The Easter Bunny has come!  And instead of leaving me a chocolate replica of himself, he’s posted Plinkett’s in-depth review of Star Wars: Episode Two – Attack of the Clones on YouTube.

Plinkett is the name of the reviewer who made news last year by posting a 70-minute critique of The Phantom Menace.  Now he’s topped it by posted and even more elaborate, even longer 90-minute review of Attack of the Clones.  You’re probably hearing those running times and thinking that there’s no way they can be entertaining enough to warrant those lengths, but I dare you to start watching the first part of his Episode One review and not get sucked right into it.  Go ahead.  Here it is:

Watching Plinkett’s reviews has got me all fired up again, remembering some of my feelings about the prequel trilogy:

• I call bullshit on George Lucas from Jump Street.  Episode One proved that he’s full of shit about having the whole long story worked out ahead of time.  It’s like that myth that Sylvester Stallone was homeless before writing and starring in Rocky – a good story that feeds the mythology, but is utter bullshit.  He might have had a couple of ideas randomly floating around, but my impression from Episode One is that George Lucas bought into his own hype, took it for granted that a prequel trilogy was going to be earth-shakingly awesome, and then went “oh shit, I’d better think of something!” when he got to where he had to shoot something for the release to be on time.
• Episode Two should have been Episode One.  It plays like it’s the beginning.  There’s no reason whatsover to show us Anakin Skywalker as a child, except that George Lucas was rushing to get one movie done instead of thinking out the whole trilogy ahead of time.  But the inverse scenario can also be a problem, which is the reason why Iron Man, as great as it is, is not the classic that it almost was.  It’s also the reason why the Hulk movie was a dud.  In those two cases, the reason is that they’re so focused on building up towards a posse-cut team up Avengers movie that they’re scrimping on making the individual movie something that stands alone.  I guess you can’t win on this one.
• What’s up with the pervy romance angle?  Amidala is a grown woman in the first one.  Even if she’s only supposed to be sixteen or so, Anakin is about ten.  Then suddenly Anakin is all grown up, and nothing suggests that Amidala is any older than she was in the first movie.  But even if they had cast another actress in the role to play Amidala ten years later, there’s still nothing to suggest why a little boy grown up a bit is of any interest to a woman who has been Queen and a Senator.
• CGI Yoda is awful.  I understand that he can’t light saber fight if he’s a puppet, but why does he have to look so gross?

Whenever I draw at Free Comic Book Day, a lot of the kids want me to draw them characters from the prequel trilogy and it makes me want to scold their parents for not selling them on the original trilogy.  For shame, parents of today’s youth.

Tags: movies, review, star wars