Ahsoka

Gesundheit!

Ahsoka
Streaming August - October 2023
8 episodes

Warning: Spoilers within.

Okay, so of the messed up Star Wars TV shows that Disney has so far put out (and I’ve still not seen them all quite yet), Ahsoka is probably the best and most consistently entertaining one. Now, there’s a lot going on here which I don’t pretend to understand fully because, one thing I’ve not seen is any of the Star Wars animated TV shows (apart from the cartoon feature film which got released theatrically in the UK and I can’t remember much about it). That being said, there are a lot of flashback references to what one assumes are the important parts needed here, just remade into live action variants so... yeah, I think you can mostly get through this without having sampled the animated fayre, to be honest (and I’ve no real desire to finally catch up to the Droids or Ewoks TV shows, which I guess would have to be the first port of call if I was to do it properly). 

This one follows the complicated exploits of Ahsoka, Sabine Wren (a kind of Mandalorian Jedi-in-Training, played by Natasha Liu Bordizzo) and Hera Syndulla (played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead, no stranger to the fantasy and science fiction genres, for sure). 

Now, apart from wanting to see this before the new Star Wars movie is out soon (or possibly at time of publication of this blog review) the other big draw is, like the appearance by Ahsoka in the ‘almost pretty good’ series The Book Of Boba Fett (reviewed here) and The Mandalorian (reviewed here), the title character is played once again by one of my favourite modern actresses, Rosario Dawson. Now, admittedly it’s hard to see the Rosario for the Lekku here but, well, make up and prosthetics (and CGI) aside, it’s another role which shows the range and diversity of the actress. 

The story is basically a side quest to find an old friend of these characters, Ezra, but in the process, endangering the future of the ‘Empireless’ Star Wars universe by risking the return, as a side effect (or vice versa, actually), of a rather famous bad guy from the Star Wars novels who I had no idea had made it into any of the various TV shows over the years. Now I’ve only ever read, maybe less than 20 Star Wars novels in my life but, one of the three trilogies I read was Timothy Zahn’s sequence of novels which were, when they were being marketed in the early 1990s, being touted as the official sequel to the original Star Wars trilogy of films. And the bad guy in that series, being chased by Luke Skywalker and co, was Grand Admiral Thrawn... who returns, after a stint in some cartoons, in this show. I guess it’s a case of Thrawn but not forgotten. 

Story beats and mechanics aside, it’s a nicely put together show with good chemistry between all the many characters (including David Tennant voicing Ahsoka’s droid Huyang) and some nice cameos by the likes of Hayden Christensen as Anakin Skywalker (who somehow found time to train Ahsoka when he was in the land of the living, before he became Darth Vader) and C3PO. 

I have a few minor complaints about the show but the only one I’ll highlight is my disappointment with the text recap on the first episode. For some reason, the producers have decided to veer away from the one point perspective style scrolling text adopted by the original Star Wars movies and which were an obvious reference to the recaps on some of the 1930s and 1940s Universal theatrical serials, specifically the third and final Flash Gordon serial, Flash Gordon Conquers The Universe (reviewed here). That being said, the vision Ahsoka finds herself in during episode five certainly reminded me a little of the aesthetic of the light bridges used in Flash Gordon’s Trip To Mars (reviewed here). 

But there were also some really nice things in the show too. Two I’ll highlight are...

The use of violins or, in this case, ‘fiddles’ in the last episode to highlight the antics of four witches... honouring the time old tradition of iterating this kind of orchestration to accompany witches throughout the history of cinema. Indeed, I’d have to say that the scoring on Ahsoka by somebody called Kevin Kiner is much more in keeping with John Williams and George Lucas’ vision of using the kind of writing style of the golden age of Hollywood than any of the other Star Wars shows so far. 

Okay, the other thing is going to throw people who don’t know the rich history of the character but, there’s a ‘blast shield’ Jedi training scene and, yes, I get it, it’s a reference back to the original film (called Star Wars on its first release) when Luke is training in the Millennium Falcon... but it’s, oh, so much more than that and also comments on the title character’s fighting style throughout the series too. 

To explain... at one point during Wren’s training, Ahsoka asks her droid if he’s tried her in the Zatoichi style. As soon as she said that, I knew she was going to stick a helmet on the pupil, effectively blinding her (and there’s more, give me a minute)... 

So Zatoichi is a long running series of films, initially starring Shintaru Katsu, who played the blind masseur/gambler (and greatest swordsman in all of Japan) in 26 movies made between 1962 and 1989, not to mention in a hundred TV episodes in the 1970s and, after Katsu, at least three other Zatoichi films have been made to date (you can read my review of the first Zatoichi film here, with more to follow as I will be returning to that series of films shortly). I’m sure he’ll be back before too long as he gets rebooted for yet another generation. He had a sword cane and, if you want to see what looks like pretty much an exact replica of that sword cane, it’s in this show as the weapons Ahsoka gives herself and Wren to train with in that particular scene. The Zatoichi fighting style with the backwards sweep of the blade is also something which Ahsoka seems to adopt for the show. So I was really pleased with this. 

Of course, this is not the first time Zatoichi has been used in the modern Star Wars franchise. Donnie Yen’s character Chirrut Îmwe in Rogue One was literally a version of Zatoichi himself dropped, into that story and it of course prompted many people on social media at the time to ask why Yen hadn’t officially played Zatoichi in a film. The time will come, is my guess. He’s already played yet another blind killer heavily based on Zatoichi in John Wick 4 (and its soon-to-be spin off, Cane). 

Oh, and in case you’re wondering, that single stroke victory after a Mexican standoff against a light sabre wielding droid is, I believe, a reference to the influential last scene in the Yojimbo sequel Sanjuro (reviews of both those Kurosawa films coming soon to the blog)... so that was another nice touch. 

The series ends on a kind of cliff hanger and I’m seeing the second season is due this year... so yeah, I probably will give that one a go too, as a voluntary thing because I thought this first season of Ahsoka was easily the best of those Star Wars shows I’ve seen so far and, well, there was never a dull minute. I’m now glad I reluctantly gave this one a chance. Maybe I should give Andor a quick look next?

Obi-Wan Kenobi

Daft Vader

Obi-Wan Kenobi
Airdate: May - June 2022
Lucasfilm

Warning: Spoilers but, who cares? It’s hard to spoil rubbish.

Obi-Wan Kenobi was originally scheduled to be a new Star Wars prequel movie... you know, one of those “A Star Wars Tale” movies like Rogue One (reviewed here) or Solo (reviewed here). However, due to Solo failing at the box office, the film was rewritten and reworked as a TV show (is my understanding). In regards to Solo, one of the better Star Wars movies to be made since the Disney buy out, it seemed pretty clear to everyone except Disney, surely, that the quality of the film was not at fault for it’s failure at the box office. Just bad Marketing/scheduling. The Star Wars films had been released one a year for a few years but, following on from one of the worst Star Wars movies ever made, aka The Last Jedi (reviewed here), audience enthusiasm was at an all time low so, yeah, I would have thought common sense might have told you not to release another Star Wars movie just a short five months after that one. I think anything in the brand released then would have met with the same financial ambivalence, to be honest.

But, anyway, instead we have the new TV show which, I wasn’t that fussed about but, since the high quality of the first four episodes of The Book Of Boba Fett (reviewed here), I was actually slightly hopeful for it. Well, let me tell you that this series sees a return to the role of Obi-Wan Kenobi by none other than Obi Junior, Ewan McGregor himself, still trying to do an accent which gets close to Alec Guiness at times. So, yay, we have Ewan back and... that’s it really. His inclusion and acting in this is literally the only good thing about this show.

We also have Hayden Christensen back as Annakin Skywalker aka Darth Vader, giving the myth a bit of spin about how he feels he did kill himself (just to make the lie told by Alec Guiness in the original Star Wars - before it was even A New Hope - just that much lighter). We could have done without him, to be honest. A flashback to a training fight we never saw actually has Hayden looking much older than he did years after that fight would even have taken place and about the only good bit he did have was when he’s peeking out from behind Vader’s half shattered helmet.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Obi-Wan Kenobi has the title character being hunted by Sith-style inquisitors, highlighted by actress Moses Ingram as the one surviving ‘youngling’ from the retro fitted slaughter of all the kids by Annakin in Revenge Of The Sith (reviewed here) and, to do this, she kidnaps young Princess Leia as bate. So Obi-Wan has to leave Tatooine and relinquish his watchful eye on ‘young Skywalker’, left with the Lars family, to go and rescue her in six episodes of mayhem which almost threaten to contradict the already told future continuity of the franchise and, as my friend correctly identified, it really didn’t need to be made. It’s just a piece of padding to get viewers to Disney+ at this point. I mean, to be fair, most things don’t need to be made but this one is just another exercise of filling in gaps that nobody needed filled and, to boot, doing it in such a careful way to not try and change too much about the final destination that, it doesn’t actually add anything to the canon. It’s like it’s redundant even before it gets out of the starting gate.

I started off quite intrigued because Kenobi’s life on Tatooine, as we see how he’s been living, is actually quite interesting... but he’s soon off on an adventure and all the good work done in the opening half an hour or so is immediately blown out of the water. He’s off on his space romp but, somehow, manages to bring none of the gleeful optimism of the Kenobi character as seen in the prequel trilogy. You can kinda understand why, perhaps but, then think of the carefree but confident character as portrayed by Guiness, which only takes place around ten years after this story... and you can see the mismatch.

And, while I’m on the subject, yeah McGregor is totally the right age to play this character at this point but... one wonders how he gets from looking like someone who still looks in his 30s here... to 60+ Alec Guiness in just ten short years. Blimey, those Tatooine summers must be really hard on the body.

There are also some token cameos thrown in, such as the return of Emperor Palpatine and, bizarrely, a really unnecessary and ‘definitely looking like it was just tagged on with no thought of actually meaning anything’, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it appearance from Liam Neeson as the force ghost of Qui-Gon.

Despite all this, though, the show does have a few interesting moments such as the brief humanising of Darth Vader (which completely compromises his effectiveness as a villain in the later films, to be honest) but they struggle to find a solution to the biggest problem with the show and the beautiful legacy that Star Wars once was. Namely that Obi-Wan Kenobi is a really dull, ineffective and, I dunno, almost ‘by the numbers’ attempt to cash in on a series of films which were very special and inspirational to people both in the 1970s and the 1990s. The light seems to have faded much faster from the franchise than even I expected it to do when Lucas sold it on to Disney and, to be honest, I really wasn’t expecting Disney to be able to handle what they’d acquired that well but... yeah, the Star Wars brand no longer sparks an ‘Ooh’ of anticipation when I hear that something new is in the works. Now I just shake my fist at the moon and yell for Disney to let it die a more dignified death, to be honest. Can’t recommend this one but, you know, Ewan McGregor is always pretty watchable.

Star Wars Episode III: Revenge Of The Sith

The Sith Element

Star Wars Episode III: Revenge Of The Sith
2005 USA 
Directed by George Lucas
20th Century Fox BluRay Region A/B 

Okay, so after being more than pleased with the first of the prequel films, The Phantom Menace (reviewed here) my faith in Lucas was shaken again, what with his continual meddling with the original trilogy prints and the nightmare when Attack Of The Clones was released into cinemas (my review of that one here). The sluggish pacing of the previous film meant that I wasn’t getting too excited about what we’d get in Revenge Of The Sith but I remember that I had a much better reaction to it at the time. There were some bits which didn’t quite make sense, and they still don’t (yeah, I’ll get to it later on in this review), but overall I originally had a good time with it.

Revisiting the movie now on blu ray, I have to say that my appreciation of this one has soured a little over the years and I’m not nearly as enthusiastic as I once was about this chapter in the Star Wars saga. The action sequences are spectacular, it has to be said, but also quite boring in their choreography and I did find myself slipping into lethargy this time around. The action sequences in Attack Of The Clones were much better but, having said that, the pacing in Revenge Of The Sith beats the prior episode hands down, so overall I’d have to say Attack Of The Clones is still my least favourite Star Wars movie, with this one running it a close second.

That being said, there are still some good things about it. Hayden Christensen, at least in the early scenes of the film, seems a lot more confident and really begins to inhabit the role of Anakin Skywalker, probably due to the fact that the dialogue seems less clumsy than it did in the previous movie. That being said, there still seems to be something a little bit “flipped switch” about Anakin’s fall to the dark side. I know George Lucas has been alluding to it and putting in necessary shading in the previous two films but somehow, even after the slaughter of the Tusken Raider colony in Attack Of The Clones, it still seems like a bit of a leap to me, when Anakin suddenly becomes Palpatine’s follower. Remember, he’d just got Samuel Jackson’s character Mace Windu involved to take care of Palpatine and then, all of a sudden, he’s slicing off Windu’s arm and letting Palpatine chuck the geezah out of a window. And then he’s off to slaughter Jedi.... it seems a bit much to me but, having said that, there could be good reasons for this.

Reason number 1 is... it’s hard to retrofit a series of movies to take place before a set of pre-existing movies and get them to match up (no matter how much you tinker with them and destroy everyone’s fondest childhood memories in the process) and get it absolutely perfect... even though Lucas had some elements of the basic plotline for the back story in place decades before. I know he did have at least some of it figured out because I can remember back as far as 1978, after the very first movie was released at the end of 1977 in the UK (when it was literally just called Star Wars), that I’d talk to my friends about the epic battle between Obi Wan Kenobi and his apprentice by the side of a volcanic pit, where Darth Vader fell in and had to be moved into some kind of iron lung. This movie pretty much has a variant of that scenario in it so, even then, he knew what he was doing. There’s always going to be some kind of inconsistency or lack of logic to it somewhere and, well, like I said... I’ll get to those in a while.

Reason number 2, from what I understand about this picture, is this. The first cut Lucas arrived at ran for four hours. Now, even with the initial rescue of Palpatine originally lasting for over an hour, apparently, that’s still a lot of extra on the 2 hours and 20 minutes running time that got excluded from the cinema and home video versions. This means that there could have been all kinds of subtle signals that Anakin was finally tipping over as a prelude to the actual act itself which may have been cut out. I say could, since I don’t actually know... but it might be that Lucas was trying to fix some other problems with the final cut and the elimination of those problems created the lack of subtlety we see in the final release prints. That kind of thing does tend to happen more and more in the editing room these days, from what I can see from a lot of modern cinema. Mistakes and so forth creep in due to decisions made in the edit. It happens. So I’m letting both George Lucas and Hayden Christensen off the hook on this one... Lucas may not have been standing far enough back from the last cut to be able to glean that he’d lost that element of subtlety.

Let’s balance that out with another plus, then. Ewan McGregor as a more mature Obi Wan Kenobi, 15-120 years before he turns into Alec Guinness, really goes for it with this one and succeeds perfectly. Each of his three performances have, of course, had shades of the Guinness personae in them but this one brings it up to near what Guinness was doing in the original trilogy. Perfect job here from McGregor, I have to say. In fact, most of the performances in this one are spot on. Threepio is also a lot less irritating here... so that’s a blessing.

The music is a lot less choppier too. There are, to be fair, a couple of moments when it sounds like stuff has just been tracked in from The Phantom Menace instead of being re-recorded but, mostly, the music is pretty solid. Not particularly as memorable as... well, any of the other Star Wars films, to be fair, but at least it holds its own against the intergalactic hubbub with a certain dignity and originality... so happy about that.

And there’s that great moment where we see Bail Organa, Yoda and Obi Wan walking the famous corridors that the rebels were defending at the start of the very first Star Wars movie, revised to A New Hope around about the 1978 re-release (contrary to popular belief) and which now, of course, chronologically follows on from the events of the first film. There’s also a nice shot where we see a younger version of Peter Cushing’s character from that same film, Grand Moff Tarkin... but, alas, that scene has problems all it’s own.

So let’s get to the problems with this one, shall we?

Well, asides from a clunky bit of dialogue which really needed the scene originally shot for it to be inserted either at the same point or, preferably, an earlier point in the movie, where Yoda tells Obi Wan that Qui Gon is back from the dead... most of the problems occur when trying to match this movie up to the next film and there are basically two main things I have a problem with here...

Number one is the scene with Grand Moff Tarkin in it. They are looking at the rough frame of their new construction project, the very first Death Star. This is the one that Luke destroys in the next/first movie which is said to be the first time the weapon is revealed and fully operational. Except... hold on a minute... we know from the chronology of the events in The Empire Strikes Back and Return Of The Jedi that, after the destruction of the first Death Star, the second one could have only taken three and a half years to construct. Bearing in mind that Luke and Lei are somewhere between 16 and 20 years old in A New Hope, that means it takes 16-20 years to build the first Death Star? Even though they already have it half built at the end of Revenge Of The Sith? Seriously? C’mon guys. I mean, I know the first one would have taken a lot longer to build and, you know, to quote Kevin Smith “You think the average Stormtrooper knows how to install a toilet main? All they know is killing and white uniforms.” But, even so... 16 - 20 years. This stretches my ability to suspend my disbelief a little bit, to be honest.

The other problem I have is Luke’s “Uncle” Owen Lars and “Aunt Beru”. They look great in this and the previous movie as younger versions of the actors who played them in the original and, yes, I know Threepio’s memory is wiped so he doesn’t know them anymore but, honestly? You’d think after all the trouble they had when Darth Vader’s mum married Owen’s father and was killed by sandpeople, not to mention the fact that Threepio was Annakin’s droid and had been staying with them for, what, 15 years, that the minute these two saw Threepio again in A New Hope they would have junked him straight away and gone and hid somewhere. Not, presumably... “Oh, remember that robot who’s maker turned out to be the ruthless villain holding the galaxy in a stranglehold of terror... well he’s turned up in Luke's garage. Neat, huh? Better have it’s memory flushed, just in case.” I’m sorry but that’s just not appropriate. I know droids are seen as a lowly “life” form in the Star Wars universe but, seriously, this is basically Darth Vader’s other, mechanical, son. So I’m afraid this was a mistake I saw coming from a long way off, just after The Phantom Menace was released and, though I was trying to trust George Lucas on fixing this problem somehow... he just didn’t. Bit of a blow this one.

Still, an enjoyable film, if not a great one, albeit with some grizzly images which are maybe not totally appropriate for the rating, truth be told. A brave attempt but now with this trilogy back under my belt, it’s time to rewatch the original trilogy on blu ray. I’ll let you know how that goes real soon.

Star Wars at NUTS4R2

 Episode 1: The Phantom Menace 

Episode 2: Attack Of The Clones

Episode 3: Revenge Of The Sith 

Solo

Rogue One 

Episode 4: A New Hope

Episode 5: The Empire Strikes Back

Episode 6: Return Of The Jedi 

Episode 7: The Force Awakens 

Episode 8:  The Last Jedi

Episode 9: The Rise Of Skywalker

Star Wars Episode II: Attack Of The Clones

Clone With The Windu

Star Wars Episode II: Attack Of The Clones
2002 USA 
Directed by George Lucas
20th Century Fox BluRay Region A/B 
Previous BBFC cuts waived

I have really mixed feelings about Star Wars Episode II: Attack Of The Clones. If you read my review of the The Phantom Menace (which I reviewed for the 3D cinematic re-release right here) you’ll know of the very strong bond I feel with the Star Wars universe since I first saw the very first movie play in the Dominion cinema in London at the tail end of 1977. You’ll also know from that review that, despite a lot of people being less impressed with Lucas’ first prequel, I actually rated it quite highly. I couldn’t understand why a film almost as dark as The Empire Strikes Back was not realised as such, just because it was wearing a happy face, so to speak. It wasn’t until I saw Revenge Of The Sith with some friends and had to explain it to them years later, that I realised a lot of people just didn’t have a very good idea of the back story to the original 1970s trilogy... so a lot of them didn’t realise just exactly what was going down in The Phantom Menace.

Now don’t get me wrong. I was losing a lot of love already for my childhood hero George Lucas, after the frankly disastrous “modifications” he made to the original trilogy on the late 1990s cinematic re-release of the movies... but The Phantom Menace was a triumph for me and I couldn’t wait to get to the next one. Well unfortunately, for me, Attack Of The Clones is the one Star Wars move I really don’t like all that much and it just doesn’t feel quite like a Star Wars movie to me. Don’t get me wrong, there’s some nice stuff in there... the asteroid depth charge sound and visual effects, for example... but to me it all just seems a little flat.

Now I’ve got absolutely nothing against Hayden Christensen as an actor. I especially liked him in Jumper, but I don’t think his on-screen chemistry with Natalie Portman is that great here. It’s not as emotionless or wooden as people said back when the first reviews of this came out in 2002... but it’s not all that great either. There are some parts where the actor is saying hugely romantic things and not really getting away with it and, other times, when his emotions seem to be quite a bit repressed or non-existent when they shouldn’t have been, perhaps. Now I’m not going to blame the actor for this stuff because I suspect at least some of the reasons why certain of the scenes don’t work is because he may have been directed to deliberately dial things down or up due to the ultimate fate the character is heading towards. Also, it has to be said, a lot of the romantic, character building stuff is overly long and slows things down... and also that brings me straight into what I personally feel is another bad thing about this movie.

Pretty much all the other Star Wars films in the original trilogy are very pacey and you’re not very far off from entering or leaving an action sequence throughout their running times. The Phantom Menace follows in the footsteps of this beautifully and, Kurosawa comparisons aside, these were kinda supposed to be the modern equivalent of an old Universal or Republic style film serial of times gone by. Now I really don’t mind slowly marinating plots and action alone doesn’t do it for me in a movie, unless it’s deliberately setting itself up to be that kind of thing, but Attack Of The Clones has a delayed action chase about ten minutes in (after two assassination attempts which don’t really count as action sequences) where we get to see Anakin Skywalker and Obi Wan Kenobi in pursuit of Zam The Assassin... and then the film just goes dead in terms of action, to be honest. Some wonderous sequences fill this gap, to be sure, but frankly, over 35 minutes without an action sequence in a Star Wars movie seems a bit of a mis-step to me. I maybe would have liked my Lucas a little more Corman in this particular movie, perhaps, but maybe the weight of the story just drags it down too much for added action? I don’t know... but I thought this was an uncharacteristically empty gap for a Star Wars movie.
And talking about pacing...

Now I know this film had some problems when the first cut was reviewed by the director and I understand that a lot of the Anakin/Padme romance scenes were either re-shot or beefed up to try to get them to work better (at least that’s what was reported at the time) but... the timeline taking place between the film’s two main male protagonists, Anakin and Obi Wan, and the cross cutting between their separate exploits... don’t quite make sense when you compare them. See if you agree with me on this one...

These are the two timelines which are equally cross cut together across the running time at a certain point in Attack Of The Clones:

Obi Wan, pops into a diner to get a quick bit of info, drops in on Yoda, goes to the planet where a Clone Army is being built (posing as a customer) and has a quick look at them, gets into a scrap and then goes to another planet where he sends a message and gets captured. That’s.... what? Two days at the most?

Meanwhile, cross cut with this is...

Annakin escorts Padme back to Naboo, they spend some days/nights romancing, then they hotfoot it to Tatooine, Anakin spends at least an evening, possibly a day, tracking down his dying mother, then he slaughters a whole tribe of Tusken Raiders and, only then, after all that, do we get the message cross cut into things.

So, what’s that? About a week? And these two timelines are simultaneously cross-cut to give them a sense of happening in the same time? It doesn’t quite gel with the way it’s been cut together I think.

So I’m guessing what’s happened here is they reshot and added some extra bits into the Annakin/Padme timeline but... there was nowhere else to insert them into the movie which made any sense unless you made the, aesthetically not great choice, of not continually cross cutting between Obi-Wan and Anakin’s timelines. Which must have been really irritating to the people sitting in the editing room, I’ll bet. Now, to be honest, what they’ve gone with in the finished product is probably the lesser of the two evils and I think they made the best choice they had... but it still leaves your mind playing catch up with the temporal space in a few areas during the course of the movie and it does pop you out of it a few times.

Okay... that’s most of the negative stuff. What about the good stuff?

Well, the fight between Obi Wan and Django Fett is pretty good and brutal (it was originally cut at both British cinemas and all British home release versions until a head butt cut was finally waived for this Blu Ray release... which meant I had to pay out for an import copy of the DVD when it was first released to get it the first time around). The idea of the poisonous centipedes which infiltrate Padme Amidala’s room at the start is something which reads straight out of a pulp Sherlock Holmes or Fu Manchu story and perfectly captures the tone of what this film series is about. The action sequence in the arena at the end is like it’s been plucked straight out of one of Edgar Rice Burrough’s John Carter novels... so that’s kinda cool (if a little plagiaristic, perhaps) and the incredibly hard to even imagine until you see it dual between Yoda and Count Dooku is pretty amazing. Oh, that reminds me... Sir Christopher Lee doesn’t have a huge amount of screen time in this film but what he does get he really makes count. He’s just really phenomenal in this movie and his screen presence uplifts certain scenes tremendously.

But... back to the negatives again, I’m afraid.

The conveyor belt battle looks and feels just like something out of a platform game... which makes me cynical about why it was even included in the movie... and the comedy shenanigans of C3PO are just beyond irritating in this one. Great gags in themselves but, seriously, inappropriate in the context of the scenes they are in, in my humble opinion. Also, there’s a real false note where Natalie Portman falls out of a transport and looks like she’s been really hurt and then, when someone asks if she’s okay, she just gets up and gets on with things... it doesn’t quite scan right. You have a watch and let me know if you agree with me please.

And then there’s the music. The beloved John Williams scores another epic Star Wars movie but... this one doesn’t seem quite right in a lot of places. Don’t get me wrong, there’s some memorable scoring in this one but, throughout the movie, it just felt like a load of action cues from The Phantom Menace were literally being chopped up and then just needle-dropped onto the soundtrack rather than have a new score composed in several places. I’m wondering if Williams wrote some stuff which was rejected and then replaced with temp or, possibly, if the action sequences in certain areas kept getting recut to buggery and he just didn’t have time to keep changing them. Either way, certain musical sequences just seem a bit choppy and clumsy to me. Still, you can’t top Johnny Williams scoring a Star Wars movie so maybe the story will come out on this one in a few decades... who knows?

And that’s about it for this one. There’s a certain something which really doesn’t make sense in the whole Star Wars timeline in this one, due to C3PO and R2D2 being present on Owen and Beru Lars moisture farm on Tatooine, but I’ll point that out in the next two reviews, when I rewatch them. For now, let me just say that, any Star Wars film is going to be something you’re probably going to get something out of. For me, Attack Of The Clones is my least favourite of the lot and I think newcomers to the trilogy should never try and start on this series with this as a jumping on point. Make sure you watch them in the chronological order on which they were released or, if you want to do it the other way round, make sure you start with The Phantom Menace first... just cut Attack Of The Clones some slack when you watch it. They’re not all like this one.

Star Wars at NUTS4R2

 Episode 1: The Phantom Menace 

Episode 2: Attack Of The Clones

Episode 3: Revenge Of The Sith 

Solo

Rogue One 

Episode 4: A New Hope

Episode 5: The Empire Strikes Back

Episode 6: Return Of The Jedi 

Episode 7: The Force Awakens 

Episode 8:  The Last Jedi

Episode 9: The Rise Of Skywalker