Of course, everything on the 'net probably contains spoilers by now; if you're online at all, you're either immune to them, or too dumb to catch on right away.
I'll go ahead and assume that dumb people no longer hit gremlin.net. Which might be more a matter of wishful thinking than assumption.
Anyway....
I guess the first thing to mention here is that I liked the film. I had a number of problems with it, but I generally liked it. And the reasons why are where we start hitting a few spoilers. So consider yourselves warned.
Something I found personally odd about the film is that it wasn't actually sold out. I went ahead and cheated, buying tickets online with a MasterCard a few weeks ago; I didn't really want to stand in line for this thing [especially since we got hit with a lot of rain at forty degrees just as ZeroHour was approaching]. Still, the cinema might have been eighty percent full.
To date, I've seen Star Wars films on opening night--dating back to Wednesday 25th May 1977. Including the rereleases in 1997, this was the first time I actually had an empty seat next to mine. I'm not really sure what to make of that. Maybe it was the weather; maybe it was that everyone's waiting for the reviews to come in before gambling on a sequel to The Phantom Menace.
So let's start at the beginning.
First of all, we now know that the filmscript here at gremlin.net was, in fact, for real--thanks to Ford for that one. And we know that it was an early draft, and that a few things were cut [they'll probably make the DVD] and a few things were added. Unfortunately, a lot of the added stuff really annoyed me. But I'll get to that.
We begin with the opening scroll, which mentions that thousands of Solar Systems are defecting from the Republic. Granting that there is exactly one System of Sol in the universe, I hate it when morons pluralise the term. The closest system to the Solar System is the Alpha Centaurian System, which is not a 'solar system'. The term 'solar' relates only to Sol. And if you're wondering about 'solar power', remember that smart people still refer to it as photovoltaics.
Other than that, the only thing I really can't stand about the opening scrolls is the way they convey matters of importance; id est: the CLONE ARMY OF ALLCAPS SCREAMING. Are there italics in space? Could we see this for Episode Three?
Anyway....
Clones is, in a way, similar to Menace. It begins with a ship landing and being blown up, which leads into a longish period of conversations. Very little in the first half of the film got any sort of reaction out of the crowd. On the other hand, it didn't drag the way that Menace did. And there's a fairly good reason for that.
I've covered this before, to a degree; but it's worth mentioning again. In 1977, there was Star Wars. This came from an unknown writer-director whose most notorious work to date was best known for jamming Richie Cunningham and Shirley Feeney into the same film. Whether Star Wars would ever have a sequel was unknown. So the first film told a fairly simple story from the beginning to the end, with random references to what had gone before and sketchy ideas of what could happen next.
Empire worked partly because people love sequelae. People love to see familiar characters again. But also, Star Wars had done well enough to greenlight at least two more films, so Empire wasn't required to finish the whole thing; even if Empire had bombed, Return [nee Revenge] of the Jedi was pretty well Go. So Empire was a better film--because the backstory had been told, and the future still commanded two and a half hours, once the final chapter got round to being made.
Enter the Menace. This time, there was nothing but potential. This time, there was another five hours of footage to play with after the fact; but there was really no past reference. Episode One began with a reason for it to have happened, and slowly built its way up to nothing much more than the presumed understanding that there were another five hours of footage required to bridge it to A New Hope.
That missing link was the only real reason I ever gave Menace any chance. And now, the missing link is beginning to patch a huge number of things together.
The 'boring' half of Clones is required. It's also not really that boring; it's just unusually intelligent for a LucasFilm. It's setting up both the second half of this film, the existence of Episode Three, and even the situations seen in the original trilogy. However, everything's somewhat backward.
The Trade Federation which turned Menace into a boring PolySci material play a larger yet smaller part here. They have a major purpose in the entire series, although they have a lot less exposure this time. Also, their role is more specialised, while their involvement in Menace becomes justified.
The Federation are also generally unaware that they're the badguys. The Federation are, really, the first draft of the Rebellion. Although, again, things are a little backward.
What Lucas seems to have worked out here is that the line between good and evil really doesn't exist. Each side of the issue assumes that the opposition is the badguy. And, of course, the singular badguy in the film is working both sides of the street, which complicates matters a lot.
Sidious is secretly controlling the Federation, which we already knew; Palpatine is controlling the Republic; presuming that Sidious and Palpatine are really the same guy--although that hasn't quite been admitted yet--then the entire thing is being run by one very evil monster.
Personally, I'm waiting for a little more evidence that the two are one before I assume that. We know that Ian is playing both of them, but that's meaningless--especially factoring the namesake of the film.
Which brings us to the other characters.
Fett. This guy is far more interesting than Darth Maul ever was. And I say this guy because Jango and Boba are effectively the same entity: Boba Fett is merely a clone of Jango; the only real difference is that the clone has a reason to dislike the jedi. Although, again, there's something missing here, since the jedi are, in fact, the Empire--or, at least, the beginning of the Empire.
Fett is the template for the clonetroopers, who will soon evolve into the stormtroopers [apparently]; but, Fett actually works for the Federation. Ultimately, Fett works for Sidious. That appears to be an important distinction here.
Also working for Sidous is Tyranus--also known as Dooku, and also known as Jinn's master even before the events of Episode One. Dooku left the Jedi Order sometime before Menace and apparently joined Sidious in the hopes of abolishing the Republic and replacing it.
Which is where the Federation becomes important again.
Personally, the Federation are more interested in exacting their revenge against Naboo than much of anything else; which makes some sense since they're a race of morons. I wonder, thinking about it, what got changed after 11th September 2001, since the Federation almost remind me of a few terrorist groups in current events. Then again, the change may have been in favour of these current events. Lucas can't quite be trusted to disclose his original ideas, as evidenced by the sixteen-year-old Leia and eighteen-year-old Luke, the twins.
The Federation--which amount to Nute Gunray--really just want to see Padme exterminated. And her assassination is one of Jango Fett's main gigs. Whether the Federation have any real interest in replacing the Republic isn't quite clear, although, for whatever reason, they're supplying Tyranus and Sidious with their patented battledroids.
Which, again, gets a little odd when you factor that the template for the clonetroopers is off killing Padme for the makers of the battledroids. Except, of course, that Fett is really just available to the highest bidder, and appears to live in a free work state.
So. The other half of the nonexistent line between good and evil.
Lucas seems to have caught his mistakes with making his protagonists too nice. Solo returning fire on Greedo was a mistake; cutting Jinn's admission that he'd stolen the power supply for the podrace was a mistake. This time, the mistakes have been avoided.
Kenobi is turning into a strangely dark character here. More accurately, he's turning into the version played by Guinness in the first place. He's perfectly comfy with lying to people, for example. He's able to ascertain the source of the clonetroopers by impersonating the enemy. He also knows a number of...people, or things, or whatever, of the sort who might be found later in Mos Eisley. Really, this film focuses on him; he even gets top billing in the end credits.
Then we have Skywalker.
Whether Hayden was really 'right' for this part is still debatable. Whether there was anyone better is also in question.
Skywalker is...a mess. Angry, of course; but his anger is largely justified. He's also a bit of a geek, although that might only be the case because the audience are mostly geeks too. Of course, that he's a geek and that he's angry are two different matters; otherwise, things would start looking like Columbine here.
Skywalker is one of the reasons that I'm starting to think that Lucas might actually know what he's doing. He's really not the antagonist; his environment is. He's essentially advanced beyond the system, which never produces goodguys. The system, as it exists, is holding him back and preventing him from doing a number of things. So he's becoming a bit of an elitist who wants everyone else to adhere to the rules, while he's free to do his own thing. Which is both evil, and perfectly understandable.
So far, this is mostly good news. There are a number of major problems to consider here.
Skywalker returns to Tattooine to find his mother, who has been sold off to the Lars family and freed, and, ultimately, captured by the sandpeople. Which is fine. What's personally bugging me a lot is Threepio.
If JarJar was the major source of annoyance last time, he's been completely replaced by Threepio.
Threepio, for one thing, has become James Bond without a decent writer. And if that sounds redundant, then you haven't seen this film yet. This guy makes the satiric oneliners in Austin Powers sound sage. He's 'beside himself' when he's decapitated; it's 'a drag' when Artoo tows him away. I'm not sure which is more of a drag here: that Lucas plummetted to this level of bullshit, or that the audience in general seemed to dig it.
Worse is Owen Lars.
I can buy that Threepio was reformatted at some point before the first film began. His first memories appear to be serving on the TantineIV. But, presuming Owen Lars was never reformatted, we have a huge problem now. Because Threepio was part of the Shmi Skywalker Purchase, and Owen lived with him for years, apparently. I can't wait to find out why he didn't quite recognise Threepio when he bought him back from the jawas a few years later. Especially factoring that we've seen three or four different protocol droids so far, and only one of them sounded anything like Tony Daniels.
But maybe I'm expecting too much again. It happens.
Speaking of expectations, I'd like to recommend a couple of things to ILM: LightWave, SoftImage, and maybe SquareSoft; because Maya is a joke.
The CG effects in this thing were a mess. Elements were pretty good, but overall....
I think the worst thing was the Naboo bit--a sort of remake of Starship Troopers with 'Skywalker' trying to surf on this weird buttmonster thing. It looked almost as fluid as Gumby. I'm really amazed that the shot was approved at all; it looked terrible.
Otherwise, most of the CG elements had that unfortunate texturemapped, flat look to them. And I understand the reasons for it--you have to take a lot of shortcuts to get the rendering done in less than a year; but it still bugs me a lot. Especially factoring the CG work in Jurassic Park Three, which looked a hell of a lot better than this did.
Which brings us to the main CG character in the film. Yoda.
I never really liked Yoda much. Of course, I started liking him a lot more once I discovered that Lucas was capable of thinking up ewoks and gungans. Still, he always annoyed me somehow. Two things have changed about Yoda.
First, of course, is that he's no longer a muppet. And that's a sort of a good thing. While Frank Oz is good at making socks talk, it's still pretty evident that it's a muppet. Now Yoda's no longer an obvious muppet; he's an obvious CG object. Again: using JP3's SoftImage or Final Fantasy's SquareSoft engine would have helped that a lot.
He's also no longer that annoying.
Once upon a time, Yoda was an annoying little muppet; then he was an annoying little jedi master; then he was a dying, annoying little jedi master; then he was an annoying panel judge who wouldn't take 'cold' for an answer. This film has fixed Yoda a lot.
Yoda has become amusing, for one thing--and not by falling down while screaming 'concentrate'. Instead, he says things like 'lost a planet, Obi-Wan has; embarrassing, it is'. He also says neat things like 'around the survivors, a perimeter establish', and other things which make Yoda seem a little more important to something called Star Wars.
And then there's the kinetics.
When it first became obvious that Menace was going to be released in 1999, talk of Yoda with a lightsabre began to circulate. Along with the debate: would he have a lightbutterknife, or what.
Yoda is a sleeper. A mole. One of those hypochondriac types. Master Splinter. He's not quite as old and crippled as he appears.
One thing about the filmscript which made me think it was a fake was the scene in which Yoda--the cantankerous invalid muppet thingy--pulled out a lightsabre and zipped about doing backflips in a blur. And yet they actually did it.
Whether that's a good thing is something I'm still working on. It was neat to see it; I'm just not sure it was the best way to do things. There was something back in 1980 with Yoda lifting the XWing out of the bog which made me wonder a bit; and now I know what it was. He's hiding things. He never allows anyone to see what he's capable of. And that's kinda cool.
'Judge me by my size, do you? And well you should not: into the dirt your dick shall I knock.'
And that's basically it. Aside from the Slave I's primary weapon being an augmented C chord, which was odd, and the numerous references to various games. There's a scene which was utterly stolen from Oddworld in there, for example.
But there are a few neat parallels, too. One of them is the Lars Homestead. When you suddenly realise that Skywalker is sitting in the same spot, at the same table, in the same house where Luke sat in 1977, things begin to come together. When Kenobi swings round from the bar to cut off an enemy's arm in Lower Coruscant, things begin to form a pattern. When the gates raise and you expect to see the Rancor walk out of its cage, you start seeing how everything is going to tie together someday.
And, of course, when you see the schematics for the Federation's Ultimate Weapon, you understand that it's the same data which will eventually end up in the hands of the Rebellion.
So I liked the film. And this time, unlike the last time, I'm already looking forward to the next one.
Partly because, after seeing the five which have been released, a sixth/third seems almost superfluous. Like A New Hope, Clones ends in a way that we don't exactly need a direct sequel to connect to anything else.
And that's good news. Because we were at the same point just before Empire showed up as the best of the series.
More later....
--Gremlin