Crap. Total crap. Irredeemable crap. Sitting in the theatre, I could almost hear the voice of the late Sam Kineson screaming. "Ohh! Ohh! I'm in Hell! I'm in Hell!!!" I had thought that The Phantom Menace was a profound disappointment, but...

Maybe I should be more constructive. Let's go back to the beginning (I'm tempted to say, "A long time ago, in a movie theatre far, far away," but I'm much too sophisticated to go for anything that obvious). When I first saw The Phantom Menace at that midnight premier showing, I was really disappointed, but I got to thinking that maybe I was being too harsh because, after seventeen years of anticipation, no film could possibly live up to my expectations. So I watched it again when it came out on video (someone gave it to me; I certainly wouldn't spend my own money on it), thinking that, now that I knew what to expect, I could approach it more objectively and realize that it wasn't so bad after all. But this was not to be. I thought it was even worse on the second viewing. I watched it for the third time a few days before Attack of the Clones opened, and it was worse still. Having had this time to digest it, I think that the biggest problem is that The Phantom Menace is a children's film. As an adult viewer, I found young Anakin Skywalker to be a bit too precocious, and the ending, where he accidentally destroys the enemy ship, saving the day, elicited a deep "oh puh-lease." (And if Anakin was able to destroy the bad guys' space ship by flying into it and firing one shot at the main reactor, one would think that someone would have suggested fixing that little design flaw by the time Luke Skywalker came along.) However, I could also see that young children wouldn't be bothered by this and would, instead, identify with young Anakin, finding the whole thing to be very exciting. It's a shame that George Lucas made a film that no one who was alive when the first Star Wars was released would be able to enjoy ("Thank you for keeping the torch alive for twenty years; now go to hell").

In all fairness, The Phantom Menace does actually have a germ of a genuine idea buried deep within it (very deep; set Rationalizors to full power): the planet Naboo has two races - humans and Gun-Guns - who mistrust and dislike each other; when threatened by a common enemy, they put aside their differences and ultimately forge a lasting friendship. If this had been the central plot of the film rather than a peripheral element, it might actually have become a good film. Unfortunately, no such idea exists anywhere in Attack of the Clones. Perhaps, one day, when scientists have unlocked the secrets of the matter/antimatter, reaction, future generations will be able to build Rationalizors powerful enough. Nor does Attack of the Clones have a child protagonist so that we can merely dismiss it as a kiddy film that doesn't need to have any intelligent content. Who's this one for, George?

The other big problem is that the new trilogy is not showing us the only two things that we really care about seeing. The first is how Anakin crosses over to the Dark Side to become Darth Vader. In The Phantom Menace, I kept looking for that hint of darkness that we know must be there. When we find out he that grew up as a slave, I thought that the enslavement could make him bitter; the bitterness could lead to anger; and the anger leads him to the Dark Side. Instead, he seems pretty content with his life: playing with his friends, building droids, and flying podracers. There could have been a scene where he's working on Threepio, but the droid's not activating. He throws down a tool in anger; a blank look comes over his face; the Force theme music plays; he gets an idea, makes an adjustment, and Threepio activates. This would show that he's intuitively tapping into the Force and that the Dark Side is rushing to aid him just as Yoda had warned Luke it would. There could also have been a moment in the pod race where we see him becoming surprisingly ruthless to one of his opponents in order to win - maybe using the Force to damage another racer's controls. Instead The Phantom Menace ignores it completely. Attack of the Clones actually has one scene that deals with this - only one - when Anakin kills the Tuskin Raiders who killed his mother. It's the only genuinely dramatic moment in the entire film; the rest is just filler.

The second thing that we want to see is how Palpatine becomes the Emperor and turns the "Old Republic" into the "Evil Imperial Galactic Empire." As soon as a character named Senator Palpatine is introduced in The Phantom Menace, we know that he will become the Emperor (we were told so on the first page of the Star Wars novelization twenty-five years ago) and therefore must be the mysterious hooded man who is shown pulling the strings. I kept waiting for the scene where the hooded man takes down his hood, and we go "Oh my God! It's Palpatine!" Then the scene where the queen places him in the position of power could have been played for tragic irony. At the very least, during the final celebration in The Phantom Menace, there could have been a closeup of him, and an evil expression briefly crosses his face that nobody but we in the audience see. (Shakespeare's Henry VI Part 3 has that exact ending with Richard revealing to the audience that he's already plotting the events that will be portrayed in Richard III). Attack of the Clones continues to ignore this by not suggesting that Palpatine is anything other than a nice guy and not spending any real time with the hooded man so that we can learn more about his ultimate agenda even if we're not supposed to know who he really is. There's an awful lot of stuff that has to take place in Episode III to rescue this trilogy from being a total loss.

Let the nitpicking begin!

• It goes without saying that the visuals and special effects are spectacular, but even this works against the film. In the early scenes where we see the characters talking about stuff, we're much more interested in looking at the panorama of buildings and spaceships out the window behind them, partly because what the characters are saying isn't particularly interesting, but mostly because the eye can't help but be distracted by such visual splendor. In addition, if every single scene - even a casual one - is spectacular to behold, what does Lucas have left to blow us away with in the scenes that should look spectacular? With the visual volume set at full blast in every scene, we become immune to it as we did with disco music that never varied its tone or tempo - just that constant pounding beat - all glitter and no soul. There's no real sense of rising action or that suspense is building up.

• My respect for Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, and Carrie Fisher has really increased (the greatness of Alec Guinness goes without saying). In A New Hope (the first or fourth Star Wars film, depending in how you're counting), I liked and cared about the characters. We're now two films into the new trilogy, and I still don't care about Padmé, Anakin, or the young Obi-Wan. Since Lucas is same writer/director behind all three films, I can only assume that Luke, Han, Leia, and the older Obi-Wan were just as boring and unsympathetic on paper as the current crop of characters, and it was only the actors' talent and charisma that brought the characters to life. Ewan McGregor, Natalie Portman, and Hayden Christensen just don't seem to have what it takes to breath the same life into such bad material, although I do like the way McGregor has put a number of "Guinness-isms" into the way he speaks and moves. The only likeable character is Yoda, who's been carried over from the other trilogy, and the only really enjoyable moments in Attack of the Clones both involve him: the scene where he's training the children and the scene where he kicks some @$$. Roger Ebert hated the latter scene, but I thought it was the only really cool thing in the entire film (as much as I hate to admit that I agree with that Roeper guy - we miss you Gene).

• While watching The Phantom Menace, I thought it was kind of weird that Padmé and Anakin would end up romantically involved given the difference their ages. How many teenaged girls would harbor romantic thoughts about a boy they first encountered as a little kid? In the beginning, Attack of the Clones actually seems to be dealing with this. When Anakin - who has somehow managed to age ten years while Padmé hasn't - admits his feelings to her and looks at her lustfully, she admonishes him and says that his gaze is making her uncomfortable. Hmmm, I thought, maybe it's her rejection of him that causes Anakin to turn to the Dark Side; maybe he then rapes her, and that results in the birth of Luke and Leia. That would be much darker than anything we might have been expecting, but it would also be powerful storytelling. But this was not meant to be. Right after Padmé says how uncomfortable his gaze is making her, she's parading in front of him in a very revealing outfit with a completely nude back (huh??). They then fall in love, not so much because there is any actual chemistry between them but because the plot says that they're supposed to. The less said about the dialog the better. The music for the love scenes, on the other hand, is really beautiful - much better than the film deserves - but it's also full of impending tragedy which raises an important question: how much are we supposed to know about the future of these characters? Since we've already seen the other trilogy, we know that the relationship ends badly, and the tragic love theme in the final scene where Anakin and Padmé seem to be getting married is very poignant. But if we're first watching the films in numerical order, it's puzzling why the music is so sad when Anakin and Padmé look so happy. However, it's not until A New Hope that we're given full explanations about the force, Jedi Knights, and lightsabres; The Phantom Menace wouldn't make much sense if we didn't already understand these things. See also my comments about Anakin and Palpatine above, So what's the best order to watch these films?

• As I was saying, John Williams doesn't disappoint. He delivers a music score that is much too good for this movie. Literally. And that's its one flaw. He's gotten so used to scoring prestige films like Schindler's List that he's forgotten how to score a sucky movie. Good films carry their share of the dramatic weight with the support of the music; bad films need to be carried by the music (as Williams did with Jaws and so many other films). Over the past decades, Williams' music has grown progressively more subtle and sophisticated, but the Star Wars films have grown progressively less subtle and sophisticated. Attack of the Clones needs a music score that is much more bombastic and obvious than Williams is willing/able to supply. His technical virtuosity in the action scenes is stunning to listen to on the soundtrack album, but the movie might have been better served by a lesser composer.

• Padmé sure changes her clothes a lot. Gotta justify all those different action figures, don't we? When she was queen (and we find out that she was elected queen rather than having inherited the title; why would people elect someone that young to such an important position?), I could kind of accept it as required ceremonial garb, but now it's just too "Carrie Bradshaw" for my tastes. Also, the white outfit she wears in the latter part of the film is almost identical to the one worn by Erin Gray in the Buck Rogers television series, although Erin's was never sliced up in such a titillating fashion. Anyway, if she has the money to buy so much clothing, you'd think she'd offer to buy Anakin's mom out of slavery given that he did win the race that got her the money to fix her spaceship, so she could save her planet. (As an aside, this was another problem I had with The Phantom Menace: since the Jedi Knights are supposed to be the guardians of peace and justice in the galaxy, shouldn't Qui Gon have been a little more concerned about the existence of an illegal slave trade on Tatooine. Obviously, Naboo was a more immediate problem, but there could have been a scene where he tells Anakin's mother that, as soon as the current problem is settled, he'll come back to help her and the other slaves. This would have added an additional level of tragedy to his death.)

• I also got to thinking about what might happen to Padmé in next film, Episode III. My first thought was that she dies at the end after giving birth to Luke and Leia, but then I remembered that, in Return of the Jedi, Leia says that she remembers her mother as being very sad. I don't remember if it's explicitly stated the Leia's mom is dead, but I seem to have that impression. Does this mean that Episode III will show Leia as a little girl (not just a baby) getting to know Padmé before she dies, or does it mean that Padmé dies offscreen in between films. It would be really weird - not to mention annoying - for a character so important to just vanish without a death scene or even an explanation. Or are we wrong in assuming that Padmé is Luke and Leia's mother? When it was first announced that Natalie Portman was playing an unnamed "young queen" in The Phantom Menace, I had the idea that she was Mon Mothma, the middle aged woman in Return of the Jedi who seems to be in charge of the Rebellion. It would have been cool for the two characters who started out as friends in Episode I to end up as leaders of the opposing sides in Episode VI.

• Jar Jar's back! Actually, racial stereotypes aside, I didn't find him all that annoying in The Phantom Menace even though his dialect was a bit difficult to follow the first time I saw it. I think all the Jar Jar bashing resulted from people desperately trying to look hip even though they liked Star Wars. It was cool to hate Jar Jar, so all the lemmings quickly lined up. The real award for most annoying character in a Star Wars movie has to go to C-3PO in Attack of the Clones (sob, and I so liked him in the first trilogy). His comic bumbling around during the climactic battle scene completely ruined the film - and this is saying a lot because the film was so completely awful up to that point to begin with. Comedy relief is supposed to take place in between the tense scenes, not during the tense scenes BECAUSE IT BREAKS THE TENSION!!!! We're supposed to be worried about the danger our heroes are facing. How can we be worried and laughing (or theoretically laughing since it wasn't very funny) at the same time? The attempts at humor trivialize the seriousness of the situation. When the Jedi Knights come to the rescue - like the cavalry charging over the hill - it should have been a "jump up and cheer" moment like when Han came to Luke's rescue in the climactic battle of A New Hope. But, because no tension has been allowed to build up, there's no emotional need for such a cathartic release. The battle should be played straight; then, when it's over and everyone is catching their breath, hit us with a bit of comedy as a final emotional release (I just saw Tim Burton's Planet of the Apes again and noticed that it did exactly this with its climax - although I still hate everything that happens afterward). This is Lucas' biggest directorial blunder; a decent climax might have saved the whole film. I've found that if a film works for me emotionally, I'm willing to overlook a thousand flaws.

• The early part of the film leads us to believe that Christopher Lee is a bad guy. When Obi-Wan meets up with him, however, Lee warns him that a Sith Lord has infiltrated the empire and explains that he's building a robot army to fight the clone army that the Sith Lord is building. What's this? A plot twist? Something in this new trilogy isn't playing out in the most obvious and predictable way possible? Wow! And wasn't it clever of them to cast an actor whom we'd automatically assume to be a villain? Hope springs eternal in the human breast: maybe this movie's gonna start getting good now. Maybe not. Obi-Wan doesn't believe him for a moment. Lee does nothing else that suggests he might be one of the good guys or even a morally ambiguous guy. He is a bad guy just as they told us in the beginning. So what was the point?

• As with the pod race in The Phantom Menace, we are once again treated to a gratuitous and expensive looking action scene that serves no plot purpose whatsoever when our heroes end up on a conveyor belt in a droid factory. It's not like the bad guys put them on the conveyor belt with the intention of killing them; they end up on it by accident, and it takes away time that might otherwise have been spent on - I don't know - maybe a scene with legitimate plot or character development.

• We get some backstory for Boba Fett, but I'm not sure why. He was a big disappointment in The Empire Strikes Back because he had been hyped so much beforehand but then appeared only briefly. In Return of the Jedi, he gets casually killed off before he's able to add anything significant to the plot. What's the point of introducing him now when we know his story arc goes nowhere? And why does he end up working for one of the guys who killed his dad? Having him secretly plotting revenge against Anakin/Vader would have given him something to do. It was, however, a nice surprise to see Temuera Morrison as Boba's dad (am I giving away my indie film biases?). It's a shame he gets killed off so quickly too.

• I was a bit bugged by the midichlorian explanation of the force in The Phantom Menace. I thought that the force was something spiritual, not scientific. If it's scientifically measurable, why do Han Solo and the Imperial Generals dismiss it as superstition in A New Hope? For that matter, if Darth Vader is actually the Emperor's handpicked apprentice, why would the general dare to criticize him to his face about it? And why would Vader be willing to follow Tarkin's orders? I had been under the impression that Vader was just one of many imperial flunkies who didn't rise to real power until Tarkin was no longer around to "hold the leash" on his ruthlessness.

• So long as I'm being particularly nitpicky, I couldn't let the librarian scene pass without comment. As a librarian myself, I'm soooo pleased that, even a long time ago in a galaxy far far away, librarians were old ladies with their hair in a bun who were condescending and unhelpful. Where's Giles when we really need him?

• I have to be fair and say that Palpatine's plot is pretty clever. He wants an army that he can use as stormtroopers to take over the Republic, so he secretly orders the clones to be made and makes it look like the trusted Jedi Knights ordered them instead. Then, knowing that the senate would never approve of establishing an army, he manipulates the Trade Federation into rebelling against the Republic and creating an army of droids to threaten it. The Jedis are now forced to reveal the clone army that they had the "forsight" to create, and Palpatine will be the "hero" who will use the clone army to crush the "evil" Trade Federation. Except, of course, that we don't know Palpatine is doing this. Or do we? As stated above, I'm still not sure that we're supposed to know that Palpatine's the bad guy or if there is any relationship between him and the hooded man. Why withold this information from the audience? People who are not knowledgeable fans of the series will not get any of this, and people who are knowledgeable fans will be frustrated by how obvious it is and how long it's taking. Why not reveal it right away and use these early episodes to explore Palpatine's character and rise to power, evoking plays like Richard III and Macbeth? Anyway, in Episode III, it would be pretty cool if the Trade Federation guys finally realize that they've been duped and join forces with the good guys against Palpatine - perhaps earning some redemption in the process - but somehow I doubt that Lucas would be interested in character growth like this.

• Again to be fair, Anakin ultimately does fulfill Qui Gon's prophecy that he will bring balance to the Force. When the Emperor rises to power, the Dark Side becomes dominant. When Darth Vader kills the Emperor, good and evil return to being in balance with each other.

• Lucas seems to be saving up all the really important stuff for Episode III. These are things that we'd better see:
  • The Clone Wars (although why do I get the feeling that Episode III will begin with a crawl that says, "The Clone Wars are over..."?)
  • Palpatine reveals his plot and becomes the emperor (and maybe an explanation as to why he doesn't look human in the next trilogy).
  • Anakin follows Obi Wan on "some damn fool idealistic crusade."
  • Scenes that show Obi Wan to be the great hero that A New Hope implied he was. We certainly haven't seen anything yet.
  • Anakin turns to the dark side, gets disfigured and placed in the Darth Vader mask.
  • Some explanation for "there is no father" and "conceived by the midichlorians"
  • The Jedi Knights are all destroyed (except for Yoda and Obi Wan).
  • The birth or conception of Luke and Leia, as well as the details of Padmé's ultimate fate. Rumors are spreading that Lucas is planning to shoot new footage of her that will be inserted into a new edition of Return of the Jedi, but this sounds like a sloppy alternative to actually resolving her arc here where it should be.
  • Why Yoda knows about Leia, but Obi Wan, Anakin, and Palpatine don't, especially since The Empire Strikes Back shows that Anakin knows about Luke, but Palpatine doesn't seem to even know that Darth Vader is Anakin Skywalker: he says, "The son of Skywalker must not be allowed to become a Jedi" instead of "your son." It is Vader who firsts suggests turning Luke to the Dark Side.
  • Something that rationalizes why Obi Wan so blatantly lied to Luke about his father's death. The backpedalling he did in Return of the Jedi really didn't cut it.
  • C-3PO getting his memory erased or something to explain why he doesn't seem to know anything about Tatooine, Anakin/Vader, Obi Wan, or the Lars family. R2D2 can keep his memory because, now that I think about it, he seems to be more knowledgeable about what's going on in the other trilogy than any other character.
  • Seeing a younger Tarkin would be nice but not necessary.
  • Some surprises or anything that exceeds my expectations and makes me feel deeply ashamed that I ever doubted Lucas' master plan (fat chance).

• As far as I know, Attack of the Clones is the first major movie (as opposed to low budget indie films) to be shot on digital video instead of traditional film stock. There's currently a lot of deabte among purists concerning the difference in image quality between the two formats. I may be a philistine, but I couldn't tell the difference, and I saw it on a medium large screen. What I don't understand is why Lucas also wants all films to be beamed to the theatres by satellite and projected digitally. Wouldn't this just make it thousand times easier for the pirates to produce bootleg videos? All they'd need is a satellite dish and the right decryption software which will probably be available on the internet any day now. They'd no longer have to risk sneaking a camera into a theatre or acquiring a print.

In conclusion: crap, crap, crap. And I'd like to say something about the audience too. I saw The Phantom Menace at it's midnight premier, and, even though I didn't like the movie, it was one of the best movie-going experiences I've ever had. One of my biggest pet peeves is people talking during a film, but this audience was completely silent. They were the true fans who were there because they really wanted to see this film. However, at the midnight premier of Attack of the Clones (in unlucky cinema thirteen of my local multiplex) the audience was quite different - having conversations, heckling the screen, and laughing at inappropriate times. Clearly, they were there to be part of an event and not to "merely" watch a movie. It would seem that the people who truly loved Star Wars have abandoned the series and have been replaced by the common rabble. I know Attack of the Clones is going to be very popular anyway - although I'm smugly pleased that it's not breaking Spider-Man's record - and that its fans will surely accuse me of being a big, elitist snob. And so I am. There's a phenomenon I've observed: from time to time, a work is created that is so good that it appeals to both the discriminating as well as the undiscriminating audience. As it spawns the inevitable sequels, the magic eventually runs out, and the quality begins to drop. The discriminating audience loses interest, but the undiscriminating audience is so large that the series continues to be wildly successful as happened with Ann McCaffrey's Dragonrider books, Wendy Pini's ElfQuest comics, all the recent Star Trek episodes, and now George Lucas' Star Wars films.

So, is it ok to like it anyway? No, it's not. I'm reminded of a scene in the movie, Broadcast News, where Albert Brooks descibes William Hurt as being the devil. The other person is skeptical, but Brooks warns that the devil will not appear to us with pointed horns and fiery breath; instead, the devil will appear to us with a pleasant face, and his method of corruption will be to gradually lower our standards. In this context, George Lucas is, beyond any doubt, the devil. And anyone who likes his latest film is most certainly damned.

Guide for parents: Violence is about the same as the previous films. A head and an arm are cut off by lightsabres, but no graphic gore is shown. There are scantily clad dancers briefly shown in a bar, and Padmé wears a couple of revealing outfits - one without a bra, if you know what I mean. However the real issue is not whether your kids should see it, but whether you should see it, so here's the plan: call up your parents and say, "Mom, Dad, I was just thinking that you don't get to spend enough quality time with the grandkids; how about taking them to that new Star Wars movie, my treat?" This way, you don't have to sit through it, and you get to punish your parents for all the mean things they did to you when you were little by making them sit through it. I know that revenge is not the Jedi way, but we're not Jedi, are we?

Links: Official website and Internet Movie Database Entry