I finally went to go see Attack of the Clones. This contains spoilers. Caveat emptor.

I liked it much better than I thought I would, although the Yoda fight (which everyone has gone on and on about) was kind of underwhelming. I've heard from more than one person that it's the best thing in the movie, and If I hadn't been waiting for it the whole time, I would have loved it, I bet. As it was, I was anticipating it too much. ("Is this when Yoda fights? I bet Yoda's going to fight him. No, what about that guy? Does Yoda kick his ass now?")

What is wrong with George Lucas, though? Of course the dialogue is often awful, but my real question is, how does he turn these people into such horrible actors? I just saw Hayden Christensen in Life as a House, and he was great in it. In Star Wars, he's like a piece of particle board. A worthy successor to Jake Lloyd if there ever was one. And then there's Natalie Portman, who I always thought could act. What was she doing? "I love. You. Truly. Deep. Ly." She was the worst thing in the movie, and I like her!

Okay, no. The worst thing was the tinkly little chime music that played every time Anakin looked at Amidala. Could you be any more intrusive and lame, John Williams? "It's Love! Love! LOVE! Tinkle chime! IT IS GODDAMN LOVE."

Those chimes were just ridiculous, and the flowery field, and the sunsets and everything-- the reviewer at Salon said it was shot to look like a douche commercial, and I'm still laughing at how right she is about that. It's a plot contrivance I might have come up with when I was fifteen, writing stories starring myself and my best friend and the members of New Kids on the Block. "Okay, so you and Jordan are stranded on this beautiful, beautiful island, and there's a beautiful, beautiful sunset...")

Also bad: Jar Jar's appearances, brief though they were, and that incredibly fake looking "surfing-on-a-dinosaur" thing. Anakin's mother dying with just enough time left to reunite with her son and gasp out some "moving" last words: spare me. Oh god, and Boba Fett holding up his father's helmet. Is it just me, or wasn't his HEAD in that thing? It was supposed to be this touching moment, and I was just waiting for the head to fall out.

Anyway, some things I liked.

It's weird, I never saw any of the original trilogy until I was nineteen years old, but I still get a chill up my spine at the beginning, with the green Lucas Film logo and the opening music and the scrolling words.

I liked the interesting aliens in the movie-- the café owner alien guy, the random aliens wandering around, and especially the strange aliens on the clone planet. (And the chairs and doors on that planet were cool, too. And the clones. The whole thing was cool.) I liked the star map in Yoda's classroom. I liked Ewan McGregor and Samuel Jackson. Yoda was mighty cool.

I liked the light speeder chase at the beginning, whee! And when Anakin light-sabered the poisonous centipedes right off of Amidala with perfect precision. And the blue sweepy security lights on the floor, those were cool. Lots of eye candy in the movie. And also, Anakin being such a brat was kind of cool, because it reminded me of Luke, of course. I loved hearing Darth Vader's theme after he described the massacre. I hope we get flashbacks in Episode III, because if that's going to Turn him to the Dark Side, we should really be able to get a good idea of why.

I liked all the insider stuff I was able to pick up on: "Why do I get the feeling you're going to be the death of me?" and the plans for the Death Star so on. ("I get a bad feeling about this" was more jarring, because that was a Han Solo line, and Han wasn't a Skywalker, so it seemed like a cheap shot instead of a clever parallel.) I liked seeing Anakin on Tatooine, in Uncle Owen's house. God help me, I liked Amidala's outfits.

Mostly I just liked that it was so much better than the crappy Phantom Menace. I never want to see Episode I again, but Episode II, I will probably add to the collection. Maybe. Possibly.

I do have one burning question for you, though. Well, I have a lot of questions, I am a bit confused by who is fighting who, and why, and so forth. But my big question is this: are the Imperial Stormtroopers in Episodes III,. IV and V all clones? Are they all clones of Jango Fett? Because if so, that really is the coolest bit of retcon I've ever seen.