The Kyiv Cinema Theater has hosted the premiere of Star Wars: Episode II — Attack of the Clones. Needless to say, George Lukas’s new creation is a true delight for all Jedi fans. The special effects here reach supernatural perfection; there are not just one or two but a whole army of Jedi armed with light swords; and one would give his life to see the big-eared grandmaster Yoda fight somebody.
Once again Lukas has confirmed his reputation as a producer of miraculous cinematic playthings for all ages. Probably at the world premiere (Kyiv watched the film simultaneously with other principal world capitals) children and adults were equally ecstatic. For the first there were numerous fights, flights to other planets, inconceivable creatures of all kinds: crawling, hopping, and flying; for the latter — political collisions, fights against separatism, tyranny, and dark magic, and the sorrows of young Anakin (Hayden Christensen). The latter follows his way to the Black Helmet and the following atonement through numerous thorns. He loses his mother, falls in love with Padme Amidala (Natalie Portman), and permanently argues with his mentor Obi-Wan Kenobi. Obviously the road of psychological nuance is hard for the director himself. A romantic line never was Lukas’s strong side, in contrast to battle scenes. Anakin’s mourning over his mother’s dead body or love scenes with Padme are the weakest parts of the film. At such moments a spectator longs to hasten the flow of the episode: come on, when are they going to fight again? And when another battle breaks out upon the audience from the screen and dynamics, the timid muse of romance falls silent immediately.
It makes no sense to tell about all these battles: one must simply see them. Soon the new findings of Lukas’s Industrial Light & Magic Studio will be mastered and reproduced by mass cinema production. But until this happens, the film is worth watching. And also listening: some pearls of Russian dubbing stuck in memory immediately. The headlined phrase by Yoda is among such aphorisms. True, the war between good and evil has entered its decisive stage, and woe unto those who do not watch the next and latest Star Wars episode.
