Secrets of the Force

by Edward Gross

  HAYDEN CHRISTENSEN

  To be honest, I more or less knew what the reaction to Attack of the Clones was going to be when I first read the script, because Anakin was a petulant, sometimes whiny teenager. That’s how he was scripted, that’s how George wanted me to play him, and that’s how the character needed to be. So, I had no problem with it in that respect, but I knew that it was going to receive some criticism when it was released. I just hope that when people saw the next film, they were a little more sympathetic to some of the qualities and characters that they had a hard time with in the first two movies. But, hey, it has never been a popularity contest for me. I wanted to fully realize the character George envisioned and I feel like I accomplished that.

  RAY MORTON

  In the middle of his romantic interlude with Padmé, Anakin has a dream about his mother, Shmi, whom he has not seen since he left Tatooine ten years before. Feeling Shmi is in danger, Anakin decides to go to Tatooine to find her. Padmé insists on accompanying him. Seeking out his former owner, Watto, Anakin learns that his mother was sold to a moisture farmer named Klieg Lars, who later freed and married her. Anakin and Padmé travel to the Lars farm, which we recognize as the same place where we will eventually meet Luke Skywalker in Star Wars. There, Anakin learns that Shmi happily married Klieg, but then a month ago was kidnapped by a savage band of Tusken Raiders. Anakin rides out to find the Sand People’s camp and rescue his mother. Upon reaching it, Anakin discovers Shmi—who has been brutalized by the Raiders—on the verge of death. A few moments after he finds her, Anakin’s mother passes away in his arms.

  One of Anakin’s primary motivations for turning to the dark side in Revenge of the Sith is to save Padmé’s life after he dreams of her dying in childbirth (by then Palpatine will have persuaded Anakin that the dark side gives one the ability to bring the dead back to life). So the narrative point of having Shmi die in Clones is clearly to have Anakin experience an early significant loss that makes him determined not to suffer another one later in his life. Although the entire Tatooine sequence feels like it has been plopped down in the middle of a movie that it otherwise has nothing to do with, if this was as far as the sequence went it certainly would have been acceptable and might have actually made Anakin a more sympathetic character. However, right after his mother dies, a vengeful Anakin mercilessly slaughters every single Tusken Raider in the camp, including the females and the children. Anakin has just committed mass murder.

  The purpose of the prequel trilogy is to tell the story of how Anakin Skywalker, once a noble and virtuous Jedi, came to embrace the dark side and become Darth Vader. This terrible event is supposed to happen at the climax of the entire trilogy. Instead, with this incident, it happens halfway through.

  * * *

  All through the original trilogy, Luke was warned not to give in to his hate and his anger and his aggression—if he did, he was warned, he would travel down the path to the dark side and it would forever dominate his destiny—he would become a villain now and forever. Anakin does exactly what Luke was warned not to do—he gives in to his hate and in his anger commits multiple killings. With this act, he has turned to the dark side and become a villain. Surprisingly, though, instead of the script treating Anakin like a villain, it actually treats him far more sympathetically.

  RAY MORTON

  After the murders, Anakin returns to the Lars homestead and tells Padmé what he has done. Rather than condemn his actions or running from him in horror, she is understanding and sympathetic. Without explicitly saying so, she justifies his actions and forgives him. And not long after, she appears to have forgotten all about it. As does Anakin. As does the movie. The script and the film proceed as if the entire Tatooine episode was just a minor bump in the road—as if Anakin has not yet turned to the dark side. And here is where having a protagonist who is also an antagonist becomes a problem. Just a few scenes after Anakin confesses, he (along with Padmé) is off to rescue Obi-Wan. He gets captured, declares his love for Padmé, fights off monsters, duels with Count Dooku, gets his arm cut off, gets his arm replaced, and finally marries Padmé. These are all the actions of a heroic protagonist, which is how the movie regards him and wants us to regard him also.

  But this is impossible. Because Anakin has committed mass murder. And because we’ve seen him do it. And because we can’t forget it. From now until the end of the trilogy, our feelings about Anakin are forever in conflict—we know we’re supposed to regard him as a hero, but how can we when we know he is a villain? With this conflict ever-present, we can no longer invest our emotions or our sympathy in Anakin’s story. From now on, we can only watch it unfold.

  * * *

  Thirteen months after the release of The Phantom Menace—on June 26, 2000, to be exact—principal photography began on Episode II: Attack of the Clones. There were definitely a few behind-the-scenes changes made. For starters, production had shifted away from Leavesden Film Studios in London to Fox Studios Australia (with some additional shooting at Elstree Studios in England). Beyond that, Stephen Jones (The Well, Red Planet) was brought on as production manager. Exterior locations would be shot in Tunisia; the Plaza de España in Seville, London; China; Vancouver; San Diego; and the Villa del Balbianello on Lake Como, and the Reggia Palace of Caserta in Italy. Principal photography would wrap on September 20, 2000—less than three months after it began.

  RICK MCCALLUM

  The reason for the move to Australia, actually, was a combination of a couple of things. One, Fox had just built a huge studio there and that was an opportunity that we just couldn’t miss. It was a fantastic deal to be able to work at that studio with a great infrastructure and a great film community. We brought a few English heads of departments to the studio, and we had some of our English crew working on various locations as well. So the decision to film the next two pictures in Australia was really a combination of things, but primarily it was a great opportunity to work at Fox’s brand-new studio.

  Production on Episode II was low-key and done with great precision. We shot very quickly and tried to film the bulk of the movie in an intense period of sixty days. We shot in five countries and it was great, because there were no problems. We didn’t have anything on location that screwed us up on any level. There were no storms like the ones that destroyed some Phantom Menace sets. There was plenty of rain, but it never stopped us from shooting. Everything went really well. But it was relentless, because we always shot a minimum of thirty-six setups a day, but he was into it. I think he had a great time.

  GAVIN BOCQUET

  (production designer, Attack of the Clones)

  We were on a similar schedule for Episode II as we were on Episode I, because of the time of year we were shooting. On the other hand, we were probably getting the information [we needed] later than we did the last time, but then we also had environments we already knew a lot about, which had to be developed a great deal last time. So, the initial conceptual work on Episode I needed to go back to “base camp,” so to speak, whereas on this one we felt, despite the slightly delayed information gathering, there was a sort of comfort level with the fact we had all worked together before, and we understood the major environments of Star Wars, how we work, how George works, and how we put all of these things together. Half of our environments we had knowledge of. There might be different rooms or spaces in these environments, but a lot of the initial conceptualizing was done. So on the one hand we were getting the information later, which made us work a little bit faster, and we were in a new country, which also made it a little bit more hectic. But then there is an awful lot of familiarity with the people we were working with and what we were doing. And the new people fit in as well.

  * * *

  The biggest change in terms of production on the film came from the fact that, whereas portions of The Phantom Menace were shot digitally, Attack of the Clones was completely digital. This allowed them to break with the norm and shoot interiors first prior to going on location.

 
; RICK MCCALLUM

  Those days were long gone. The reason that you used to have to do your exteriors first was so you knew what your lighting conditions would be like for the interiors. In the digital world it doesn’t matter. We can change the exterior to anything we want to match the interior, so you deal with what you want instead of what you get. And then what you want, you re-create. And even if it’s a rainy day, it doesn’t matter. Personally, I love location. It’s much more exciting for me, because anything can happen. You just never know. It doesn’t matter how well you plan, you live by the serendipity of weather. There are so many different kinds of exigencies in production that can fail. Perhaps your actor drank too much the night before and gets in a car accident or the driver doesn’t see anything, including the oncoming bus. The person who owns the house where you got permission to shoot gets a divorce and suddenly the permission vanishes. Anything can happen and every day it does. Whereas here you know you can control your day. It’s a very controlled atmosphere. Technologically we need to be in an atmosphere like that, and also because we have so many different worlds and so many different sets. We were shooting for fifty-six days but we had sixty-seven sets, so you can imagine some days when we are moving from one area of the stage to another. And if it’s raining, that’s about as much drama as we get.

  GEORGE LUCAS

  The problem with digital is that if you have a leaf wiggle in a tree, you have to figure it out and go program for that. It’s a totally different kind of art form in that if you want water, you have to work on it and work on it. We had water left over from The Perfect Storm, so we licked the water thing. But working digitally is a big challenge. It takes a lot of people, a lot of money, a lot of time just to develop a realistic … anything.

  RICK MCCALLUM

  For example, you shoot the real rain, and then, when you want something that is a bit more powerful, that doesn’t look as naturalistic as you want, then you add the CG. There is stuff called particle animation. It’s what made Twister work. It was taking particles and animating them to a performance level. That’s what was done on Perfect Storm and also on Twister and to a large degree, we pushed it to a whole new level in the podrace sequence in Episode I. When a CG element crashes on the ground and you see it break apart and pieces fly all over, that is all performance-driven. There is somebody who is actually creating the performance of a particle. That is really amazing to see come to life. I mean, Perfect Storm almost cracked it totally with water; some of it so unbelievably realistic. That couldn’t have been made two or three years earlier. It would have been impossible. So, each film pushes the technology a little bit further.

  * * *

  Seven and a half years were spent attempting to develop the technology, the final prototype of the camera arriving two days before they began shooting. Which just happened to correspond with the time the crew received the shooting script from Lucas and Hales.

  RICK MCCALLUM

  For us to shoot a movie that lasts about two hours and ten minutes and has about twenty-two hundred or twenty-three hundred shots in it—and every single one of those shots has a digital effect in—it would have been ludicrous to shoot on film and scan it all into a computer before we could even cut or begin to manipulate it. That was one of the major reasons why we wanted to be able to acquire our images digitally.

  But the most important reason was to push the technology so that, finally, audiences could see a film in the theater that is duplicated exactly the way in which we made it. It’s a very simple, compelling idea, but getting an audience to see the actual movie you’ve made is still one of the most difficult things out there to achieve. Moviegoers usually don’t see a film that even comes close, visually, to representing what we’ve shot. And most of the time you can’t hear a film the way you should after we’ve spent millions of dollars trying to get a sound mix for it. It’s very hard to do.

  GEORGE LUCAS

  I’ve always [said], “This is like the film industry in 1902,” so the advances are going to be huge, because what we did on Episode II, we did in essence by ourselves. We had to talk Sony into it, [but] they built the cameras and they tried really hard to make this work; we also had to talk Panavision into committing a lot of money to build those lenses. Both companies really went out on a limb. This was a giant experiment for everybody, and nobody knew if it was going to work or if they were pouring money down a rat hole. The whole medium was opening up, there were lots of lens manufacturers out there building lenses and lots of other camera people building cameras, so you had competition. It was the same with digital editing—for the seven years that we had EditDroid [almost] nobody would use it, and even after we sold the company to Avid another two or three years passed before they got anybody to use it. All [digital technology] does is give you more to work with. It’s a much more malleable medium than film, by far; you can make it do whatever you want it to do, and you can design the technology to do whatever you want to do.

  RICK MCCALLUM

  We weren’t trying to change everybody else’s world, we were just trying to change our world. There was so much controversy about us filming Episode II digitally. There was so much fear being projected all over by cameramen and by studios. As far as we’re concerned, we were not trying to convince the world that they need to go a different way in making movies. We probably got 10 to 15 percent more setups per day, because of the ease of the camera.

  GEORGE LUCAS

  Audiences can’t tell the difference. We knew that right from the beginning because we shot [parts of] Phantom Menace digitally, and nobody could tell which shots were digital and which weren’t.

  RON MAGID

  (journalist, visual effects historian)

  As Episode II unfolds, it seems as though a new style of filmmaking is evolving, particularly in terms of the stunt and effects sequences, which felt more believable because there was less cutting around to hide the trick. Digital tools allowed them to develop a different style.

  RICK MCCALLUM

  It’s a whole different medium on one level and it’s a whole different skill set on another. For us, I love it. It’s so easy and you know exactly what your movie’s going to look like. Our real problem was going to be in exhibition, once we tried to take what we knew was the future and tried to force it into the analog world that existed then, with poor projectors and horrible presentation. But that was all changing.

  GEORGE LUCAS

  I refined the process of working more visually; I shoot for a period of time, about sixty days or so, and then I stop and work on the film for a while. Then I come back and shoot for another ten days or so, and then I stop and go back and work on the film, rewrite and change things, and then I come back and shoot for another week. I do it in pieces rather than in one long shoot. That way I can actually look at what I’m doing, cut it and study it. The previsualization process [allows me to] put scenes together without having to shoot them, see how they fit in the movie, and then, if they work, I can cut them in and actually go out and shoot them. There’s a lot of freedom and malleability that didn’t exist before. It’s easy to move things around in the frame, to change various visual aspects of the film, which just wasn’t possible before. It’s the same kind of thing that you find in still photography if you use Photoshop.

  RICK MCCALLUM

  That camera was only an interim step. High-def isn’t the ultimate answer, just the way you acquire images. And if you acquire them digitally, you have the ability to manipulate every frame with total control.

  RON MAGID

  One reported problem was the decision to use high-def instead of VistaVision for miniature effects photography.

  GEORGE LUCAS

  We had to reinvent the system. We had to get new cameras and build the system rather than just use the system we had. But I wanted Episode II to be consistently digital; I didn’t want to have to use film. Film ultimately is very cumbersome. It’s like working with the lights out—you can’t see the work until the n
ext day. Being able to look at what you’re doing while you’re doing it, without having to run to the lab or [hurrying] because you want to break down the setup and all that, makes high-def a much more efficient way of shooting visual effects.

  * * *

  Beyond new supporting players, those joining the main cast include the legendary Hammer horror star Christopher Lee as Count Dooku; Temuera Morrison, who had wowed audiences in Lee Tamahori’s Once Were Warriors, as Jango Fett; Daniel Logan as his son, Boba; NYPD Blue’s Jimmy Smits as Bail Organa; and, of course, Hayden Christensen stepping into the role of Anakin Skywalker, which Jake Lloyd had played in his pint-sized version in The Phantom Menace.

  Christensen was born April 19, 1981, in Vancouver, British Columbia. Prior to Attack of the Clones, he starred in the TV series Higher Ground (2000) and appeared in the films In the Mouth of Madness, No Greater Love, and Street Law (all 1995), The Hairy Bird (1998), The Virgin Suicides and Free Fall (both 1999), and Life as a House (2001).