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Attack of the Clones |
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Film Review by John Demetry In Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones, the fey droid C3PO exclaims: "Machines building machines? How perverse!" It's the funniest, truest bit of dialogue in George Lucas' latest Star Wars movie. The line also describes how I feel about Attack of the Clones.
C3PO (played by Anthony Daniels) with Star Wars creator and director George Lucas
C3PO reveals the fascinating subtext that actually bemoans Lucas' massive postmodern folly. The film's concern with cloning and technological simulacra acts as a surface-level critique of capitalism. This inspires two near-striking visual sequences in Attack of the Clones. In the first, Lucas details the production of Jango Fett clones. In purely visual language, the sequence moves the plot forward. Simultaneously, Lucas exposes the process of capitalism's assembly-line dehumanization. This conveyer-belt logic takes capitalism to its ultimate, horrible conclusion.
The Clones of Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones
At the end of the sequence, the Triumph of the Will choreography of cloned Storm Troopers makes this point clear. Lucas mixes sci-fi and mythic archetypes with history, politics, and the perversion of cinema. Shamefully, Lucas himself reduces Maori actor Temuera Morrison, as Jango Fett, to a mere clone. Lucas removes the racial-cultural significance that Morrison carries over from Once Were Warriors, a powerful movie about oppression and familial violence.
Maori actor Temuera Morrison (right) as Jango Fett with Daniel Logan (left) as Jango's son, Bobba
The visual punch-line to C3PO's classic line hints at a witty extension of the clone theme. Caught in a conveyer belt building androids, C3PO ends up with his head attached to the body of a soldier android, his body attached to the head of a soldier. The highlight of the resulting, and otherwise drudging, battle sequence features the dual C3PO droids conflicted between impulses. C3PO's man-made uniqueness engages in an interior battle with the soldier droid's programming. Amidst the abstract -- well, incoherent -- staging of the battle between the Jedi and the droids, it almost achieves Dada depth. Lucas might have challenged the audience to question its participation as spectators. However, it raises only one question: Is Lucas' head screwed on right? Even these, the most thought-out moments in Attack of the Clones, lack necessary moral shading, moral substance. Attack of the Clones is the first film shot in Cinealta, a high-definition format. Lucas sacrifices meaning (and humanity) to digital technology -- enacting in grand scale the conflict and capitulation of the Hollywood artist and businessman.
The grand scale of Clones
Each shot in the movie attacks the eyes, the windows to the imagination. Lucas loads nearly every image -- especially long or medium shots -- with fuzzy, unsubstantial black shadows. This lighting technique clearly means to disguise the way that the digital format reduces any real performer or object to digital blurs when projected onto a movie screen. The murky visuals replace moral ambiguity. By removing coherence and urgency from the moral downfall of Anakin Skywalker, Lucas actually deflects moral scrutiny from his own artistic sell-out. Lucas succumbs to the Dark Side. So, now, Attack of the Clones completely relinquishes the promising qualities of Episode I: Phantom Menace (the only Star Wars film aside from Empire Strikes Back that I recommend). In "Episode I", the camera move that identified the phantom menace as government corruption and the cross-cut multiple climaxes borrowed tropes from The Godfather series. Doing so, Lucas promised a sci-fi epic exposing the popular culture to its own corruption. However, the video-game-ready digital action sequences in Attack of Clones are fully downloadable for violent interactivity and moral passivity. The much-despised performance of Jake Lloyd as Anakin Skywalker in Phantom Menace exhibited Lucas' Godfather-style daring by featuring the most ambivalent child protagonist in cinema history. Hayden Christensen now takes over as Anakin. Imagine Michael Corleone of The Godfather as played by a Backstreet Boy.
The love story between Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen) and Padme Amidala (Natalie Portman) is at the center of Episode II
There's no real moral crisis for Anakin. The move from youthful petulance to genocidal maniac is a mere sub-plot away -- totally removed from any developed psychosocial motivation or conflict. Rather than raising audience awareness of pop culture's corruption, Christensen's Anakin simply reflects the narcissism of a corrupt culture. In one scene, Anakin uses the Jedi definition of "compassion" as "unconditional love" as a pick-up line. Later, he expresses his bloodlust as an alternative means of seduction. Lucas never dramatizes or visualizes either emotion - they're just come-ons for him, too.
Lucas shows no compassion for victim, victimizer, or audience. Attack of the Clones provides the spectacle of DV technology transforming the popular film audience into machines. How perverse! |
