In the new issue of Science Fiction Chronicle, novelist Alan Dean Foster provides a review of Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones. Of course, this is somewhat old hat since the film has been in release for over six weeks, but still it’s an interesting review. Foster gives the film a fair-minded review. For example, he says that the film’s love story is “neither as grating as the majority of critics contend nor as passionate as it ought to be”. This seems fair to me, although I am still not convinced that Lucas was ever striving for passion in the first place. Foster gets a couple of details wrong about the film — he states, for instance, that during the arena scene Anakin and Obi Wan do not use their Force powers to try to confuse their attacking beasts, but Anakin clearly does just that (it’s how he is able to calm the beast long enough for him to jump onto its back). Foster also utilizes the (sp?) tag after every Star Wars proper noun in his lengthy review, but throughout he spells “Anakin” wrong, rendering it as “Annakin”. (No, that’s not a critique of the review content; rather, a pointing-out of a funny detail.)
Finally, Foster points out in passing what could be an interesting plot point: that we don’t necessarily know that Luke and Leia have the same father; we only assume they do. I’m not sure about this. In Return of the Jedi, Obi Wan specifically tells Luke that the “other Skywalker” is his twin sister. How they could be twins and not have the same father is beyond me, unless it turns out that Luke or Leia is actually a clone. (Now, that might be an interesting twist indeed.)
