Wow.

What else can you say after seeing the three trailers for Episode II? Either Lucasfilm had the best editors in the business (probably true) to produce these, or it seems practically impossible to botch "Attack of the Clones" after the splendors we have just seen.

Before we attempt the predictions game, let me say that these three minutes already constitute one of the most beautiful pieces of moviemaking I have seen. We always knew Lucas has a very strong visual sense. Even in the less than perfect The Phantom Menace, many scenes took your breath away -- the arrival in Coruscant with the floating aerial landing platforms; the underwater Gungan city; the Senate chamber with its delegates' pods on repulsors; the red light from the Sith Infiltrator innards spilling out into the Tatooine twilight; Amidala's regal costumes and Kabuki make-up; Darth Maul... (I cared less for the Naboo palace, because I kept wondering what a very recognizable piece of Baroque architecture, its statuary simply replaced by second-rate papier-mâché figures, was doing in Star Wars; the whole pod race thing was visibly lifted from "Ben Hur"; and the underwater chase was a poor takeoff on the ESB asteroid field pursuit.)

But the wealth of AOTC scenery we see from a total of 180 seconds of film (well, digital shoot) here is breathtaking. Palaces: lakeside, desert-side, Senator's city residence, skyscraper penthouse. Streets: à la Blade Runner, crowded and rainy; sun-drenched and dusty on Tatooine; classical stone colonnades; Venice-like canals. There's a Waterworld-type city in a ocean storm from whose tossing inky waters a flying pteranodon emerges. There are towering desert dwellings that look like the Jawa sandcrawler from ANH, except that they have picture windows. There's an achingly beautiful lakeside terrace reminiscent of villa Thyssen on Lake Lugano: I wouldn't necessarily have thought that George Lucas could stage romantic settings, but he can, all right.

Everywhere there's the overflowing wealth of detail we've come to expect from Lucasfilm as our due, but which no other producer or director gives us. Rows and rows of blue-lit, bald holo-operators who may, or may not be, the famed clones' controllers, or even clones themselves. Hundreds of different flying craft models, from Anakin's angular desert bike to the huge, somehow alien rusted cargo taking off in Coruscant (*what* is it doing in this overcivilized cityscape?) to a zippy corridor snoop; sometimes just glimpsed behind a penthouse window or streaking through the Coruscant sky. There are climates and costumes and crowds and aliens and beings and That Guy In The Mandalorian Armor. I remember, seeing ESB on opening day in 1980, feeling so incredibly grateful that George Lucas, who'd with ANH given life on screen to a world far beyond my best imaginings from sci-fi comics and pulp novels, had managed to top himself after the long three-year wait. I can't imagine AOTC not being a better movie than TPM.

That's even before we consider the story, and this story cannot fail to grasp the imagination this time. Coming of age. Romance. Doomed love. Conflict. Betrayal. Intrigue. Terrorist attacks. Political crisis. Underhanded evil. Character development. Yum, yum.

It was often difficult to care for the characters in TPM. A Jedi knows no emotions? Oh, please. Qui-Gon didn't do it for me. Neither did young Obi-Wan. They were so... serene. So predictable. So was Maul: a cardboard baddie through and through, no psychology, no lines, no onscreen evil deeds (killing Naboo women and kids during the invasion, disemboweling some underperforming Nemoidian, whatever. Something.) Just some really kewl dueling. Superlative eye candy, yes. The Sith You Love To Hate? Yawn.

But the central characters of AOTC are the two who already showed the most potential in TPM: Amidala and Anakin. And talking about Anakin, as far as I am concerned, Hayden Christensen is the dreamboat assoluto, a piece of casting as inspired as James Earl Jones's voice for Darth Vader. That frown! That pout! Those moves! That smile! It's not that he looks dishy, though he does. It's that you can see the temper, the ethical corner-cutting he's capable of. Call it the conjunction of a fine actor (eat your heart out, Mark Hamill) with good writing. To me, of the "Forbidden Love" trailer, the most ominous line is Anakin suggesting to Amidala, presumably of their nascent love affair, "We could keep it a secret." "It'd be living a lie, I couldn't do that. Could you, Anakin?" she answers, troubled; and her trouble echoes ours, because, of course, we realize the moral flaw that prevents him from understanding how insulting his proposition is. Since she is the politician, and as Obi Wan warns, "not to be trusted", while he is a Jedi, and as such supposedly "the guardian of order and justice", we know for certain that the Old Republic's order has been turned on its head, and chaos must surely follow.

Not that we don't get plenty of foreshadowing of Vader. "You're not all-powerful." "Well, I should be! Some day, I'll be the most powerful Jedi ever!" Somehow, Christensen's delivery maintains the exact balance between teen frustration and ominous portent: it's a fine moment.

We get to see fights. We catch a glimpse of Anakin writhing on the ground under an onslaught of blue Force-lightning, just as his son will one future day on the second Death Star. Obi Wan has been taken prisoner by someone -- Gardulla? Jabba? Some Sith? -- in a place that looks by its golden light to be Tatooine, and Anakin attempts his rescue with a Dug-like alien. There are aerial chases in Coruscant that look just the way I imagined "Wedge's Gamble". There's at least one new baddie, probably two, and that's not even counting Chancellor Palpatine whom we glimpse statesman-like in his Coruscant penthouse offices. Yoda looks miffed. Mace Windu looks good. There are clones, or Stormies, or Stormie-clones. There's The Kiss. There are other kisses. There's enough for several movies here, and more than enough for a gr-r-r-eat Episode II, if George Lucas assembles it right.

So what do I think will happen in this movie?

I have taken quite a few precautions to remain spoiler-free until May 16, 2002. I don't want to look at The Insider magazine or read the Episode II conference on the boards here, avoid TheForce.net and plan to stow away unread the Vanity Fair issue that'll have the Ep 2 photoshoot, sometime in early 2002. (Publicists and editors are predictable. There will be one such issue, shot by Annie Leibovitz again, probably dated March, out in early February. I'm taking bets on that one.) So my predictive screenplay here is the product of my imagination, set alight by the three trailers.

Episode II starts ten years after TPM with the arrival on Coruscant of Obi Wan with his Padawan Anakin, about to be accepted as a full-fledged Jedi by the Jedi Council. There may or may not be another reason for the trip. The Senate is in session, and Amidala represents Naboo there -- she holds Palpatine's old office. She may or may not still hold the title of Queen for her planet. (Her honorific is now "My Lady", which should disqualify her, but George has never been very accurate for aristocratic etiquette.) There have been some disturbing terrorist attempts made against Amidala and her senate faction, and she has asked for help from the Jedi Council, who duly send the available talent, i.e. Obi-Wan and his Padawan.

The Amidala-Anakin first meeting produces the deliciously-anticipated simultaneous double-takes. "Ani... Ani? My, you've grown!" "And so have you... [cough] ...grown more beautiful, I mean." (She may be the Queen, or ex-Queen, but has anyone noticed how Hayden Christensen looks like a more charismatic version of England's Prince William?) Obi-Wan sees these two fall for one another practically under his eyes. He warns Anakin. Anakin, surprise, surprise, couldn't care less. As another attack is made, the two Jedi move to act as the Queen/Senator's bodyguards. Sure enough, yet another attempt is made on Amidala's life in the middle of the night. Obi-Wan flies (literally through a plate-glass window on the umpteenth floor) after the mysterious attacker. Anakin jumps into an airspeeder to pluck him in mid-air, saving his Master from a surely fatal fall kilometers below. Cut to hair-raising chase above Coruscant and in the depths of Coruscant's lowlife lower levels. Brawl. The fiend escapes. Shaken by the attacks, Mace Windu orders Anakin to accompany Amidala on her return trip to Naboo, where she'll be safer. For some reason, Obi-Wan urgently needs to be somewhere else. It may be that he disapproves of Anakin taking on this mission. It may be that Anakin, now a full-fledged Jedi, doesn't need to accompany his Master everywhere any longer.

Anyway, all is set for The Trip That Will See These Two Fall In Luv (hard.) She may be six years older, but he is eight inches taller, and he's got brawn to match. Cut to the movie's mid-section on Naboo and a series of ever more romantic settings, from a lush field of grass next to three waterfalls (a geographical impossibility, but who's counting?) to an expedition to Tatooine to a summer lakeside palace to... no, by now, they have kissed, and all is set for the This Is Terribly, Terribly Wrong But We Can't Help Our Luv situation.

For Anakin, who still half-way minded Obi-Wan's warning on Coruscant, is by now reckless. On the way to Naboo, he and Amidala have detoured by Tatooine, where, improbably, Anakin knows just the right little louche restaurant to take his Queen/Senator/runway model girlfriend for gourmet Bith food. He (Anakin) can't help showing off to Watto that since he (Watto) lost him (Anakin) in that dice game, he (Anakin) has gone on to better things and become a Jedi while he (Watto) is still stuck in Smallsville, Mos Espa. Not to mention that, swathed inside ten meters of ruched restaurant curtains, is The Most Beautiful Girl In The Galaxy (TM), on his (Anakin's) arm, and how do ya like 'em green banthas?

It also could be that in the ten years that he was a Jedi Padawan, not one time did Anakin try to go and visit Mum, still slaving away on the dustball; but now that he can borrow from the grateful Queen/Senator/arm candy the price of Shmi's indentures, he rushes to Tatooine to finally free her. Bad news at any rate: Shmi is no longer there, either sold off or dead. Anakin rails in anger against Obi-Wan, who never let him try to rescue his mother, and is opposed to his loving the other woman in his life.

Anakin had rescued Amidala: now Padmé can comfort Ani. All is set for the Naboo Post Kiss. The two start an affair, offscreen since this is still a PG-13 movie, torrid nonetheless. Anakin decides to leave the Jedi order, Amidala to give up her Senator's seat. The two leave the Naboo Palace and all its riches, including porter-droids and repulsor-sleds, Anakin carrying his lady-love's two Samsonites while she keeps the vanity-case with her three-step Clinique cosmetics. They will settle on a moisture ranch Anakin bought on Tatooine with the money that was to have bought back Shmi.

But hardly have Anakin and Amidala settled on Tatooine that Obi-Wan shows up to ask Anakin to come back to Coruscant and help the Jedi, he's their only hope. For meanwhile, back on Coruscant, Darth Sidious naturally has a new apprentice. This Evil Sith may or may not be the guy in the Mandalorian Armor, or employ the guy in the Mandalorian Armor. The Sith Duo have stepped up their attacks against Old Republic senators including those of some other waterlogged nation, of whom I am thoroughly incapable of predicting anything because their planet only gets two seconds of airtime in the trailers. So infer any amount of dark doings here.

Trouble is, upon arriving in Tatooine, Obi-Wan manages to get immediately kidnapped by some Hutt who plans to feed him to a Rancor in the old pod-racing arena in order to provide the local crowds with entertainment, so that Anakin first has to ally himself to Sebulba's least favorite nephew (the one Sebulba always picked on) to rescue his ex-Master. Bad call: Third Nephew, hoping to curry favor with Sebulba, or the unknown kidnappers, betrays Anakin mid-rescue.

By now, my predictions are completely hazy. (I'm very happy George left us a good dose of mystery.) In fact, I have no idea what happens at all. Since I couldn't help noticing the presence of Jar Jar in one of the trailers, the disaster may be worse than mere galactic domination by the Sith. I think we can assume there is a final confrontation between Anakin, Obi-Wan and the baddie, either on Coruscant or on the waterlogged world. It may be that the baddie buys the farm, creating a professional opening for Anakin as Sith apprentice to Darth Sidious. It's almost certain that Amidala won't approve of this career change. Does Anakin lie to her (we know he can) and tell her not to worry her pretty head while he secretly apprentices to Palpy? Do they marry? Do they split? Is the Jedi temple destroyed? Does Jar W. Jar take over the world? I'm afraid we won't be able to tell before May 16, 2002. But one prediction I will make now: Star Wars, Episode II: Attack of the Clones will be stupendous. Thank you, George.

Reactions After Seeing The Film

I was right about Vanity Fair.

And Attack Of The Clones?

Of course I liked it. I have now seen it four times, and expect to finally get the full glory of it in digital projection next Monday, in Brussels. (Paris's only digital theater shows it dubbed in French, and there is no way I am going to subject myself to the horrors of half-pay TV actors' voices instead of Sam Jackson's, Christopher Lee's and Ewan McGregor's mellifluous tones.) AOTC is a great movie, miles above The Phantom Menace, amazingly beautiful to look at, and fun to follow, without any of the dragged-out sequences that marred TPM (the stupefyingly boring underwater chase, the podrace).

So could it have been better? You bet. No surprises here: George Lucas hates writing, and it shows. Jonathan Hales, his co-author, was too junior to contradict him loudly enough ("You can type this sh*t, George, but you sure can't say it," as Harrison Ford famously slammed some typically wooden line on the ANH set.) The movie's structure -- Lucas is a first-rate editor, and whenever he doubts his own text, he cuts scenes ruthlessly -- is impeccable. Some final script-polishing would have been invaluable. Lines such as "I'm haunted by the kiss you should never have given me. My heart is beating, hoping that kiss will not become a scar" will go down in the ultimate annals of world-class cringe-inducing cheesiness. But the Anakin - Obi-Wan belabored exchange ("I haven't seen you this nervous since you fell into that Gundark nest" -- "It was you who fell into that nightmare, Master. I had to rescue you") in the Coruscant turbolift, as they prepare to meet Padmé Amidala again after ten years, will surely rank a close second. It takes a superb veteran like Christopher Lee to deliver every line, however hackneyed, with style and meaning. ("Patience, Viceroy, she will die.")

Throughout the movie, we see where the script intends to go: Anakin chafing at Obi-Wan's reprimands even though the two have developed a genuine affection; Padmé slowly realizing that "that little boy [she] met on Tatooine" has grown up and become damnably attractive. But between the general awkwardness and the chopped scenes (the original screenplay illuminates many small mysteries, from the departure of Dooku from the Jedi Order to how Anakin and Amidala warm to one another on Naboo) we are left to connect the emotional dots ourselves, almost like spectators of a silent movie, with what remains of the unwieldy dialogue in place of title cards.

Lucas is so enamored of speed that no character development is allowed to happen in front of us: Anakin's rebelliousness is a given, so that when he protests to Obi-Wan "You're the closest thing I have to a father... " it doesn't register -- not a look, not a move we've seen onscreen shows him demonstrating half the affection for his master that he shows most mechanical contraptions -- the yellow Coruscant speeder, the pit droid he quickly fixes for Watto in Mos Espa. Similarly, when Padmé suddenly says -- and very movingly too; this is one of the few instances of Portman carrying her acting weight -- "I truly, deeply love you," our reaction is the same as Anakin's. You love him? All she's been doing so far is cut him -- usually deservedly -- down to size. Doris Day may have bickered with Rock Hudson throughout the first 80 minutes of their movies, but we were never in doubt that some major chemistry was happening onscreen. (In ESB, Leia did get to tell Han "You have your moments. Not many of them, but you do have them.") Here all we get are hormones.

It's no coincidence that Lucas gives the best reaction shots to CGI characters, Jar-Jar (when Anakin contradicts Obi-Wan in Amidala's apartment, early on) or Yoda: he controls them entirely, unlike the flesh-and-blood actors, who often look less than convinced by what they have to mouth. It's obvious here that, absent the attention of an actors' director like, say, Spielberg or Truffaut, British technique trumps Method acting every time. Natalie Portman's Padmé and Hayden Christensen's Anakin look fantastic -- Anakin's body language and expressions in particular chillingly prefigure Vader -- but often sound awful. Meanwhile, the stage-trained Brits are having a ball. Ian McDiarmid's Palpatine manipulates Jedi and politicians in private -- one elegant short scene shows how he's been "guiding" Anakin for years, setting him up for The Fall -- and pulls a wonderful Thatcher-like number in the Senate. Lee's Count Dooku betters his Saruman performance with a touch of delicious world-weariness ("Then, I'm sorry, old friend... " just before he turns the droids back on). And Ewan McGregor finally comes into his own as Obi-Wan -- more or less fulfilling the wry, cynical part that Han Solo occupied in the HT. He's got some terrific lines ("You don't want to sell me death sticks. You want to go home and rethink your life"; "Good job") and an even more terrific look, with a full beard and mane. Not only does he successfully channel Alec Guinness: he also manages to appear, move, act, a good ten years older not only than what he was in TPM, but than his star turn in last year's Moulin Rouge, in what must be his first fully mature part: I don't mind saying that his various TV interviews during the film's promotion, like Hayden Christensen's, were pretty disappointing, looks- and charisma-wise, which is exactly as it should be.

That being said, what we're left with is enough to make any normal Star Wars fan very, very happy. You can see AOTC a dozen times, and still notice new, lovingly-crafted details, from Zam Wesell's face morphing in fright for a snap second when Anakin jumps onto her speeder, to the proto-Imperial crest on the Republic's aircraft and the clones' armor: it's an immensely generous movie, in which every stop has been pulled with Lucas's typical perfectionism. There isn't a single other director/producer, alive or dead, as dedicated to creating such a layered, complex universe, and as committed to the continuity of such a broad vision. We may joke about George Lucas "winging it" -- a backstory he gave his biographer Dale Pollock [*] in 1983 about Threepio suggests for instance that he'd never thought at the time to have the droid share the same father as Luke -- but in truth, the Galaxy Far, Far Away (otherwise known as Fred) is a huge, consistent universe, with the new trilogy's driving elements of politics, religion and personalities neatly expanding and dovetailing into the first installments.

We know that Anakin is doomed to surrender to the Dark Side and become Darth Vader; but here we see the Jedi setting themselves up for a fall quite clearly: there is hubris ("If an item does not appear in our records, it does not exist"), there is arrogance ("Count Dooku was once a Jedi. He wouldn't assassinate anyone, it is not in his character"), there is disregard ("Dreams pass in time"), and there is a dangerous cynicism ("Politicians are not to be trusted," repeats Obi-Wan time and again, setting up his Padawan for every dictatorial temptation.) No wonder that Dooku tricks them so elegantly by warning Obi-Wan that "a Sith controls the Senate," just so that Yoda can wave away as tainted his -- true -- accusation ("Evil using truth to sow doubt among the forces of Good", Jodo called it on the Boards.) These Jedi deserve Vader: they've paved the way for his ascent. Lucas may write dialogue with a blunt machete, but his political plotting is subtle and ambitious. Palpatine covertly pushes both sides towards war, maneuvers the Senate with a talent Tom Daschle should envy, throws Anakin and Amidala together away from minders and chaperons, and seems in general so in control that some speculate he even masterminded the Tusken attack that costs Shmi her life. (If this is revealed in Episode 3 I'll be truly awed.)

Then of course the movie looks stupendous -- one of my predictions at least that's entirely fulfilled. If anything, the four trailers showed us almost too much: the only complete visual surprises were the Kaminoans themselves, Dexter's Diner, and the Jedi Temple. The temple mostly looked like a matte painting, surprisingly for Lucas: I'll reserve judgment until I have seen the digital version of the movie. Dexter's Diner was amusing and very much in the ANH Cantina tradition: a wink and a nod at gumshoe noir flicks as well as a Lucasian self-reference to American Graffiti (Anakin the hotrod pilot of the speeder chase also owes a debt to Graffiti's Bob Falfa.) The entire Kamino sequence was utterly unexpected and unsettling: cold, futuristic, A.I.-Spielbergian. Lama Su's and Taun We's ambiguously polite welcome underlines the moral void in which the millions of clones are being "grown"; the Jango Fett / Obi-Wan faceoff in Jango's sterile living unit is a beaut in which all three protagonists, including young Boba, smolder perfectly; and the Fett-Kenobi fight in the rain is a classic. I'm still wondering how Palpatine managed to arm all these battalions: suddenly they have blasters, armored vehicles, transports, Star Destroyers? Where do the credits come from? That's procurement on a superior plane: Don Rumsfeld would certainly like to know how the thing is done.

We had glimpsed Coruscant and the bar in the trailers: they fulfill every Blade-Runneresque prediction and then some, with Japanese overtones worthy of William Gibson, in the night-time speeder chase. Anakin's "Jedi business -- go back to your drinks" is another of those lines worthy of the HT; and Obi-Wan's lightsaber slicing of Zam Wesell's arm satisfyingly echoes the Mos Eisley Cantina scene: when we finally get to see the six films in sequence, we'll recognize the young Jedi Master in the old man with the quick bar-room reflexes.

Enough has been said about the awkwardness of the Naboo love-scenes (with the meadow picnic the most cringingly Sound-Of-Music-ish: did Lucas intend the reference to the rise of Nazism in Austria?) There as in the arena, every scene involving Anakin riding a CGI beastie looks pretty awful, again a surprise coming from Lucas. Bad call on my Italian Lakes: it's villa Balbianello on Lake Como that's undergone Naboo-ization (CGI-ed round roofs). Bad call, in fact, on quite a few (but not all) of my predictions: let's list them in sequence.

I'd got my beginning reasonably right. Obi-Wan won't let Anakin pass the Jedi Trials yet, but otherwise the circumstances -- terrorist attempts, Amidala holding Palpy's old Senate seat, the first meeting, the speeder chase, Anakin plucking Obi-Wan in mid-fall -- were all fairly easy to deduce from the trailers. (The killer does not escape, but her boss does.) Mace does indeed order Anakin to take Amidala back to Naboo, while Obi-Wan goes off to Kamino by way of Dexter's House of Galactic Cholesterol (and yes, Obi-Wan has second thoughts about the wisdom of sending Anakin on this mission alone). Now's also the time when I have second thoughts about the wisdom of trying to outguess George Lucas, because I fell for one of the trailers' several traps, which was to make us assume that Our Two Romantic Leads Would fall In Luv. (Well, immediately.)

I had the Tatooine trip completely misjudged, even though it was fairly predictable that Shmi would figure at some stage. (Pernilla August was never mentioned in the advance publicity, probably so that we'd have the shock of Anakin's Tusken expedition.) After reading Jodo's remarkable Death Scene Analysis, I now have no problems with Shmi's actual demise, and the rest of the scene is very powerful. I can't remember if The Hero's Journey Across The Wasteland To Save A Loved One appears in Joseph Campbell Hero With A Thousand Faces, but the entire raid is straight out of the best American mythology anyway, John Ford's The Searchers, in a very conscious homage. In the screenplay, Anakin's confession is more drawn-out, as he tells Padmé of his remorse and how he has failed the Jedi: it's a pity this was cut out of the movie, and I hope it will make it to the DVD. Christensen is excellent here -- raw, angry, hurt, dangerous, vulnerable: he has said in interviews he admires James Dean, and Dean's influence is noticeable here in his performance. The vulnerability would also have gone a long way to explain why Padmé finally falls for him: here we see her comforting him almost immediately after he's admitted to a mass murder, which doesn't do much for her image as a wise stateswoman.

Okay, Anakin doesn't leave the Jedi Order, but at least I'd made a good call on the Samsonites. (Couldn't Lucas's art department contrive some more exotic-looking luggage? Or at least something with repulsors? What's the point of having hyperspace interstellar travel if you must carry your own bags?) What with the wardrobe a Senator apparently can't make a move without, these must weigh a ton. (Either Padmé wraps herself in acres of ruched curtains, or she shows enough bare flesh to light up an army of Jedi. Anakin may act awkward around her, but I can't think of a male between the ages of 11 and 90 who wouldn't. It was impossible not to notice her heavy make-up on the terrace: together with her backless little chiffon number, this argued for serious premeditation. They may do things differently in Fred, but this woman was planning seduction. A leather corset in the evening? Sheesh.)

My other major mistake (apart from ignoring the clones, Count Dooku, the Kaminoans, Jango Fett, and half an hour of solid mayhem) was to confuse Tatooine and Geonosis, and here I have to question Lucas's decision to set the action on two separate desert-like planets. One is somewhat sandier, one is somewhat rockier, and even that is a matter of debate: there were plenty of ruddy-red rocks in the TPM podrace. Overall Geonosis appears as an afterthought, just a set for some really cool action scenes: that's because every scene presenting her Archduke, her droid factories, Dooku's setup there, and the separatists, has been cut from the screenplay to be replaced by the Monsters, Inc.-type assembly-line scene in which Padmé, Anakin, Artoo and Threepio jump hoops between giant casting machines and assorted droids. Frankly, we could have done without that scene -- it's so cliché it's spoofed in Galaxy Quest. And with all the cuts from the screenplay, we never learn that the Geonosians are building their droids in secret for the Trade Federation, who has officially accepted a Senate-mandated arms-reduction -- but won't let Republic inspectors check on their good faith, in distinct echoes of Saddam. (From stem cells to the Axis of Evil to trouble with the Senate Leader, it's amazing how the Republic seems to be having a series of Dubya moments.)

This leads to the final battle scene, and that one works on practically every level. Even with less stellar CGI than expected, the arena scene is terrific. (Anakin half-taming and riding the Reek works very well; somehow, you expect him to subjugate wild animals.) Sam Jackson, who does solid work throughout, gets to Pulp-Fictionize ("This party's over!") and Yoda saves the day in Churchillian mode, flying in with the cavalr... er, the clones to turn the tide of the battle. As Our Heroes give chase to Dooku, a significant incident occurs, and I disagree with Toryn here as to its meaning. "The most important moment in Anakin's journey to the dark side," writes Toryn Farr, "may not be when Shmi dies, but when Obi-Wan tells Anakin to forget about Padmé and do his duty. Even Yoda seems to sense that something has shifted. I believe this is the point at which Anakin decides to wash his hands of the Jedi." This, you will recall, happens when Obi-Wan, Anakin and Padmé's transport, shot at by Dooku's outriders, lurches and Padmé falls to the desert floor -- and Anakin screams at the clone pilot to stop the ship. What fascinated me here wasn't so much Anakin's understandable reaction (whatever George Lucas himself may have to say about the danger of attachments, all of Black Hawk Down was precisely posited on the fact that nobody should be left behind, ever) but the fact that Anakin only backed down when Obi-Wan asked him "What would Padmé do in your place?" "She would do her duty," a suddenly sobered Anakin answers. This, as well as other moments in the movie ("Don't worry, I've decided I'm never going to argue with you again") sets up Amidala to become the only force that can restrain the future Vader.

Having seen AOTC four times, every time I like the Yoda-Dooku crowd-pleaser less. A rabid Chihuahua with all the realistic moves of SuperMario is not how I wanted to remember the wisest of all Jedi. But the Anakin-Obi-Wan-Dooku fight is terrific, not least because both Padawan and Master are hopelessly outclassed. Anakin probably makes the worst and most significant mistake of all when he rushes Dooku alone despite Obi-Wan's warnings. Having separated his adversaries, Dooku makes mincemeat of them -- and makes good his escape when Yoda stops the pillar from crushing them. (If we follow the "leave Padmé" reasoning, shouldn't Yoda have let Anakin and Obi-Wan be crushed, rather than let Dooku go?)

Predicting a new Star Wars movie is probably a thankless exercise. We can have all the fun we want, but this (happily) remains George Lucas's sandbox. We now have three years to deconstruct and analyze AOTC in preparation for Episode 3. Does Anakin and Padmé's marriage remain a secret? Can Anakin still be a Jedi, never mind pass his trials? Will Dooku deliver the separatists to the Clone Army? The Death Star plans to Palpy? Will Bail Organa become Anakin's rival? Obi Wan's? Does Darth Sidious ever reveal himself? Does Jar Jar become Majority Leader? Three years!!!

[*] Dale Pollock, "Skywalking", 1983-1990. "Lucas had a mental dossier on C-3PO, too: The robot is 112 years old and Luke is his forty-third master (most of his previous employers were diplomats like Princess Leia). His logic is located in his head, and his storage systems are in the heart and chest area. As a protocol robot, C-3PO is programmed not to reveal classified information, which explains his apparent ignorance of Princess Leia's hologram message." (p. 167)

See the other Predictions/Reviews here.