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Attack of the Clones gets the RLM tratment at last!

Star Wars was a pretty silly title for a movie that included only a handful of space battles and only featured a single war (in fairness, it was called "The Star War" at one point, IIRC).
 
EDITED FOR GEONOSIS' NON-MEMBER STATUS (In my defense, since this was not addressed at all in the movie, I had assumed Geonosis was a Republic world as it was a major member of a secessionist movement. I had to look up its actual status in the recently released Star Wars Atlas):

Obi-Wan was conducting espionage against a sovereign world. He was captured and duly sentenced to death according to the laws of that sovereign world for his crimes.

Anakin and Padme were captured not only conducting espionage, but the indescriminate murder of Geonosian citizens at the factory and sabotage of state property in an attempt to subvert the sovereign power of the Geonosian government and effect the release of a captured spy by force.

Two hundred Jedi then took it upon themselves to infiltrate the sovereign territory of Geonosia, threaten its citizens, leadership and visiting dignitaries with deadly force in order to effect the release of now three captured spies.

No attempt at negotiation was made other than to demand the Geonosian leadership and it's guests immediately and unconditionally surrender. Mace Windu threatened violence and then he and his fellows proceeded to kill Geonosian law enforcement and military personnel acting in defense of their world, its citizens and leadership when they refused to acknowledge the Jedi's authority to do what they were doing.

Did the Senate authorize the Jedi to take an army of unknown and sinister providence to invade and occupy a sovereign memberworld in order to rescue yet more Jedi on another mission not authorized by the Senate, and thus plunge the Republic into war? Or did Yoda and Mace Windu decide to do this all on their own?

The scene I saw in the movie showed the Senate authorizing the creation of an Army to defend the Republic. Was there a secret ammendment the audience was not privy to concerning a declaration of war if the Jedi were up against the wall? I doubt it.

So, finally, the Grand Master of the Jedi Order invaded a sovereign nation in order to rescue the surviving spies and terrorists of a failed coup, and in effect, declaring war upon this foreign nation and the political successionist movement meeting there. He did this employing a slave army of highly dubious origins based entirely on a single piece of intelligence (Obi-Wan's claim to have overheard talk of succession and admission of complicity in the assassination attempts on Senator Amidala) and what? Jedi intuition? Fear of the Sith they never bothered investigating after TPM? Wanting to try out his new slave army?

Sounds to me like a lot of people were getting attacked in this movie and it was the Jedi and their clone slaves doing the attacking.

Who am I supposed to be rooting for in this movie again? The guys who ordered the assassination of a political opponent and who are willing to defend their right not to be part of the Republican confederation by force, if necessary? Or the guys who kill indiscriminately, commit acts of war left and right, then employ a slave army against an ostensibly neutral foreign nation?

Why are the Jedi brandishing their weapons first all the time in the PT? Why are they attacking anyone and everyone who gets in their way? Why do none of them question the origin of their new, shiny slave army? Is the Shroud of the Dark Side making everyone retarded? Why does this movie suck so much?
 
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I dunno. Attack of the Clones is no more a stupid title than The Empire Strikes Back yet no one ever complains about that title.
That's because one means "Attack of the Good Guys" and the other means "The Bad Guys Counter-attack". One of those titles is ridiculous. ;)

No. They are both stupid sounding. All the Star Wars movies have intentional silly titles (from a contemporary viewpoint).
 
Obi-Wan was conducting espionage against a sovereign member world of the Republic.
I think you are wrong there. Kamino was not part of the Republic. That much is certain, according to Dex. Also, Geonosis was not part of the republic either. It was trying to separate from it in any case.
 
Obi-Wan was conducting espionage against a sovereign member world of the Republic.
I think you are wrong there. Kamino was not part of the Republic. That much is certain, according to Dex. Also, Geonosis was not part of the republic either. It was trying to separate from it in any case.

You're absolutely correct, neither Kamino nor Geonosis were memberworlds of the Republic. Geonosis was actually part of Hutt Space. Obi-Wan was still spying on both worlds, however.

Geonosis wasn't attempting to secede, since it wasn't a member, it was hosting the CIS leadership meeting and providing material support through its factories.

I've edited my rant to reflect this, but my nerdrage remains undimmed.
 
Well, Base Delta Zero, it's complicated.

It helps to think of it in terms of WW-II.

Imagine Geonosis as the Munich conference of 1938 in which Britain, Italy, and France agreed to let Germany annex the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia. A Canadian reporter arrives at the conference to relay the fact that there's a Munich conference going on, and that a bunch of countries' representatives are there to decide something, but he's not sure what, only that his childhood enemy from next door is involved somehow.

Then he gets arrested because he doesn't have a proper press pass.

Meanwhile, an Australian girl and an American arrive and are trying to slip through the kitchen of the local hotel, but they go nuts and start stabbing the cooks with steak knives. They get arrested by the Munich police and are put on trial.

So then, before the representatives of Britain, Italy, France, and Germany can decide what to do about the Sudetenland, a company of the American 82nd Airborne division parachutes into the soccer stadium and starts shooting all the Germans in the crowd. So the German police call up a couple of nearby companies of the German army who engage the American paratroopers, but then the Americans, British, Canadians, and Free French land at Normandy and drive their tanks to Berlin.

But the whole thing was really just a setup by Stalin, who wanted Germany to fall so he could get plans to the V-2 rocket.

Okay, so the story doesn't make a lick of sense on any level.

It's Lucas.
 
I dunno. Attack of the Clones is no more a stupid title than The Empire Strikes Back yet no one ever complains about that title.
That's because one means "Attack of the Good Guys" and the other means "The Bad Guys Counter-attack". One of those titles is ridiculous. ;)
No. They are both stupid sounding. All the Star Wars movies have intentional silly titles (from a contemporary viewpoint).
No, they both sound fine, and are inherently comparable titles - it's in the context that the disparity lies. IMHO. ;)



@ Base_Delta_Zero: Dude... brilliant stuff. I'd never thought of it that way, but you're totally correct. That's the sort of insight RLM shined on TPM, but left out here. I raise my hat to you, sir! :)

@ gturner: ... and to you also! Hilarious and true at the same time.
 
Well, Base Delta Zero, it's complicated.

It helps to think of it in terms of WW-II.

Imagine Geonosis as the Munich conference of 1938 in which Britain, Italy, and France agreed to let Germany annex the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia. A Canadian reporter arrives at the conference to relay the fact that there's a Munich conference going on, and that a bunch of countries' representatives are there to decide something, but he's not sure what, only that his childhood enemy from next door is involved somehow.

Then he gets arrested because he doesn't have a proper press pass.

Meanwhile, an Australian girl and an American arrive and are trying to slip through the kitchen of the local hotel, but they go nuts and start stabbing the cooks with steak knives. They get arrested by the Munich police and are put on trial.

So then, before the representatives of Britain, Italy, France, and Germany can decide what to do about the Sudetenland, a company of the American 82nd Airborne division parachutes into the soccer stadium and starts shooting all the Germans in the crowd. So the German police call up a couple of nearby companies of the German army who engage the American paratroopers, but then the Americans, British, Canadians, and Free French land at Normandy and drive their tanks to Berlin.

But the whole thing was really just a setup by Stalin, who wanted Germany to fall so he could get plans to the V-2 rocket.

Okay, so the story doesn't make a lick of sense on any level.

It's Lucas.

:lol: Well played.

So, since YT put the first part back up, and as mostly noted here "fair use" gives him permission to use the footage can we assume that he will do Ep-3?
 
That's because one means "Attack of the Good Guys" and the other means "The Bad Guys Counter-attack". One of those titles is ridiculous. ;)
No. They are both stupid sounding. All the Star Wars movies have intentional silly titles (from a contemporary viewpoint).
No, they both sound fine, and are inherently comparable titles - it's in the context that the disparity lies. IMHO. ;)

I don't get how that is a disparity. The good guys do attack in this movie. That's what the climax is all about. Is it a counter attack? That can be argued, but an attack nonetheless. Also, it is a nice little play on expectations.
 
Thanks, Gaith. Much appreciated. And gturner, that is some funny shit right there.

As for the title of the film, while I'm not a fan, it does seem that since Darth Rube Goldberg is the driving force behind every single event of consequence in the PT, Attack of the Clones is, in fact, Attack of the Good Guys at the Bad Guy's Behest, or more simply, Attack of the Bad Guys, and so appropriate.

The problem, I think, arises from the whole Good Guy attacking bit. The Good Guys are expected to be New Hopes or Returning. The Bad Guys are the ones Striking Back, Phantomly Menacing and Revenging.

"A Jedi uses the Force for knowledge and defense, never for attack...except 20 years ago when all we did was attack people and couldn't find our own asses in a darkened room with both hands and a flashlight, let alone a missing star system using Google Galaxy."

-Yoda, huge ass liar
 
I love this review it is very funny. We need this guy to have a weekly HBO show were he reviews new movies coming out in the same way he does these reviews. lol
 
^
That wasn't something they did by choice though; Revenge of the Sith seems to imply it was a genetic predisposition that all the clones were programmed/grown with by the (secret) order of Palpatine... I very much doubt Yoda -or any of the other Jedi for that matter- would have willingly gone in to combat with the clone army had they known about the existence of Order 66.

That said, it raises the question --- if they Clones didn't really have much of a choice with regard to their actions following the issuance of Order 66, does that REALLY make them bad guys?

Clearly, in the moment and in context, Obi-Wan, Yoda, and years later Luke, Leia, and Han -- all of them have to fight the Clone and later Stormtroopers simply on the basis of "us vs. them" --- but that still doesn't necessarily mean they're bad guys.

I mean, if Luke brought down the Emperor at the end of Return of the Jedi, what does that mean for all the Stormtroopers left over? Are they still 'programmed' to follow the agenda of Palpatine? Or are they simply pre-disposed to kill Jedi on sight? Or can they be 're-programmed' ?

@Treker --- did you read the article I linked to previously? RLM guy said he wasn't sure that he would want to do an Episode III review after the removal of the first part of the AOTC review... I don't know if that's changed since it was restored, but I don't blame him for being wary.
 
See the quotation marks? I was quoting Red Letter Media guy, from the Star Trek Nemesis review.
Just a helpful point: quotations minus attribution are just asking for trouble, because it presumes readers know the quote. It's a safe bet that, "No, I am your father!" doesn't need to be attributed to Darth Vader, but one line from a 90 minute review probably needs the support.
 
Also... wasn't there an implicit theme of speciesism in the OT (made explicit in the Thrawn trilogy), what with the Rebellion being multispeciesal, and the Empire uniformly British-accented white humans? Any PT mention of that? Or would including fewer new aliens have limited action figure sales potential?
 
Also... wasn't there an implicit theme of speciesism in the OT (made explicit in the Thrawn trilogy), what with the Rebellion being multispeciesal, and the Empire uniformly British-accented white humans? Any PT mention of that? Or would including fewer new aliens have limited action figure sales potential?

I think that is more EU stuff than anything that was suggested in the movies. The only non-humanoid in the Rebellion was Chewie (and that was only because he was following Han around). It wasn't until Jedi that we got Ackbar and Lando's co-pilot. I'd hardly call that "multispeciesal".
 
I've also talked to Mike and he said he would be spending his free time hunting down more hookers and eating more pizza rolls.
 
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