The Force Awakens Review

*****THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR THE FORCE AWAKENS*****

I never thought I would see the day when a Star Wars movie had boring design and interesting characters. It's definitely a different animal from its predecessors and doesn't suffer the classic Star Wars flaws: stilted performances and bad dialogue. Overall, it  is a satisfying movie that will not only please hardcore Star Wars original trilogy fundamentalists but in its compelling new characters and some thrilling action sequences will be fresh and entertaining for new viewers as well. For a movie series that has been so intertwined with its creator who has been involved as a writer, director, or producer on each of the six prior movies it is interesting to see a completely Lucas-free Star Wars movie.  For better and for worse, The Force Awakens proves that J. J. Abrams is no George Lucas.

Abrams has a track record of directing big Hollywood blockbusters that have an emphasis on character and relationships, most evident in his two Star Trek movies.  The Force Awakens has that same emphasis on its characters and their relationships and this is without a doubt the best thing about the movie.  Newcomers Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Adam Driver, Oscar Isaac (and the insanely adorable BB-8) are all excellently cast and give the movie a sense of joy and vitality. This is the first Star Wars movie I have seen where there is not a single bad performance (although Domhnall Gleeson's foray into Imperial bitchiness comes close as does Carrie Fisher's understated and weirdly lock jawed performance.)  Daisy Ridley and John Boyega, in particular have terrific chemistry and form a sweet and tender friendship over the course of the movie.

It is a notable that this movie features a strikingly diverse cast for a blockbuster movie featuring a woman and an actor of color as its leads who are all well-developed three dimensional characters. While this shouldn't be a big deal, Star Wars is an important and beloved piece of popular culture so it is nice to see it finally reflecting the diversity of the world in which we live.  Hopefully this movie's phenomenal success will serve as proof that audiences want to see more diverse casting in their movies.



The strength of its new characters and the excitement of returning characters such as Han Solo, Leia, and Chewbacca in solid supporting supporting roles makes The Force Awakens a uniquely satisfying Star Wars movie,  It has a warmth and a looseness that were missing from the prequels.  The movie is dramatically sound, sometimes funny, and it really "works" in a way that none of the previous movies have.  It lacks the awkward goofiness of the original trilogy and the stiff formality of the prequels.

As good as the movie is, I do feel that it has one fatal flaw in that it relies far too heavily on nostalgia and essentially replays story beats from movies in the original trilogy.  We start with another character on a desert planet.  There is another Death Star (this being the third one in four movies).  There is another trench run to destroy the Death Star. The First Order is run by a mysterious, scarred, and shadowy figure who is apparently a master of the dark side of the Force. Unfortunately, for every new and unique element that the movie brings to the table, it recycles three things as an act of obsessive fan wankery.

In the trade-off of J. J. Abrams for George Lucas, we thankfully lose a lot of Lucas' maddening bad habits but we also lose that hard-to-define quality that Lucas brought to Star Wars that made it so special.  We lose his genius at creating a coherent and compelling visual world and we lose his facility for purely cinematic storytelling. The Force Awakens is certainly a good-looking movie but it does look and feel a bit generic at times. Strangely for a Star Wars movie, it has very unimaginative design. With the exception of BB-8 and Rey's speeder, there is not a single memorable original design element in this movie.  And both of those two are essentially twists on iconic Star Wars designs. Other than the redesigns of original trilogy vehicles, every ship in the movie is bland and slab-like.



That carries over to some really unimaginative locations.  Even in the prequel trilogy for which a lot of fans have an irrational hatred, there are a half a dozen really unique and memorable locales such the baroque splendor of the Naboo capital, the futuristic urban sprawl of Coruscant, the sleek and rainy clone facility on Kamino, the volcanic Hell of Mustafar, and plenty of others.  The closest that The Force Awakens has to a memorable location is Jakku, which is essentially Tattooine with some crashed starships,  The other locations are ill-defined and mundane.

Starkiller Base, in particular, is problematic.  We are to assume it is some sort of pre-existing planet that has been converted into a Death Star-like weapon.  So, it has a combination of a tech interior with a snowy forested exterior.  It feeds off a nearby star which, apparently it will exhaust to power its weapon, at which point, who knows what happens.  Can it travel like the Death Star?  If so, what happens to the people who presumably live on its surface?   Its poor design raises a lot of awkward questions.  Compare that with the Death Star which after a few short scenes, tells you all you need to know about how it works, mostly in a purely visual way.  Good design works without distracting you with questions.

Instead of the vast and diverse galaxy of the Lucas movies, the galaxy of The Force Awakens seems strangely compact, as though the events of the movie are taking place in one solar system.  Once Rey and Finn escape Jakku they are almost immediately met by Han and Chewie, who are then met by other characters.  The Starkiller weapon fires a laser that hits another planet which is an indeterminate distance away but feels like it must be nearby.  What worse, Han is able to see the planet destroyed from Maz Kanata's planet.  Instead of feeling like the story is happening on an epic and vast canvas, it feels small and inconsequential.  This was also an issue with the director's two Star Trek movies, which seemed to shrink the cosmos and bend the rules of the established universe to expedite and facilitate the story.



Lastly, for a movie that seems intent on delivering fan service it seems to stubbornly insist on reinventing things that don't need to be reinvented.  For example, it is weird that the movie creates a desert planet for Rey to live on  when perhaps the most iconic world in Star Wars is the desert planet of Tattooine.  It seems like the choice was to either use Tattoine or use an original planet but not to create a planet that is exactly like Tattooine down to having its own version of Jawas and moisture vaporators.  Instead of using the already established Coruscant, the movie creates another urban planet as the capital of the Republic. The Resistance is based on a planet that looks a lot like the jungle planet Yavin IV from A New Hope but apparently is a different world.  The Force Awakens does a lot of things like this.  Instead of using any of the hundreds of classic Star Wars aliens that have appeared on screen, the movie insists on featuring its own original creature designs, most of which are pretty forgettable and look like they could come from an episode of Doctor Who.  Abrams also did this on the Star Trek movies and it was a missed opportunity there as well.

For all the complaints about the prequels being mired in "politics" you at least had a good understanding of the different organizations and entities at play.  The Force Awakens has a difficult job of at least giving a basic picture of the state of the galaxy post-Return of the Jedi and it doesn't succeed at helping you understand how these different factions work.  Instead of the Empire, there is now a First Order, which is essentially the Empire with a new name. Why not just call it the Empire? The Rebellion is now the Resistance which apparently has some relation to a new Republic that is also a thing.  While Star Wars has always been about dropping you into an existing world, this just feels like sloppy and overly complicated storytelling.



So, I have a lot of nerdy gripes about The Force Awakens but they are mostly small ways that the movie doesn't capture that sense of Star Wars despite the fact that it has a lot of superficial fan service.  All that said, I mostly enjoyed the film which was filled with some really terrific moments. The movie also features some great new characters and performances which feels like a revelation in a Star Wars movie. I am excited to such a talented and charismatic cast carrying on the story.  I feel very good about the next installment which I hold will go in a bold and original direction.

Patrick Garone
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A Star Wars Retrospective: Return of the Jedi

While The Empire Strikes Back was my first Star Wars movie, I was an eight year old boy when Return of the Jedi  hit theaters and was exactly the right age to lose my mind over it.  I'm not exaggerating when I say I saw it at the theater twenty times during its run.  It was my primary babysitter during the summer of 1983. Even before the movie was released I remember sitting with my best friend and studying the Kenner action figure card backs with the upcoming figures in order to parse out story clues.  What was a Gammorrean and why did it need to be guarded?  It was the most toyetic of all the OT movies with more creatures, aliens, vehicles and more of just everything Star Wars.

The movie, however, leaves quite a bit to be desired.  While it starts out strong with a fun section revolving around the rescue of Han Solo and is enjoyable for carrying both trilogies through to a satisfying ending, a lot of the movie feels lazy and uninspired.  Much of the problem with the movie is in the fact that it rehashes elements of its predecessors.  Jabba's Palace is an opportunity to do a bigger and better version of the Cantina scene.  The movie's climax involves an attack on another Death Star but faster and with more ships.  The movie feels a little samey.

And then there's the Ewoks.  While the Stormtroopers have never been terribly effective, to see the Emperor's "best troops" easily dispatched by a bunch of teddy bears armed  with rocks and sticks kind of ruins them and diminishes the Empire as a force for evil. The whole sequence-which is pivotal to the movie and trilogy-is silly when it needs to be serious.  

The combination of a weak script which seems confused about what to do with its characters and a lot of actors phoning in their performances hobbles the movie.  Ford and Fisher have traded in their great Empire Strikes Back chemistry for a vague romantic relationship which veers into a truly dumb and adolescent love triangle with Luke.  I don't know how the carbonite affected Han Solo but he is really dopey in this movie.  The two share a scene in the Ewok village that nears Attack of the Clones levels of melodrama.

However, like any Star Wars movie, Return of the Jedi is more than the sum of its flaws.  There is a lot to like about the movie and it still holds up as a rousing space opera adventure.  While very derivative of Star Wars, the space battle at the end of the movie is truly spectacular.  The Endor speeder bike chase also holds up as a terrific sequence which makes me sad that the movie has yet to make its way to a 3D presentation.

Perhaps Jedi's greatest contribution to the Star Wars mythos is Jabba the Hutt, a character who is among the series' most iconic.  I am certainly not a practical effects fetishist (I wouldn't be sad to see the Yoda Muppet replaced) but the giant puppet that brought Jabba to life is one of cinema's greatest and most successful creatures.  It holds up astonishingly well and could hardly be improved upon.

In terms of its connections to the larger saga, Return of the Jedi ties up storylines from all five of its predecessors and particularly connects to and reflects The Phantom Menace and Revenge of the Sith (Ring Theory!), where Luke and Anakin's journeys strongly parallel one another.  Most noticeably, Anakin's encounter with Dooku at the beginning of Sith on Grievous' ship strongly mirrors Luke and Vader's duel on the Death Star with Palpatine presiding over both.

Jedi also brings back prequel mainstay Palpatine in the flesh.  He has lured Luke to him to test him against Vader and also caught the Rebels in a trap by feeding them bad information.  Classic Palapatine!  It's good to see that he is still doing what he loves.

Jedi has some of the more controversial Special Edition changes.  Jabba's palace gets a new musical number which replaces "Lapti Nek," which is not bad but some of the ostentatious CG could have been toned down.  The   The Sarlacc gets CGI tentacles and a beak which is cool and makes it a little more active than just a toothy hole.   The horrible There are some nice subtle touches added to the Blurays, such as a Dug skulking around Jabba's palace and blinking eyes on the Ewoks.

The movie's finale gets perhaps the biggest changes.  The music on the Endor celebration has changed to a more somber and epic song befitting the conclusion of the saga and no takes us to the Empire's fall on several locations we have visited in the saga.



Perhaps the most controversial change is the swap of the original actor who played Anakin's ghost with Hayden Christensen which, on some level, is a hilarious troll to the original trilogy fundamentalist crowd.  The argument against this is usually something like "How dare they replace that guy who was in the movie for two minutes with the guy who played that character in two movies!  I loved what's his face!  Childhood!  Ruined!"

Patrick Garone
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A Star Wars Restrospective: The Empire Strikes Back

The Empire Strikes Back was my first Star Wars movie.  I was only five but I remember it vividly and the parts of the movie are burned in my imagination; the dark and snowy imagery, the spooky duel in the Dagobah cave, the dramatic reveal of Vader's identity.  It made a huge impression on me and I have been obsessed with Star Wars ever since.

Empire is widely considered the best of the Star Wars movies and is tonally a much different movie than its "gee whiz!" predecessor.  It is the prototypical "dark sequel" and is slower, moodier, and more character-driven than Star Wars.  It famously ends with a dark and traumatic twist.

After their rousing victory in destroying the Death Star, the Rebels are now on the run and hiding out on the inhospitable ice planet of Hoth.  We learn in the opening crawl that Vader has become obsessed with locating Luke Skywalker after apparently learning his identity at some point off screen and he soon learns the base location and leads a memorable land assault in one of Star Wars most memorable sequences, the Battle of Hoth (later to become fodder for many many video games.)

Han, Leia, Chewie and 3PO escape on the Falcon (which is strangely unreliable in this movie) and Luke and Artoo head for Dagobah where a ghostly Obi-Wan has instructed him to find Yoda and complete his training. Meanwhile, after avoiding the Empire in an asteroid field the Falcon and her crew limps to Bespin where Han's friend Lando Calrissian runs Cloud City-one of Star Wars' most awesome and iconic locations.  Han is betrayed and frozen in carbonite and turned over to the bounty hunter Boba Fett to be delivered to Jabba the Hutt on Tattooine.  

When he senses his friends in danger, Luke heads to Bespin to rescue them only to face Vader in the series' most dramatic duel and  Luke finally learns the truth about his father's identity.  Battered and defeated, he is rescued by Leia in the Falcon as she makes her escape with Chewie, Lando and the droids..

Compared to the original movie The Empire Strikes Back is surprisingly heavy and features an ending that can be charitably described as a "bummer" and there are fans that prefer the more light-hearted entries in the series but Empire goes a long way towards enriching the world and (to an extent) developing its characters.  That said, it still suffers the same flaw as all the Lucas produced Star Wars movies: god awful dialogue.  This is mitigated somewhat by director Irving Kirshner's steadier hand directing actors but it is still an issue.

Where the movie really resonates is in developing a deeper mythology of the Star Wars universe and its mysterious Force.  The chunk of the movie on Dagobah with Luke and Yoda really develop the Force idea from what was a sort of vague spiritual concept in Star Wars and speaks to a definitely Eastern philosophy with some profound implications.

Like the best parts of Star Wars, the most powerful sequence in the movie is a purely visual sequence: Luke's mysterious encounter with "Darth Vader" in the Dagobah cave. In this brief sequence Luke is drawn to a strange cave and is warned by Yoda that it is a place strong with the Dark Side.  When Luke asks him what is inside, Yoda cryptically warns him "Only what you bring with you."  When Yoda warns Luke that he will not need his weapons, Luke ignores him and ventures in where he encounters...Darth Vader.  Luke beheads him in fear and anger.  When he looks down at Vader's head he sees his own face  beneath the mask.

As a five-year-old boy, I remember being simultaneously scared, confused by and in awe of this scene.  While on the surface it was confusing to me, I think that I understood it in my gut what it meant.  It's an example of the really powerful visual storytelling for which the series is known. The best thing is that no one ever talks about it, except Yoda referring to it obliquely as Luke's "failure in the cave." A lesser movie would spend time analyzing it or telling the audience what it means but Empire leaves it

In the context of the larger six film saga, Empire connects to the prequels in a number of ways.  We finally see Palpatine and Yoda after a long absence. Since we have already spent a lot of time with Yoda, our introduction to him plays different than it did in 1980.  Instead of asking "Who is this weird little creature?" now it is "OMG Yoda went nuts!" 

In this movie, Boba Fett plays his most important role and production-wise this was his first live-action appearance (although he actually debuted in the Holiday special and also in some live appearances.)  So began the weird cult of Boba Fett, a character with little screen time and importance.  Oh, Star Wars fans, you are an intense bunch.





If you are familiar with the wonderful "Star Wars Ring Theory" which describes how movies in both trilogies "rhyme" with one another and allude to one another in very specific ways, you can see how Empire  connects in a lot of ways to Attack of the Clones.  Both movies feature Fetts, chases through asteroid fields, a ship attaching itself to a larger body to hide, a Skywalker getting his hand cut off, giant ground battles featuring walkers, romance subplots, Skywalkers abandoning their missions to rescue loved ones, etc.  If you haven't already, check it out.  It is a good read.

At the very least, both trilogies compare and contrast the journeys of both Skywalkers and the choices they make.  It's hard for us old school Star Wars fans to see it fresh but watching the movies sequentially and seeing Luke begin to replicate his father's choices should fill the viewer with trepidation.  In retrospect, Hayden Christensen does a good job of subtly channeling some of Mark Hamil's vocal and speech patterns. The two really do seem to be credible as father and son and when Luke takes off because he is compelled to go after his friends, it should bring up some red flags.

In terms of Special Edition changes, Empire was the least affected.  The majority of changes expand and enhance to Bespin scenes to great effect.  Other changes include alteration of Boba Fett's voice to match the prequels and a puzzling and unnecessary scene of Darth Vader walking to and from his shuttle.  Perhaps the best change is replacing the original "Monkey Eye" Emperor hologram with Revenge of the Sith Ian McDiarmid.  While his is a welcome addition I do wish the make-up was more in the style of Return of the Jedi rather than the Mrs. Doubtfire-looking Sith make-up.

Patrick Garone
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A Star Wars Retrospective: Star Wars: A New Hope

What can you say about the original Star Wars movie?  It's a film that is so beloved and was such a phenomenon upon its release and is such a classic with an amazing legacy that it is easy to forget George Lucas' somewhat quaint movie amidst a host of trilogies and spin offs.  But, at the time of its release, Star Wars nestled itself into world consciousness and the imaginations of a generation of people. It's easy for people to forget that there is a movie in the middle of the maelstrom that is the larger Star Wars phenomenon.

One of the remarkable things about Lucas' first trip to the Galaxy Far, Far Away is how it succeeds as an effortless bit of world building. Modern movies tend to feature clunky world building in service to profitable "shared universes" and "connected franchises" but the universe of Star Wars seems to have sprung out of George Lucas' weird preoccupations and unexpected genre mash-ups and the result is visionary and compelling and unlike anything before it (despite its clear debts to other movies).  It's a movie that starts in the middle of a larger story, throws you into a credible pre-existing world and trusts you to understand what is going on in a universe that is much more complex and rich than the simple narrative that unfolds.

Of course, much of the uniqueness of Star Wars rests with its bold and unexpected design thanks in large part to people like Ralph McQuarrie who were largely responsible for the movie's look.  We are so used to the imagery now but so much of the Star Wars visual style was just completely weird and unprecedented in 1977.  Ships like the Millennium Falcon, Imperial Star Destroyer or TIE Fighter would not have even been recognizable as spaceships.  Darth Vader is a bizarre asthmatic samurai robot thing who fights with a laser sword.  R2D2?  A trash can robot on wheels,  Jawas? Sandpeople? Space apes? It's no wonder they had a hard time getting this made.  It's a really weird movie with an iconography that is almost completely fresh.  Very few movies achieve this level of clear visual originality.

So it's no wonder that people went crazy for Star Wars when it was released.  It was completely different and therefore compelling.  And the story was fun and fast-paced and sweetly good-natured. Like Rocky the year before, it was the perfect remedy for late 1970's malaise and a contrast to the dark complex movies that dominated the decade. 

How does it hold up now, almost forty years and five movies later?  I'd say pretty well.  It still presents a unique world and for the most part the 1990's Special Edition changes have added to the movie's visual world through opening up some environments and subtly fixing some effects issues. The only addition I find objectionable is the added Jabba scene which presents a weirdly fatherly and mellow Jabba the Hutt.  

Now, the movie has its characteristic George Lucas flaws: poorly directed actors and painful dialogue.  While fans are quick to point these out in the prequel movies they are all over the original trilogy as well.   People tend to look at these movies with nostalgia blinders.  They are classics and wonderful movies but not perfect by any means.

For example, the character of Han Solo has not improved with age.  While many fans are Solo cultists, the character is grating to modern sensibilities.  It's kind of like going back and watching Friends and realizing that Chandler is kind of an awful person.  Han definitely comes off as kind of a douche.  He's basically rude to everyone around him and disrespectful and dismissive.  I mean, he literally refers to Obi Wan as an "old fossil."  He's blatantly sexist to Leia and treats C-3PO with vaguely homophobic disdain.  His wishie-washiness about participating in the Death Star attack also causes Biggs and a bunch of Rebel pilots to be killed. So, yeah, douche.

In terms of its place in the now six-film narrative, A New Hope jumps ahead twenty years after Revenge of the Sith.  The Empire is now ascendant and we hear the the Senate which was such a big part of the prequels has now been disbanded.  While the Emperor is given a shout out, this is the only Star Wars movie in which he does not appear.  

The now-adult daughter of Padme and Anakin, Princess Leia has been dispatched by her father Bail Organa to Tattooine to find Obi Wan Kenobi, who is hiding out there and watching over Luke Skywalker.  Upon her capture, Leia sends R2D2 and 3PO to find Kenobi, who has aged A LOT in twenty years (those suns, though) and doesn't seem to remember either droid despite having important interactions with both of them (although he does give R2 a rather knowing look.) Obi-wan's character is one that I feel is enriched by the prequels.  Watching the movies sequentially it almost seems that Alec Guiness has some of MacGregor's twinkle in his eyes, although obviously it is the other way around.  Anyway, Obi gives Luke a cursory Jedi training aboard the Falcon which is interrupted but their capture at the Death Star, last seen at the end of Sith under construction.  I guess it takes twenty years to build a Death Star.

Leia is rescued and Obi-Wan and Vader engage in what is a strangely low-energy lightsaber duel during which Obi-Wan is killed and vanishes into thin air, the trick to which Yoda referred right at the end of Sith.  Luke and the rebels attack the Death Star, blow it up and Vader escapes.  Chewbacca doesn't get a damn medal.

I was just a baby when Star Wars came out and didn't actually see it until years later on home video after having already seen at least The Empire Strikes Back and possibly Jedi (back before VHS really caught on, you had to see movies in the theater or catch them when they ran on TV).  I didn't have the experience of seeing the movie in the theaters until the Special Edition came out in 1997 but I definitely caught a lot of the Star Wars mania in the ensuing years, I just didn't have any context for it until I saw Empire but like many people my age, Star Wars was a huge part of my childhood even if it took me a while to catch up to the actual movie.

Patrick Garone
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A Star Wars Retrospective: Attack of the Clones

Attack of the Clones is the most schizophrenic of all the Star Wars movies and the one whose flaws most negatively affect its viewing.  While the movie has some really fun and thrilling sequences-the Obi-Wan/Jango fight, Anakin's search for his mother, the Yoda versus Dooku showdown, and the insanely action-packed Geonosis battle, to name a few, it also has a handful of scenes that are astonishingly, jaw-droppingly bad.  These scenes are much worse than anything else in Star Wars including all Jar Jar and Ewok scenes and mar what is otherwise a really fun movie which gleefully embraces its Space Opera elements and which amps up the action and adventure factor considerably from the slower and more plotty Episode I.

Of course, the objectionable scenes I am referring to are the "love story" scenes between Anakin and Padme which are tortuously melodramatic and overwritten. A lot of the blame for this gets placed on Hayden Christensen and he gets unfairly accused of being a bad actor but the real problem is with the script and direction.  That these scenes are even watchable is a testament to Christensen and Natalie Portman's heroic efforts. Christensen seems to have been directed into playing Anakin as some sort of James Dean-in-Space kind of character and it makes Anakin a little goofy at times.  He does however have some really nice moments (mostly when he isn't forced to mouth George Lucas' word salad) particularly when the story takes him and Padme back to Tattooine.  His discovery of his mother and subsequent slaughter of the Sand People is very effective and firmly puts him on the path to Vader-dom.  Unfortunately for Portman, without the stylized character and fun identity switch in The Phantom Menace, she has little to do in this movie other than be an ambivalent love interest.  She also straddles things.  She really straddles a lot of things in this movie.

Despite the awfulness of most of their sceenes, Anakin and Padme do share a couple of worthwhile moments in the movie.  First,  as the two are carted out into the Geonosis area, they share a silent silhouetted kiss.that really tells you all the things about them that a half dozen interminable dialogue scenes could not.  It's odd that a visual maestro like Lucas could not tone back the dialogue and tell more of this story in a purely visual way. Secondly, in the otherwise unwatchable series of Naboo romance scenes, Anakin and Padme talk briefly about politics and Anakin lets it slip that his ideal political system is a kind of dictatorship, which gives Padme a moment's pause while she figures out if he's kidding or not (he's not.)  This is one of the rare scenes between them that is skillfully written and illustrates their points of view and future conflict.  It is very revealing about Anakin and the fact that one of his greatest character flaws is that he sees things in a simplistic way. Our hero is not very bright, and that's okay.

In fact, people are quick to point out all sorts of things about Anakin in the prequels such as his whininess, the fact that he is arrogant, his creepiness, the fact that he's a mama's boy, as though these are problems with the movies.  Those are not problems, those are character traits that doom Anakin Skywalker to his fate. He's not really supposed to be a likable character.  It is more important that you feel for him and understand his downfall than that you like him.

The other half of the movie deals with Obi-Wan's attempts to investigate the attempted murder of Padme and plays like a detective story, which is a new and interesting genre for Star Wars.  This is the more fun half of the movie and takes Obi-Wan (and his space mullet) from the gritty underbelly of the urban world Coruscant, to a mysterious cloning operation on rainy Kamino, to Geonosis where he stumbles upon a plot that threatens to kickstart the Clone Wars.  One thing I will say about these scenes is that perhaps we see a little too much of the Star Wars galaxy which starts to look a little mundane when you are spending time in libraries, sports bars, and diners.  There's a fine line between Star Wars and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Once we get to Geonosis, though,  the movie moves into high gear and Attack of the Clones ends with a half hour of straight action as we witness the first battle of the Clone Wars.  First, we see something that we desperately wanted to see in the Prequels: a full on Jedi Power Battle as Mace Windu leads a squad of Jedi in an all out assault on Geonosis.  The movie keep layering cool stuff  on top of this: Yoda coming to the rescue with an army of clone troopers, Jango Fett battling Mace Windu, an EPIC ground and air assault, Anakin and Obi-Wan teaming up to duel Dooku, and ultimately, we get to see Yoda finally engage in not only a battle of force powers but a lightsaber (!) duel as well in a sequence that was so awesome that essentially the whole after release marketing plant resting on it (Yo-da man!)  While people like to snigger about Yoda's acrobatic lightsaber moves, I remember people watching the movie in the theater went NUTS during the scene when I watched it.

With all of the Star Wars movies there is a distinct brilliant to crappy ratio with which to contend and Attack of the Clones is the most dramatic example of this.  With Clones, one has to wonder if it would have been possible to make it a better movie with some selective editing.  For example, would drastically cutting down the Anakin and Padme Naboo scenes and selectively pruning dialogue throughout, make this a better movie?  It might be worth tracking down one of those turn-of-the-century fan edits to find out.

Join me next time for Episode IV (I had already recently recapped Revenge of the Sith here.)

Patrick Garone
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