Attack of the Clones

Where to begin.

Yes, it's kind of slow in the middle. And some of the dialogue is God-awful, especially anything having to do with the romance between Anakin and Princess Amidala. And some of the acting SO flat- poor Natalie Portman, she's way too good of an actress and way too cute for some of the stuff she has to do.

But…….

There just might not be any greater moment in film than the moment when the "Lucasfilm" logo disappears , the words "A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…." appears, and the screen turns black. Ever. And then, it comes. The Star Wars logo appears, the music perfectly in synch. And all you want to do is go "who-hoo!". You can feel the entire audience totally wired in anticipation too, like when you're doing some unbelievable, triple-loop-de-loop roller coaster and you've just hit the top hill. Then the logo and music hits and coaster starts rushing downhill. I admit it, when I saw Phantom Menace for the first time, that was the moment I wanted to see the most, the thing I was the most psyched for. And when it came, yeah, I was a little misty. The audience was too. And I think that's part of the reason why Phantom Menaceis hated so, because nothing in that movie came close to that moment, when for the first time in 20 years, we got to feel that rush again. Nothing could of compared to that moment.

The second best moment in film might just be the moment after the scroll passes- the pan up into outer space just as some cool-ass ship zooms by. When I was a kid and saw Star Wars for the first time, it was that moment, the shot of the Rebel ship zooming overhead, chased by the Imperial Cruiser, that I knew I was hooked. It's still probably my favorite scene in the original one. And once again, we got the pan-up with a shot of a cool-ass space ship zooming by. And then the cool-ass ship flys into a planet and we get this incredible city-scene as the ship comes in for a landing. Just like that, I was into it.

That's the stuff, the shit. That's the stuff that has us hooked. Even scenes with no point, scenes that are kind of boring- like most of the middle section- still has enough cool-ass stuff going on in the background that you're locked in. After the movie, I was exhausted cause the movie's total sensory overload. Hours later, I'm still worn out from it.

In the middle section, the part where the movie bogs down, Obi Wan goes to a planet to play private dick and chase after Jango Fett. It's a planet made up pretty much entirely by water, but with these buildings coming out of it. It's storming so there's huge waves crashing by and as the scene is established, some huge, bird-like creature comes zooming out of one of the waves and flys over one of the buildings. What's the point of the bird-thing? Who knows? Who cares? Either way, it was fucking cool.

In that part too, Obi Wan meets these aliens, aliens that haven't been shown in the commercials or any of the publicity, so they were a complete surprise to me. I won't describe them because I don't want to spoil it, but they're pretty much unlike anything I've ever sene. Nothing like them whatever. Add all of that plus the incredible design and scenes of clones upon clones, and there was no way I was gonna miss a shot. I had to piss then, but I wasn't gonna get up. I had no idea what was coming next, but all I knew was that I had to see it (as soon Anakin and Amidala started getting all googly with each other, I went).

The other cool thing about that whole sequence is that the aliens aren't played as a big payoff. There not the alien money shot, the scene where the director and everyone's going "here, look at these things we dreamed up for you and spent a couple million bucks doing." There's so many aliens in the movie, so many creatures that these aliens are almost lost. Seeing freaky looking, tripped out aliens happens so frequently that it's not really a big deal to see them. Yeah, these were pretty fucking cool, but as the movie rolls on, seeing any sort of creature is no big deal.

Which is why the movie is what it is. Because Lucas has done it. He's created such a complete universe with such complete vision, a vision right down to the nitty-gritty, that you're there. You're totally there. The movie is like nothing anyone's ever filmed before. Years from now, it'll still be unlike anything anyone's done. Yeah, some people have tried and still will, but not to the extent of Clones. It's so thorough and the detail so masterfully done that it's as good as anything you could imagine.

And that's why Star Wars is so popular and why I thought the movie rocked. Because Lucas has done it, tapped into the well-spring. He's hard-wired our minds. Every kid who sat in his room and dreamed up outer space adventures, every kid who watched science fiction and wished they could see things like that- the inner geek in most of us- he's tapped into. He's put what we've all dreamed of in this movie. But it's even better than we could have imagined. You could tell Lucas spent most of his time agonizing over every ship, every creature, every set, trying to get it just like he pictured it. And yeah, it explains why parts of the movie aren't so good, but whatever. There's a ship that opens up into sails. There's another ship where part of it dislodges whenever a character flies near a planet. There's a huge battle between the clones and robot troops. Yeah, Amidala just said the stupidest thing, but that space cruiser is so fucking cool.

So yeah, I loved it. Because it was better than anything I dreamt up while I sat in my room, alone, as a kid, dreaming up outer space universes.

Oh yeah, I loved the ending too. It's probably the only part of the movie that had any real emotion to it, but I totally suckered into it. The tone is done so right, so well that, well, I can't fucking wait til the next flick. It's gonna fucking rock.