Caseus Archivelox: Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones & Persona

2002-05-16 - 11:19 p.m.
I also went to see Star Wars Episode 2, and it was neither as bad as some people were saying, or as good as others (admittedly many fewer were saying that). Lucas set himself up to be trashed with The Phantom Menace. No matter how good this movie was (maybe if he had another Empire, but that's so unlikely that I'll just ignore that possibility), it would be trashed by many, just because it was no Star Wars or Empire. The final battle scenes are really cool, and Yoda certainly does kick ass, as does Samuel L. Jackson. Too bad C3PO is the new terrible character. At first he was just a gay robot, now he's horribly bad comic relief, with just bad puns. Not that there are good puns, but it's like Lucas and Hales couldn't think of a way to add some levity to a serious battle, and thus put C3PO in the Jar-Jar role. Ignoring the fact that in the original trilogy the battle scenes rarely had comedy. There were funny things, but there was not one character that is there only for that. The Ewoks banging on the AT-STs, the tow cables causing the AT-STs to trip, and Porkins were all funny to a certain extent, but back then, they knew that comedy wasn't really for those scenes. When Han and Chewie chase the stormtroopers in Star Wars, that was funny, but it wasn't in the midst of many characters dying and mass mayhem, it was in the middle of comedic rescue attempt of the Princess. Sure, Jar-Jar Binks is the most evil character of all time, for his obvious racist stereotype, but now also because he just was responsible for the downfall of the republic. But that is just one of those things that we have to accept from Lucas. That he's a racist and won't admit it. Jar-Jar is so evilly bad. The dialogue and love scenes were also terrible, while, surprisingly, some of the CGI was also very fake. It's one thing for a movie like Young Sherlock Holmes to have below average CGI (at least compared to now, for the time, it was incredible, even if it was only around 12 polygons), but for a movie that cost $130 million or so and had the top of the line CGI group working on it is almost irredeemable. Lucas is so evil. So, I give the movie a 6 out of 10. Star Wars is a 10, Empire also is a 10, but would be an 11 if I bent the rules, Return is a 9 (I don't like Ewoks and Jabba's palace was terrible (mainly from the Special Edition)), and Phantom Menace is a 4, and that's almost entirely for Ewan McGregor, the pod race, and the final lightsaber duel. Those were good, the rest was bad. Another way to judge the movie is to say that you can pretty much ignore any scene with Anakin until the duel at the end of the movie, because he's just bad until then. Padme isn't much better. Yoda, Obi-Wan and the rest of the Jedi are cool, as is Dooku (Christopher Lee) and Jango and Boba Fett and the rest of the clones. But the movie is just disappointing, not as terrible as the Phantom Menace, nor as transcendentally great as the original trilogy.

2002-05-23 - 1:39 a.m.
Then I watched Persona. That is one weird movie. But v. v. good, and it would have made my lesbian vampire film paper v. v. interesting. The paper could have been better, had I had more time to work on it, and an unlimited amount of space to write about them. Like if I were writing a dissertation on it. That would be really funny if I were to graduate from Duke's F/V program and they list all the dissertations in the program, so you'd see "Lesbian Vampires: Empowered Female or Male Fantasy?" in there, next to all the useful ones. That would be good. Anyway, cool thing noticed while watching Persona: the somewhat jarring credits (and music) were reminiscent of Monty Python and the Holy Grail's opening credits. I am positive that they were spoofing not just Persona in particular but Bergman's films in general.