Star Wars Retrospective: Episode 2

Day two of Star Wars retrospective week brings me to Episode 2: Attack of the Clones.  Remember, this is a posting of old livejournal posts, like most of my other reviews.

Episode 2: Attack of the Clones.  Better than Episode 1, but that's not saying much.  That's like saying the shit I took today was better than the I took yesterday.

I'm going to start with the ways this movie is better than its predecessor.  First off, the action.  A lot more, and a lot better.  I actually cared about what was going on.  From the moment Obi-Wan jumped out onto the droid to the battle of Geonosis, the action sequences were awesome.

Second, the performance of some of the actors.  Ian McDiarmid's performance as Palpatine was awesome, as always.  Christopher Lee was awesome as well.

And Hayden Christensen was...okay...as Anakin Skywalker.  He did the role well, but the lines he had to say were almost as bad as the stuff Jake Lloyd had to say.  But, playing an Emo/angry Jedi, Christensen did Anakin Skywalker justice.

The locations were awesome.  I love rainy environments, and Kamino had that in spades.  And the cloning facilities were just beautiful.  And the places that returned form previous were well done as well.

Having 3PO back for comedy relief was great too.  He made up for the craptasticness of Jar Jar in spades.

Which brings me to the bad.  First off, the dialogue still sucks.  I swear, George Lucas can write action, create amazing locales, amazing alien races, but he can't write natural dialogue to save his life. 

And the romance.   Don't get me started on how bad that was.  It just didn't feel believeable, and the dialogue was about as natural as an oral bowel movement.  Especially the fireside moment.  That was painful to listen to.

I'd go into it more, but I'm kinda tired at the moment of writing this.  All in all, Episode 2 was better than Episode 1, but that's not saying much.  Episode 3 makes up for these two pieces of shit, and then the original saga is George Lucas' best work in Star Wars to date.  I'll get to those in the next few days.

As for now, there's not a whole lot more I can say after rereading this.  It's not a good movie.  Now, on to Episode 3 tomorrow, the movie that saved the franchise in my mind. At least until the Clone Wars movie and cartoon.