Poll: So the romance in Star Wars Attack of the Clones. Yay or nay?

[Lieju]

Well, I know some women who were teenagers at the time who thought the romance was good because she was cool and a queen and it was just fair she got her prince and a tragic love-story.

I personally didn't care, but my complaints aren't necessarily that the dialogue was clunky, like the whole 'I hate sand'-line. I liked it. He is a teenager trying to sound cool and deep.
But their relationship wasn't interesting and they didn't have good chemistry (Anakin had no chemistry with anyone). And it's clear Lucas can't write natural dialogue. The clunkiness is all well and good when he is supposed to come across as a dork, but it requires some actual human connection as well.

The reason the romantic scenes in Empire and Jedi worked was because Lucas wasn't involved with directing/writing the scripts. The reason they FAIL horribly in the prequels is GEORGE LUCAS CAN'T DIRECT/WRITE. He's a good lore builder,

He is not a good lore builder.

None of this stuff makes sense, and the stuff that works has been done thousands of times before in fantasy/scifi. (Not to say that's necessarily bad, but you don't get the credit)

When your biology makes no sense (like anything involving Jar-Jar's people) and the politics are either silly or nonsensical, that's not good lore-building.

How could you not love brilliant writing like this


Call the Oscars ************...

He is a teenager who has never been allowed to date and who is trying to impress a hot girl. How do you suppose he would sound in a situation like that?

Although I'm a bit worried Lucas actually considers that cool and deep.

 

[Mikeyfell]

How could you not love brilliant writing like this


Call the Oscars ************...
Are you sure when she said it was the "best part" of the movie that she wasn't trying to say "The rest of the movie is worse than this?"


It's shit, But... I'm tempted to vote "yay" just because I can appreciate it outwardly as a train wreck, the same way I appreciate the first Transformers movie.
But from a critical film making perspective it's one of the worst things ever.

 

[loc978]

The book did okay (what can I say, romance is an appealing fantasy), the movie stripped most of it out and Anakin's actor flubbed what was left.

So if you mean the movie specifically... strongly nay. If you mean the book... meh leaning towards yay. (from a 32 year old male, lifelong fan of the Star Wars universe).

 

[The Enquirer]

It's a film romance that is so bad and tedious that it manages to sap the energy away from the good main plot involving obi-wan. The stuff with Jango Fett and the clone army is actually pretty interesting, and it's held up by a really strong performance by Ewan McGregor. But that Romance takes up so much of the film that any fleeting hopes of cool Obi-Wan stuff are quickly drowned out by cocktease senators and Sand People genocide.

Ewan McGregor, Christopher Lee, Samuel Jackson and Liam Neeson were some of the only characters I felt like were true star wars characters. They each showed themselves to have specific personality traits that make them feel like actual heroes or an actual villain. The clones were not given nearly enough attention. I mean the title of the movie was centered around them attacking something. The romance was something that had to happen but it could have happened in a way that was more directly related to the plot, not off to the side in some hole somewhere.

OT: No one is allowed to use the excuse that he was emotionally unstable anymore. No one. You can't use that as an excuse for bad acting anymore. At every single other point Anakin is shown to be headstrong, even a little too quick to rush into things across the board, except during the AotC love scenes. It completely conflicts with his character everywhere else so saying that he was emotionally unstable during every single love scene in that movie just does not work anymore. The only times within reason he should have been emotionally unstable was after seeing his mom died, and during Revenge when he thinks Padme brought Obi-wan with him and betrayed him. Other than that it is not a reason to excuse poor writing, organization and acting on the actors and writers behalf. Even materials outside of the films show he was strong minded and stable during those times.

 

[Muspelheim]

Weeeeell... Not a bad idea on paper. It's just that the performance by the actors, well...

http://www.reelfilm.com/images/tbird6.jpg

That, basically.

Hell, it might be a bad example, the Supermarionation puppets had loads more personality and liveliness than Anakin ever did, come to think of it.

 

[TheMigrantSoldier]

If Anakin were more likeable as a character then all would be good.

 

[Hero of Lime]

Nay, I actually have very little against the prequels as opposed to many others. However, that "romance" was for lack of a better word, blarg.

 

[Something Amyss]

Anakin spent the whole movie looking constipated even when he was with Padme. That's not love.

They say love hurts. Maybe he was passing a love kidney stone.

Seriously though, I liked almost everything about Attack of the Clones better then Phantom Menace. But when it comes to that romance bullshit. XP

I have trouble honestly assessing it because I remember the romance so much. And hating Anakin. Vader is supposed to be a tragic figure, but between serial killer demeanor and bad romance lines....Ugggh.

Also, I remember Yoda flipping around like a gymnast on meth.

 

[Evonisia]

Ugh, I didn't like it. Anakin was just inconsistent in his character because of the romance, too. In all honesty I don't like any romances in the 6 films and I haven't read the books on any of them except The Phantom Menace.

 

[SKBPinkie]

How could you not love brilliant writing like this


Call the Oscars ************...
Are you sure when she said it was the "best part" of the movie that she wasn't trying to say "The rest of the movie is worse than this?"


It's shit, But... I'm tempted to vote "yay" just because I can appreciate it outwardly as a train wreck, the same way I appreciate the first Transformers movie.
But from a critical film making perspective it's one of the worst things ever.

Damn it. I wanted to post that video.

Yeah, the "romance" in most media is bad. Like, really bad.

 

[Nimcha]

Yeah, didn't work out that well. But it had to be established, I guess. It just sucks because it's such an integral part of Anakin's downfall... luckily they did a lot better in episode 3. In my opinion.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

I could never get over the fact Anakin was some kid in the first movie and Hayden Hunk Christensen in the second movie, while Natalie Portman remained the same in both.

 

[Amaror]

I didn't mind when i first saw them. But when i first saw them i was like 11 and didn't know anything about romance. The way Anikin acted made sense to me when i was that age, take of that what you will.
I didn't saw them since.

Edit: Why was the captcha in spanish?!
And even more important: When i answered it randomly, because it was in spanish, and it accepted it, why do you even have that captcha?!

 

[DkLnBr]

I dont like it. Not so much the idea of the romance, but how it was handled. It just seemed like it was shoe-horned in at the last minute, and it was pretty ham-fisted. Like a preteen girl wrote it, and then Lucas decided it was good enough

 

[Vrex360]

I'm firmly on the 'nay' side of things because as I've gotten older and am less impressed by the fight scenes and cgi I have begun to realize that the prequel trilogy really was awful.

The lines were so painful, the 'I don't like sand' being one example and I swear you can see the actors looking annoyed to be saying some of that out loud. I felt especially bad for Natalie Portman because well I know she is capable of much better. She is an amazing actress when given the chance but here she is given nothing and forced to work with some of the most painful lines I have ever heard. Somehow George Lucas managed to get the absolute worst out of her and when you see her in other movies it is really jarring.

I also feel bad for Hayden Christiansen though mostly because he had the task of being one of the most petulant unlikeable male romantic leads in modern cinema history. Anakin whines, moans and complains the whole way through and even crosses the event horizon when he slaughtered an entire village of sand people down to the last child. Seriously THAT should have been a warning sign.

Then there's also the weird age gap thing, now I don't mind that Padme is clearly older than Anakin by several years but what is beyond strange is that Anakin seems to have aged about ten years and she still looks exactly the same, in fact everyone does. The age gap is never mentioned or explained, Anakin just randomly becomes ten years older and no one else does. I heard a rumor that supposedly Padme was supposed to be fourteen at the time of Phantom Menace and yeah, she so did not look fourteen. Hell if they were supposed to be romantic leads from the beginning why not have Anakin have been a teenager right from the start? Sparing us Jake lloyd in the process (and sparing him from years of bullying).
As it stands it's just wierd, Padme by all counts should basically be a cougar and yet here she is EXACTLY THE SAME AGE AS HIM. No explanation, no context, no 'Naboo people age differently' hand wave.

So yeah don't like it, wierd time paradox age thing going on, the fact that the leads have no chemistry, the fact that Anakin is an obnoxious prick long before he became Darth Vader and the lines... dear god the lines...

The idea could have worked, Vader having someone he loved (and naturally Luke and Leia did need a mother) could add to the tragedy but instead he just comes across as a prick, she comes across as bland and in the third movie he becomes a domestic abuser in only a few scenes. The idea was strong but my god the execution leaves a lot to be desired.

 

[Asita]

Uh...no. The actors had no chemistry, the dialogue between them was clunky at best, and ultimately there's a level of creepiness in the relationship that helps to torpedo the relationship again on closer inspection.

I mean let's review their romance arc for a minute. They meet in Phantom Menace wherein Anakin immediately starts crushing on Padme (His first line to her was literally described her as one of the most beautiful things in the galaxy) after which they have very little interaction. This is when Anakin is 9 years old. Cue the time skip of ten years between the end of that film and the start of Attack of the Clones, which reveals almost immediately that they have had no contact for the length of that time skip. Let me go ahead and lay that flat. At the start of Attack of the Clones Anakin had spent half his life pining for a memory consisting solely of what we saw onscreen in Phantom Menace. That's not endearing, that's obsessively creepy.

 

[Baron von Blitztank]

Did the romance-scenes involve Lightsaber fights or droid fights with hundreds of clones? No? Then I don't care!

 

[AuronFtw]

There was a romance in Attack of the Clones? Was it between C3P0 and R2D2? Oh no, wait, Mace Windu and Obi Wan. Hrm...

 

[octafish]

Well it sure as hell isn't Casablanca is it? Hell, it isn't even Lady and the Tramp. Just slightly better than Tough Guys Don't Dance...just. Oh man, oh god, oh man, oh god etc. Like I said, just.