he Force is back in force. After a three-year wait, Star Wars boss George Lucas returns to that galaxy far, far away with Star Wars: Episode II—Attack of the Clones. The film unfolds a decade after the events of The Phantom Menace.
Anakin (Hayden Christensen) is all grown up, in love with Padme (Natalie Portman) and frustrated by his status as a Jedi trainee under the tutelage of Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor). Meanwhile, all hell is breaking loose in the Republic. Someone's attempted to assassinate Amidala, now a senator from Naboo, and rumors are spreading of an imminent clone war. Fans can check it out for themselves when Attack of the Clones invades theaters on May 16.
Christensen beat out hundreds of actors, including several major name talents, for the coveted and star-making role of Anakin. The Canadian actor was working on the Fox Family series Higher Ground when he won his part, and he delivered a searing performance as a troubled teen in Life as a House, a film he shot after completing the bulk of his work on Attack of the Clones. Christensen seems to be channeling James Dean as plays the often petulant and rebellious Anakin, who in Attack of the Clones is clearly on his path to the dark side.
Samuel L. Jackson made it known that he dreamed of being in a Star Wars movie and word got to Lucas, who promptly cast him as Mace Windu in The Phantom Menace. Jackson worked just three days on The Phantom Menace, but spent a month filming Attack of the Clones. Accordingly, his role is much larger the second time around, as the Jedi master frequently confers with Yoda and also gets to kick clone butt in one of the film's major lightsaber battles.
Lucas directed and co-wrote Attack of the Clones and at long last achieved his goal of shooting an entire Star Wars film in the digital format. He makes no apologies for The Phantom Menace, insisting that Jar Jar Binks served a purpose and noting that to properly set the Star Wars universe in motion, the first film had to center on a child and had to introduce all the political intrigue unfolding within the Republic.
Science Fiction Weekly ventured out to the Skywalker Ranch in San Rafael, Calif., recently to talk with Lucas, Jackson and Christensen, all of whom are set to return for Episode III, which will be filmed next year and released in 2005.
George Lucas, some people feel that you got a free pass with The Phantom Menace, that people went back again and again even though they really didn't care for the film. Do you feel that was the case?
Lucas: People will not go see a film over and over again if they don't love it. I will tell you that for sure. You can make a sequel and not have it work. I made More American Graffiti.
When I made Phantom Menace, I knew that I was basically not going down the commercial route that everybody expected. I knew that I was doing it with a 9-year-old kid, and everyone said, "You can't do that. It's got to have Jedi fighting and all this kind of thing everybody wants to see." I knew I was doing it without the cast from the other films, and everyone was saying, "You've got to work Harrison Ford into it somehow." I said, "It's a prequel. How can I do that?" And if I'd been doing it in Hollywood they would have done all their market research and said, "This is the kind of movie you've got to make."
I'm telling a story. I'm telling a story I wrote 30 years before. So I wasn't going to change it. I said, "If it doesn't work, we'll deal with it. It will be harder to get the other two made, but somehow we'll manage to do it." That's the way I was thinking when I finished the first film. I said, "We'll get these other two done somehow. But I'm not going to suddenly make some other kind of movie just because it seems to be more marketable." I'm more interested in the story, not in whether or not the film is a commercial success.
What do you make of the fans who set up camp in front of theaters weeks before a Star Wars film opens?
Lucas: I understand what that's all about. Soccer fans do the same thing. Rock 'n' roll fans do the same thing. I don't know why movie fans aren't allowed to do that. I've done it. I camped out for sports-car races.
What it comes down to in the end is if you're a college student and somebody said, "Hey, let's go camp out on Hollywood Boulevard for four weeks. Lots of girls. The media will come and talk to you. We can still do classes, because we can switch off. It's a party for a month."
I know a lot of my friends when I was in college would have done that. I might even have done it if I had the opportunity. It's a spontaneous event that happened, kind of like Woodstock, and now it's become an institution. The reality of it is you can get your tickets online. You don't have to stand in line anymore. But they don't care about that part of it. They care about having a party. If that makes them geeks and weird and all that kind of stuff I guess I'm one of them. I like to party as much as the next guy.
Can you speak about the technical challenges on Attack of the Clones?
Lucas: There were a lot of challenges and if we hadn't met those challenges I wouldn't have had a movie, especially on this one, because I had to replicate Yoda. If I couldn't replicate Yoda digitally I was in serious trouble. I couldn't have made this movie. We tried to make him digitally on the first movie and we couldn't do it, but if we hadn't accomplished it here I would have had a pretty silly end of the movie.
Are you OK with the fact that your tombstone will say "George Lucas, Star Wars creator" on it, especially since your friend and contemporary Steven Spielberg appears to have avoided being linked to just one project or franchise?
Lucas: I had to accept that about 10 or 15 years ago, that there wasn't anything I could do about it. The problem for me in terms of accepting my fate is that when I wrote this thing I made the choice of saying, "I like this stuff. I like this story. But I know I can't do it. So what I'll do is I'll just take the first third and make that into a movie." I did that instead of saying "OK, stop, we're going to rewrite the script and take all of these ideas and squeeze it down into a two-hour movie that will end with Darth Vader killing the Emperor." I thought, "Gosh, that could be hard to do in two hours. I'd have to cut out so much. I'd have to compromise so much so that I can't do this. So I want to do the first third and I'll get the other parts done." What happened? I ended up with a trilogy.
That's E.T., Jaws and Raiders of the Lost Ark. I took those three shots [with Star Wars], while Steve became something other than Mr. Jaws or Mr. E.T. I kept on saying "Star Wars, Star Wars, Star Wars." If you say it enough then you're stuck. That's you. ... It could be worse. I did American Graffiti and there are some people who are still fanatic about it. So I've done other films, but nothing on this level, and I probably will never ever do another film on this level. In the end, you accept it and say, "Life could be worse." I'm proud of Star Wars.
Sam Jackson, did George give you any details about the bond between Windu and Yoda?
Jackson: George didn't really explain it to me, but since the beginning, when I got there for the first time and got my first few pages of the script, I realized that Yoda and Mace had conversations. I just assumed that our relationship was different from anyone else's. In Episode II, you do see that they spend a lot of time together talking about things outside the Jedi Council and making decisions among themselves.
Do you like the way the digital Yoda looks on screen?
Jackson: He looks great to me. It's still Yoda. He still moves the same way, except when you see him do all those fantastic moves. It was fine for me. Being able to see all the things we were accomplishing was pretty great. George would put you in a big empty room and say, "Lots of things are attacking, so fight them." The more you do the more they have to draw in front of you. So I just kind of got in there and went to work. I did all the things I did in my room when I was a kid. I fought all the imaginary things that were bouncing around my room and coming out of my closet. I had a great time. It was like coming full circle.
How different, if it's different at all, is acting in an SF film versus any other kind of film?
Jackson: It's still like doing a dramatic film. I talked to George about what we were trying to accomplish in each individual scene. He knows how all of this stuff will be put together. If you ask him the right questions he gives you the right answers. He puts you in there and we'll trust our instincts. And we're all Jedi. It's not like we're having big arguments. We're always the calm guys. Everybody around us is going crazy and we're calm and sifting through the information, getting rid of the fat.
What can we expect to see for Mace Windu in Episode III?
Jackson: I know that I'm going to die, but that's about it. I keep talking with George about [who's going to kill me and how]. I don't want to be shot in the back by some droid. I don't think it's going to be Boba. He's not skilled enough, and we all know him as a guy who runs away and shoots people in the back. I think it will either be Dooku [Christopher Lee] or Anakin or maybe a couple of Sith Lords. But I plan to go out in a blaze of glory. I just hope it's not in scene one.
Hayden Christensen, how intimidated were you by George Lucas?
Christensen: At first, I was, because he has such a huge following. The Star Wars films are massive. They were huge in my childhood and in my brother's childhood. So it was a little daunting at first to create that actor-director relationship. But George makes it very easy once you get to know him. He's a very kind man, and he was very aware that our relationship was going to be important to my portrayal of Anakin. So he did everything he needed to in order to make me feel comfortable.
Several actors—Jake Lloyd, Sebastian Shaw and James Earl Jones among them—have previously contributed to the portrayal of Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader. How much of your predecessors' work did you take into account?
Christensen: That sense of linear development of character was very important. So I tried to take certain sensibilities from Jake Lloyd's performance, the naiveté and the immaturity that is just a part of being Anakin. And then there's only so much you can draw from a man beneath a mask, but I did try to instill the monotone aspect of the delivery of [Jones'] lines in my character as well. That was about all I could take.
A lot of people gave thumbs down to Lloyd's performance in The Phantom Menace. How did you go about picking up the better aspects to incorporate into your performance?
Christensen: I thought that elements of Jake's performance were very key to what Anakin's descent was going to entail. That immaturity was hopefully a part of my performance, in terms of how he reacts to certain stimuli in the film and his mindset of feeling that guidance isn't so much necessary at this point in his life. Jake is a kid. He was eight years old at the time. To actually critique his performance is cruel. You wouldn't do it if he were performing in a school play. Just because he's doing it on a different platform, I think it's kind of wrong [to criticize him]. But what are you going to do?
Also in this issue: Frank Spotnitz.
