PT Has Episode II dethroned Episode I as the worst entry?.

Thanks. It's always a movie that could do with defending.

Sure. I'm basically looking at each film on its own terms. Not at what it "sets out to do", or "trying to accomplish", or anything like that. Just how it speaks to me.

Anything else is too abstract, too abstruse, too obtuse -- even for me.

See, I don't think the Tatooine section is lacklustre, but glorious. I love the sun-baked tones, the simple humanity, the quirky aliens, and so on.

I like what you said about the celebration, but it's just as true that the eerie feeling is *in* the celebration. The "Phantom Menace" of the saga is right there, intermingled with the heroes, smiling to himself. He's won. And no-one else knows it.

I appreciate what you're saying. Clones has more oomph, a more desultory tone, more maturity. And the characters are very intricately sketched.

TPM is more willfully naive and does feel more like an overture -- a tone poem that dazzles the viewer while keeping them at something of a distance.

The camera panning up, and that fog blanketing Coruscant, are great visual gestures, indeed. We're not sure where we are, or even who we are. We're falling, or floating, into the unknown.

There is a definite Oedipus dimension to Anakin's pursuit of Padme. The boy displays a bad case of transference, you might say. Even other character names evoke the classic Sophoclean play ("Darth Tyranus", "Jocasta Nu").

Clones offers a dream-like, surreal-scape of mood and metaphor. It's a very imagistic story. Like a great novel. There is a fervent sense of symbolism and visual ideology at work (or play).

Anakin is at a very complicated place in his life cycle. He isn't really built for the cold, calculated, anodyne world of the Jedi. He is seeking a new covenant -- he wants to be his own person.

Yes, it's a very powerful chapter, and I like it a lot.

Oh, yes. There is great shading at work -- a multiplicity of genres. The profusion of imagery and moods inclines to the abstract. The Star Wars galaxy is never more alive, more in-the-balance, denser, than at this point in the story.

I also have great fondness for how much of this is lensed. I especially love Lucas' roving wide shots. Like when the camera pans gently across, at a discreet distance, as Anakin and Padme walk up to the balustrade collimating the edge of the lake. Beautiful imagery.

That's an interesting way of expressing it: "glimpses of the depth underneath". Hmm, I do agree, in large part. TPM has more of a preliminary quality. We're not taken through the looking glass until AOTC.

Tatooine is adroitly handled. I think the film takes on a more mysterious, urgent, and operatic quality when Anakin and Padme say their brief goodbye (though they seem, almost, to be hugging forever), and Anakin rides off to the horizon, riding backwards against the "progressive" direction of film-motion. Combined with the blood-red sky, and the awesome rush of "Duel Of The Fates" (here given a grimmer inflection), we know it isn't going to end well. He's unmaking himself in that very moment. Few films have such thrilling pull.

I suppose, for all of AOTC's complexity, there is also still a clement quality to the visual construction, and the story-telling, that makes us feel "at home". It's Star Wars to the power of Star Wars. You get sucked in, but you feel safe. There is a wondrous neatness and coherence to Lucas' visual schematics that gives the film a pleasing clarity and poise, even as everything is made to seem a little off-kilter. An opaquely operatic experience, a psychological meditation -- or just a simple action-adventure/comedy-tragedy/sci-fi-romance.

Everything is much more muddled. All actions are under suspicion. Even simple gestures of kindness look and sound suspect. It is the depiction of a grand tragedy in the making. The most misanthropic of the Star Wars films, it might also be one of the most critical-of-humanity films ever put into the mainstream.

Whoa! Again, that's a strange criticism, in my view. The droid factory sequence offers us a clear-cut example of Anakin playing at the hero, but failing. The key is that he's using violence to try and rescue Padme, so he is condemned to a pitiless struggle on a conveyor belt, futilely twisting and turning to break out of war contraption (a Super Battle Droid arm), and leaving Padme to her doom (his moving about, trying to break free, is like a more exaggerated version of his moaning in bed when having that powerfully-unsettling nightmare on Naboo). Of course, Artoo intervenes; and if he hadn't, Padme would likely have perished. It is a sequence that anticipates Anakin's ultimate failure to defeat death through violence, to quote a cogent essay on Clones. That essay, BTW:

http://brightlightsfilm.com/38/clones1.php

Anyway, yes, I love the droid factory sequence -- could be my favourite action sequence in Star Wars, or the prequels, at least. It's so intensely symbolic overall. And Threepio's antics are rendered in a way that is very in-keeping with the wider themes being explored. Themes related to depersonalization, derealization, incongruity, loss of control, apathy, confusion, the emptiness of speech, the encroachment of mechanization and industry, erosion of personal liberty, and things being put to other purposes. Threepio is punished, it seems for his idle wanderment, or even just for laying eyes on the droid factory in its hellish magnificence.

That and, if you like, it is a sort of aggressive satire of the extensive "rhyming" between AOTC and TESB (and how AOTC is also skewed to rhyme with other installments -- especially ANH), with Threepio being the unfortunate victim of the "machinery" of rhyming. The rhyming, if you will, is almost on "auto-pilot" at this point ("It's on automatic pilot!" -- oh, I just brought up that scene again, didn't I? ), and ridiculously out-of-control, but there's nothing Threepio can do, once he falls, to stop it. He's on a ride and he just has to go through it. Fun, and slightly horrifying, adventure. I bet he never planned it when leaving Tatooine, eh?

Maybe TPM is a little held-back in that area. Though, again, lest I refer to the scene you dislike, little shards of personal intrigue can be found there, such as Anakin powering up his starfighter because his girlfriend (or wife-to-be) is in trouble. What a statement that is on human nature!

I love those developments in AOTC, though. And that is, indeed, a very well-written and acted scene. It's got an added rawness, I think, because Obi-Wan normally keeps his cool. There is only one moment in each prequel movie (and none in the originals) where he truly loses it and actually raises his voice beyond a refined calm. Well, at least to the point of hectoring, or bawling.

It's like a clarification of the hidden darkness within TPM, isn't it? A vindication, a validation. The rousing (if bittersweet/depressing) operatic capper of Clones is quite a stunner. It may qualify as the darkest ending of the series as everything seems horribly compromised and doomed at this point. It causes you to question everything you've just witnessed. And I do love the music at the wedding. The crashing percussion makes it seem like the moment truly heralds something -- a way out of the madness, ultimately (the twins), even if the union of the lovers is stained with tragedy. A gripping finish!

I think AOTC shows tremendous confidence on the part of George Lucas. Visuals are wonderfully expressive and emblazoned with meaning. It's a movie with awesome sweep.

Well, y'know, as I addressed previously, she doesn't necessarily know who's in that ship -- doesn't realize it's Anakin. She's not giving much response to it, beyond a moment's surprise, because she is very focused on the mission.

I don't think it makes her words ring hollow. Her and Anakin live in a complicated galaxy, fraught with danger. They can't have each other's backs every moment. One might even speculate that "distraction" forms part of their tragic bond.

Anyway, this has all been --------------------> JMO.

 

AOTC is the weakest Star Wars movie IMO.

I prefer Phantom Menace because it feels more "Star Wars-ey" if that makes sense. The romance in Episode II is just mind boggling bad too ... like I can kinda get Jar-Jar, because they were obviously going for a goofy character, but the romance in Episode II is straight out of a bad (really bad) B-movie.

How do you go from the charming romantic bits of the original trilogy and the incredibly well done romance plots in the Indiana Jones movies to .... that?

Also Count Dooku is the lamest Star Wars villain. Ditto for Jango Fett ... yeah a cool costume, but really he's not believable as an actual threat to an armed Jedi ... what Mace Windu did to him is basically what you'd expect any Jedi to do to him in about 10 seconds flat.

 

The over analysing of AOTC to find something deep and meaningful in every scene all sounds very good, and it comes across like a university paper. I don't think theres that much depth to it all, but no ones opinion is incorrect, so I respect that.

I don't think theres anything wrong at all with the concept of using a ruthless bounty hunter as the blueprint for a clone army, I just thought it was a little annoying that they had to shoe horn in another ref back to the OT with Boba. We don't need to know the origins of every character that we saw in the OT. Sometimes less is more.

Over the years, common criticisms that friends and workmates have said about AOTC are the romance with the cheesy dialogue and the console game feel of the effects in the droid factory and the arena. All valid points. However I still think AOTC is better than TPM, mainly thats down to the tone and style of the film, its a bit darker than TPM which I feel was a bit wasted with keeping Anakin as a child throughout and thus was limited it in what it could do because of its lighter tone.

 

Not for me, but I can understand people holding that view.

The romance is deliberately quite hackneyed and corny on some levels, but also (in my opinion) dark, textured, and moving on others.

I like that question, and the answer is........

AOTC. No, really: AOTC. It plays by its own rules. It's deliberately different.

I think Count Dooku is a fairly tragic villain -- though I wish he had a bit more screen-time.

I see Jango as being quite believable in the sense that he might be best thought of as a sort of genetic aberration: an unconscious Jedi mirror to those that are trained as Jedi and live by a monastic code. Perversely, while Jango kills people for money, he has a sort of stark, "lone wolf", lives-by-strict-values persona that might otherwise be considered quite Jedi-like. He's even being "kept" at a Dagobah-like location (Kamino's stormy surface is reminiscent of the dark, swampy enclave of Dagobah). The forces of evil play on Jango's hatred of the Jedi and use him to underhandedly get back at the Jedi. The clone army represents a sort of "unnatural" attack on Jedi hegemony. The Jedi, of course, are basically killing themselves, by refusing to procreate, while Jango's unconscious Jedi seed has been sown endlessly. The bad guys can win by changing the rule-book and out-smarting the Jedi -- exploiting their own rigidity and throwing it back in their face.

Two things basically let Jango down against Mace: his shooting skills and his rocket pack. His greed got the better of him when he saw a chance to take Mace on directly in the arena. His shooting skills had a match in Mace's fierce lightsaber technique, and when Jango tries to escape at the last second (you can see the rockets trying to ignite), Mace wastes no time in cleaving his head off. Perhaps he shouldn't have gambled that a Jedi wouldn't deliver a death blow.

I admit, it's an over-analysis of sorts, but I disagree with the more basic, hidden assumption that there's nothing extraordinary about the movie, or that popular art can't be engrossing or challenging.

 

I've always been a big fan of TPM but I was not altogether happy with AotC upon release.

The romance storyline is just badly written and the accusations of poor dialogue ring truer here than anywhere else in the saga.

There are a few sequences that just aren't that well realised -most of them minor, but they do detract from the whole. Things like the street level of Coruscant (which just looks cheap and could easily have appeared in a sci-fi TV show of the day), or Padme's lounge on Naboo which just isn't imaginative and seems too much like earth (with that fireplace it could be something out of a 70's TV show). Padme's packing scene doesn't play well for me. Having her march about she comes across as a bossy busybody and it just seems ill conceived -I'm really not sure if the actor, the director or hasty production are to blame here but it. Shame, it has my favourite of her hairstyles in it. The 'Hills are Alive' sequence is particularly bad too and its hard not to believe that they could've put together a better outdoor sequence of Naboo. The Diner is ill conceived and again too 'earth'. Anakin's oddysey to find his mother and the sand people camp is also visually poor. The biggest waste for me was the 'sports bar'. There was a great opportunity to show Coruscant society here (personally I'd have liked to see some real decadent excess of a hedonistic, overpriveledged and uncaring society) but instead we got a really bland Mos Eisley Cantina-Lite instead.

The overuse of digital effects became more of an issue here too. Dex and the Kaminoans aren't very convincing at all. The battle on Geonosis, whilst impressive and stylistically a departure for Star Wars, does look animated and does detract from its impact.

Some of the comedy falls flat again. The droid factory sequence is overplayed and really looks like an advertisement for a platform game.

Ewan's performance disappointed me in a few places. He mimiced Guinness vocally superbly in TPM (a tough one to do) and he really made the part his own in RotS. Here he's mostly excellent but in a few places his accent just flies off into something rather arch that makes him sound more like Rex Harrison than Alec Guinness. That one of them is the bit where Dooku tries to turn him, which I believe was a reshoot (?), may indicate that its due to production haste and a lack of preparation. In any event the worst of it is early in the film in the sequences in Padme's senatorial apartments.

The climactic duels don't really deliver for me. Mostly I don't think the Yoda sequence should ever have happened. In fact I don't think that Yoda or Palpatine using lightsabers should ever have happened in the whole series. It came across as sensationalism to butter up the audience. It was 'OMG you've gotta see this!' as a way to 'sex things up' in a franchise that'd suffered a massive backlash from its fanbase. It detracted from their roles as the definitive expressions as each side of the Force and even more than that it detracted from the actual protagonists of the story.

Anakin and Obi wan were made to look superfluous and also weak. Their screen time was obviously cut and as a result they went down like punks. Especially Kenobi. In fairness Anakin's duel is done artistically and deserves credit for it and Dooku's presentation is great throughout. However both Anakin and Obi Wan's battles should've been given more time and more prominence and certainly shouldn't have made either of them look rubbish. Obi Wan's in particular did lasting damage to the perception of the character. Most of his duel isn't even seen as we cut to elsewhere. What we do see is him just being owned. Now, sure you can reason that there are excuses as he's no doubt exhausted after his exertions but it undeniably looks bad. Building up Anakin at Obi Wan's expense so that the denouement of their eventual duel has some element of surprise is dramatically necessary but this is poorly handled and RotS did a better, if not perfect, job in this regard IMO. Yoda suddenly going from a creaky old frog into a somersaulting superfrog is another abuse of CGI (which we'd see more of in RotS with Yoda, Dooku and Palpatine) which made it look too much like a cartoon.

I think the biggest mistake in the movie concerns the cut scenes. Padme clearly had a much more important role and this really should've been her film. The scenes of her addressing the senate and negotiating with Dooku are really important for showing that it's the politics that are important. this should've been abouit that rather than just a story about Jedi. Again this is unfortunately Lucas responding to criticisms of TPM where many said 'trade negotiations and politics is boring' (I completely disagree btw, seeing this side of the SW universe was what I wanted to see and it was also where a fair chunk of the heart of the story lay). What is also clear is that the scenes didn't fit into the rest of the footage. They were right to cut them in that sense, but frankly they should've planned better so that they would've fitted. What was lost was important and would've made a significant change to the storytelling.

So, I had serious misgivings at the time. However, it looked really great on DVD and overall the film works IMO. Another initial problem I had was Hayden's performance but I think that one RotS comes out it makes much more sense and that the development of the character really works. Upon seeing footage of Hayden's audition in the extras me and some friends commented that Lucas's direction for the actual movie must have been 'slower and less intense'. However, seeing where Hayden takes it you can see that Hayden does a good job of progressing the character and personifying teenage awkwardness and moodiness as a step on the road to what happens in RotS (where he becomes a lot more like his audition). Admittedly his efforts are still hampered by the sheer awfulness of the dialogue in the romance sequences but he's far better than I thought prior to RotS.

As a result it is still probably my least favourite movie of the entire saga but I do enjoy it a lot more than I did at the time.

 

TPM felt like an attempt at a real movie.

AOTC felt like George Lucas playing around with digital cameras and CG effects.

 

I just rewatched AotC last night, and I enjoyed it. Yeah, there are definitely some ways in which that movie is a hot mess, but for me personally it's also very fun and does a good job of setting up both Anakin's and the Republic's issues for their respective ultimate falls in RotS.

 

Personally, I have seen no sign of this, in regards to my view, I enjoy it greatly. Part of the reason is the fact that I was four when it came out and it was the first Star Wars film I saw, and the only one I've seen in theaters, giving it a more nostalgic feel to it.

 

I disagree. TPM is better at sheer spectacle, but AOTC provides a more intimate portrait of the main characters and for that alone if feels like more of a "real" movie.

 

TPM and AOTC aren't bad movies, just the least best of the 6 imo.

 

They're equally bad IMO, for different reasons.

Bad scripts, bad acting, bad directioning. Good action is not enough to overcome that so yeah, they simply are bad movies

 

For me, AOTC further confirmed what I felt with Phantom Menace. I had my doubts about Episode I, but I suppose I was in denial, rationalizing the movie to myself thinking "Lucas is just rusty, he hasn't been in the director's chair in years." I suppose I was looking forward to Episode II so I could be proven wrong, but alas, that wasn't the case. I found each subsequent Prequel worse than the previous one. The writing got worse, and I found it was getting more and more desperate, it seemed, as though Lucas realized he wasted time with Phantom Menace and tried to force the story to where he felt it should be.