My mistake was reading the novel first. They had an entire scene where Padme meets her family. They tell her to go for Anakin after she admits she loves him. Cut from the movie, which made Padme’s declaration on that chariot seem out of nowhere.
I’ve been told the Ani/Padme scenes were no worse than Han/Leia is ESB. I agree the Han and Leia scenes WERE silly. However, we knew who Han and Leia were. Han was a reckless scoundrel, Leia was free-spirited royalty. It was a classic case of opposites attract, and both had qualities to attract one another. You could see the love reluctantly building and GL realized Leia worked better with Han. Hence the last-minute “Luke’s sister” invention to remove any love-triangle with Luke.
Whereas we don’t know anything about Ani since he was a 9-year-old brat. We know Amidala as a noble queen and senator. Now, I’m supposed to believe that this woman falls for a creepy leering teenager who feeds her preposterous and contemptible lines (“I love you, Padme. I’ve always loved you, Padme. I
hate sand, Padme.”) and tells her about his little massacre? I saw Anakin as disturbing as a Lifetime Movie husband, and I fear for Padme (pictures Ani coming home drunk in a stained white tanktop t-shirt).
I’ve also been told GL was going for a more Classic Victorian style with the dialogue. And if I was bored and groaning (and unintentionally laughing) during the romantic scenes, then apparently GL could not pull off the classical style for many reviewers. Which is fine, since I don’t go to Star Wars movies expecting a wonderful romance scene. I’m wondering how they’ll handle it in Episode III: they’ll boot him from the Jedi council just for getting marrying someone he’ll love? It seems a silly (and tyrannical) thing, since it would be good for the Jedi to reproduce and all.
Here’s some other things I would’ve liked changed in AOTC:
The Obi/Dooku and Ani/Dooku saber battles were WAY too short and didn’t really show his “fencing” style. I was really looking forward to that, especially the way they discussed it in the book. Jedi’s never use lightsabers for fighting, since there are no Sith anymore. So Dooku had an advantage to offset his 80-year-old age. He was supposed to be relaxed and efficient, while Ani and Obi would do all the flipping and swinging. In the movie, things went too quick to even tell. Plus a lot of Dooku’s Vader-esque
taunting was cut out “Come, come, Master Kenobi, put me out of my misery!”
More action with Mace vs Jango. When you read the book, you won’t believe how much they cut that scene down by!!
Same with Ani vs the Tusken Raiders. I know GL wanted to keep it PG, but come on! This is the first time Darth Vader uses the dark side, let’s see a little bit MORE of this, probably the most important event in the entire saga. His whining “I hate them” with Amidala was almost as bad as the Toshi Station line.
Padme getting up after being knocked out of the speeding gunship. Lying on the ground, moaning in pain then getting up and being just fine. No painful sand in the back lacerations, either. Very very odd.
Yoda’s backwards dialect. Great in small doses, but not every time. “Front assembly area, take me.” And bring back the Yoda puppet. At least just for close ups. CGI just isn’t that good yet.
The arena at Geonosis. It was totally full and crowded, like the audience was expecting a big spectacle. And they get 3 people trussed up and totally immobile and defenseless. How exciting would that be? Especially with 3 different large and powerful monsters. They’d saunter up and quickly kill the people chained to the post. Show’s over, go home now. I know they were
trying for a “Gladiator” angle, but I don’t think it would satisfy the
crowd’s bloodlust by having someone tied to a post, with the gladiator strolling up and stabbing him.
Was it better than Spider-man? I thought the action scenes were, especially Yoda and the battlefield scenes (my favorites). But Spidey handled the love story subplot infinitely better. Call it a tie: the first half of Spider-man was better, the second half was better in AOTC.
I think it’s unfair to compare it to LOTR, and no one will be nominating AOTC for best picture. For one thing, Peter Jackson is a much better director than Lucas, look how he handled his actors. PJ wanted Tolkien’s story to more or less stand on its own, not add a romantic angle to get the “Titanic” audience in the seats (Arwen wasn’t that bad). PJ was able to use terrific actors like Blanchette, Holm, McKellan, Bean, Mortensen, and Lee… no need for boy-band types like Hayden (again to attract Titanic fans). True, AOTC had Lee, but he just reprised his Saruman character. Instead of talking to Gandalf about “join me or else”, he talked to Obi-Wan. Besides, it’s not like we got to see a lot of Dooku anyway.
It could be said that no movie could live up to Star Wars’ expectations, that fans should not expect to be enthralled in their 20s or 30s as they were in their pre-teens. However, LOTR left me with that childlike sense of awe throughout the whole movie, I cannot say the same for TPM or AOTC. I just don’t Lucas is at that level anymore. He surprised us with ANH, had someone else write ESB, and it’s been downhill since.