriating idiocy, but since Christopher
Lee is LITERALLY a James Bond villain he gets a pass for this one.
This is dragged out juuuuuuuuuust long
enough for Yoda to arrive with ship upon ship of Clone Troopers to
kick off Attack of the Seizures Episode Two. Dooku escapes, the Jedi
boarding the ships to hunt him down. R2 finishes his repairs of
C-3PO to get us laughing again, which gets squashed in the very next
scene where we see Boba holding his father's severed head. Uhh, that
was abrupt. At least you got your precious Boba Fett origin you've
been waiting two decades for, hope it was everything you thought it'd
be and more!
Dooku hightails it to another facility
with Nute and company, everyone wondering how the hell the Jedi got
such a massive army. What?! Dooku doesn't KNOW about the clones?
He IS Darth Tyranus, right? That hasn't been revealed in the film
yet, but duh. Jango said he was hired by a man named Tyranus to be
cloned, and we definitely know Jango was working for Dooku. The
fallen Jedi wanted Jango to kill Padme is what was presumably deal
for Nute's Trade Federation helping the Separatist movement, so it's
safe to assume he was in on the whole assassination plot. This means
he should know all about the clones, considering how Jango was
shacked up on Kamino.
In true Lucas writing fashion, this
whole thing is a total clusterfuck. In the original script,
Sifo-Dyas was Sido-Dyas, a pseudonym for Darth Sidious (Sido-dious,
get it?) himself. Sidious originally placed the order for the clones
directly, which made complete sense. However when the script was
being typed up Sido-Dyas became Sifo-Dyas due to a simple typo, and
Lucas liked this new spelling so went with it instead. This resulted
in him writing Sifo-Dyas an entirely new character, one whose
backstory wasn't fully revealed until MARCH OF THIS YEAR. Yes, we
had to wait twelve years for an explanation on this bullshit.
The canon animated series the Clone
Wars tried its best to clear all of this up, explaining Sifo-Dyas
was an ex-Jedi kicked out of the council because he was too
“extreme”. He was still a good guy though, so commissioned the
clones to prepare for what he saw as Sith controlled future. Dooku,
also recently kicked out of the council and was now serving
Palpatine, found out about the clones and had his old friend
assassinated so he could take control of the clones for his new
master. Dooku took Sifo-Dyas' blood and had it transfused into the
cyborg warlord that would eventually become General Grevious, which
explains how he was able to attain a mastery of the Force.
BUT the movies are exempt of any of
this pesky “explanation” stuff, so unless one is to assume Dooku
was feigning ignorance about the clones to Nute for some unfathomable
reason, THIS SCENE IS ASININE. Dooku really is one of the most
poorly conceived villains in sci-fi history, and every time he steps
into frame I just cringe. With the Jedi closing in, the Neimodians
turn tail and run. The leader of the bugs, Poggle the Lesser, pulls
up holographic blueprints for the Death Star and states it cannot
fall into the hands of the Republic. Dooku takes them, promising to
carry them to safety back to his master on Coruscant. We see the
bugs are quite fond of the round design for their orbital weapons of
doom, as all of their spaceships basically look like miniature Death
Stars. I'll give the film a point for this, it's a nice change of
pace here where something from the original trilogy gets a nice bit
of insight that doesn't utterly ruin it.
Dooku boards what looks like Darth
Maul's speeder bike and departs for his ship, still being chased by
the good guys. Droid ships blast at the main ship housing all of our
leads, which causes Padme to FALL TO HER DEATH to the ground below.
My bad, she's totally fine! That was a HELL of a fall there, at
least fifty feet at insanely high speeds. I know her Main Character
Force Field is strong and all, but DAMN! I'm having a hard enough
time buying, well... ANY of this, why waste what little credibility
the film has left by pulling something like this? Anakin wants to go
back for her, but Obi reminds him stopping Dooku is more important.
After all, if they can catch him they can end the war before it
begins. I do question this though, Poggle seemed quite quick on the
uptake and probably would have gladly stepped in to continue the war.
They finally corner Dooku in a hangar
where his ship is, which means it's time for another epic two on one
lightsaber duel. Well, epic is probably the wrong word since
Christopher Lee ain't no acrobatic Ray Park at this point in his
life. Still, Lee is more badass than anyone else in this film so
let's get this party star- oh. We cut back to Padme lying in the
sand. I thought we were done with this whole “quick cutting
between scenes to kill momentum” stuff? Guess not. A clone helps
Padme up, the senator declaring they have to get to the hangar and
stop Dooku. The... hangar? Did the Jedi have a complete map of the
entire planet showing where Dooku's ship was parked? Otherwise,
there is NO WAY she should know where he was headed. This VITALLY
IMPORTANT scene now done, we return to the Duel of the Fates 2: The
Redueling.
Dooku kicks everyone's asses AS HE
SHOULD, going as far as to cut Anakin's right arm off. Hey, just
like in the Empire Strikes Back when the same thing happened
to Luke! That makes this movie MUCH better, right? RIGHT?! How
awesome would it be in Dooku revealed he was really Anakin's father
right now? Alas, the latest chapter of my Star Wars
fanfiction “Fuck Midichlorians” doesn't come to pass because here
comes Yoda to save the day. Again. This is where I turned off the
movie back in 2002, so I've never seen anything past this point.
Can't wait to see on all the glorious storytelling I missed out on!
Things start off great with Dooku using
the Force to throw various shit at Yoda, but he deflects it all with
waves of his hand. Okay, that's more like it! Maybe the lightsaber
stuff was just a bad hallucination I had that- oh, there it is. Yes,
Yoda whips out a lightsaber and they begin to duel. Yoda, who just
moments ago was laboriously breathing as he limped into the room, is
now moving around the area like a young Bruce Lee. Do I even have to
talk about how WRONG this is? How this violates everything he talked
about in Empire? “A Jedi uses the Force for knowledge and
defense, never for attack” ring any bells? WELL FUCK THAT, it's
way more important to look badass!
How about how Yoda NEVER had a
lightsaber in that movie and never once taught Luke a single thing
about it? Oh sure, Yoda fighting and flipping around LOOKS cool,
which is ALL that Lucas cared about in the prequels. Nevermind that
silly “characterization” gibberish, it'll look SO FUCKING
AWESOME in the trailer! Fortunately, this only goes on for
about a minute before Dooku realizes he's in over his head and
escapes in his ship. Good thing the Jedi didn't stake any ships
around orbit of the planet to prevent such an action from happening
or anything! Dooku flies to Coruscant where he meets up with Darth
Sidious, announcing everything went according to plan and the war has
begun. Sidious is pleased, but I don't think taking advantage of
these fools is anything to be happy about. You get happy when you
steal candy from babies too, you asshole?
Across the city Obi meets with Yoda and
Mace, wondering if Dooku was telling the truth about Sidious running
the Senate. Yoda calls Obi a fucking idiot for believing this,
because no there is no way a shadowy man who keeps ending up at the
center of nonsensical conflicts and keeps obtaining more and more
power as a result could EVER be evil. Seriously though, how lucky
was it they had a clone army just waiting for them?! That couldn't
have worked out any better unless it was planned in advance to unfold
that way! Yoda laments the beginning of the Clone Wars, and I sure
am glad one of the biggest defining moments of the Star Wars
universe will happen almost completely off camera. NO A CARTOON DOES
NOT COUNT, I don't care if it is canon.
This monstrosity finally ends on Naboo,
where Anakin and Padme are getting married. Because they're so in
love, remember? We see Anakin's right arm has been replaced with the
robot hand from Terminator 2, because apparently
prosthetic limbs with skin won't be invented until Empire.
Badmouth Palpatine all you want, at least he got sweeping medical
reform pushed through after he seized control of the Republic. They
kiss AND WE ARE FUCKING OUT OF HERE!
CUE THOSE CREDITS!
Ladies and gentlemen, that was my pick
for worst movie of all time. Now of course that's just my opinion
and not a fact, I'm sure there's much, much worse out there because I
have yet to see every movie ever made. And what makes a movie bad is
completely subjective, because where do you even start? People like
to point out films such as Tommy Wiseau's The Room or Birdemic
as the contenders for this award, and they are justified in saying
that. These barely even count as films, with every single level
botched just horribly. But the difference between those and Attack
of the Clones? They're ENJOYABLE. Yes, it's all unintentional
comedy that has you laughing AT the movie and not with it, but
ultimately you're having fun. Hell, if you have a sense of humour
you're going to have a BLAST with those movies! I can honestly say
the Room is more entertaining than hundreds upon hundreds of
other movies I've watched.
What about those horrible B movies from
the 1950s and 60s as popularized on Mystery Science Theater 3000?
Manos: The Hands of Fate or Santa Claus Conquers the
Martians? BEYOND wretched on every level possible, any of these
could easily make the case for the worst film ever. But again, these
are a BLAST to watch. Same goes for pretty much any film made by Ed
Wood or Roger Corman, or if you want to go modern, Uwe Boll. And
yes, you can expect to see a Uwe Boll movie appear on this blog
sooner than later because I have House of the Dead on the way.
Yay...
Genres can also pretty much be ruled
out because of their inherent niche, so that rules out things like
horror and comedies. Do you really go into things like Friday the
13th Part 91, Ashley Judd Rom-Com #6,531
or Adam Sandler Fart Movie #56,297,399 expecting very much?
This really only leaves Big Budget Flops like Heaven's Gate,
Ishtar, Battlefield Earth, or Waterworld, which we'll be
taking a look at next year. The difference between these and Attack
of the Clones is these are just standalone stories, something you
can watch and then go “Wow! That was BAD!”. But Episode II
goes further with this, as it damages an entire OTHER set of movies.
And not just any movies, but the single more popular trilogy of all
time until Lord of the Rings stole its thunder. It is now
impossible to watch the original trilogy without thinking about how
brain dead Yoda was or how much of a whining baby Darth Vader was.
Or Midichlorians existing.
Based off everything going into this
movie and what it needed to be, I've yet to see a movie fuck up
harder than this. The Phantom Menace was atrocious, but in
comparison to this film it's a goddamned bastion of quality.
Everything was stupid there, but Episode II compounds the
stupidity to a near immeasurable degree. You can go superficial and
point out how the lousy CGI takes you out of EVERY scene because it's
so sterile and artificial. The majority of the scenes you can just
picture the actor in front of a green screen looking confused while
Lucas shouts at him or her what he's meant to be looking at. There
is no sense of believability with any of this stuff, and the worst
part is this extends to mundane scenes like characters just WALKING
AROUND. Just because you can make an entire movie on a computer
doesn't mean you SHOULD.
In my last review I talked about how
Lucas trail blazed the current state of movies being all mindless
action at the cost of everything, obviously writing the set pieces
first and then clumsily constructing a story around them. This is on
full display here, even moreso than Episode I. You can't tell
me he wrote the arena scene with ANY kind of thought how it'd fit
into the plot, that could easily be awkwardly shoehorned in later.
This set a horrible example for other filmmakers who saw this and how
much money it made, copying it over and over again for their own
films.
The problem with this is that Star
Wars made all of its money because it's Star Wars, this
could have been two hours of people sitting around talking and it
STILL would have made all the money. Don't believe me? Watch
Revenge of the Sith! When Generic Summer Action Blockbuster
apes this formula with no preestablished license (which is,
admittedly, getting rarer since four of every five movies is now
based on a comic book), it is just another mindless movie that you've
already seen a million times over. Thank you for that, George.
Strip away all of the tension free
action, and what do you have left? A love story that makes 50
Shades of Grey look moving, a love story that is so paper thin
and free of ANY kind substance that Lucas is forced to supplement it
with Obi trying to solve the world's most obvious mystery. Fucking
Fred and the Scoobies could have solved this thing before the first
commercial break! It really didn't help either that the second one
of the dueling plots were on the verge of becoming vaguely
interesting, the film would cut to the other one to put you back to
sleep. And it accomplished this with a fury, it took me FIVE days to
finish this freaking thing. Every other scene had me stopping the
movie and doing something more entertaining, like watching my lawn
wilt in the cold winter air.
This is it though, this is the story
that sets all of Star Wars into motion. The darkness in Anakin
Skywalker's soul, the grand machinations of Emperor Palpatine, the
galaxy changing Clone Wars, all of this begun here. Did you feel the
majestic origins of all this? Between watching Anakin creep on Padme
and the Jedi Council wandering around with their mouths hanging open,
I was inspired. Weren't you? This is the final nail in the coffin
that was Star Wars, and my new synonym of cinematic failure.
Just think though, there's one more movie left to finish shoveling
dirt of the space opera to end them all. I can't wait!
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