Disapointing chapter to greatest movie series of all time!

TWO AND 1/2 STARS -

I am one of those fans that was holding out hope that Lucas would "make it all right" after the release of "Revenge of the Sith" only to be sourly disappointed in the end. I am finally going to review the final two Star Was movies of the series.

Starting with Attack of the Clones...
This movie showed a marked improvement over The Phantom Menace as far as action level, a more grown-up serious tone, and much less Jar Jar. The bad. (And its really bad, folks.) The two main lead characters Hayden Christensen and Natalie Portman were horribly miss-cast. These two dry and charmless teens with no "developed" personalities whatsoever had to carry this whole movie on their shoulders. Add to that the "flat", cliché-ridden, uninspired dialogue they had to spout from their lips, the dull over-done and drawn-out romance between them and you have a recipe for disaster. Portman was actually somewhat interesting as an exotic child-queen and she did a good job with that in TPM. In this movie she just comes across as a stone "pretty" faced otherwise bland teen with the personality of a mannequin.
Christensen was much more emotive but simply lacks any acting skill whatsoever. His performance is clumsy and awkward and just plain inexperienced. In short, I just did not care whether the main characters in these new movies (all of them) lived or died. That should say something about how poorly executed the over-all character development was done in these prequels, especially if you compare them to the original trilogy. Those characters almost feel like "family" to me. It worked in the original trilogy so much better not because they were the best actors, but because they projected (or were allowed to project) their ripe "personalities" on the screen! Acting skill is not required for a Star Wars movie, but personality is! Add the memorable, witty, and well-written dialogue and you have a recipe for great success. Apart from the superior special effects of the prequels there is nothing else that even compares to the over-all superiority of the classic trilogy.

In conclusion, Lucas stumbles time and time again with each subsequent movie by trying to play to a target audience and just missing the mark for an over-all good movie. With TPM he was targeting small children and alienated everyone else. With AOTC he went for the teenage girls (ala Titanic) but instead produced one of the most embarrassingly maudlin, cringe-enducing romances ever put on screen. This movie could have been about as good as Return of the Jedi over-all, had it not been for that.

I review Revenge of the sith next (look it up) and its also not very pretty.

YUK!

This movie is beyond terrible. My working hypothesis: That maybe, possibly, it takes a genius to produce something this stupid.

Good movie, but Anakin sucks

AotC was a very good movie, but had some major flaws. First the positive stuff. I enjoyed the father-son relationship shown between Jango Fett and his cloned son, Boba. I actually felt sorry for little Boba Fett when he saw Mace Windu decapitate his father, even though they were bad guys. However, like his son in RotJ, I thought Jango died too easily and too anti-climatically.

Now, the bad. I know special effects technology has improved since the first SW trilogy, but why did Lucas have to make everything look so much more high tech in the prequels? It makes no sense. Also, Hayden Christiensen is a terrible choice for Anakin. He totally ruined my image of that character. I thought that Anakin was supposed to be a great man, and that his turn to the dark side was supposed to be a surprise and a tragedy! Instead, Anakin is portrayed as a whiny little b**ch who thinks too much with his...ahem, "lightsaber", especially when he's around Padme, who we now know is Luke and Leia's mother. The love story is heartwarming, since we know Anakin has loved Padme since he was 9, but it is portrayed too much as lust. For example, Padme tells Anakin in one scene that hes making her uncomfortable and whenever Anakin is talking to her, especially when he says "you have grown also" or when hes confessing his feelings to her beside a burning fire, it is obvious that he is staring directly at her chest. There is also a nightmare scene with Anakin that looks rather suggestive. Also, we learn that Jar Jar Binks, possibly as a final gesture of disrespect to his many haters, is responsible for the rise of the Empire because he proposes that Palpatine gets emergency powers.

Its an improvement over Episode 1, but still leaves much to be desired.