“Star Wars – Episode II: Attack of the Clones” debut on IMAX does not mean bigger is better

I do not need to see “Star Wars - Episode II: Attack of the Clones: The IMAX Experience” to review it. I can already give you my negative assessment of the "The IMAX experience" without seeing it.

My reaction is all based on the various tidbits I picked up off such websites as theforce.net and comingsoon.net the past couple months.

The unexpected news that Clones was coming to IMAX theaters was like having someone say, "Wait before you start cheering. I have good news and bad news."

The good news is obvious, but I'll say it anyway for the record. For the first time, a Star Wars movie is getting the BIG, BIG, BIG, BIG, BIG SCREEN treatment in IMAX theaters across the country beginning Nov. 1 through Nov. 26; 12 days before the theatrical version debuts on video and digital video disc (DVD) Nov. 12. Screenings will begin at midnight.

The sour news is Attack of the Clones: The IMAX Experience, like director Ron Howard's biographical epic, “Apollo 13” (1995), before it and released on IMAX screens last month, will run 20 minutes shorter than the 143-minute version audiences and fans saw last summer. “Apollo 13”, which has a 140-minute running time on video and DVD also had 20 minutes cut for its IMAX presentation according to a 9/20/02 review by film critic Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times.

I suppose I should not blame the filmmakers. It is a known fact movies shown on IMAX projectors can only run 120 minutes or less. Hence the reason Disney does not have problems releasing films like “Fantasia 2000” and making such animated classics as Beauty and the Beast exclusive only to IMAX theaters. About everything in Mickey Mouse's video library run under the 90-minute mark. And as a result of the limited box office success of “Fantasia 2000” (1999) and “Beauty and the Beast” (1991), “The Lion King” (1994) will debut on IMAX screens Dec. 25 followed by “Aladdin” (1992) in 2004 before they head to DVD.

An IMAX print, as opposed to a theatrical one, is 58 inches in diameter and weighs 390 pounds according to an Oct. 11, 2002 feature story on Starwars.com called "Making It BIG: Episode II - The IMAX Experience" with the projector itself weighing in at two tons.

"It's the limit now," said Brian Bonnick, Vice President of Technology for IMAX Corporation who was quoted in the 10/11/02 online feature story. "We are actively developing a 150-minute solution that would be employed as an upgrade to the theaters in the future."

I have already seen Attack of the Clones, the theatrical version twice this summer. I would have loved to view it again just to see how it looks on an IMAX screen. The same would have gone for “Apollo 13”. But not at the cost of leaving scenes on the cutting room floor. I have browsed through the script of Clones and found a number of scenes cut (20 minutes of deleted footage appears on the Clones DVD).

I would have been happy if Episode II had run close to three hours which I think it should have (theater owners prefer to have films clock in or under a two-hour time frame so they can have more showings and thus make more money). I will get a three-hour epic when creator/director/screenwriter George Lucas re-edits episodes 1 through 6 for a special DVD edition due out before 2010. The as yet to-be-titled and reportedly final Star Wars prequel, Episode 3, is scheduled to open in theaters May 2005.

Or maybe I'll just wait for the folks at IMAX to come up with that "150-minute solution" so the father of Star Wars can show the entire series on a much larger screen. Now there's an IMAX experience I wouldn't mind sitting through!

So why should I pay to see an edited two-hour version of Clones at an IMAX theater when I'll be able to either rent or purchase the complete 143-minute theatrical version 12 days from now and enjoy the film in the privacy of my own home?

Is it so I can see a recklessly jealous teenager and love-struck Jedi apprentice, Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen), and his adopted father figure, Ben Kenobi (Ewan MacGregor), go after an assassin while on a high-flying, high-speed chase throughout the night skies of Coruscant? Or see the vast dark blue oceans of an alien water world where armies are being cloned to look like bounty hunter Boba Fett from episodes 4 through 6 (“Star Wars” (1977), “The Empire Strikes Back” (1980), “Return of the Jedi” - 1983) and who are a prelude to the Empire's stormtroopers?

Is it to see ships like the Slave 1 and a Jedi Starfighter do battle in an asteroid field? How about watching hundreds of Jedi Knights fight off battle droids and animated monsters inspired by special effects guru Ray Harryhausen who worked on such fantasy films as the Sinbad pictures and “Mysterious Island” (1961) in the 1950s and '60s? Perhaps it's to see a digitally enhanced, lightsaber welding Yoda throw down his wooden cane and do battle with bad guy Count Dooku (Christopher Lee).

I am willing to good bet those scenes aren't what's going to wind up on the cutting room floor.

The editing will "maintain the integrity of the story" said a Lucasfilm spokesperson according to a brief 9/16/02 article on theforce.net called "IMAX Clones Is Bigger But Shorter."

What will likely be sacrificed are those scenes that made fans moan and groan like the romantic subplot between Anakin and Padme (Natalie Portman) that some said slowed down the film's pacing. Perhaps the much-loathed digital character, Jar Jar Binks, who's barely in the film at all, won't even be seen until the final 30 minutes or so.

That alone will probably be enough to win fans over much the way some were won over by "The Phantom Edit"; an abbreviated version that appeared on the Internet shortly after Episode I: The Phantom Menace's debut that was shorter than the original 1999 theatrical 133-minute version. Some said the condensed version, which cuts a lot of the movie's silliness and several scenes featuring Jar Jar Binks, is better. (Lucas did not endorse the version which was done by someone without Lucasfilm’s permission).

Call it "The Clone Edit" for those who embrace Episode II - The IMAX Experience. I will not be surprised if after seeing the shorter version if some say it is as good as “The Empire Strikes Back”. The fact it will run 20 minutes shorter will not be enough to keep fans away from the box office. It is "the IMAX experience" they want to visually witness; special effects eye candy. Who cares about story content?

Well, I do actually.

I am not against releasing theatrical movies in IMAX format so long as everything that was in the original print is included in the IMAX presentation.

As one friend of mine told me, if the film wasn't made to be shown on an IMAX projector to begin with, then it shouldn't be shown in that format at all.

Perhaps at the beginning of each showing for IMAX's Clones, a statement should come up on a black screen whenever R rated movies are shown on network television that says, "This movie has been edited to fit the time frame allotted."

©10/30/02

Controversial 9/11 sculpture kept from public view following complaints from onlookers

The most blatant form of censorship went on display last month at New York’s Rockerfeller Center a week after the televised memorial services for the victims lost on Sept. 11 at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and in a field in Pennsylvania.

A bronze statue was draped in cloth and curtained off because of complaints from onlookers who said the image was too disturbing according to a Sept. 18 article by the Associated Press.

The bronze sculpture, called “Tumbling Woman”, was made by artist Eric Fischl which featured a naked female with her arms and legs extended outward as she is falling to her death from the World Trade Center, her head, and shoulders, hitting the pavement first.

The artist’s work, according to writer Katherine Roth’s 9/18/02 article by the Associated Press, was “designed as a memorial to those who jumped or fell to their death from the World Trade Center.”

I admit the sculpture’s image caught me off guard when I first saw pictures of it on several websites. My first impression was the same as those upset by its appearance. I thought it was unnecessary to depict someone approaching the final stages of his or her doom before lying violently to rest on earth.

Then after looking at the photos for a moment, the work was not that disturbing at all.

I found the piece to represent the desperate situation those poor souls were in after the first plane hit the upper floors of the first tower. We know now most of the victims were trapped, and that the plane’s impact wrecked any chances of getting down alive. The decision they made was either burn to death or jump. Those, for me, are the lasting most heartbreaking images of 9/11. Not when the buildings collapsed.

According to Roth’s article, “some onlookers said there is a need for art that captures the horror of Sept. 11.”

“I don’t think that it’s done in bad taste,” said Christine Defonces who was quoted in Roth’s AP story. “It’s an artist’s reaction to what happened.”

The sculpture was not meant to hurt anybody,” Fischl said in a statement according to Roth’s column. “It was a sincere expression of deepest sympathy for the vulnerability of the human condition. Both specifically towards the victims of Sept. 11 and towards humanity in general.”

Fischl’s comment, however, was not enough to curtail the complaints.

“I don’t think it dignifies their deaths,” said Paul Labb according to the same story. “It is not art. It is very disrupting when you see it.”

“It’s awful,” said a security guard who was quoted by New York Post columnist Andrea Peyser in her column that was also discussed in a September 19, 2002, editorial by the New York Sun.

According to the New York Sun’s editorial, Peyser quoted a security guard who “felt as if he were being dragged against his will back to the terrible day when he actually watched human beings fall from the sky.”

I would love to ask those same people, including Ms. Peyser, who in her column at the Post according to the Sun’s editorial called Fischl’s work “a violently disturbing sculpture”, a few questions.

I wonder if Peyser and those who complained are the same people who stop or slow down on the interstate whenever there is a car accident to see if there are any dead bodies to look at?

I have read several unsettling news accounts describing the horrors of 9/11.

If Mr. Fischl had sculpted such things as a severed hand with $40 dollars in it or a few passenger seats with only the torsos strapped in or images of body parts strewn all over the rooftops of neighboring buildings, would Peyser and her entourage reacted in the same way?

Last September, Hollywood paused, albeit briefly, debating when the public would be comfortable to see violent war movies and films with terrorist themed plots again after 9/11. So much for the long wait.

Some of the most blood drenched films released this year that have either hit the $100 million mark or close to it were pictures about war (“Black Hawk Down”, “We Were Soldiers”) and Irish gangsters (“Road to Perdition”). “Black Hawk Down” and “We Were Soldiers” did not spare audiences the grisly shots of American military service members being blown apart by guns and grenades. Nor for that matter did “Pearl Harbor” (2001) and “Saving Private Ryan” (1998).

I did not hear anyone complain about how graphically offensive or tasteless those movies were which do, in effect, depict what really happened on the battlefield. Their message was war is Hell.

What happened on 9/11 was Hell and Eric Fischl’s “Tumbling Woman” had something to say about what America witnessed that day. Yet some people refuse to accept it.

It is because images of victims falling to their deaths brought home to those civilians who complained about the artist’s work, a grim reality they still refuse to face.

The fact is art, whether it be a painting or statue, movies, television shows, music, literature, ballet, or a play are not just forms of entertainment. It is all art. Even “The Jerry Springer Show” as much as I hate to admit it. They are made to illicit a response from the viewer, listener, or reader. He or she can decide if they like it or do not.

I do not have a problem when people voice their opinions about something they dislike. What makes this country great is freedom of speech. People can voice their likes and dislikes on various issues without being thrown in prison. Not everyone, however, shares the same opinion.

What I will not stand for is when a small group of people protest so much so that a decision is made to pull one’s work from display for the good of all society.

There are no winners when that happens, only losers. And last month, the losers were the patrons at Rockerfeller Center, who unlike Ms. Peyser and those psychologically troubled after seeing Fischl’s work, were denied the chance to view a thought-provoking sculpture and form their own opinion.

©10/6/02