Star Wars Episode II: Attack Of The Clones
This set has pretty much been living in my DVD player since I picked it up last week. Granted, my young daughter really likes the music videos, but even without her influence, these discs stand up to heavy re-viewing. (And heavy reviewing, as the length of this piece should indicate…) I’m assuming, of course, that you liked Attack of the Clones in the first place; otherwise, even the entertaining and informative behind-the-scenes features won’t do much for you.
For the most part, the visuals of the film itself hold up quite well. On the Phantom Menace DVD, the color depth seemed just slightly off, enough that some of the composited layers didn’t quite match up right, but I haven’t noticed that problem so much on this disc. Watching in closer proximity, there is a greater possibility that some of the animations won’t quite seem as smooth, but overall the movie looks and sounds terrific.
There’s a great set of extras included as well. Disc 1 features an audio commentary track by Lucas, producer Rick McCallum, editor/sound designer Ben Burtt, and a host of effects people from ILM including animation director Rob Coleman. The track is pretty good, although I dearly wish that someone would sit Lucas down and have him comment on something for an hour to get warmed up before they turn the mic on. For the first chunk of the film, he’ll say things like “Here we see Anakin chafing under Obi-Wan’s direction” while Anakin’s on screen pretty much saying, “I’m really chafing under Obi-Wan’s direction!” As the film goes on, though, Lucas delves a little bit more into exploring the themes of the story and describing the thought process that led to scenes being reshot, moved around, or otherwise fiddled with. Burtt spends more time talking as an editor than as a sound designer this time than he did on Menace, which I found a welcome change. The most remarkable thing about the commentary, though, is that the person who spends the most time talking about acting and performance is Coleman. To a degree, this makes sense, since the pressure was on to make the CG Yoda work. But he also talks about the performances of the actors, a subject that I don’t think ever escapes Lucas’ lips. Which probably tells you all you need to know about the way this movie was put together.
If you want to know more, though, you can just head over to disc 2. The long-form documentary “From Puppets to Pixels” focuses on the development of Clones‘ digital characters, especially Yoda but also Lama Su, Dexter Jettster, and the digital stunt doubles that handled some of the action for McGregor, Temuera Morrison, Christopher Lee and others. You can see how Lucas assembles the movie more than he films it, surrounding his actors in bluescreen and filling in the environment later. It’s no wonder the actors describe making these movies as a trying experience, even if I can see the advantages from the perspective of saving time, money, and the physical well-being of the cast. That said, the documentary makes clear that the movie’s not just about whiz-bang effects, from Lee’s voiceover (taken from an EPK interview) about the importance of “performance, performance, performance” to the animators’ agonizing over the nuances of the digital characters’ acting. My favorite element of the documentary is the repeated attempts to get Yoda’s closing “Begun, the Clone War has” line down correctly. Lucas’ reactions to the less-than-successful first tries are amusing, and the back-and-forth between director and animators is interesting stuff.
There are two more original documentaries, shorter than “Puppets to Pixels” but still worthwhile. “Films Are Not Released, They Escape” tracks the various stages of development for the movie’s sound, which is always a fun process to watch. “State of the Art” discusses the previsualization process, in which the effects team uses rough models to mock up the settings, camera angles, and direction of shots before filming actually begins. It’s really interesting to see this process, especially on such heavily animated sequences as the final battles. What disappoints me about all these documentaries, though, is their focus on the technical how-they-did-it aspects of the film. The DVD for Phantom Menace featured the excellent “The Beginning,” which delves into the writing, casting, rehearsals, filming, editing, design, music recording, and so on for that movie. I’d have loved to see some of that here. How did Lucas and cowriter Jonathan Hales work together? How did Christensen land the part? Did the returning cast talk a lot about the reaction to Phantom Menace? There’s not a lot to answer these kinds of questions, and the press kit featurettes on “Story,” “Love” and “Action” don’t really have any depth to them. The 12 short features that originally appeared on the official site do provide a small glimpse of what I’m talking about, but I would love to have seen a whole lot more.
The second disc also features the “Across the Stars” music video, every television commercial for the theatrical release and all four trailers for the movie, including the Mystery trailer that was previously only available on the web. (Since that’s my favorite of the four, I’m happy to have it here.) There are eight deleted scenes with completed effects, most of which expand Padmè’s backstory and character development. While they move the romantic subplot along a little more smoothly, they aren’t worth slowing the film down for, so I agree with the decision to cut them. Two of the scenes were eliminated because Lucas decided to rework and restage the scenes in a different context - Dooku trying to convince Padme to join the separatists became Dooku’s attempt to persuade Obi-Wan to join him, for example. Again, in both cases, I think Lucas made the right move, which does demonstrate one of the advantages of Lucas’ approach. It’s much easier to make these changes on the fly when you don’t have to worry about tearing down and rebuilding sets. What reality giveth, reality taketh away.
The still galleries are decent. The production photos are a nice look behind the scenes, but I don’t really see the point of showing the international posters, since they all use the same Drew Struzan artwork. On the other hand, if you want to know how to say Episode II in a bunch of foreign languages, this is the feature for you. And I did get a kick out of the World Cup-themed foreign ads. The Dex’s Kitchen section includes a trailer for the “R2-D2: Beyond the Dome” mockumentary, which is neat if only to see the Lucasfilm crew having some fun with themselves, and a really nifty Effects Breakdown Montage, where before-and-after footage from a number of sequences are edited together to create a funky little package. Dex’s Kitchen also lets you access pictures of the college flier campaign as an Easter Egg, by highlighting the small yellow flier behind Dex. The other notable Easter Egg is a blooper reel located on disc 1. (A CG blooper reel accompanies the credits to “State of the Art.”) To access it, go to the Options submenu and highlight the THX logo. Press 1138 on your remote, pausing between each key to let the player accept the input. If you don’t have a numeric keypad on your remote, or you’re having trouble, you can access the reel directly by searching for Title 3 while the movie is playing. (The disc won’t let you do it from the menus.) Check it out - Natalie Portman’s reaction to filming the droid factory sequence is worth it alone.