Part 1 of 7: Comments by Shane Ivey

I'm not going to give you a comprehensive review of Attack of the Clones, because Martin Thomas already did that and he did a heck of a job. I think I actually enjoyed the movie a little more than he did (although it might have helped that I was with my 7 year old son, who had his brand new collapsible lightsaber and was grooving to the whole thing, even the mushy parts); but, all in all, I think Martin got it right.

There are a couple of things he didn't say, though, or things I want to say differently, or things I just can't quite wrap my brain around. Tell me what you think.

Can't Find a Better An

Girls, help me out here. You're dating this guy. He's young, he's cute, he has a sense of humor, and he does that dysfunctional brooding thing to show he's sensitive, but not too sensitive. (It also helps to spice things up, which is good because he has a really stilted way of talking and can't—sorry, "can not"—use contractions.) Sure, you both work long hours and your jobs kind of conflict, but the relationship has real potential. He smolders when he looks at you, but he can take "No" for an answer. That kind of thing.

Then you find him in the garage fixing something with this really intense, "I'm gonna fix the HELL out of this power coupler!" look on his face. So you ask him what's wrong, because that brooding thing is pretty hot.

"I just killed a whole village of men, women, and children," he says. "I killed them like animals. I hate them!" And then he cries.

Here's where I need the help. Do you (1) say, "That's great, dear," pretend you have to go pick some mushrooms from under the vaporator before dinner or something, and go straight to the cops; (2) get him a lawyer; or (3) pat him gently on the shoulder and sympathize, because he's only human, after all, and sometimes humans have to kill whole villages of men, women, and children.

Now, I'm not going to pretend that a smart girl like Padme Amidala—she ruled a whole planet at 14, for cryin' out loud, and did a good job of it, too; how do the other Girl Scouts keep up with that?—can't fall for a jerk. It happens all the time. But this isn't your average, every day, trailer park kind of jerkiness. It's not like Anakin called from a pay phone at 8:30 Saturday morning and told her, "Baby, I feel so bad. I really tied one on last night, and I totalled the speeder and the cops made me sleep it off in detention. Do yew still LUUUV me?" It just ain't the same.

Do the cuteness and the brooding make the mass murder okay? Because they seemed to do the trick for Padme.

And does this explain why the frat jerks got all the dates in college?

Palpatine foresees him becoming the greatest of the Jedi.

Yoda and His Badness

In my theatre, the moment that knocked the audience out was not when Yoda fired up his lightsaber. It was a few minutes before, when Christopher Lee's Count Dooku had just beat Anakin and Obi-Wan down and was about to finish them off, and the camera picks up this shadow coming around the corner. It's a short little silhouette with a shuffling limp, and everybody knows who it is. Everyone in the theatre—every single person—laughed the exact same laugh. It was that low, vindictive, knowing laugh that says, "Man, you pissed the WRONG guy off. You're gonna GET IT now!" The whole theatre. It would have been a little scary, but I was doing it, too.

The actual getting and giving of "it" was fun—"it" being in this case a Yoda-size lightsaber ass-whipping: when he got his Force on, the little guy was spry as a rabid wolverine—but not really as great as that split second when we realized what was about to happen. That was a Star Wars moment.

Making the Most of a Name Like "Dooku"

Damn, can Christopher Lee get some mileage out of evil! The man's 80 and he still makes these roles look good. If only the rest of the cast could make cornball Lucasian dialog sound natural, Attack of the Clones would have been a lot more fun.

Especially the mushy parts.