#now I’m thinking about these two and their complicated creator-creation/father-son dynamic

[middle-earth-marauder]

Your honor that’s his SON

I see ya'll's art of Maria with baby Shadow and i love it, it's very sweet- but i'll remind you, Gerald's ass was not immune lol-

No dialogue under cut

[i-just-like-commenting]

Star Wars rewatch, part 3: Episode 2, Attack of the Clones

Following the Machete Order, I’ve gone from tESB to the prequel trilogy, skipping The Phantom Menace. How did that work out? Well... (this gets long)

Overall Impressions

I’ve been sitting on this one a while because I don’t, generally, enjoy writing negative reviews. And this film, in its theatrical release, is a bad movie, albeit bad in a different way than tPM. Episode 1 is just overall below average in everything, from its meandering plot to its weak characterization to its obvious CGI. But other than the racist accents, nothing in it as absolutely horrible.

AotC, on the other hand, has quite a lot of good content in it - but it’s paired with material that is so incredibly terrible that it makes the bad material feel that much worse. And given that there are two main plotlines in this movie, you can probably guess which one I consider good and which one bad.

Because yeah, I make no secret the fact that I think Ewan McGregor was one of the best things about the prequels, but his story in this is also the strongest part of the movie. Yes, I know, some people hate how talky it is, but it works as a political mystery as an assassination attempt slowly is revealed to be just one part of a galactic scheme to destabilize the Republic. Not only is it a good story, it has fairly well-defined characters this time around. Obi-Wan is depicted as very trusting and naive; he can’t even imagine that someone would destroy information in the Jedi library, because what Jedi would do that? Meanwhile Yoda is the voice of pessimism as he grumbles that the Jedi are becoming arrogant. We see how, behind the scenes, he and Mace Windu are painfully aware of the limitations of their small order, how weak their actual position is. Windu himself doesn’t get too much development, but he seems to be the practical, military side of the Jedi operation, while Yoda is more a teacher and a diplomat. It all culminates in a truly chilling finale as the clone army raised to stop a civil war marches into their ships...to the tune of the Imperial March.

And of course there is the magnificent line “The day we stop believing democracy can work is the day we lose it.” Very important message to remember right now.

Meanwhile, you have Anakin and Padme and oh my god this is so bad. Dissecting the why of it is difficult, though. I want to blame it all on the script, but it’s more more complicated than that. One of the worst lines of the film, the infamous “I hate sand” actually works for me pretty well, because Padme and Anakin laugh after he says it, which makes the awkwardness feel intentional, as if Anakin is aware of how ridiculous he sounds. So perhaps the acting can transcend the bad script...except when the script is sound but the delivery ruins it. Just reading the words, Anakin should be rather oblivious to his attraction to Padme, with everyone else more aware, including Padme, who’s not ready to think of him as an adult. But Hayden Christensen often plays Anakin like a stalker, and Natalie Portman is defiant rather than awkward. So are they just bad actors? We know Portman’s done well in other roles, and watch Christensen’s face during the scene where his mother dies - no, that’s not the problem.

I’m going to blame the director. It was Lucas’s job to bring the script to the scene, and everything about this screams poor communication between cast and crew. Their deliveries are erratic because they’re not being told what they’re supposed to be doing on screen. The more experienced actors - McGregor, Oz, Jackson, Lee - all clearly decided what their characters were going to be on their own and stuck to those interpretations, and it works. The younger actors, though, are clearly lost.

Is it fixable?

Yes. A ways back before The Force Awakens came out, I watched what the creator called the “cheese free” edit of the prequels, and while Phantom Menace wasn’t improved much at all by editing out the “cheese,” AotC was, dare I say, quite good. Since it was the first time I’d seen the film in years, I couldn’t remember what had been cut out, but I remember thinking, “Wait, why is this remembered as the worst one?”

Then I watched the original cut and I could tell every last thing he’d removed. Some of it wasn’t necessary, though it did streamline the plot (the R2D2 and C3P0 slapstick never really bothered me, the series has always had that) but what he did with Padme and Anakin was simply amazing, and all it took were a few cuts.

First, he cuts their first kiss, then the ridiculous rolling around in the grass, then all of the anguished dialog in the fireplace room. Oh, and he cut Anakin confessing the murders of the Sand People to Padme, jumping from his rage over Obi-Wan not letting him have enough power to Padme comforting him. It both (1) reinforces Anakin’s turn to darkness as he would hide this from her and (2) doesn’t make Padme fall for a man she knows is a mass-murderer. The result was that when they kissed on their way into the stadium, it felt completely, utterly believable, a steady progression from them being awkward, to getting to know each other, to bonding over their struggles. It worked, and I really wish that the copy of it hadn’t vanished from the internet.

Continuity, Part 1: Relation to the Other Prequels

So is the Machete order correct? Can you jump from episode 5 to 2 without watching tPM? The answer, I’m afraid, is no - but only for the first time watching it.

There’s just a few things that were introduced in Episode 1 that don’t get properly reintroduced in Episode 2. Mace Windu and Senator Palpatine show up and are not named for their entire first scene. Windu and Yoda worry about the Sith without ever defining what on earth they are, and without the “always two there are” speech the master-apprentice dynamic of Tyrannis and Sideous doesn’t work. Likewise, if you skip Episode 1, the first time you hear “Duel of the Fates” will be over Anakin’s anxious search for his mother which is...not right, sorry.

That said, it is true that without Episode 1 you can easily imagine Anakin and Padme as longtime childhood friends separated for a decade rather than as a 9 year old having a crush on a 14-year old and why did Lucas have to do that?

Continuity, Part 2: Relation to the Original Series

R2′s magically appearing-disappearing flight powers is one of the bigger plot holes created by the prequels. But for me the bigger issue is Anakin’s convoluted relationship to Owen and Beru. Stepsiblings that he barely knew does not gel with their reactions to his memory in Episode 4. I have an inkling of an idea to rewrite tPM to fix this and the Anakin/Padme problem. Make Anakin a little older - 12 or 13 - and have Beru be his older sister, maybe 18 or 19, in love with Owen Lars, son of a wealthy man, who wants to buy all of their freedom. He’s resistant to letting Anakin go with Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan. Padme really is one of the Queen’s handmaidens this time, Amidala being a separate, older character who would recur in AotC with a now-grown Padme as a senator. And C3P0 would be a protocol droid in the service of the queen rather than randomly created by Anakin; show his mechanical skill by fixing a droid.

Continuity, Part 3: Relation to the Current Series

In this film, the Geonosians already have plans to the Death Star; how does this relate to the creation of the plans we see in Rogue One? Were their plans just preliminary, and Galen Erso expanded on them? Is this something that gets explained in the various TV series? Well, I’ll start finding that out soon enough...

Meanwhile, if Boba Fett shows up in the Han Solo film he’d better be Maori. The origin story of Boba Fett is one of those things in the prequels that isn’t necessary but that I also don’t mind. So Boba Fett’s father helped create the clone army and died in front of him? Okay. This doesn’t detract from his character, though he’s in the original trilogy so little it doesn’t add that much either. But it was really nice to see Lucas try to diversify his very white universe with the casting of Jenga and Boba.

Conclusion: Droids Had it So Bad

There’s even more evidence of just blatant anti-droid bigotry under the Republic in this film. “If droids could think,” Obi-Wan quips, “none of us would be here.” Yet it’s obvious they do think - organic lifeforms are just in denial about it because they don’t want to admit to supporting a system of slavery and brainwashing. Droids themselves help reinforce this system as we see a droid kick send R2 away saying “Hey you, no droids!” Only R2 seems to be willing to defy the status quo.

Well, R2 and Padme. She is always certain to thank R2, and I remember that she did it quite formally in the first film. Padme seems to reject the notion of droids as non-sentient. Perhaps that’s why she invited R2 and C3P0 to be witnesses to their wedding.

Also, headcanon, but Padme threw the bouquet and C3P0 totally caught it and had an awkward exchange of looks with R2.