Three years after The Phantom Menace, and fans were beginning to realise that the prequels might not be the success they originally hoped.
This is where we expect to see the beginning of Anakin's transformation into Darth Vadar and his love for Padme begins. We end up what is universally seen as the weakest of the franchise. But thankfully, there are still some pleasing parts to part two of the space saga. However, I think some of you reading else might see this as me clutching at straws. I can see why as the fan in me might just be a sucker for the material. But I honestly still feel entertained enough when re-watching this.
Most of the problems are pretty much the same from Phantom Menace. The dialogue is its biggest negative and it just gets worse as the film goes on. The woodenness looks like a high school play and the batches of cheesiness would fit in nicely to a Roger Moore Bond film.
This is where we see the first of the two films that pretty much all on green screen. It does lost some value in its visuals and it just generally makes it lazy film-making. But with George Lucas running the show, you would not be surprised at all.
However, the night scenes still manage to have my attention as they look so nice.
I am afraid there were only two good performances, Ian McDairmid and Christopher Lee. Lee does what he does best despite the corny dialogue. His voice remains ever powerful that anything he says can still sound sinister. McDairmid continues to be the strongest performance throughout the prequel trilogy. You can definitely feel his big part to play within this franchise is slowing getting nearer.
Ewen McGregor disappoints. But that is mainly because of the dialogue that was given to him.
I forgot how annoying Hayden Christiansen was. I don't mind that he is purposely trying to mirror the whiny kid Luke Skywalker initially was in A New Hope. But he just can't seem to make it pleasing viewing for the audience. We just can't seem to route for him. However, his scenes on Tatooine are pretty solid throughout as we begin to see Anakin's hate and I always like the moment when Anakin is on a speeder bike whilst the suns are setting in the desert. A very picture-esque moment, even though it is all on green screen, The only part that I feel shows Christiansen's potential was his heart-breaking scene with his character's mother. Only there I felt true development in the beginning of his change into Darth Vader.
As for the scenes with R2-D2 and C-3PO, it was excruciatingly bad that I feel they were trying to be bad on purpose. When they're together in the original trilogy, it is silly but entertaining and I enjoyed their old married couple style of arguing. But their scenes together in this one makes me embarrassed to watch them and I actually cover my eyes.
The scenes on Naboo is the weakest part of the film. The scenes feel boring, the dialogue stays the same low quality throughout. Thankfully, the visuals are still nice to look at. The love interest between Christiansen and Natalie Portman's characters on Naboo is supposed to be the big part of this film. But the dialogue they are given is poor and it never makes you believe that their love is real. It feels as genuine as the Twilight love story which I did not want to compare it to, but it's the best comparison I could think of.
Thankfully, most of the action set-pieces are good to watch and do enough to keep me going for the rest of the film. The chase scene near the beginning at Coruscant, the battle between Obi-Wan Kenobi and Django Fett (the best part of the film), the battle within the Coliseum (despite some flaws in the physics of characters moments and horribly cheesy moments) and the final battle. There is one light-sabre fight and it is a questionable one. The choreography starts promising, but in the end becomes sub-standard. It was cool seeing Yoda use a light-sabre, but I always thought Yoda was beyond using a light-sabre and always used the Force. I felt sorry for Christopher Lee as his age detracted him from having a high-level choreography in his fights. Instead we get a lot of close-ups of them just waving their light-sabres close to their faces which looked silly.
The technical parts of the film are still a huge strength. The designs of the creatures and architecture of each city and planet are as creative as ever. The score by John Williams still manages to even make the bad things look average.
In the end it may contain a fair amount of cringe-worthy moments, but it still has redeeming features to make this passable viewing. I enjoyed Obi-Wan Kenobi's investigation part of the film that eventually leads up the best part of the film, his battle with Django Fett.
The technical team did a great job. But sadly, the script is the worst in the franchise and the performances sadly does not detract us from the writing.
I think the fact that it is Star Wars and that this is part of a bigger story does make me give it some sympathy to it. But I cannot ignore the poor writing despite the action set-pieces keeping it going during the parts where we grind to a halt.
Rating: 7/10
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