Happy Fifth Anniversary, AOTC!

[lazypadawan]

Believe or not, today marks the fifth anniversary of clonetroopers, Count Dooku, butt-kickin' Yoda, Jango Fett, and hottie Anakin.

It was the first film shot entirely on HD video and fortunately, I was able to see it a few times in DLP. But AOTC, like any pioneer, took a lot of arrows in the back. Some critics like Roger Ebert were harsh on AOTC because they hated the idea of movies going into an all-digital medium. For others, it was payback time for not getting in their licks for TPM. Add to this what was perhaps Lucasfilm's most lackluster attempt to promote a movie while Sony ran for a touchdown with the first Spiderman flick.

But as for the movie itself, I absolutely loved every minute of it. Darker than TPM, but a laff-a-thon compared with ROTS, it's probably the most unusual of the SW films. There are elements of mystery, urban science fiction, war documentary, and of course, romance. The Anakin/Padme romance unto itself mixes genres. There are elements of teen romantic comedy, Bollywood romance (minus the dancing and singing of course), medieval courtly love, and romantic tragedy all rolled into one. Few expected Anakin to wear his heart on his sleeve. All of it is wrapped up in a beautiful lush package. In fact, the coloring of each location and scene practically tells the story. While John Williams's score features the fewest new songs in any of the SW soundtracks, it has the lovely "Across the Stars." Lordy, I love that piece.

It is also when I officially joined the HC cheering section. Sure he was good in LAAH and I was impressed with how he carried himself at CII, but AOTC was the clincher for me.

Here are my previously posted AOTC memories:

http://lazypadawan.livejournal.com/158546.html

Comments

[krpalmer.livejournal.com]

I don't know if Spider-Man grabbing the box office crown for the year hurt Attack of the Clones that much; The Phantom Menace grossing the most in 1999 didn't seem to help it... although people may have tried to "spin" that anyway by pitting it against Titanic. I wonder at times if the real blow to some was dished out by the one-two punch of the releases of the Fellowship of the Ring Extended Edition and The Two Towers at the end of the year. Not that it bothers me nowadays...

That's an interesting list of influences on the movie, although when I was thinking about it before I was tempted to say AotC has just about everything that goes into a Star Wars movie, and might even still suprise people because of that.

Five years later, I do still have a dangerous question that I've never quite found the courage to answer myself: Whatever happened to all those rumours about "N'Synch" having cameo appearances in the movie? theforce.net was panicking about it; it even got into the newspapers and comic strips... and then it seemed gone without a trace.

[lazypadawan.livejournal.com]

You have a point about LOTR having a negative effect on how AOTC was received by critics and the internet peanut gallery. It got ug-lay on a lot of message boards.

I'm not sure if the NSync rumor was ever true. The story went away and that was that. Some people claimed the bearded Jedi who tosses lightsabers to Anakin and Obi-Wan during the arena battle was Joey Fatone but it turned out it was actually Steve Sansweet.

[krpalmer.livejournal.com]

As for message-board mayhem... I once got involved in a group MSTing of a fanfic where a remarkably dumb version of Legolas is dragged out of a TV playing The Fellowship of the Ring and treated as the mascot of a group of highschoolers... and at one point, they take him to the IMAX version of Attack of the Clones. (Intriguingly enough, there was a throwaway comment that this was a "fifth anniversary" release!) The fanfic itself seemed oblivious to any potential comparison or commentary whatsoever, but I begged the other MSTers to at least try and refrain from attacks on the movie itself. While I got a lecture or two in the process, we managed to hold our "riffing" to making the whole encounter seem just plain peculiar.

I did actually hear that claim about "the Jedi who tosses," but not the final resolution. Mind you, the person making it proclaimed they'd detected it because the seconds-long performance "stood out of place" or something... somehow, I wonder if I should feel a little sorry for Steve Sansweet.