**Official** First Reactions Thread

i also want to add that from beginning to end i did not feel bored at all during this film. in ep1 the pod race although it was cool it really slowed the pace of the movie down. i thought the pace was great in this film. it simply kept me watching and watching for more. and i really liked how lucas cut in between the love scenes and obi-wan's investigation. i was concerned that there would too much of the romantic scenes, but the way lucas did it was great. well done job gl. i also liked the humor, by far the funniest of them all. c-3po who i am not a huge fan of made me laugh alot. and obi-wan was well just like the obi-wan in ep4. i just love the line when obi-wan walked into to kamino and says to the kamionian who welcomed him, "well thats what i am here for"- great line.

the people at the screening were into the film. the first applaud came when obi-wan said to anakin "how come one of these days i think you are going to be the death of me"- huge applaud and laughter.
and when mace entered the arena when you see just his boot, everyone was like the tide was going to change.

but the real applause came of course when the little green jedi walked into the hanger. what a rush i tell you, god by far the most exciting feeling i have ever had in a star wars film. all and all the crowd was into it, at least most of them and i loved the film.

 

All right, it's the time none of you have been waiting for. My thoughts outside of "On my god, it was Amazing." I guess I'll do this in the standard good/bad/ugly format that's all the rage with the kids these days.

Good
-Yoda. Everything Yoda was great, with the minor exception that he almost looked too good, too CG, which I'm not even sure I care about.
-Jar Jar. Now, I hated Jar Jar in TPM. But, I have always appreciated his role in the story. And he was used to perfection in AotC
-The Wedding Scene. I have seen many say the wedding scene sucked. I think they did it just right. I didn't really want to see an extended wedding scene, especially after the battle.
-Shmi's death. Yes, her head loll was overdramatic and corny, but aside from that, she did a great job of dying.
-The Star Destroyers. Oh man, they have to have a huge space battle in Ep. III.
-Obi-Wan. His storyline was great, he had the best lines, and McGregor was awesome.
-Mace Windu was also really great.
-The Death Star. Oh, that was cool.
-Ian McDiarmid's and Christopher Lee's acting. Those two had outstanding performances.
-Kamino looked Amazing. As did Genosis from space. I was so excited to see it have rings.
-R2D2 and C3PO were both used really well. A couple of corny lines, but on the whole, very funny.
-There was actual humor, something TPM really lacked.

Bad
-Jango. Now, I thought he was a cool character, but he wasn't in the movie nearly enough. They really should have done more with him.
-Captain Typho. Just terrible acting and a useless character. At least he was barely in it.
-The romance scenes. I think some of them could have been cut, and the dialogue for them wasn't nearly as good as it was for the rest of the movie, which, I think, is saying a lot.
-The lightsabre duel could have been longer, but that's really nitpicking. It was still really good.
-The lack of any real space battles. The only thing they had was the asteroid belt chase.

Ugly
-Dex. Good lord he was one ugly alien. But a very interesting character.
-All the Star Wars nerds getting riled up in the theatre at the 5 minutes-late start, the commercials, and too many bad trailers. Hell hath no fury like an impatient Star Wars nerd.

Amazing.

Edit - I forgot a couple.

 

Okay,
Besides being unbelievable, and when I say unbelievable I have to say as almost as good as ESB or maybe a tad better (a good space battle would have put it over the top). Lucas simply delivered what everyone wanted to see. It was a Star Wars Movie for the fans. The Highlight for me was YODA!!! Two words explain him... BAD A$$. I mean he was the baddest mofo I have ever seen. Natalie looked hot, Hayden was great. But I think Yoda rocked, not just his fight seen but in Palpy's office, you can see the look of distrust Yoda flashes at Palps and it was AMAZING. It is a bad A$$ movie with a BAD A$$ Yoda! I saw it at the 12:01 showing and I am seeing it again tonight. It ROCKED!

 

i thought the acting was good all the way through! amazing movie! I like it better than ESB!

 

Anyone else notice that Yoda's line was redubbed?

Commercials and trailers: "Begun THIS clone war has."

In the movie: "Begun THE clone war has."

Interesting.

 

Honestly, for a while during the film I had this panic, this thought. "I'm not really digging it..." I was horrified. How could I not dig Star Wars? What the hell? It's just, there were these little things I felt to be character inaccuracies pissing me off.
The amazing thing is, I forgot that I did this same exact thing with The Phantom Menace. During the movie I thought I hated it, loved the end action scene, then went home and reflected. After several hours I realized I loved the movie. Same thing happened about five hours ago. I realized how effing cool the movie was. I mean, Yoda. Little bitty Yoda. Look at them lil' bitty Yoda legs... he's so cute, yet kicks so much a$$. You never saw Kermit open up a keg o' whup arse like that. Least not that we know of...
Anyway, I think I really liked it. But I'm not sure. Maybe my ADD kicked in and I have to see it again. Maybe Star Wars is in all actuallity edited with quick second long frames that sublimanally tell you its cool. Maybe I've burned too many brain cells.

 

Yo Irish! I think I know what you mean ... I think the film leaves you wanting more, which at first sort of threw me, and then I realized that's what a good second film of a trilogy is supposed to do.

I also liked what son_of_the_tear said:

"And well... what can I say. It was so different from all the other SW films. Yet so much like all the other SW films."

I feel the same way. It's almost like a "grown-up" Star Wars movie, lol. Especially the Anakin Tusken slaughter scene. I hadn't expected that at all.

Anyway, overall I'm still 'digesting' the film ... but I really loved it. I can't wait to see it again.

 

Just got back from a 10:00 am showing a little while ago and I loved AOTC (although I'm one of the minority who really enjoyed TPM too.)

Hayden was fabulous as Anakin. The scenes where he breaks down after seeing his mother die and where he confides in Padme were incredible. Awesome chemistry between the two. Ewan has successfully given Obi-Wan some much needed personality IMO.

The arena battles and the final duel were great and very, very, VERY visually stimulating. It will take me a few viewings to digest it all.

YODA KICKS A$$!!! I really loved the CGI Yoda. He was very believable and looked good.

Well, I'm babbling on, so I'll wait to post more until tomorrow. I'm going to see AOTC again in about 9 hours, so hopefully I'll have a more insightful post to add tomorrow.

 

Fireportal! I saw it in the same theater, the lennox. That crowd was Wonderful! I can't believe how long the line stretched. which theater did you see it in?

 

i thought the film was great apart from the very bad captain typho acting at the start. the clone troopers were better than i could of dreamed of and probably made the movie for me. anakin was good as was obi wan, but i would of liked to see them have a laugh as friends as well as the very good conflicts they had. the love scenes were ok but very nesesary for the story and character development. dooku and jango were great bad guys, i was realy worried when maul was killed in tpm thinking how are they going to match him. this is the best pt movie so far but i cant compare it to any of the ot movies as i was a kid when they came out. i was 6 when han and luke were my heros from anh and i grew up with them. nothing will replace them or come close, but i have my fingers crossed for ep3.

 

I also saw it at the Lennox in Columbus.

Wow!!!!
Hayden's acting was brilliant. EWan was great too. I also liked Natalie. Count Dooku was awesome and so was Jango Fett.

I really liked the end scene where Dooku reports to Sidious that the war has begun. It came across MUCH better than I imagined. Chris Lee played it better than what I had in mind for the scene.

The actiond and visuals were almost too much to handle!!! I am going to see it again later tonight to soak all the visuals and action in again.

I thought the first half of the movie was a bit slower than some people have indictaed. Although it didn't drag. It kept moving forward. And I have always personally liked the slower part and drama of Star Wars, not just the FX and action. Right now I am on cloud nine, and I still need another viewing to fully take everything in. Maybe even another 2 viewing or so. It was just that dense.

But Roger Ebert was dead wrong in saying that it looked crappy. The FX was noticably better than TPM in most parts I thought.

Episode III is going to rule. Can't wait to see how George handles how everything tanspires and wraps up.

 

up big time.

the holy trinity ESB, AOTC and ANH.

 

Senateguard3 and Gedi:
I was in screen 1 at the Lennox. I feel bad for those that had to watch the film on the smaller screens. I cannot wait to go see this film again and again! The line at the Lennox was a great crowd. Nobody was being to rowdy which was nice and it really helped build the anticipation for the movie. I'm happy to see so many positive reviews on the postings. Does anyone know if there were any theaters that played it on more than 12 screens? I think this may have been the most at one theater across the country!

 

I just got back. Three words: Oh. My. God. I was mostly spoiler free and it was worth it. Good lord...it was amazing.


Things I loved:
-Anakin. He was awesome. His costume, his acting, awesome!
-the "You'll be the death of me" line. The entire theater cracked up!
-The whole club scene.
-Little Boba. I had thought I wouldn't, but he was really good.
-Coruscant.
-The fight scenes
-How Yoda, after he finished fighting Dooku, picked up his walking stick and started hobbling.
-Anakin's hand.
-The foreshadowing to the Empire, espeically how the clones had a version of the Imperial insignia on their armor.


Things I didn't like as much:
-Some of Obi-Wan's lines, how he kept saying "my young padawan"
-Padme's outfits. But I'm probably just jealous that I couldn't fit into them.
-Jar-Jar and his outfit.
-How late we "find out" that Dooku=Sith
-The ending on Naboo. WHY?????


Final Verdict: Better than TPM, ANH. Ties with ROTJ. Not as good as ESB.


(this is my first post in spoilers allowed... //celebrates millstone)

 

holyCOWitwassoGOOD.

my gosh, i sat with this huge dorky grin throughout the whole movie, little gasps and peeps of delight escaping every so often, cheering wildly for Yoda... oh my gosh. i don't think it could have been any better! ok well, i take that back--the first half hour i was sitting there like, "uh oh. this could be really bad." but then the whole movie just got going and it was just FREAKING AWESOME! i was freaking out at the end because there was SO MUCH going on in the final battle that i couldn't absorb it all!! i'm going to have to go back and see it many times before i pick it all up. it was SOOOO GOOD!!!!

and i know darn well i'm in the afterglow of all the excitement, therefore i will wait a while before giving AOTC a rank among the other SW movies. my ranking so far:

4) The Phantom Menace
3) A New Hope
2) The Empire Strikes Back
1) Return of the Jedi

i can tell you now that my top three are highly threatened. >

 

pacing could have been better, action scences were well done, some dialouge seemed forced... all in all one good flick... my rating 8.5/10

 

The Good:

-Dexter and his gang of Dinner fiends stands as one of my favorite bits in the entire film, and I love how enthusiastic he is about everything. It was nice to see Lucas maintain the lighthearted humor from Episode I and yet extend upon it with this scene.

-Anakin was golden, in more ways then one. I really thought that Hayden nailed the character dead on, giving him a dash of classic Luke Skywalker personality, the ever-fading personality of young and innocent Anakin and a sinister portrayal of his own. How the critics can bash his performance and denote his acting as some of the worst they?ve seen in a long time is beyond me.

-Padme was a lot better then she was in Episode I, and she had a much stronger, dynamic personality. Yes, the type that Lucas does so well with female characters. I loved how she was constantly turning Anakin down or berating him in some sense, you?d look at their interactions and Portman?s acting, and you could see easily how those two become a couple.

-Count Dooku was fantastic, a classic villain in the vein of a classic Saturday morning serial. He?s old, he?s evil and he dresses in black; you don?t need anything else in a movie like Star Wars for the viewer to immediately distinguish him as ?the foe?. And I was very impressed with Lee?s lightsaber work; it actually made sense on so many levels. When I first heard that the new villain would have simplistic moves and a style that ended battles quickly I was disappointed and concerned on many levels, but I was proved wrong. Maul was evil; he could disturb me?But Dooku? Dooku I could fear.

-Obi-Wan was fantastic; I loved every second of the film he was in. His dry wit, subtle Alec Guiness tone, and investigative intuition made him the star of this film. Ewan did a great job with the acting and delivered each and every single line with a punctuation that was lacking from Episode I.

-For that matter, every line was delivered with a punctuation that is nearly better then any of the Star Wars films, excluding A New Hope.

-The Anakin and Obi-Wan friendship/rivalry was better then I expected it to be, more then I could imagine and very fun to watch.

-Kamino was beautiful, and Tipoca City was very sterile and cold. Aspects of it made it look like a gigantic Imperial facility, except with more white then gray.

-The Solar Sailor was awesome, one of my favorite ships ever seen in a Star Wars movie. The way in which it unfolded its sails and glided through space was surreal.

-Coruscant at the end of the film when Dooku returned to Sidious looked a lot like Bespin with the orange and pink tinted clouds.

-Obi-Wan arriving on Geonosis at nighttime was fantastic and the atmosphere with the lit-up Federation ships hovering in the ground was cinematic in every sense of the word.

-Geonosis, the planet that I originally thought had the most boring of settings turned out to be my favorite of the entire film. The columns of rising rock twisted and bloated was ethereal, and the way in which the Geonosians could hide in the nooks and crannies of the walls was very cleaver.

-The Arena and the proceeding fights were great, almost like the military/Jedi combat written from an EU book.

-The Dialogue, although stark, was some of the best Star Wars dialogue I?ve heard. It was witty and predictable, but ultimately, enjoyable.
-The character development was very well done; Lucas has surprised me in that aspect.
-The directing was good and solid and I was very pleased to see Lucas try a few different camera and lighting effects, such as the darkened lightsaber battle.
-Yoda couldn?t be any more fluid in his movements, period.
-Jango was the man; I liked his bit where he shot the Jedi about to assassinate Dooku and then holstered his blaster Western style.

The Bad:

-The musical cues where poorly done and a bit sketchy for a Star Wars film. Usually the music in a Star Wars film evokes a sense of wonder, amazement and suspense when used right, but that wasn?t the case with Attack of the Clones. I was also

 

I may catch SEVERE flack for this, but I felt there was more 'slow' time than in TPM. Of course, this opinion may change upon my subsequent viewings of the film(I plan to see it at least 4 times). I liked it, thought the action scenes were phenomenal, but the love story seemed clunky to me...probably due more to an uneven performance by Portman(I thought Hayden was fine). Perhaps if the 'family' scenes from the novel were included, Padmes' realization that she loves Anakin would have seemed more seamless, as it stands now, it appeared to be forced(at least to me).

Yoda? Absolutely friggin' amazing! As I said, the action scenes were awesome.

 

Just saw it. AOTC is right up there in my opinion with EBS (not as good but close). Yoda was incredible. Should I go back in an hour and see it again??? Would that look silly LOL

 

Wow, three other people in this thread saw it at the AMC Lennox in Columbus! I was in Theater 1 there, like Fireportal. That was one hell of a long line outside the theater! It was kind of annoying that the movie started fifteen minutes late, but oh well...

I went back for a second viewing this afternoon, and this time it all came together for me in a way that it didn't last night. Last night I really liked the movie; now I love it. My second viewing nearly turned into a disaster when the sound was messed up at the start, but fortunately it was fixed and we all got free passes after the movie.

Last night I was severely bashing the movie's score. I'd still rank it last among the five SW movies in that category, but fortunately this time around the good parts of the score seemed better and the recycled parts from TPM didn't bother me much.

In the last scenes of the movie the atmosphere just seemed so foreboding. The scenery when Dooku flies to Sidious's base on Coruscant was just wonderful. The ominous look and colors were also there in the scenes after that one with the clone army and at the Jedi Temple. It's kind of hard to describe, but it was a really cool effect that I didn't notice as much the first time. Storm clouds are on the horizon, and Episode III is just going to be unbelievable.

 

Just watched it twice back-to-back - It seems amazingly short the second time round, everyone be warned!

No doubt this is my fave episode - so many clever bits in it, references to EpI and OT, it really, really worked hard to bring it all together. It's gonna be astounding to see all 6 back-to-back in a few years time.

Even JarJar served a purpose - makes his presence in TPM more understandable. In fact, it seems to really legitimise EpI in my eyes. You can see what GL is setting up.

Fave bits? 3PO's last half hour and the Yoda fight, but there were so many very cool bits it'll be SO rewatchable when the DVD arrives (by Christmas I've heard - is this the latest position or just rumour?). Thought Haydn was very impressive, did a really good job of portraying a very tricky role. His performance in AOTC will, I feel, prove to be the lynchpin of the entire story. Imagine having that weight on your shoulders in your first 'major' movie. The boy did good.
Also - the ending and how closely it ties with TESB ending - loved the parallels there.

Worst bits? Anakin riding that fat donkey thing in the meadow - HOW badly animated?
Shmi's death scene - I agree with others here, I found her excellent in TPM and just overacting here.

Things to watch for next time (Digital for me!) - Sure I saw a PS2 Dual Shock joypad fly past in one of the Coruscant scenes. No one else I was with saw it....

 

I've noticed some of the complaints stems from conflicts with preconceived notions about how certain pivotal scenes should be shot (I'm guilty of that) and/or how certain scenes shouldn't have been cut.

They are legitimate gripes, but I think spoilers in this case ruined some parts of our experience for the movie.

Would we have complained about cut scenes or shown disappointment in how a scene was shot b/c of preconceived notions?

I know the answer is NO in my case...but I still enjoyed the movie overall.

 

I will not be able to see AoTC until June 21 but, since I am already spoiled rotten by the internet, I thought I´d share this comment made by Scott Kurtz, creator of an online comic called PvP online which regularly features SW topics. It made a lot of sense to me in the middle of all the bashings this movie seems to be getting.

"So let me give you my non-review of ATTACK OF THE CLONES. I call it a non-review because I have no desire to discuss the merits of this movie, discuss one character or plot point. This isn't a movie, it's Star Wars. You can't watch it in a vaccuum. It comes with 25 years of baggage with it.

If you love Star Wars, you'll love ATTACK OF THE CLONES.

I do want to share with you a little ephiphany I had last week, as three of my friends and I were arguing vehemetly about whether or not PHANTOM MENACE was a good movie.

I'm tired of talking about Star Wars. I'm exhausted. The debates, the arguments, the speculating, the spoilers, all of it. Somwhere between RETURN OF THE JEDI, and THE PHANTOM MENACE, I stopped loving Star Wars and started loving "being a star wars fan."

Somewhere between the late 80's and now, it became more important to talk about the movies, speculate and philosophize about the mythos, than to just like the movies themselves. Somewhere along the line, I stopped loving STAR WARS and just started loving being a geek about Star Wars.

I was one of those people who felt hurt by THE PHANTOM MENACE. I was one of those guys screaming about how Lucas "raped my childhood." I'm one of those guys who has spent the last three years debating the issue with all my other geek friends.

Last night, sitting in that theatre, waiting for five hours to see a movie, I think I finally came to my senses. PHANTOM MENACE didn't destroy Star Wars. PHANTOM MENACE made me realize how silly I am for putting such an intense importance on a series of movies. MENACE didn't make me hate Star Wars, It made me hate being a Star Wars Fanatic.

Luckily, George Lucas gives us fanatics everything that we want in CLONES. Absent are any mention midichlorians or virgin births. All the cheesy lines are delivered by the droid we grew up with rather than a new CGI created character.

It really feels as if this time around, Lucas had at least one person holding him back and reminding him not to do anything that might upset us zombies.

So my non-review of CLONES is a message to all you fellow fanatics out there. Take it or leave it, I really feel it's the truth.

If you don't like ATTACK OF THE CLONES, you have no one to blame but yourself. George Lucas didn't ruin Star Wars for us. I think we ruined it for him."

 

Episode II definitely met my expectations, and I'm hoping that the box office meets them also.

 

-The fights were?short. Well done, but short

So the last 40 minutes which was practically all fighting was too short?

Woo.. what planet do you come from?