Blandness In Great Ones Must Not Unwatch'd Go
I'm not exactly doing anything radical by saying Hayden Christensen is just plain awful, but he is. He is awful. Really awful. Just, really, really awful. Superbly awful. Awfully awful. Okay you get the point.
For a film to engage a viewer, there needs to be a main character that they can relate to, so that the events in the film emotionally effect the viewer. Film viewers cannot relate to bland, emotionless robots, but unfortunately that's pretty much the performance we got from Hayden Christensen. His lines are delivered more robotically than any of the droids in the film, and they're supposed to be robotic. The battle droids have more personality than Anakin does. Whenever he does show emotion, the only one he seems to be able to portray is whiny and annoying, so now the viewers are not only completely emotionally disconnected from the protagonist, but also now want to introduce their fists very aggressively to his face.
Hayden Christensen can't exactly take all of the blame, however. It is the actor's responsibility to bring the script to life, but it isn't their responsibility to write it - and it sucks, especially Anakin's dialogue. In what is the most excruciatingly painful love story ever, Anakin attempts to pull Padmé Amidala with such lines as, "From the moment I met you, all those years ago, not a day has gone by when I haven't thought of you. And now that I'm with you again... I'm in agony," and the classic, "I don't like sand. It's course and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere. Not like here. Here everything is soft and smooth." In other words, I don't think even Daniel Day Lewis could deliver these lines without looking like a complete idiot, but at least he would try.
Of the numerous problems in Attack of the Clones Anakin is the biggest. He's supposed to be the character you support and root for, but instead leaves you feeling incredibly sorry for Obi-Wan Kenobi and thinking that the Jedi Council were were entirely correct in their decision to not train him. As a result of this, you couldn't care less about any of the events in the film and are instead disappointed when Anakin doesn't get ripped apart by a battle droid assembly line, instead of relieved.
What Phantom Menace Did Well, It Does Better
Now you may be thinking that this sounds like the worst film ever. If you add a 'Star Wars' in to that sentence, just before film, you'd be right. There are, however, some things that do redeem it from being a complete disaster. Just a bit of a disaster.
I praised the action in The Phantom Menace for its spectacle and Attack of the Clones, in the best decision this film made, has a lot more of it. It does contain a lot of walking and talking (a prequel speciality) but the action sequences are far more common and spread out than those in Phantom Menace, which are all pretty much just at the end. They can get quite over the top, mind you, especially the lightsabre duel between Yoda and Dooku, which is so flippy and flashy you can barely tell what's going on. It is still exciting to look at, even if it is entirely unengaging from a character and story point of view.
I also praised Phantom Menace's creative design and Attack of the Clones continues that, by introducing more planets, such as Geonosis and Kamino, and more aliens, such as the Geonosians and the Kaminoans (there are more, those two are just personal favourites of mine). Once more, everything is very well designed and would be gorgeous to look at, if it were still 2002. Unfortunately, just like Phantom Menace, the overuse of CGI is still an issue, meaning no matter how good the designs are (which they are) they all look incredibly dated. I still love the different aliens and spaceships present in this film, I just wish they weren't all made up of antiquated polygons.
I also really liked Ewan McGregor in this film. Whilst he was fine Phantom Menace, he really starts to become his role in Attack of the Clones and no matter how terrible his lines are and how badly he's directed, something about the way he delivers them always wins me over. Just everything about him, the way he looks and the way he speaks, screams Obi-Wan. I don't know, it just works for me.
Now the good stuffs out of the way, we can get to the fun part.
What Phantom Menace Did Poorly, It Does Far Far Worse
The Phantom Menace did do a lot wrong, but what redeemed it for me is that it didn't do any of it as badly as Attack of the Clones did. Now, we can talk about that.
As I've previously mentioned, the script in this film is atrocious. The amount of cheesy one liners is unbearable and every time a character tries to express any kind of emotion, it sounds like a really awful emo song. Everything else in between is completely devoid of any sort of character, in similar vein to The Phantom Menace. There might be the odd line that's half decent, but those are few and far between and most of the time I feel incredibly sorry for the actors that had to deliver them.
Speaking of them, they're not any better than before, with the exception of Ewan McGregor. Hayden Christensen's performance is, as previously mentioned, boring at best and cringe-worthy at worst. Everyone else comes off as extremely dull and uninterested. Even Samuel L. Jackson, Samuel L. Jackson, is painful to watch. The lack of charisma in his line delivery makes you wonder if it even is Samuel L. Jackson and isn't just a terrible clone of him. Although it's probably not entirely his fault.
A lot of the blame can go to George Lucas, who continues to surprise me with his inability to direct human emotions. Everything comes off as messy and awkward, it feels like each take is the first one. When an actor delivers a piece of information, they're incredibly wooden, and when they try to express emotion, they're incredibly hammy. It's supposed to be the director's responsibility to make sure that doesn't happen. Apparently George Lucas didn't get the memo.
I didn't bother to mention the plot in The Phantom Menace, because to be honest, it's entirely unremarkable. Attack of the Clones' plot is a complete and utter mess. We follow one character from one planet to another, with very little explanation as to why, whilst at the same time are attempting to follow another character from planet to planet, with just as little explanation. None of it holds together very well and you're just completely baffled as to what the heck is going on and why exactly it has to. It also doesn't help the pace very well, which feels awfully clunky, due to the plot's sporadic nature.
So yeah, it's not exactly Oscar winning material.
The Verdict
Believe me when I say I didn't want this review to be as negative as it was, I really didn't. I love Star Wars and there are aspects of Attack of the Clones that I do enjoy, but as a film, it's really incompetent. The script is atrocious, the acting is wooden and/or insufferable and the plot is an absolute mess. Creatively, it's fantastic. All the new creatures and locations are brilliant and there's more action throughout, therefore the film feels less tedious than The Phantom Menace, but in every other aspect, it's a total mess. I wish I could say it's not as bad as people say it is and maybe that is kind of true, but it certainly isn't a whole lot better either.
4.1/10
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