I'm a Star Wars fan, not a dress up and role-play type fan, or read the copious number of books, but I'm a fan of the movies, George Lucas I've always considered a great story teller, but his dialogue has always been dodgy, a great example has always been "I'm going into Tashi station to pick up some power convertors".

I knew Episode 2 was going to have a "love story" in it.... it had to happen. At some stage Anakin and Padme have make the beast with two backs and pop out a couple of sprogs... and in fact we know a lot of things that have to happen, which made his job harder in this film... but back to the love story, he hasn't done this is Star Wars before.... there was the tension thing between Han and Leia, but nothing really happened on screen... well nothing too bad... Episode 2 however.... oh I'm getting ahead of myself...

After some pre-movie coffee at the dreaded Cafe Soho we joined the throng to try get to the actual cinema, really it wasn't that bad... after taking seats, going back downstairs to find a missing member of the group (of 20 people...) taking seats again ... we waited.... and waited... and still waiting... it took until 12:30 for them to even say anything to us... saying there was a great prize, just to hold on for 5 minutes longer... obviously something was majorly wrong and the crowd was getting rather upset.... the lights dimmed, some chick chucked some ball looking thing into the crowd saying it was the prize and the movie started... no adds or trailers, which menas to me they had a major screw up with the projection system or something... so we missed see the new Matrix trailer, but it is available online now anyway....

We got the marvellous Fox theme and then the immortal "A long time ago in a galaxy far far away..." and then into the Star Wars theme and the obligatory scrolling text to set the scene... At this time I will stop with the scene by scene explanation and just getting into ripping the movie apart....

Actually on second thoughts.... I'll try do this chronologically.... maybe..... ok... I'll just start that way...

The opening on and Star Wars film is a pan from a star field shot to show a planet and some ships... in A New Hope (ANH) it was Leia's ship being chased down by the Star Destroyer above Tattoine, in The Empire Strikes Back (ESB) it was a Star Destroyer sending out probes near some unknown planet, in Return of the Jedi (RotJ) it was a Star Destroyer again, flying towards the still under construction Death Star 2, above Endor. In The Phantom Menace (TPM) it was the Jedi's ship heading towards the Trade Federation's ship above Naboo.... In Attack of the clones (AotC) it is A nice shiny ship, flanked by some yellow Naboo fighters, heading into a remarkabley cloudy Coruscant. The funny thing is, that this time the pan went up after the scrolling text, every other movie it went down.....

It turns out to be Padme's ship, Padme, formally a queen (queens are elected on Naboo it seems) now a Senator.... last name Amidala... go figure.... Someone tries to kill her (large explosions.... big sound effects....) but once again she is protected by a decoy and it is the decoy that is killed... It seems little miss perky nipples (that comment does make sense and seems less sexist once you see various scenes in the movie... especially when she is in the white outfit... there has been some nipple action before in the SW universe, Leia was braless in her White number in ANH, a dancer that was chucked into the monster pit in RotJ actually bared a whole breast [freeze frame needed for that one] and of course Han Solo checks out Leia's goods in a rather manual way in RotJ) Padme is a quite important Senator, and it is coming up to a big vote on whether the republic gets an army.....

It is arranged for two old friends to look after her welfare... the two being Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin SkyWalker... funny thing is, when they first meet up in this movie, Padme and her guard are standing out on an unprotected balcony.... no wonder they need some Jedi?

Immediately on seeing Padme, Anakin seems to remember his other lightsaber and gets all gooey eyed over the be-nippled one... First sign of problems, but not too bad....

Anakin and Obi-Wan have a bit of a to do about how they should protect Padme... and really all this does is show us that Anakin is a petulant kid who wants to impress someone, I suppose it could be said it shows how he thinks differently to Obi-Wan and the other Jedi, but I think the whole rebellion thing makes him look like a kid...

After a wonderful chase through the city scape of Coruscant after a drone and then the drone's owner. The feeling of speed and danger was quite high... but again there is a problem....

Action sequences need people to believe that the protagonists are in danger. We 'know' in every film that the good guy won't die, it is inherit in Hollywood movies, but in this film we have larger problems. We know that certain characters cannot die, and most often these are the characters that are constantly put in danger. Anakin and OB1 jumping from moving vehicles and windows, Padme, Anakin almost being crushed on Genosis... the list is really quite long. Although this does not spoil the excitement of these action sequences, it is always in the back of my brain going "Anakin and Padme have to have kids before she dies...." and that sort of thing...

The appearance of someone in Mandalorin armour had some of the crowd jumping.... I've never seen the reason why Boba Fett was so great in ANH,ESB and RotJ, so his back story was interesting... but I still see a problem, not with the film, with the hardcore fans. They have soaked up all the books that are not canon (ie. not part of the one true storyline) and it shows Boba Fett as some kewl arse Bounty Hunter with a gripe about Jedi... Whereas we never see Boba do anything.. He takes Han away (after he was frozen) and we see him get knocked into the pit of karkoon after his rocket pack goes haywire.... nothing to kewl there...

Now however we meet Jango, Boba's 'father' and he has the same armour (although blue) and Jango can mix it with Jedi. With an array of weapons he is quite formidable.... I think OB1 was a bit silly trying to go one on one against someone in a metal suit... let's face it... a kick to someone in a metal suit, from someone in a hessian sack is not going to hurt the suited one.... So generally we see Jango mix it up with everyone he cares to, he is a bounty hunter / mercenary as well... so we are allowed to like him because he isn't that evil ...

Jango is still to me a bit of a Batman to the Jedi's superman, with lots of marvellous toys versus some funky powers and in the end his head is chopped off by Mace 'BMF' Windu.... this is actually quite shocking.... seeming though Boba sees it all and then picks up his dad's helmeted-head (note: there has been reports from people who have seen the movie a couple of times that Jango's head flys out of the helmet... apparantly there is a shadow of the head parting ways with the helmet....). So we know Boba is now not a fan of Mace and Jedi in general...

Back to the action now.... and geez there is a lot in the last hour.... Chases, space battles, land battles and lightsabers lightsabers lightsabers..... I'm not going into detail... just some point for you:

• Watch and listen for Jango's sonic missles in the asteroid field... never going to sound like that on the home stereo
  
• The use of humour (albeit punny-tacky lines) from OB1 and C3P0... a return to the SW of old...
  
• Jedi swarming from everywhere for the arena battle... a big intake of breath from the audience when they see this many Jedi are going to fight...
  
• Yoda... Finally we see some fighting from the muppet turned computer sprite. He seems like he can kick serious arse... he doesn't actually get to... but it looks sooooo kewl...
  
• Ewan McGregor. This guy does such a great job of OB1. He is almost the only one (of thge major characters)to come out of the acting stakes looking prestine
  
• Droids, clones do battle in a huge mix of Braveheart, Saving Private Ryan and .... um.... Lego hehehehe
  

Now we get to the part of the review that has been on my mind the whole time.... the Love Story....

... to be continued