Are We Still Doing This?

Well then, onto Attack of the Clones. Again, not a comprehensive takedown or review or anything like that - I am not a critic, and everyone and their dog has mocked this film to bits (and then some people have tried to reconstruct its reputation a little - amazingly). No, I apparently just want to force myself to watch all the Star Wars, good and bad, as punishment for my sins.

As the crawl announces, we’ve gone from turmoil in the Galactic Republic to “unrest in the Senate.” At this rate, the saga will probably end on a mild disagreement about phrasing on a non-binding subcommittee resolution. Although if they got Sorkin to write it, I would eat that up.

A question that first appeared in Episode I now becomes even more salient - what precisely does it mean for the Jedi to be “the guardians of peace and order throughout the galaxy”? How precisely do they achieve this? Personally, I find it deeply suspicious that our heroes need a massive army in order to force systems to remain in the republic. I get that the confederacy are called “the confederacy” and are the bad rebels, but if anything the Republic is just as bad, deploying a slave army to force systems to remain in a polity that can’t even be bothered to protect rights within its theoretical boundaries.

At any rate, the Jedi’s close relationship to the chancery and the military leadership raises one of two troublesome possibilities. Either the Jedi are merely enforcers for an oligarchic Senate, or the Senate is an empty pawn of the Jedi, and the Republic is an extremely badly-run theocracy – or perhaps just the demesne of a particularly well-off monastery. It’s additionally suspicious that Anakin can play off chopping someone’s arm off as “Jedi business, go back to your drinks,” and that the Jedi all immediately assume generalships in an army - did they study tactics and grand strategy? What kind of religion is this?

Speaking of the Senate, my head-canon is that Boss Nass appointed Jar-Jar simply to get him off the planet. And oh yeah, this movie reveals that Naboo senators are appointed. In other words, the person who has the most to say in defense of freedom and democracy in this movie was herself appointed by an (elected) monarch - but yet a monarch who sometimes is simply a child and theoretically is a figurehead. I think their democracy has about as much legitimacy as the ham sandwich that Ian McDiarmid is devouring in every scene.

As if to confirm this, there’s a scene where Obi-wan begins lecturing Anakin about the massive influence of money on Senatorial politics, and Anakin shuts him down as if this were a boring subject. But I wish we got more space politics, instead of the ‘romance’ this film tries to serve up. Though the problem there isn’t conceptual, it’s that no one involved acts like a human being. Anakin is incredibly creepy, and yet apparently this works.

I guess Padme does charge at red flags like an enraged bull.

Honestly, maybe she feels she’s obligated to after creeping on child Anakin in the last movie - maybe following through with this is another crooked turn of her strange mind. But it’s seriously weird how she goes for the person who stares at her creepily and won’t stop when asked to, who bosses her around, who openly advocates fascism, and who slaughters children. Their relationship is the biggest leap of science fiction in the whole saga. At least Padme has the excuse of only finally succumbing when she thinks she’s going to die anyway - another great fictional example of people making snap decisions in the face of death, only to live to regret them.

I’d also like to know how Padme changes her hairstyle up in the absence of any maids or salons.

Does Threepio do it? I’m impressed.

At least while this is going on, we have a decent Detective Obi-wan movie, guest starring Temuera Morrison, which I would greatly prefer to watch instead of the rest of this movie. Especially since they shot the Kamino scenes on location in my hometown of Seattle.

I’ll say this for the movie - the factory scene very effectively contributed to my fear complex about assembly lines as a child. Between this and the trash compactor, Star Wars played an outsize role in my childhood fear of heavy industry. But speaking of the factory scene, are we not going to ever talk about how R2 straight up tries to murder C-3P0 by knocking him into the machinery? Couldn’t he have asked him to move?