May 16, 2002
Attack of the What?
I realize my last editorial was also an entertainment gripe. My apologies for not being more diverse. I went to see Star Wars Episode II last night, at 12:03 AM. We got to the theater at 10:30, and half the seats were empty but were all being saved by people sitting in the other half. We had to sit in side seats so we didn't get full impact of the digital sound. I'll go ahead and point out that 10:30 PM is my normal bedtime, so just sitting down to wait for a movie to start at that time was challenging.
The movie itself was pretty good. I liked it a lot more than Episode I. I thought it contained too many pop culture references, but the action scenes were great. I have no idea what Padme sees in Anakin, but it takes all kinds, I guess. I've realized that from a larger "Star Wars world view" perspective, only two interesting things happen in the first movie: Anakin and Padme meet, and Palpatine becomes chancellor. Everything else that happens is helping one of those two events take place. You could also say it was important for Anakin to meet Qui-Gon (and by association, Obi-Wan Kenobi), but once he met Padme, that was inevitable.
In "Attack of the Clones" (the title is extremely lame but also misleading in a clever sort of way, to George Lucas's credit) more significant things are going on. It's sort of like in the original Episode IV, they blow up the Death Star, and in Episode VI, they blow up the other Death Star, but in "Empire Strikes Back" nothing really phenomenal happens but all the stuff is important. This movie is more like that. And the bad Jedi is a lot cooler than Darth Maul, I don't care what everyone else thinks. Except for the double-ended lightsabre, that was cool, and new bad Jedi doesn't have one.
The big PFFT about all this is that I'm terribly tired today. I don't want to be at work, I want to be asleep. But I guess it's worth it, to be able to tell my grandchildren I saw Episode II the day it came out -- as if they'll care.
Published: May 16, 2002
Editor: stacy