Star Wars Episode II: Attack of The Clones

DVD, Star Wars Episode II: Attack of The Clones (2002) film

Oh dear, where to start? 2002, I suppose… After being terrifically entertained by Episode I, a film I'll always defend, I was no doubt excited to see the next instalment, and although waiting three years didn't seem quite as much of an age as it would have when I was a child, it was still a pretty long time - 'The Lord of The Rings' trilogy came out in three successive years, so there no longer seemed as much of a reason to be forced to wait so long (for a school child, six years is longer than their secondary school career!). While I was still in my teenage years (just), when Episode II came out I was on the cusp of beginning to see the patterns in narratives, the cliched form of so many films, and special effects were just about to start losing their specialness. But I was still not quite old enough to realise all this, cynicism hadn't gripped hold, so I couldn't quite grasp why this film was the first 'Star Wars' not to fill me with pleasure - I remember leaving with the impression that it had been a great experience, but it wasn't quite there, it was missing… something. I couldn't define that impression, and subsequently I enjoyed it again on DVD release, partly because of the novelty of the medium at the time. But although I could be absorbed by the exciting action sequences and remained onside, looking forward to how the trilogy would conclude, I didn't quite know what was wrong with the film: I had a bad feeling about this…

I remember writing a letter to someone (these were like emails, but you actually printed them out, physically folding the sheets of paper so they would fit inside what we called an 'envelope' which was then fitted with a 'stamp' and delivered to the address printed on the front of the envelope), mentioning the film was good, but that I'd enjoyed 'Spider-Man,' released the same year, more. Having seen that film in recent years I can say that it still holds up and impresses me, but Episode II, sadly, does not. I do remember discussing it at the time, saying that the battles were a bit 'soulless,' and I'm pretty sure I never liked Hayden Christensen's portrayal of Luke Skywalker's famous Father, Anakin. I don't want to rip into an actor - not that he's ever going to read this, but constructive criticism is more valid than tearing a person's work to pieces. I don't know whether it was because I had imagined Anakin in such a vastly different way to the screen version, or whether even then, I had little patience for this irritating, bad-tempered, sulking, resentful, manipulative teenager, whose anger sounded more like the pouting of an irritating schoolboy than a young man of power and confidence. I suppose I'd always imagined (sketchily, admittedly), Luke's Father to be a Qui-Gon Jinn type: noble, self-sacrificing, a good leader; so it was with great appetite that I set myself up to watch the downfall of such a man. What I got was a boy, in a way, less mature than his boyhood self in Episode I, because at least in that he was described as kind, doing things for others and wanting to help people, his curiosity about the wider galaxy an unfulfilled dream.

I imagined Anakin being a good, but powerful Jedi who goes through some incident that transforms him into the evil dictator he would become (or, to be more precise, the evil henchman of the Emperor), it would be a tragedy of vast proportions, a sad failure by himself or others that drove him to the Dark Side. Instead we find out that he's on the way there all by himself, having developed an arrogant personality in which he's constantly questioning his master, Obi-Wan Kenobi, thinks he knows better, and twists the truth around to suit himself. All that stuff about Jedi are forbidden possessions or attachments, yet they're supposed to care, and that's love, so yes, it's 'fine' for him to love Padme… He sees what he wants and his Jedi training can't live up to his own passions. Sometimes you can see where they were going, or trying to go, with his outbursts on death and how he'd like to be able to control death and bring people back, and how he isn't all-powerful, but he will be one day. It's the megalomaniacal ravings of a dangerous youth, one who has only the modest, reserved Obi-Wan to keep him in check. We must remember that it was a bit of a burden for him to take on this apprentice, one who was already considered too old to learn the ways of The Force, but because his powerful connection to it was a novelty, the Jedi Council gave the go-ahead for his training. Obi-Wan was doing it for his master, Qui-Gon, against his better judgement, but unlike Anakin he doesn't flout his master's rules, and it was a deathbed request, so he was hardly going to refuse.

Even then, one disappointment to me was Qui-Gon's no-show as guide to Obi-Wan, as Obi-Wan would later do for Luke. I still don't know why, but watching the film it's evident that a lot of things don't make much sense. The most likely explanation was that they couldn't get Liam Neeson back (a real shame - he came back for a cameo in 'The Dark Knight Rises,' one of the things that makes that film rise above), or weren't bothered enough to try. Maybe it was felt with Qui-Gon there it would be even harder for Obi-Wan to miss the signs that his apprentice is actually a bad deal? Whatever, Qui-Gon's non-appearance (was it his voice crying Anakin's name as Yoda sensed the moment he turns on the sand people, or was that Obi-Wan's?), was the least of the inconsistencies. I'm still not a hundred percent sure why Senator Amidala was being desperately hunted to destruction by bounty hunters. I know it was at Trade Federation Viceroy, Nute Gunray's wish (I thought he got blown up in the droid ship's explosion at the end of Episode I!), but it was a weak connection that had very little logic, unless we put everything down to Palpatine's grand scheme. If that's so, then it all makes sense, because if even little details were purposeful in order to turn Anakin to the Dark Side, there's a motive behind it, at least, and it's fully possible Palpatine knew of Anakin's long held attachment to Padme and that his vows would be sorely tested if he came in contact with her, so getting her back for the Senate vote makes a certain kind of sense. But the film doesn't feature strong motivation and none of this is explained, the tone's so wrong, so often.

The big assassination attempts are simply there to kickstart the film with a bang, and they certainly did that, ending bodyguard Corde's career in flames, and providing some reason for Obi-Wan and Anakin to meet up, protect, and ultimately investigate, Padme's potential killers. But because her death really isn't important at all, when you think about it you realise the very structure of the film is at fault. If it is supposed to be so devious that it's Palpatine's wish that motivates everything, then they made it too subtle to appreciate, too subtle for the average filmgoer to even notice! And that's giving them the benefit of the doubt. It could just as easily be a case of needing to get to the next set-piece. Give them some credit, though, there aren't that many set-pieces, at least in the first half - if only what is there had been engaging rather than boring! Unfortunately, the story and characters don't carry off this adventure (with Obi-Wan going all Batman, detecting clues from projectiles), which turns into a weak love story. Who carries the film? In Episode I it was definitely Qui-Gon as the leading figure, with an opposite in Darth Maul, but in this everything's a bit of a mishmash: Obi-Wan is too quiet and restrained to draw us in, Anakin's the opposite, brash and unthinking. His master's far from perfect - look at the way he forces the death sticks seller to 'go home and rethink your life.' It's funny, but he does it unthinkingly, a throwaway mind control we're supposed to chuckle at and accept, because it's well-intentioned, after all, he's ending this weak-minded guy's habit, but the implications of control and the careless way he performs it, are creepy.

I suppose you could draw parallels with Qui-Gon and Maul, except neither are close to as interesting as those characters, and Anakin isn't the bad guy yet, that accolade goes to Count Dooku. So, Count Dooku, what can you say about a character played by Christopher Lee? Well, I can say I didn't like him. It was probably due to the fact that I'd seen 'The Fellowship of The Ring' a few months prior, and Lee's outstanding performance as Saruman was one of the many highlights of that great classic, so to see him again, with no makeup, nothing to make him stand out… it was just Christopher Lee playing himself, and as good an actor as he is, with the gravitas to pull off the role (which makes me wonder if he wouldn't have been better as an Obi-Wan character who mentored Anakin, or at least someone other than a bad guy that doesn't do much), the villain was bland. Maul screams for your attention, Dooku does not. Maul had a double-bladed terror of a lightsaber, I can just imagine the ad Dooku must have replied to: 'little-used lightsaber, generally good condition, slightly bent handle.' It's something that's unexplained - oh, I'm sure there are books that go into great detail on the subject, but anything relevant or interesting in a film should be explained in the film, you shouldn't be forced to buy books just to understand what was going on. We get a little history: Dooku was Yoda's padawan, Qui-Gon was Dooku's padawan, and so we see the whole chain of Jedi training, which is nice. I like that you hear about the lore and get some context for the characters, and all it took were a couple of lines of dialogue. You see? It's not that hard!

When the main villain isn't that much of a threat, you do have a problem. Dooku's evil scheme is to oppose the Republic's ways, his separatist group causing unrest (or so we're told, though no one actually seems bothered). So we need an army now? The Jedi aren't capable enough? Anyway, it's hardly something to go to war over. Everything's manufactured for the Emperor's plans, emphasis on manufactured, because most of them don't come across as natural developments. We're going to need Stormtroopers so let's have a clone army be created rather than real people drafted. And we need an excuse for the Supreme Chancellor to gain more powers, so Jar Jar Binks, left in charge by Padme, is manipulated into proposing emergency powers for Palpatine (no doubt all the Jar Jar haters liked seeing him in the Bantha pudu, although they probably preferred not seeing him at all), so we have Dooku creating a conflict on one hand, and Palpatine rising to combat it on the other… wasn't there an easier way of taking over the Empire-to-be? Did the Jedi not have any ability to spot what was transpiring right under their noses? That's one of the biggest flaws of the film, the start of the Jedi's descent into weakness and stupidity. Mace Windu and Yoda discuss this very point: the rise of a Sith Lord has somehow diminished the power of the Jedi (what's the matter, midiclorians up the spout?) - they can't even see the Sith in front of them, whom they interact with regularly! Failure on an epic scale - maybe the Jedi weren't so great after all. In previous films we're told the Dark Side isn't more powerful than the Light, it's just easier, yet one Sith can cloud even Yoda's mind? Why did it take a thousand years for the Sith to make a comeback?

I don't understand this business of opting in and out of the Jedi Order. Surely you're either a Jedi or not? Complexity's never been one of SW's strengths - the films that is, I'm sure where authors have hundreds of pages to extrapolate and define the universe in books it's become a lot more detailed and complex - but Disney doesn't want complexity, it's wants dollars, so the books aren't canon now, if they ever were, and I suspect Episode VII, et al, will be pretty straightforward for the lowest common denominator to enjoy! But why can we have Dooku, a former Jedi, and from that to being a non-Jedi, whom we eventually learn is in league with Darth Sidious (as Palpatine calls himself at the weekends), and has obviously taken the place of the chopped Darth Maul in the ten years since that guy's demise (or not, if you watch the cartoons, apparently). So is he Darth Dooku, or is he not at that 'rank' yet, or does he think of himself in separate terms to his master, and is only a partial Sith? The boundaries are blurred and unstable, but we know always two, there are, so he must be the other Sith. No one really knows, and he makes a play for Obi-Wan to join him, trying to recreate the similar scene from 'The Empire Strikes Back,' though it must have been just for show as he wasn't likely to allow Obi-Wan to join him. Unless he had plans of his own to overthrow Sidious and take the top spot for himself. It must be a lonely life for a Sith, knowing that your only employee is going to try and kill you at some point. It's not like you spend time guessing who's got it in for you, either, as you only have one follower!

I'm not sure what I was expecting from the film when I first saw it, though I still think of the trailer, scenes fading in and out to the sound of Vader's breathing, as being one of the best I've seen. I would never have expected them to jump ten years into the future, or maybe I would have expected them to jump further, as I never imagined Anakin would become Vader until he was middle-aged and had had a long career as a Jedi. Also, if Palpatine was to become the Emperor, that grizzled old man whose face was almost melting with age (or so I'd always thought), he'd have to be about a hundred and twenty, and in Episode I he looked a hale and hearty fifty or so. But that was fine, they could have another big time jump to get to Episode III… We know it's been about ten years since the first film because Anakin says he hasn't seen Padme for that long. She's no longer Queen, which was a very odd concept: elected royalty doesn't even make any sense! It also takes away from the assassination plot because she's not even that important, being a senator. For that matter why does she even need a bodyguard any more? Leia was a Princess and she didn't have one (though she did get captured by the Empire…). You can begin to see why Anakin might be such a frustrated individual, though, as a decade sounds like a long time to be an apprentice in any field! No wonder he has so little patience with his master - familiarity breeds contempt, they say, although in Obi-Wan's case he'd got to the stage of feeling comfortable enough with his master, Qui-Gon, to make tongue-in-cheek quips.

What has he done in ten years? Grown a beard. It's a nice visual reminder of the man he's supposed to turn into (not that I can imagine Alec Guinness with long hair!), but I don't feel we ever get to know him. He does his detective work, dully plodding through computer archives and forcing us to see the hateful younglings when he asks guidance of Yoda, but he's very staid and proper, politely wandering the galaxy looking for this or that - if people were bored and annoyed by all the taxation and trade discussion in Episode I, they must have been seething that half the film (or so it seems), is taken up with Obi-Wan and Anakin messing about on Coruscant (where far too much time is spent, like Earth in the Abramsverse 'Star Trek' films), hunting clues, whether that means heading to the library or a greasy diner. I loved Obi-Wan's impulsive leap through a window, but wasn't keen on the 'Blade Runner'/'Back To The Future Part II' flying cars. But back then it was all fascinating stuff, getting to see the ordinary lives of those living in the SW universe! Now, it's meaningless and dull. Why waste time on ordinary Republic citizen life when we could be seeing Jedi on daring missions of great personal danger. The chase through Coruscant traffic doesn't really qualify, exemplifying the stilted so-called friendship between master and padawan, full of clunking dialogue and humourless interplay, desperately trying to find some chemistry we can relate to. It's full of ill-judged levity in the Jar Jar vein to emphasise these are fun-loving guys that make a dysfunctional, but strong team, and enjoy what they do. But they just look like buffoons! Obi-Wan's always nagging Anakin, and he's always complaining, so even when they do crack a joke or share an experience, we don't care.

If Anakin and Obi-Wan feel strained and unnatural together, just wait until Anakin and Padme hook up for their bizarre courtship, initially under the guise of bodyguard (that's why Corde had to die, to allow Anakin to get close to Padme - maybe he was the one who planted the bomb!). Whose ludicrous idea was this (I mean in the SW world: I know whose idea it was in the real world!), to put two young people together in close proximity when it's clear he's more than keen on her? Obi-Wan knows it, and anyone that sees them together would too, but apparently no word ever reached the Jedi Council, who sanctioned his first mission. He's clearly not mature enough and it makes the Jedi appear blind. Yoda does mention that more Jedi are becoming arrogant, so maybe they just see Anakin as an example of the trend, not an anomaly to be carefully observed? They generously throw these two young people together who already have a history, a young man that often fails to control his emotions, and they couldn't foresee anything happening? At first Padme is uncomfortable, but intrigued by her new protector, and heading back to Naboo because… erm… well, they couldn't have a romantic atmosphere on Coruscant with all those noisy aliens flying across the global cityscape, so we'll send her back to her home planet for no good reason, especially as she came all this way to take part in the vote, and now leaves before it happens! Then she takes 'Ani' (it really doesn't feel right calling this teen by his childhood nickname), to all the most beautiful spots on Naboo and dresses in the most provocative outfits she can find (including the hair buns look that sets up Leia's style)!

It's okay, though, because Obi-Wan warns Anakin not to do anything without consulting him or the Council - if that isn't setting us up for another epic 'stay in the cockpit' moment, then I don't know what is. Although, in fact, Anakin, ever more resentful about his master ("It's Obi-Wan, he's holding me back"), is free to let it out now that he's far enough away from him, happy to use his master's command as an excuse not to go and help him when he needs it. Fortunately, Obi-Wan's short friendship with Padme in Episode I means more than ten long years of tutelage for Anakin, and she's going so he'll have to if he wants to protect her. It's something of a relief that they're not going to spend any more minutes of soppy blossoming romance and Anakin showing off his powers, talking as if he's reading awful poetry from a script and whining that he wishes he could wish away his feelings - a Jedi should be in control of himself! Obi-Wan was instructing him earlier to be mindful of his thoughts, Anakin prone to focusing on the negative (a lesson we could all do with today!), but he wants what he wants, and with Palpatine's influence on him, now telling him he foresees him becoming the greatest of all Jedi, his ego is as puffed up as could be. In a way, it's a good thing he has Padme to talk some sense into him, though you could say she was ultimately led astray by his persuasive, if narrow-minded argument and devotion, a willing worshipper of her - just shows that a bad person can lead a good, sensible one into trouble. She's a good person to blow some steam off to, being an outsider to the Jedi Order whom he can complain to about their rules and Obi-Wan's regulations.

You could almost say that Padme was more Jedi-like than Anakin, as she remains mostly calm and reasons things through, she doesn't get emotional like he does. While he admits he'd be happy to keep their situation a secret, she can't live a lie - her devotion to duty and the proper ways of doing things is a credit, and I suppose it's only his proving himself by going along with her to rescue Obi-Wan that seals her love. In the meantime, we have to endure them rolling around in the long grass, or Anakin lying bare-chested in bed, sweating as he feverishly has nightmares about his Mother, and Padme wandering around in her nightdress! The worst SW theme also annoys, with its sweeping lovey-doveyness. Why should we care about this couple where only one half has any positive characteristics at all, and even then she's looking stupid, being pulled in by the charm that we, the audience can't see at all. Padme's alienating herself from us because Anakin is hard to like. She even lets things like his half-joking, sinister advocation of a dictatorship, go, not realising how deep within him his desire to control and manipulate everyone and everything is.

About the only time you can feel any genuine sympathy for the lad is when they hop off to Tatooine to find out what's happened to his Mum. It was disloyal to his mission of keeping Padme safe, but he can't put personal things aside. It's around this time that the film begins to be watchable, away from all the boring detection and vague political worries that plod the first half out and drag it down. We get to see Watto again, an older Watto, perhaps fallen on hard times, but it's a nice callback to Episode I, even if the Outer Rim is really starting to look like the main place to hang out in the films (in fact, I think the only film that doesn't feature any scenes set on Tatooine is 'Empire,' which is popularly considered the best, so make of that what you will). It's also great to revisit (or visit for the first time, chronologically), the moisture farm, the actual sets returned to, twenty-five years later. I love it when a series or film does that, and I also enjoyed meeting the young Owen Lars and his girlfriend, Beru, later to be Luke's 'Aunt' and 'Uncle.' Admittedly, they aren't really characters, just names, and when you think about their connection to Anakin, you wonder why Vader never thought to go back to the farm in case his boy was hidden there. It's also pleasant to have C-3PO brought back into the story, and amazingly logically, too, for such an otherwise ridiculously plotted story: he was bought, with Shmi, by Cliegg Lars. Ah, but between now and then he ends up on a Rebellion ship and has no memory of Tatooine at all. I believe they erased his memory in Episode III as a quick fix - one fun aside is a retcon explaining 3PO's catchphrase, "Thank the Maker" - turns out he's talking about Anakin!

Cliegg was a genuinely interesting character, someone who fell in love with a slave, rescuing her from the clutches of slavery, then losing her to marauding Tusken Raiders. This was all very cowboy film, which is probably why I liked it, so his description of how a band of farmers tried to get her back and all but perished, losing his leg in the process, is about the first honest and genuine moment in the film. Actual threat, real people doing something, and the consequences. And then we get a Shmi scene when Anakin goes to rescue her, but finds he's too late. Another Shmi scene, and it's another good one, and another film with a character dying in someone's arms. She lifts a weak Christensen performance and it's a real shame she had to die, as she was one of the few actors I believe in this film. Already failing to stay in control of his feelings, he murders the whole tribe of sand people, slaughtering them with no mercy, overcome by rage. But it's okay, because Cliegg described them as animals, so we don't need to be too upset, and Padme can forgive that, right? But they must have been a sentient society, no matter how savage, so to kill women and children, too… It's a weird point between acceptable violence and killing natives, as if he had a good reason, but at the same time they were people. The Emperor's ghostly theme, accompanies his expression of hatred of them to Padme, and I might have liked the use of familiar SW music if the film had earned it and lived up to the right to do so, but it just feels odd when the film is so 'un-Star Wars.'

The other side of the coin is Obi-Wan facing off against Jango Fett, bounty hunter supreme. I can see why they added Boba's Dad to the mix, because they needed to create more links to the SW universe, and Boba Fett was always such a popular character that to see his origins should be a thrilling proposition. It doesn't exactly work like that: turns out Boba's just a clone. One of many, in fact. From a clone army that wears the armour of the later Stormtroopers, with a slightly different helmet. Why don't the clones all speak with a New Zealand twang in the later films? And diminishing Boba to one of hundreds might not have been the best move. It's also a little egocentric of Jango to want to raise a son who is, basically, himself. Or was it that he had a really bad experience with women and swore never to marry? Whatever, it's just plain weird. The best I can say about him is that he wears really cool armour and lives in a pretty cool pad, white like Cloud City, but that having a Jedi troubled by a mere bounty hunter continues to make them look weak. And this is Obi-Wan, your main protagonist! The actor gave a good performance, his tense attitude to the Jedi, or perhaps authority in general, giving him some bite. But really Obi-Wan, you ought to be ashamed of yourself for losing your lightsaber. The trouble with this sequence on the water planet is that by this time they really have dived into complete CG environments, and it feels fake, the tall aliens feel fake, and while it was once fascinatingly alien, it now feels… fake. At the time I was deceived, pulled in by the action, but I can see it for what it is now.

The takeover of CG is probably at its worst in this film, Obi-Wan bumbling about with CG characters, visiting CG planets and fighting CG creatures. It doesn't have a reality that it should. Nothing better exemplifies this than the awful droid factory sequence. It's as bad as that seen in the first 'Hobbit' film, where you have characters running along platforms, dodging, ducking and weaving as if they're in a computer game over which you have no control. It has to be one of the worst excesses of direction, padding out the story with pointless action like something out of an Aardman animation (though they'd do it much better). Even the use of R2D2 back to being the hero again and getting to show off his flying ability (why didn't he use this on Naboo, instead of trundling slowly up the stairs?), fails to improve the sequence. R2 has probably had an interesting decade as he'd been kept in the service of the Naboo army as one of the fighter's droids (or perhaps he had a rather dull time as I can't imagine the Naboo squadrons having much to do), and now he's back to travelling the galaxy with a band of misfits who earlier joked about being safe because he was along - without him Padme would have been covered in lava. One interesting point that could have done with expansion is in Obi-Wan's conversation with Dex at his diner: he says the Jedi should have more respect for the difference between knowledge and wisdom when giving advice on the dart, and Obi-Wan replies that if droids could think, none of us would be here. It's such an interesting little aside about artificial intelligence, but it never gets developed.

C-3PO (the less said about his impossibly-raised arms), takes back his role as comic relief from Jar Jar (who's limited to becoming the scapegoat). It's not much fun to begin with, but I quite like the mistake of his head ending up on a soldier droid's body, and one of their heads on his body. It's simple humour, but it works because it's not at the expense of anyone, or the story. But while all this is happening, Anakin and Padme get captured, setting us up for what should have been a terrific climax, but in reality is a messy conglomeration of climaxes that have very little purpose or obvious logic to them: they have to fight CG critters (nowhere near the Rancor's league), until Mace turns up with his band of Jedi, who then get swamped by battle droids and the flying insect creatures that inhabit this desert planet (that's another thing, there's too much sand and too much red - if Episode I's primary palette was of calming yellow and green, this one is orange and red, something else to hold against it). This is where the Jedi look so useless it's laughable - I'm not just talking about the fact they cut down left, right and centre, or rounded up into a little bunch having been beaten back by insects and droids, but even Mace Windu, supposedly a great warrior, makes the simple mistake of running away from the stampeding horned rhino creature instead of getting out of its way! Use a bit of common sense, Mr. Jedi, please?

There's no specific jeopardy, everything's so chaotic, you don't get a good sense of structure that 'The Lord of The Rings' achieved so brilliantly in The Battle of Helm's Deep. And once again we come down to the fact that there's no reason to care - these are just meaningless droids and flappy insects that all look identical, and when the clone troopers join the fray and swing the balance of the battle, they're just meaningless clones! I thought it a little odd that the clones look so much like Captain Typho - you could almost expect some plot twist that revealed he was in on it in some way, except that he's just a minor character. And after Mace making it clear that the Republic can't really depend on the Jedi to get things done at the beginning of the film ("We're keepers of the peace, not soldiers"), a soldier is exactly what he and his mates become, though I'm not quite sure what the difference is. I guess it shows why the Republic needed this clone army that had been ordered years before since the Jedi would have been taken out otherwise - I can't even be bothered to go into the hows and whys of all this, the Kamino's never bothering to contact the Council or ask for payment; the fact the Jedi just trust this army that's been conjured up from a bounty hunter with clear enmity towards their kind; commissioned by who knows who, it's just too boring. But it's Yoda and his clones (not literally his clones, although having thousands of little frog-like, Jedi clones back-flipping around might have been more fun), to the rescue, and the little guy does look quite imposing sweeping down in the troop ship.

Even Jango fares badly - again, if there were people offended by Boba's demise in the Sarlaac Pit, they must have cried tears of anguish that his Dad was finished off by Mace and a bolting creature. But with the enemy routed, Dooku makes his getaway (speeder bikes are great, but they don't have the same power to impress when they're zipping over sand dunes as dipping between trees in a forest). And we have the obligatory duel where Anakin proves useless, as does Obi-Wan, so it's up to Yoda to prove his mettle at last and fight on screen. A mouth-watering prospect, this should have been, and at the time was a fantastic battle (even if you greatly undermine the two leads of your film by showing them weak and helpless on the ground at the climax!), but thanks to Yoda ageing rather badly (ironic considering he's younger here, but his CG version loses so much of the presence of even the puppet from Episode I), it's not a thing of greatness any more. He hops around, and although they tried to make his fighting style as dignified as possible, they didn't succeed. As usual with heroes, he's beaten by having to save innocents from the bad guy's lack of morals - he can attack others to hinder the hero, but the hero has to live up to that and still fight. So it was unfair, and doesn't make much sense that Yoda has to hobble about with a stick all the time, but can gather up his energy for a whirling dervish of frenzied lightsaber fury if the need arises - the power of The Force, I guess! One minor improvement is lightsabers are a little more substantial this time, the handles a bulkier and more weighty. But I still don't see why Yoda would need a cute mini one.

The first SW film to be labelled 'PG,' I suppose it was for the scenes where Anakin lops Tusken Raiders' heads off, though it's in the dark, so you can't really see anything. Or maybe it was for a harder-edged tone to proceedings - the centipede-like creatures used to try to poison Padme at the beginning looked quite realistic, and were one of the more successful animation effects (though it causes me to wonder why R2 couldn't have stayed active all night - even heroic droids need to power down?). I don't know, for every fun piece of SW lore or spectacle (Leia's Dad, Bail Organa pops up in the Senate scenes, though it's not explained who he is; Padme wears a Leia-like white outfit), there's a dodgy decision or a ropy effect, leaving me with no choice but to mark the film down to average status when I first thought it very good all those years ago. The score is mixed, the best themes of Episode I returning and some out of place themes from the other films, but the love theme worked slightly better in the end credits than the actual film. I also felt Anakin and Padme were more natural with each other by the end, perhaps Christensen had absorbed some of Natalie Portman's ability, but it was hard going and doesn't make him any less objectionable. He's gone so far from his Jedi training by the end that it takes Obi-Wan shouting in his face not to leap out and rescue Padme, who'd clumsily fallen to the sand. His descent to the Dark Side has so far been more of a holding on to the Light Side by his fingernails rather than any tragic change in character. What they're telling us is that he was bad to begin with and everyone made a mistake in trusting and teaching him.

Not very positive, is it, but then the film ends in quite a pessimistic way. They try to inject something happy and joyful in the final scene where Anakin and Padme finally marry (recreating the final shot of 'Empire' is nice symmetry), but the galaxy is preparing for a larger war, and the Sith are in control. Trouble is, none of it occurred naturally or in a manner you could believe, which is frustrating. I bet I could imagine a better sequence of events to bring about the fall of the Republic and the Jedi. I feel I should point out at least something I liked: the asteroid battle between Jango and Obi-Wan - it was great to see Slave I again (though it's a bit of a sluggish beast, I can tell you from personal experience, having flown it in 'Star Wars Rogue Leader' on the GameCube!). Asteroid fields are always ripe for combat, and the sound design was excellent with the seismic charges imploding sound, even if in reality there would be no sound in space, anyway… It was also fun seeing Ahmed Best (Jar Jar), and Anthony Daniels (C-3PO), in the flesh at the casino on Coruscant; assassin Zam Wessel had a cool shapeshifting face as she died, and Obi-Wan's leap through the window, while not in the same league as the podrace, proved an early thrill as he gets whisked around the metropolis' skyscrapers. Once he's in the speeder it becomes a crowded and unbalanced set-piece compared to the podrace's pure desert setting, and it's really strained in trying to introduce us to the partnership in action. With that at the heart of the film, as well as another failed partnership with Padme, it was suckered from the start. They should have gone much further into the future for Episode III and boldly recast, but apparently this was all figured out back in the seventies when George Lucas first planned SW. Yeah, right…

**