Continuing my series of posts revisiting the Star Wars prequels, here’s a “live blog” while watching Episode II: Attack of the Clones. Here’s a link to the previous post for Episode I (Revisiting the Star Wars Prequels – The Phantom Menace).

Was anyone actually surprised that Amidala was Padme, the “decoy” queen in Episode 1? I doubt it and it hurts the opening assassination attempt because we already know that Padme didn’t die. Missed opportunity.

Anakin’s introduction in the elevator and the attempt at some banter really showcases the lack of charisma between he and Obiwan. Hayden Christiansen acting hamstrings the entire prequel trilogy.

I love the emperor’s little conversation with a “greedo” guy. That was a fun nod to the original series and it’s nice to know that the emperor can speak that language as well. Not sure how but…

Zan, the bounty hunter tasked to send in the worms to Amidala’s room, looks horrible. Perfect makeup, no dirt on her clothes, a beyond-young looking face, none of it works. What a horrible choice. And then the only thing she does is put the worms into a droid that actually delivers them. Why couldn’t Jango do it himself then? Laughable.

Why did the droid wait around after the worms were delivered I wonder? Was it confirming the kill I guess. Certainly, made it easy for Obiwan to grab it and then stupidly, it flies back to its owner!!!

The chase through Coruscant for some reason reminds me of American Graffiti a little bit. Maybe it’s because the ship they fly looks like an old corvette and there’s lots of neon. One thing’s for sure, Haden’s delivery of “joke” lines and banter doesn’t work at all. Just terrible.

Ben Burt’s sound design for the sequence is probably my favorite thing about this car chase. Such great sounds for all the speeders and ships flying by. He’s such an unsung treasure for this series.

Anakin says “Master” WAY too many times. Nearly every sentence he speaks to Obiwan, he ends with “Master.” Super annoying.

At least Obiwan’s lines work most of the time. “Where are you going Master?” “For a drink.” Good deadpan delivery. Not a fan of the “deathsticks” lines but they almost work.

Why do the Jedi suddenly believe in the prophecy about Anakin? They reluctantly let him get trained but now they are counting on him to bring some strange “balance” the force but it is not clear what is out of balance any more than usual. And while I’m on the subject,

Anytime Anakin is on screen, the film is worse for it. Hayden is horrible beyond belief. I can’t think of a worse choice for the role.

“Please don’t look at me like that… it makes me feel uncomfortable.” George really needed more time on the script. So much of the dialogue is really terrible.

Continuing the American Graffiti theme, we even have a diner that Obiwan visits an old friend in (but there’s no set up so it makes no sense why Dex is a friend and why he is an expert on “toxic darts”).

When Obiwan tries to find Camino, he goes to the library. Why is the librarian so snooty and sure that something does not exist if it isn’t in their database? It’s just data. There must be tons of mistakes and incomplete records. Why wouldn’t she react by being concerned they are missing something? Seemed weird.

Every time Anakin and Padme are on screen together, trying to strike up a romance, I die a little bit inside.

Why is Yoda on “youngling duty?” He’s the most powerful Jedi in the order but they have him doing kindergarten with the kids?

CG Yoda is getting old. Every movement just drives home that he’s not a real creature but a computer animation. The technology was just not ready to move away from puppet Yoda (although there was no way to do what they needed to do with puppets).

Very heavy-handed dialogue. “The day we stop believing in Democracy is the day we lose it.” Come on…

The film picks up considerably once we leave the disaster of Anakin and Padme’s love affair and just get to be with Obiwan for a bit on Camino. The Camino scenes are intriguing and really “feel” like Star Wars.

How did these people on Camino go for over 10 years, making clones without any contact? Were they paid up front? Didn’t they have logistical problems that had to be discussed with their employer? They didn’t even know Master Sifo-Dyas was dead! Regardless of these questions, the Camino scenes with Obiwan are one of the shining moments of this episode.

“I don’t like sand. It’s course, rough, and irritating and it gets everywhere.” That may be the most infamously bad line in the entire prequel trilogy.

What does Padme see in Anakin? He’s grumpy, clueless, doesn’t even have a basic understanding of how government works, and is much younger than Padme, yet she’s falling for him?

The CG of Anakin trying to ride on the top of that weird beast is the worst of the whole film. George should have cut that scene. Looks horrendous.

The Empire Strikes Back is such a contrast in quality to this “middle” episode of the prequel trilogy. Whereas we have characters under attack and in immediate conflict the entire time of Empire Strikes Back, here we have a badly handled love story and more vignettes of the “phantom menace” that we are still hearing about but don’t fully understand.

Those sounds effects of the explosions in the astroid field are amazing. I am disappointed that we went “back to astroids” for this film after we had already seen astroids done well in Empire Strikes Back but those sounds effects make me happy.

Up until this point, Boba has been quiet and passable. Now we get a bunch of bully kid talk that’s like nails on a chalkboard. In a few minutes of screen time, the mystique of Boba Fett is completely ruined.

Good to see they’re still serving kool-aid at the Lars residence on Tatooine but it looks like they are doing red instead of blue flavor today.

Why are the sand people keeping Shmi a prisoner? They kill everyone else. Also, Anakin finds her way to easily. It feels like a throwaway scene and it should be absolutely critical to Darth Vader’s character arc. And then she dies within a few minutes of finding her? How convenient… Then we get a cutaway as Anakin slaughters the sand people (who we hate anyway).

Anakin brings his mother back, all wrapped up like “here’s your dead wife…” then tells Padme he killed the whole village and how does she react? She likes him more. She has major issues. Besides, why does Anakin suddenly care so much again about his mother? He hasn’t seen her in years and never even talked to her, but now… he’s obsessed with her?

Anakin’s tantrum “Obiwan is holding me back,” is up there as one of the worst line deliveries of the series.

Christopher Lee is such a welcome addition to this series. He brings a lot of gravitas to this episode (that is badly needed).

Jar Jar continues his idiocy by giving all power to the supreme chancellor, thus dooming the Republic in one moronic speech in front of the Senate.

I do like that Dooku tries to recruit Obiwan, keeping the typical scenario that the apprentice Sith tries to overthrow his master.

The battle in the factory is pretty well shot, with some interesting camera angles, and creative action. The color palette and art direction remind me a bit of Temple of Doom actually.

The whole C-3PO comedy goes on too long and gets progressively more ridiculous. Also, finding out R2-D2 can fly creates more questions about the later episodes than it answers.

The arena scene is great Star Wars action in the vein of Flash Gordon and Clash of the Titans. The beasts are unique and threatening and the CG isn’t too bad in this scene. This is one of the only other parts of this episode I enjoyed.

For as powerful a Jedi as Dooku seems to be, he sure didn’t “sense” Mace or the other Jedi coming into the arena. It was nice to finally see Mace do something besides just agree with Yoda and that large-scale Jedi battle was something we hadn’t seen before in the series. Still not as good as the Clone Wars series but fun nonetheless.

Yoda takes so long to say his “backwards” sentences that he nearly dooms the entire Clone army’s mission. He really needs to get his “basic” down better.

It’s kind of creepy that Boba picks up his dad’s severed head and puts it up to his own forehead in mourning.

How many times can they tease the Death Star plans? I guess George really felt his audience wouldn’t get it otherwise.

Some interesting ship designs in the final Clone battle that do a good job at teasing later Empire designs.

This lightsaber battle between Anakin and Dooku doesn’t even come close to the Darth Maul fight in Episode I. Even when Yoda shows up (which is a huge crowd-pleaser), it can’t compare to the amazing choreography of that Phantom Menace sword fight.

Dooku’s sail ship is staggeringly impractical but it’s, at least, a cool idea.

It’s interesting that Anakin chooses a gold replacement hand when he later decides to go black instead with a whole new body. Maybe a nod to his creation, C-3PO?

And once again, John Williams’ score saves and elevates countless scenes in this episode.

My overall opinion of Episode II is that it’s the worst episode of the prequels. Nearly a disaster from start to finish and so much less polished than Episode I. We’ll see if Revenge of the Sith can top The Phantom Menace in my next post in this series.

With filming on Star Wars Episode VII underway, it seemed like a good time to revisit the Star Wars prequels. I thought it would be fun to do a “live blog” as I watched each film with thoughts, impressions, and some analysis. So here we go with Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace:

The first scene really has a mysterious feel that fits really well with “the phantom” title but what’s up with the weird kid-looking man/woman that is the captain of Qui-Gon’s ship? The film also looks great. George does a great job showing how far the technology has come since Return of the Jedi.

The trade dispute at the very beginning is an interesting way to show the mundane world of the Jedi. It isn’t adventurous or glamorous to manage trade relations but it definitely seems like something the Jedi’s would do.

I cringed when Obi-Wan said “I have a bad feeling about this.” Why use a line that was traditionally said by other characters and never once spoken by Obi-Wan through the entire original trilogy? It felt awkward and out of place.

Qui-Gon shows his compassion with Jar-Jar by saving him. It’s a good little character moment that makes us as an audience immediately like him.

Robot’s dialogue kills the tension of the first scene. Why did they have to talk like they were mentally deficient? Why not make them a bigger threat so it feels like the Jedi are really being challenged?

Jar-Jar’s introduction truly announces that this isn’t your father’s Star Wars. “Ex-squeeze me”. The possibility that this guy would become a senator strains all credibility.

“How rude” when Jar Jar is poked kills me. No reason to recycle old dialogue from the previous trilogy especially when it was said by a completely different character (C-3PO)

Noble gesture by Qui-gon to save Jar Jar.

Jar Jar feels more like a technical experiment than a legitimately useful character to the story. He exists to show that George could make a character out of complete CG (a HUGE advance for the time) and for comic relief. Frankly, he has more in common with Who Framed Roger Rabbit than Star Wars.

Despite what some may think they remember, the beginning is not boring. The action keeps moving and George continues to throw new things at us every few minutes to keep the pace up.

While I was suffering through another Jar-Jar scene, my daughter was watching next to me and said “ha ha, I love Jar-Jar. He’s my favorite character.” Clearly, George knew what he was doing regardless of my misgivings with the character.

Watto is actually a pretty cool CG character. He looks unique compared to anything we’ve seen in Star Wars before and he’s exceedingly more complex than Jar-Jar.

It was a huge mistake to have Anakin be the creator of C-3PO. There’s no reason for it and it makes the future adventures of C-3PO bizarre and confusing (even with the memory-wipe plot device). It brings new meaning to C-3PO’s exclamation in A New Hope “Thank the Maker!”.

Let me address the Midi-chlorians controversy. I get why George wrote it into the script. He needed an easy expository plot device to tell the audience Anakin was powerful. A MUCH more interesting and clever way to do this would have been to SHOW Anakin do something so amazing with the force that Qui-Gon could say “he is more powerful than Master Yoda.” The Midi-chlorians are a mistake that has haunted the entire Star Wars universe ever since. Taking away the mystical nature of the force and replacing it with simple bio-chemistry was a huge blunder.

The Pod Race really is amazing. Next to the ending sword battle, this is the most exciting and jaw-dropping sequence of this entire film. The stakes are high. Everything just keeps getting worse for Anakin from a slow start, to a mis-aligned engine, to a fire in the turbine, it’s an exciting and edge-of-your-seat race. Great writing here.

Jabba’s introduction at the beginning of the Pod Race is a welcome nod to the original trilogy that doesn’t feel forced or out of place. Also, it’s nice to get a look at Jabba’s wife (isn’t that who the creature next to him is?)

The Tuskan Raiders shooting at the racers was a stroke of comic genius. Well-done on that George. That was genuinely funny and clever to play them like some backwoods rednecks shooting at a Nascar race.

Anakin’s parting from his mother is so overly melodramatic. That scene has not aged well.

The special effects during the landing at Coruscant are breathtaking. Really next generation for the time and still looks quite good.

I always thought the conceptual design and realization of the Imperial Senate was great. It’s functional and well-shot.

The Jedi Council on the other hand is totally mishandled. They come off as power-hungry usurpers that deny their own prophecies. Their questioning of Anakin doesn’t make any sense. Of course, he misses his mother. Their queries are trivialities that have nothing to do with his destiny that they are trying to ascertain. It’s all gibberish masquerading as some deeper meaning.

Practically speaking, the Gungan’s shield design during the Battle of Naboo doesn’t make a lot of sense. It seems a very easy design to defeat with two pack animals having to stay close to each other to generate the shield barrier.

That final sword battle with Darth Maul is truly epic. Still the best of the entire series. It doesn’t hurt that John William’s score makes it 10x more exciting. I do hate that they killed off Darth Maul so soon. He should have been in the next two movies. He had a great set up and then… boom… he’s gone way too soon.

The whole subplot with Anakin (who supposedly knows everything about machines) suddenly not being able to figure out why he is flying the fighter ship and what’s going on is just ridiculous. I understand that it is here to give Anakin something to do but it is so childish, it’s hard for me to really enjoy it. I mean: “Qui Gon said to stay in this cockpit so that’s what I’m going to do.” Come on!

The “triple” battle works well and fits right in with Return of the Jedi’s similar 3-front battle.

My overall feeling is that this episode is the best of the prequels despite its weaknesses. But I’ll withhold a final opinion until I’ve watched the other two again.

A few weeks back, I watched the documentary Jodorowsky’s Dune. In case you don’t know the basic story, the film recounts director Alejandro Jodorowsky’s attempt to make Frank Herbert’s science fiction masterpiece Dune into a film in the early 1970’s. It isn’t giving anything away to say that Jodorowsky’s film was never made but what’s interesting about this story is how far the film planning got before the studios pulled the plug. This is why many film historian’s call it: “The greatest film never made.”

A Success from Failure

So why make a documentary about a director who failed to get his film made? Besides it being an interesting historical anecdote, the sheer enormity of the plan that Jodorowsky had for the film is staggering. This was a guy with vision like few directors have ever had. The colossal failure of such a gigantic pre-production process really is unique in the history of Hollywood.

What really comes through though is how this failure of a film project spawned so many other projects after. The documentary ends with a series of subsequent films that were heavily influenced by Jodorowsky’s storyboards and concept designs. This film that never was has resonated in hollywood throughout nearly every other science fiction film since.

A Man with a Vision

Above all else, the film really shows the power of an artist with a vision. Jodorowsky assembled some of the biggest names in the movie business, from actors, to storyboard artists, to concept-designers, it is a “who’s who” list of individuals that would go on to be the biggest names in movies in later years.

“The lesson is, someone who truly believes in their art, who is utterly devoted to their project, who has a plan and can articulate that goal from their heart can attract the best. Others will follow that kind of passion.”

Here’s some of the critical attributes Jodorowsky has that allowed him to get such a crazy and overly ambitious project so far along:

Passion – Jodorowsky believed in his film. It was all he thought or talked about when he was preparing it. 100% of his creative energy was channeled towards the film.

Negotiation – There were all kinds of actors, studio executives, and artists that had different ideas about where the film should go and why they wanted to be involved. Jodorowsky was quite clever in negotiating with each person to get them what they really wanted while still getting them to contribute their talents to his vision.

Emotional involvement – Jodorowsky wasn’t just doing a job. He wasn’t just making a fun movie. He truly believed his film would change the world. It had nearly become a pseudo-religion, the concepts, the themes, the power of what he was creating. Everyone else latched onto that belief and wanted to be involved in something bigger than themselves.

The Legacy of Jodorowsky’s Dune

With the recent tragic death of H.R. Giger, the legacy of this film is even more timely. Dan O’Bannon and H.R. Giger met while working on Jodorowsky’s Dune. They formed a creative bond and when the Dune project collapsed, they went on together to a little project called Alien. Dan O’Bannon would go on to write Ridley Scott’s Alien and of course Giger would do some of the most amazing and influential creature/production design in the history of science fiction and horror. The echoes of this “un-film” are still being heard today and all because of one man’s passionate vision.

On paper, Transcendence seemed like a sure thing. Starring Johnny Depp, produced by Christopher Nolan (of Inception and The Dark Knight fame), an interesting science fiction premise, and directed by Wally Pfister (the director of photography for The Dark Knight in his directorial debut). What could go wrong?

I read several reviews before I went to see the movie and most of the reviews were lukewarm or worse but I shrugged it off and went anyway because: how could Chris Nolan executive produce a film by his “go-to” director of photography that wasn’t good? Wouldn’t Nolan lend a hand if things weren’t going right?

Well, it appears Chris Nolan either left Wally Pfister to his own devices or was too busy working on Interstellar to make sure this movie was working because what we got was a huge letdown. What a disappointment. It appears Chris Nolan just called in favors to his usual actors and helped Wally get the film off the ground and…that’s about it.

What Transcendence did right

Cinematography – Wally Pfister has been the director of photography on Chris Nolan’s biggest films and it shows. The film is beautifully framed and shot.

Big Ideas – Somewhere in here was a great movie but unfortunately, the writers didn’t seem to grasp the implications of the science and I have to lay blame at the director’s feet for turning the big ideas into trivialities. At least they tried for big, compelling, timely, and interesting ideas even if they failed to communicate them well.

3 Reasons Transcendence Failed

Regardless of the few things the film did right, it got a lot more wrong:

1) Handicapping your actors – Johnny Depp (usually a huge Box Office draw) has very little to work with. His character is acted upon for the first half of the movie, not really making any choices on his own then spends the other half of the film as a robotic image in a computer with little chance to showcase his acting talent.

2) Pacing – there are some moments of tension and action but there are huge sections of the film where nothing interesting or clever happens. This is a directing problem and Pfister’s lack of experience shows most here.

3) Lack of tension – there are large portions of the movie where there is no threat / conflict or the conflict feels so obvious and contrived that we know within the first 5 minutes how the scene is going to end.

I couldn’t be more bummed to report this. I’m a huge fan of Wally Pfister as a DP. I so wished he had knocked his first film out of the park but he didn’t and I’m not sure he’ll get another chance.