Last night, I watched “Attack of the Clones” at the dollar movie theater. It raised a couple of questions I’m hoping other Dopers can help me with.
In building its clone army the Republic is basically creating thousands of slaves, altering their genetic structure to make them more docile, and sending them out to be cannon fodder. This is copacetic with Obi-Wan and the rest of the Jedi?! In a movie about good and evil, the Force and the Dark Side, no one questions the morality of this? The clones are human beings, after all, not droids.
Are there any female Jedi? I thought I saw one in the coliseum, but there weren’t any with speaking parts or significant–i.e., over 10 seconds–screen time. Is it an all-boys’ club?
In Epi. 1 There are I believe 3 female council members [Adi Gallia, Depa Bilaba, and Yaddle (a female Yoda)]
As for Epi 2… Me thinks you didn’t watch it that well.
In Epi 2. We see atleast 8 female Jedi
Jocasta Nu, the Jedi Librarian has a scene with Obi-Wan
In the Supreme Chancellor’s office Luminara Unduli and her padawan Barris Offee are with Mace Windu and Yoda as well as Kit Fisto (the green tentacled guy).
On the council we see Adi Gallia and Depa Bilaba again and a new member Shak Ti.
In the arena battle we see Stass Allie, Luminara, Barris, Bultwar Swain (the female asian), an unnamed white lady Jedi with a braided monk style hair cut, and I seem to remember a few more females in there as well.
So, not a boys club.
As far as the clones thing…It’s one of those moral arguments that the real world is having as cloning becomes more of a topic of debate.
And since we only see the Jedi in relation to the Clones at the end of the movie, how are we to know what sort of stance the Jedi have on it.
From Epi. 1 we know the Jedi might not like slavery, but they aren’t going to take up arms to stop it.
She’s a fan boys moist dream!
I just like the story so much I’ll tell it here:
Lucas happened to see the cover of a recent Star Wars comic and was so taken with the figure on the cover (Aayla Secura, the Twi-lek Jedi) that he decided to add her into ATOC.
That’s why she doesn’t look anything like the other Jedi. She’s wearing a tight belly shirt and tight pants rather than the Jedi style tunic.
It really was a nod to the fans and I appreciated that from the Big G.L.
I’ll try and tackle the first one. Remember that when Obi-Wan reported back on the army’s existance, everyone was surprised and shocked. Palpatine/Sidious put together this army behind everyone’s backs, then manipulated events to get special powers from the Senate. At that point, he could reveal the existance of the army, but it was too late for anyone to object.
That was the best part of ATOC, IMHO. Seeing how the bad guys were deliberatly manipulating both sides of the conflict and playing them off against each other to gain power. Really quite well done.
Thanks, all. I’d forgotten about the librarian. In my defense, I just watch the movies–I don’t read the comics or novels–and I’m not sure how ordinary movie watchers can be expected to know “Hey, that’s Luminara!” I still stand by my comment that it would be great to see female Jedi with more speaking roles and screen time. I read somewhere that Lucas and his team were expecting the romantic dreck in AotC ("You’re not like sand!) to attract more female viewers. As a female viewer, I don’t want to see kissyface, I want to see chicks with light sabers!
And I still think that they glossed over the morality of using a slave army. All it would take would be a brief conversation between a couple of Jedi: “This is abominable! How can we support such a thing?” “I know it goes against our code, but we must, for the good of the Republic.”
Basically, the Jedi are not allowed to pontificate on matters of morality, because then they would be sorely tempted to force the Galaxy to conform to their ethics. They, individually, may not like using the Clonetroopers, but the Clones are willing, even eager, to go into battle. And the Jedi desperately need their help.
So at which point in the 5 minutes of the movie that was left after the battle did you want this superflous conversation to take place?
Wait three years for the next one. I’m sure this issue will be brought up then…you know… when there is actually time for it.
Hell, there would have been plenty of time for it, if Lucas had spared us a couple scenes of Anakin and Amidala making goo-goo eyes at each other. And such a conversation wouldn’t be superfluous. It would hint that the Republic is doing some morally questionable stuff; that there are some grey areas in between good and evil; and that the Jedi actually feel some of their vaunted compassion for the clones. Given the wasted opportunities of AotC, I very much doubt that it will be brought up in the next one. Lucas does not handle subtlety or complexity (or pacing!) at all well.
I was also pretty appalled at the movie’s treatment of the clones: they seemed, in the movie’s universe, to be the moral equivalent of the droids.
Given that we’re likely to see cloned humans in the next couple decades, I’m not real happy with a movie that suggests that cloned humans are more expendable than real humans.
Had the movie been better, of course, I might be more charitable about the issue. It wasn’t, and I’m not.
Mr. Green Fool, Gosford Park is a complex movie. until the End of the World is a subtle movie.
AotC had a worse storyline than several computer games I’ve played. The action sequences were flashy but uninspiring and unoriginal. The dialogue was rough, and irritating, and monotonous – hey, it was like sand!
There was some interesting politics happening in the movie’s background, but not nearly enough of it to hold my attention. Had the movie been able to build a sense of dread as we see Palpatine’s machinations (and why the hell are they still being coy about the Senator being the Emperor? It’s not a secret anymore! Anyone who hasn’t figured it out by now doesn’t deserve to be surprised!); if we’d seen the Jedi seeing the trap they were falling into, looking for a way out of it; if the politics of the movie had been an intricate, bloody chess game – then the movie could’ve been much more interesting. As it was, there were too many lackluster action sequences and hideous romance sequences (“Oh, Anakin, I wore this slinky black leather bustier and invited you to this big wide comfy couch and served you drinks by candlelight so that I could tell you we shouldn’t be lovers!”) and not enough of anything interesting to hold make me care.
I don’t “get it” in the same way I don’t “get” the Pokemon cartoon, in the same way I don’t “get” Hell Comes to Frogtown, in the same way I don’t “get” Anne McAffrey.
This is not the bash AoTC thread. Go make (yet another if you so please)
To be fair, there are some games with REALLY GOOD plots that, yes, I would rate of AoTC (planescape:Torment anyone?)
Lucas didn’t build a “sense of dread” simply because the audience already knows what will happen.
I loved the action scenes.
I didn’t think they were being “coy” about the Emporer being Palpatine. In fact, I think they tried (and succeeded) to make it all but obvious to the audience. Of course, the Jedi don’t know it. I really can’ understand what your point is.
