Attack of the Clones

For no particular reason, I threw on Attack of the Clones tonight.

Unsurprisingly, the best transfer to DVD of any movie I’ve seen, with the exception of, perhaps, Finding Nemo (which was, of course, created entirely on computers and not in need of transfer in the traditional sense.

For Clones, the same joys and disappointments as before. You could name them as well as I could.

But I found myself thinking about the tall, skinny aliens from the Camino system (Caminans?). They have a whole planet, covered in water and dotted with clone factories. “Cloners, these people are” says the crusty cook from the ’50s diner to Obi-Wan.

Well, I’ve never heard of a whole planet’s population identified by their profession, and it stuck out weird. Really, is the entire population of Camino involved in the production of clones? Are there no truck drivers, no bricklayers, no doctors, lawyers, bookkeepers on Camino, except those connected to the cloning industry?

It’s sort of like someone saying “Los Angeles, filmmakers those people are.” I mean sure, LA is a company town, but I often go weeks on end without running into a single filmmaker. I meet housewives and grocery clerks and doctors and accountants and locksmiths and librarians and swim coaches and short-order cooks and all kinds of things. But no, apparently on Camino all they do is make clones.

But wait: in all the Camino scenes, we meet a grand total of — well, let’s see — two Caminans (Caminists? Camisoles?). One is a female greeter of some sort and the other is identified as the Prime Minister. Now, Prime Minister implies that there are quite a few Caminans running around, but where are they? And where are their belongings? The rooms we enter into are completely uncluttered and sparkling clean. No piles of magazines or half-eaten doughnuts sitting around. I know that we never get inside the living quarters of a genuine Caminan, but they must eat and sleep somewhere, something. They have clothes, which they must keep somewhere, but what do they eat? Fish? Plankton? Where do they go to the bathroom? And where are they all?

Who built those factories? It must have been contract work from another planet, because the only things the Caminans do is clone. Cloners, those people are.

And then it struck me: maybe the female greeter and the Prime Minister are the only two Caminans on the planet. Maybe that’s all there are, and all the cloning and clone-training is done by machines.

But wait — if there are only two Caminans on the planet, why is one Prime Minister?

And suddenly the whole movie turned into some sick charade. There are two creatures on a planet, and they’re surrounded by these artificial people that they make, and there are so many of them that they start to think that they are actually the leaders of some great society, instead of just a couple of cloners running an automated factory. And in the extremity of their isolation and loneliness, they start to refer to each other as Prime Minister and, who knows, Vice-Prime-Minister or something.

Maybe they trade off from week to week, calling each other Prime Minister.

They’re smart, that’s for sure. They built those factories and they figured out how to clone hundreds of thousands of clones, so they must be pretty sharp. But no one visits, no one “drops by,” even the Jedi who ordered the clones never stopped back to check their progress. Little do they know their planet has been erased from the Archives on Coruscant.

I can imagine the two of them sitting around wondering what happened to tourism on Camino.

MALE CAMINAN: “We put up the billboards, we sent out the emails, how come no one comes to rainy, water-covered, windswept clone-factory-town Camino?”

FEMALE CAMINAN: “People just aren’t interested in cloning any more. Hey, can I be queen next week?”
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Comments

49 Responses to “Attack of the Clones”
  1. Anonymous says:

    Pffft. Silly padawan. If only you would raise your head and glance upon the other Star Wars Universes. Like in the game Lego Star Wars, there are a couple of Camino, and each one’s job is to make sure the player controlled Obi Wan gets to his proper destination. There are, as Isaid, quite a few, and when hit by your lightsaber, they turn red, but stay undettered. Thats how powerful they are.

    On the film side, the Camino are, by far and wide, one of the more interesting aspects of the new trilogy. That the pit where they fight the rat. Those ALL ROCK….all of them~
    -Robolizard

    • Todd says:

      the Camino are, by far and wide, one of the more interesting aspects of the new trilogy.

      I agree. I like their design and the way they breathe through their noses. I totally believe that they’re standing there in the room. That’s why I don’t understand why there aren’t more of them. Little Boba Fett even greets the female by name, like she drops by all the time, or she looks after Boba while Jango is off murdering Republic Senators on Coruscant.

      What do the female Camino and Boba Fett do while Jango is off killing people, I wonder? Watch DVDs? Play Monopoly? When she’s babysitting, who’s running the gigantic planet-sized clone factory? You can’t leave a kid that age by himself, and the Prime Minister certainly must have better things to do, like sit in a pristine empty room with no windows waiting for Jedi to show up.

  2. Anonymous says:

    Bah

    Obviously, all the Caminanesesses moved to another planet.
    Far away from Prime Minister and greeter, who creeped the hell out of them.

    • Todd says:

      Re: Bah

      You know, and we only see the clone factory where they’re making the Jango Fett clones (And apparently the Camino also manufacture the guns and computers and troop ships and all the other things hundreds of thousands of mindless clones need. Sheesh!

      And keep in mind, when you get an order to clone an army, you will probably have to retool your entire factory depending on what species you’re cloning. Where does their material come from on their water-covered planet? They must order it from some other planet, maybe a clone-factory-building planet.

      “Arrgh, clone-factory-builders those people are…”

      You would need to have hundreds of thousands of workers there to build and supply your factories. So how come no one’s ever heard of the place except for the crusty short-order cook?

      Hey, and speaking of which, you’ve got hundreds of thousands of sweaty clones, all eating and breathing and sweating for dozens of years, all living inside a plastic water-tight dome, where is the steam, the mildew, the rot? Everything is sparkling clean. And the Greeter has nothing better to do than wait by the door in case a Jedi lands on their landing pad.

      Speaking of which, how did Obi-Wan know which pad to land on? He didn’t know where the hell he was going, there’s a planet covered with water, and what must be dozens if not hundreds of landing pads, and he lands on one landing pad in front of one dome and rings the doorbell, and hey! The Greeter is right there waiting for him! After 10 years, you’d think she would have dozed off, or at least be doing something else with her time.

      If I had written it, she would have shown up at the door holding a mop and a bucket and said “Yeah, what do you want, wipe your feet you’re dripping all over my sparkling clean gleaming-white floor!”

      Hey, if the Stormtroopers (in the original trilogy) are all clones of Jango Fett, why are their voices different? Also they seem a lot dumber. I think maybe they’re clones of clones.

      • Anonymous says:

        Re: Bah

        Some answers:
        It was buidt by clones or the Caminesses before they left.
        They were in supended animation
        Obi-Wan got directions, maybe from Yahoo.
        The greeter is a very pathetic person, or the client wanted a greeter damit! And with a big order of clones, you don’t want to piss off the client.
        It costs more to make them sound the same…. different clone batches.

      • Anonymous says:

        Re: Bah

        Some answers:
        It was buidt by clones or the Caminesses before they left.
        They were in supended animation
        Obi-Wan got directions, maybe from Yahoo.
        The greeter is a very pathetic person, or the client wanted a greeter damit! And with a big order of clones, you don’t want to piss off the client.
        It costs more to make them sound the same…. different clone batches.

        I have no clue why only a short order cook knew.

      • robolizard says:

        Re: Bah

        Through the power of SHODDY CONTRADICTION, the Clone trooper matter was explained by George Lucas somewhere… on Ign… You see, they are al indeed clones of Jango Fett. BUT, when the Empire came to power, various others joined thier ranks. No aliens, only humans. Then again, that would also explain why Luke was too short for a stormtrooper…. … … … and why did Darth Vader not outright hire Boba Fett to capture Han Solo… hmmm… HMMMM.. HM– oh wait. The clone wars were mentioned in IV [or were they? I’ve never seen the Original Version. Just the special edition…… but Alec Guinness said it soo…] so there was SOME idea… but what WAS it…

        • rennameeks says:

          Re: Bah

          The Clone Wars are mentioned by Alec Guinness in the first movie – the real first movie – when he’s talking to Luke about Anakin (telling the truth, from a certain point of view) in Obi’s living room. No special edition necessary.

  3. urbaniak says:

    I haven’t seen a Star Wars movie since “Return of the Jedi” came out.

    • smiling_dog says:

      You’re lucky. I was dragged to all of them. Now I love science fiction and enjoyed the first Star Wars movie, but these films were more about special effects than character or story. The dialogue was stilted even by Harlequin Romance standards. Great, now I will incur the wrath of both fans of Star Wars and cheesy romance novels!

    • Todd says:

      Mr. Urbaniak will see the new Star Wars movies when they are released in black and white and transferred onto nitrate stock.

  4. evillunch says:

    This the most charmingly sad thing I’ve read in a loooooong time- That species did make me pretty curious. I liked their design but nothing much happened with them.

  5. toliverchap says:

    something to think about

    hmmm that was a pretty cool world Camino. Perhaps Lucas will give us more information about these enigmatic Caminans in the TV series. This is a great blog by the way I enjoy your insights on films; as a screenwriter you bring a great and succinct analysis . . . good stuff.

  6. urbaniak says:

    Uhhhhhh…so how about those Ewoks?

    • toliverchap says:

      politics

      Yeah I just caught the last bit of something on a repeat of The Daily Show about Ewoks. I guess the Republicans have done a commercial using Star Wars. I’m sure that’ll give people something to run with.

      • goodtoast says:

        Re: politics

        Ha. Yes. I saw that too.
        It was of the better segments that I’ve seen recently. Too bad I can’t actually find the “Election Wars” video online. That would be a hoot.

    • jake_the_ape says:

      Ewoks have one redeeming quality…. nutritional value.

  7. rennameeks says:

    Nobody ever goes in, and nobody ever comes out.

    Except Jango.

    By the way, it’s “Kamino.” I guess that spelling is supposed to draw attention away from the absence of more than two of the Kaminoan society. (Three, if you count the one supposedly flying by on a winged creature during one of the establishing shots.)

    Does it bother anyone else that Threepio makes bad puns during the big fight scene at the end? Ignoring the pure lameness factor, they’re completely out of character for him. Threepio is pretty annoying, but he’s not supposed to be THAT annoying. That’s Jar-Jar’s job. *shudder*

    • Todd says:

      That’s right! There are three.

      What a society. There’s a Prime Minister, who sits in his white windowless room all day in his luminous scoop-chair that comes down out of the ceiling, a Greeter who handles running the entire planet’s industry, and a guy who rides a pterodactyl around. Probably their teenage son, out hot-rodding.

      In the Kamino-world version of Star Wars, that teenager glimpsed riding the pterodactyl is the Luke Skywalker character, an impatient teenager trying to get the hell off this windswept, water-covered company planet. “I’m sick of cloning troopers for the Republic! I’m taking the pterodactyl out for a spin!”

      Say, where’s he going on that pterodactyl, anyway? Out to — another clone factory? What indication do we have that the other factories on the planet are any different from the one where Mom and Dad live? They are CLONERS, after all; every factory on the planet is probably EXACTLY THE SAME. Enough to drive a teenager out of his mind.

      I think I’m onto something with the Luke Skywalker comparison, though. Tatooine: desert planet, Kamino: water planet. Both dead-end, crappy places for an ambitious teenager to live.

      I can see the teen Jeeby (that’s the name I’ve just now given to the teenager flying by on the pterodactyl) flying his pterodactyl out to look for his fish-droids that have gotten loose from the clone-factory. He finally locates them stuck in a reef, where they are menaced by savage Water People who have Shock Sticks. They are rescued by a new character, Froggi-One Kinoba, who swims out from a crag and waves the Water People away from Jeeby with a mysterious wave of his fin. And Jeeby’s life finally begins…

      If George Lucas ever asks me if I want to write a Star Wars movie, that’s what I’ll pitch, the story of the guy riding the pterodactyl out of the water in Attack of the Clones.

      I wonder where they prepare food on Kamino. They show hundreds of thousands of clones chowing down in a cafeteria, what could they be eating? Fish paste? Roasted pterodactyl?

      Well, I guess the Kaminites know what they’re doing, they certainly seem serene enough in their clone-factories.

      I think Threepio’s slap-happy puns in the big climax are meant to keep it light while everyone’s being beheaded and mutilated.

      If Threepio’s wisecracks were the weakest aspect of Attack of the Clones, the world would be a much happier place.

      • rennameeks says:

        The saddest part is that you probably could tie this pitch back into the whole Joseph Campbell thing and get a spin-off tv series. After all, you’ve got the Fetts for B storylines. Well, one and a half Fetts, since Jango got beheaded. (Hey, that sounds like another spin-off…)

        Y’know, considering that the Kaminoans were isolated for at least a decade, it makes you wonder what else was going on in the other cloning factories. They couldn’t have possibly been using *all* of them to clone Jango. Shouldn’t they have had other orders to fill? And if they were really that well-known for their quality clones, shouldn’t someone have noticed that they were missing? Perhaps the rest of their race decided to hop onto some very large spaceships and visit Earth in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, leaving those three behind to run the cloning facilities. After all, these *are* prequels we’re talking about here.

        If Lucas and Hales wanted a character to make slap-happy puns, they should’ve invented a brother for Jar-Jar or something. (I’ll leave Jar-Jar alone since he was originally intended as an homage to slapstick comedy, which ideally should’ve left him speechless. Oh well.) Although maybe this was their way of avoiding Threepio’s famously prissy (and arguably effeminate) nature.

        I completely agree that if those not-so-wisecracks had been the weakest part of the movie, things would’ve been better. Sadly, they weren’t.

        On the plus side, Threepio didn’t comment on Jango losing his head. And for that, we can all be thankful.

        • Todd says:

          I just feel bad for the Kaminoans (all three of them). Their business must have suffered terribly since Palpatine removed their records from the Archive. You’d think after a few years one of them would have said “Why don’t you call Verizon and see if we’re still listed?”

          The Greeter says to Obi-Wan “We were beginning to think you weren’t showing up.” Well, wouldn’t they get suspicious quite a bit sooner? Wouldn’t there be more progress reports through the years?

          FEMALE: “Prime minister, I’ve been emailing the Jedi council for months now but no one’s returning my messages. In fact, we haven’t gotten messages from anyone at all for about six years now. Maybe we ought to slow down the job until we get confirmation that anyone in the galaxy is still alive.”

          PRIME MINISTER: “Nonsense, get back to work, I’ve got to sit in my spotless white room in my new scoopy chair. Don’t you have some babysitting to do?”

          • rennameeks says:

            Ahh, the scoopy chair. The trademark of any proper recluse. In the super-special platinum-gold edition of Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope (also known as “the first Star Wars”), we get to see the scoopy chair in which Obi-Wan Kenobi was supposed to have sat while in his home, but had to be cut because of the limitation of the budget and special effects of the time period.

            The Kaminoans must have been qspent many years hungering for visitors to give progress reports to. Let’s assume that the entire planet was outside of all communications networks and only had AOL available (and that they only had a dialup connection). That wouldn’t leave much else on the planet beyond a vast ocean that took up 95% of the planet’s surface (since we all know that most planets in the SW universe only have one climate), cloning facilities, and a single pteradactyl. The cloning machines seemed to do a pretty good job of regulating themselves, which means that the family of three just had to make sure that none of the clones started a riot or were born with two heads. I wonder if the two parents argued over who got to sit in the scoopy chair and who had to clean the display rooms (than explains the incredibly cleanliness of the facilities).

            This brings up another issue: the Star Wars universe of the original trilogy was very “lived in.” Lots of dirt, mud, and grime. Not so in the prequels. Does this mean that the galaxy got dirtier after Palpatine’s rise to power? Did he declare war on cleaning supplies as well as the Jedi? Was Mr. Clean rubbed out as quickly as the Jedi Council? We may never know, unless George Lucas can be convinced to allow a miniseries on the subject.

            But I digress.

            I wonder what Boba Fett did while his dad was off assassinating people in other parts of the galaxy. Maybe he trained a few of his fellow clones to play touch football with him in the cloning rooms. I expect that he and Jeeby would have spent much of their time shooting sea womp rats and finding ways of stirring up trouble, like mixing and matching DNA in the cloning machines. That might have set Jeeby’s parents back a few years and would explain why they hadn’t tried too hard to get in touch with Coruscant.

            • Todd says:

              Well, now let’s not get excited. The Kaminoans have two scoopy chairs. We see Obi-Wan sit in one while he’s chatting with the Prime Minister in his windowless white room.

              Maybe Obi-Wan ordered a scoopy chair from the Prime Minister but by the time DHL delivered it, he was on the wrong side of the Empire and had to flee. And no one would deliver to his neighborhood on Tatooine, since Mos Eisley, the local spaceport, is a wretched hive of scum and villainy. Or maybe Obi-Wan only thinks of it that way, since DHL won’t dock there.

              Maybe there’s a movie that would fit in between Clones and Sith, about Obi-Wan’s attempt to track down what happened to the chair he ordered from the Kaminoans. We could see him on the phone with DHL for two hours, trying to negotiate their phone tree, and the DHL guy trying to explain how Kamino doesn’t exist, despite the fact that he has a tracking number for the scoopy chair.

              OBI-WAN: Of course they exist, you idiot! Where do you think the clone army came from?!

              DHL GUY: All I know is, our guys won’t go anywhere near Mos Eisley. If you want to come and pick it up at our central office —

              OBI-WAN: Christ, I can’t come to your main office! I don’t even have a speeder, much less an inter-stellar transport at my disposal! If I had an inter-stellar transport, I could fucking well travel to Kamino myself now, couldn’t I?! I’M AN OUTLAW, YOU IDIOT! I’M EXILED! Doesn’t that MEAN anything to you?!

              DHL GUY: I’m not sure what you want me to do, sir —

              I watched little bits of (sigh) A New Hope tonight, and I also noticed the grit. Yes, I think things went a little bit to seed during the Empire’s reign. Not only that, but technology took a few steps back. Machines got bulkier and cruder, computer graphics became downright primitive and even alien life forms stopped looking like life forms and more like rubber masks.

              • urbaniak says:

                I just want to say that I am thoroughly enjoying this thread even though I’ve never seen “Attack of the Clones.”

                Interesting observation about the grime in the first movie vs. the clean environments of the more recent films. It never occurred to me that even “Star Wars” (1977) contains elements of gritty seventies realism in its production design.

                • rennameeks says:

                  The sad part is that the most interesting parts of Attack of the Clones have been captured here, so you really don’t even need to see the movie to be up to speed on what little you missed. There are no “no Luke, I AM your father” or “he’s my brother” moments in the prequels. Everything shown is an obvious attempt to make things fit together with the original three movies. AotC bothers me the most out of the prequels because it’s the film that takes the original characters and gives them lines and behaviors that are completely out of character. It’s not just Threepio. I could have gone my whole life without seeing Yoda jumping around like a rabid monkey. He couldn’t have been THAT much younger than he was in the original trilogy, considering that he was hundreds of years old. He must have aged quite quickly in between trilogies. To make a long story short (too late), you haven’t missed much by not seeing any of the prequels, least of all this one.

                  The thing that bothers me the most about the grimeless prequels is that the grime of the original trilogy was what set the saga apart from other sci-fi movies (at least at the time). The prequels are pretty in their own right, but Star Wars isn’t supposed to be pretty – it’s supposed to look real and lived-in. No wonder we never saw Naboo in the original trilogy.

                  Even the outwardly immaculate Death Star had its disgusting underbelly. The trash compactor was more nauseatingly filthy than the Emperor Palpatine of the prequels would have ever permitted.

                  Nothing is smooth in the first three Star Wars films. The hull of Han Solo’s Millennium Falcon was notoriously craggy. The Imperial fleet was much smoother by comparison, but the texture of those ships was still more jagged than the perfectly smooth and more rounded ships from the prequels. Even the spherical Death Star became uneven when looked at closely enough; the surface was covered in blasters.

                  Apparently, moviemaking technology has evolved past the ability to create dirt.

              • robolizard says:

                Wait a second… isn’t it OBVIOUS!? Star Wars takes place so long ago, that as it goes into the future it infact BECOMES MORE PRIMITIVE! In 50,000 years the internet will be uninvented. In 500,000 years Oog da Caveman will univent fire. In the Star Wars Universe people age normally, but time and development will only go backwards, then forewards. Right now we are living it up forwards. Duh.

              • rennameeks says:

                There may be two scoopy chairs, but one of them is reserved for guests. The saga continues!

                The DHL storyline came about because the moviemaking technology wasn’t advanced enough to allow for the scoopy chair’s full glory. In the super-special-platinum-gold edition of ANH, Obi-Wan says (in a poorly dubbed impression of Sir Alec Guinness) that he got FedEx to deliver the coveted chair.

                My theory regarding the rubber masks is that Emperor Palpatine wanted to have the least rubbery face in the galaxy, so he had all of the galaxy’s plastic surgeons either killed or working for him, which left several thousand alien species in the lurch. Poor Greedo was not as inept a bounty hunter as he appeared to be in ANH; he just couldn’t wrap his non-manicured fingers around his blaster’s trigger in time. I believe that this is why George Lucas decided to take pity on him in the special edition of ANH and let him shoot at Han first.

                • Todd says:

                  SCENE ONE

                  PRIME MINISTER: We’ve been awaiting you. Your clones are almost ready, I —
                  OBI-WAN: Clones? Did you say clones?
                  PRIME MINISTER: They are of the highest — yes, clones. Your clones. The clones you ordered, ten years ago.
                  OBI-WAN: Ah yes. Those clones.
                  PM: They are of the highest —
                  OW: Hi, I’m sorry to interrupt —
                  PM: Yes?
                  OW: This chair.
                  PM: Yes?
                  OW: Nice.
                  PM: Oh, you like it?
                  OW: Yeah, it — what, it hangs from the ceiling? It looks like a, you know, there are those spoons they sometimes give you in Japanese restaurants? To eat your Miso soup?
                  PM: Umm —
                  OW: It’s like, if you made one of those really huge and hung it from the ceiling —
                  PM: Sure. I guess. I, I haven’t really given it that much thought —
                  OW: Of course not. You’re the Prime Minister, you — hey, how come you don’t have any windows?
                  PM: Well I —
                  OW: Where did you get this chair? It, what, it looks like it’s on a, a track or something, up in the ceiling —
                  PM: Um, yes, I guess it was made when the factory was made —
                  OW: Which was, like yesterday. Had to be. Look at this place, it’s all sparkling white and new! What do you use to clean, it’s amazing.
                  PM: I, well, that’s probably more the Greeter’s domain, I don’t, um —
                  OW: Do you think I could get a chair like this?
                  PM: I — well, I suppose —
                  OW: I just, you know, it glows, it’s really impressive, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like it.
                  PM: It’s just a chair. Do you want to see the clones or not?
                  OW: Oh sure, the clones, yes. Send them in.

                  • smiling_dog says:

                    Re: SCENE ONE

                    This is much better than that evil SW holiday special that Urbaniak is forcing his readers to watch!

                  • Todd says:

                    SCENE TWO

                    OBI-WAN: Hi, is this Ak-ak, The Chair Guy?
                    AK-AK: Yeah, what can I do for you?
                    OW: Hi, my name is Obi-Wan Kenobi, and I was on Kamino the other day —
                    AA: Yeah —
                    OW: And the prime minister had this chair.
                    AA: Uh huh —
                    OW: And, well, I’ve kind of been exiled from the Empire now that the Clone Wars have started —
                    AA: Right —
                    OW: So I’m not really going to get a chance to get back to Kamino any time soon.
                    AA: Yeah, traffic is all fucked up these days along the Outer Rim. Rishi Maze, fuhgeddaboudit.
                    OW: Right. Anyway, the prime minister had this chair —
                    AA: Kind of a scoopy thing?
                    OW: Yeah, you know the one?
                    AA: Sure, sure. Jeez, that was a long time ago, lemme see, I — did it have the anti-gravity pads?
                    OW: Um, no, it was on a track.
                    AA: A track?
                    OW: Yes, in the ceiling. It kind of moved along a track in the ceiling.
                    AA: You’re talking about the white scoopy chair, right?
                    OW: Yes.
                    AA: Hung from the ceiling?
                    OW: These did, yes.
                    AA: Now what the — y’know, you’re gonna have to talk to my brother, he did the orders for the Kamino factories.
                    OW: But your company did make these chairs.
                    AA: Sure, sure, I — white, right?
                    OW: Yes.
                    AA: And kind of glowing, right?
                    OW: Yes.
                    AA: Yeah, I know the chairs. Yeah, all the offices there on Kamino had ’em. You know the whole planet is covered in water.
                    OW: Right.
                    AA: Yeah, craziest thing, Kaminos, they ordered sixteen million of these scoopy chairs, you know what?
                    OW: What.
                    AA: They got three people living there.
                    OW: You’re shitting me.
                    AA: I shit you not sir. Three people.
                    OW: Jesus.
                    AA: Thing is — the chairs I remember, they had the normal anti-gravity pads, they didn’t — track in the ceiling you say?
                    OW: That’s what this one had.
                    AA: That might have been a custom job, we never —
                    OW: Well, the point is, I’m looking to get one like it, for my new place on Tatooine.
                    AA: Tatooine?
                    OW: Yeah.
                    AA: The fuck you gonna do with that chair on Tatooine?
                    OW: I know that it’s not an Empire-approved planet, I —
                    AA: No, no, you don’t understand. The scoopy chair? It’s made out of a special kind of plastic. That luminescence?
                    OW: Yeah —
                    AA: That’s a special kind of plastic, called “Glowy Plastic,” it’s made out of these little under-sea creatures —
                    OW: Yes —
                    AA: — needs a certain humidity level to maintain its integrity. Tatooine is a desert planet.
                    OW: Well, I’ve got a humidifier in my hovel, maybe —
                    AA: No, it won’t work. And that track thing, I don’t know, you’re gonna have to ask my brother —
                    OW: Well it doesn’t have to glow, I just like the design. Is there any way you can build one of these chairs for me?
                    AA: Sir, we can build the chair, that’s the easy part. But how are we gonna ship it to you?
                    OW: Maybe I should talk to your brother.

                    • goodtoast says:

                      Re: SCENE TWO

                      Please tell me you’re stopping for the night.
                      Tears are rolling down my face, and really, I need to be concentrating on something else. The only thing wrong with the above scenes is that the dialog is coherent. George Lucas, brilliant imagination, terrible writer.

                      Thank you for the entertainment.

                    • rennameeks says:

                      Re: SCENE TWO

                      George Lucas is the first person to admit that he’s not a good writer. Still, he does have some sense of character, even if he doesn’t always express those feelings in the best way possible. (Vader’s “Noooooooooo!” in Episode III will haunt me for the rest of my life….it’s so unbearably cheesy.)

                      I wouldn’t swear to it, but I highly suspect that Jonathan Hales is responsible for many of the shortcomings of Attack of the Clones.

                  • rennameeks says:

                    Re: SCENE ONE

                    This is a *vast* improvement upon the scene. I wonder who needs to be bribed to get this shot and included on the special edition DVD.

                    (They really DO look like those soup spoons…)

              • greyaenigma says:

                Regarding the scoopy chair: clearly he was the new Number Two.

                I’m sure their oceans are full of cloned Rovers, too.

  8. Todd says:

    Re: SCENE 1A

    GREETER: Jeepy, stop sitting there reading comic books! You have chores to do!
    JEEPY: You don’t get it, Ma! You just don’t get it!
    G: I “get” that when the time comes for you to take over the planet-sized cloning industry, you’re not going to know how to maintain thousands of city-sized factories churning out millions of clones of different alien life-forms!
    J: Ma, you know what they say about us out here on Camino? I’ll tell you what they say. They say “Camino, cloners those people are.”
    G: But we ARE cloners, dear, that’s what we DO, we —
    J: Not me, Ma. Not me. I’m not a cloner. I was born to do something else with my life. And one day you’ll see that. Why, one day I’m going to join some rebel alliance or something and blow up some big weapon of some kind!
    G: But Jeepy, those are just crazy dreams. What’s wrong with cloning? Your grandfather was a cloner, your father is a cloner —
    J: I’m NOT A CLONER! I’LL NEVER BE A CLONER! Ma, look at you, you’ve spent your whole life overseeing the automated factories that cover this entire windswept, water-covered planet, tending to millions of clones from dozens of different customers, working your long, delicate tapered fingers to the bone. Why, the other day, when you had one free moment, what did you do, you WAITED BY THE DOOR in case some JEDI or something might show up to DO MORE BUSINESS. Who are YOU, ma? What did YOU want to do with your life? There’s GOT to be more than cloning in this universe, ma, there’s got to be, and I’ve got to find out what there is.
    G: So. You think you’re too good for cloning, eh? Well that’s fine. After all we’ve done for you. That’s fine.
    J: After all you’ve done?!
    G: We sent you to the finest schools, made sure you mixed with all the right people —
    J: You CLONED all the right people, ma! And to see you suck up to that Jedi and that, that little snot-nosed kid —
    G: Don’t talk about little Boba that way, he’s perfectly sweet —
    J: He’s trash, ma, he’s the son of a bounty hunter and he’ll end up in the belly of a Sarlac.
    G: Don’t let your father hear you talk like this. And don’t you walk away from me while I’m talking to you — !
    J: I’m going crazy! I’ve got to get out of here!
    (stomps out, slams door)
    G: Jeepy!
    (we hear the sound of a pterodactyl starting)
    G: Oh, Jeepy!
    (she collapses on the bed)

    • Todd says:

      SCENE 1B

      (Prime Minister and Obi-Wan walk down the hall. Outside, the perpetual storm tosses the waves)
      PM: Well, give our regards to the rest of the galaxy. It’s been getting a little lonely out here.
      OW: I certainly will. Thanks for the — um, well, let’s see, you didn’t feed me, or give me a room, or any good company, I —
      PM: Is there anything else I can help you with?
      OW: Well, now that you mention it, that chair of yours —
      PM: Yes?
      (Just then, JEEPY emerges from the ocean, flying the family pterodactyl, splashing the windows)
      OW: What the hell!
      PM: That kid! Jeepy, get the hell inside, you’ll catch your death!
      (But he is gone)
      PM: Sorry if he startled you, Mr. Jedi. Kids these days, no respect.

      • rennameeks says:

        SCENE 1C

        (Jeepy flies his pterodactyl across the waves of Kamino.)
        J: I hate this planet! I hate being doomed to the life of a cloner! I want to be more than that. Maybe a starship pilot.
        (Jeepy lights up at the thought.)
        J: Yeah, a pilot! I could smuggle contraband across the galaxy, right under the noses of those lousy clones that Mom and Dad made for the Jedi. No one could tell me what to do anymore. I’d live by my own rules! What do you think, Daisy?
        (Jeepy pats the pterodactyl’s neck. She squawks loudly.)
        J: Don’t worry, I’ll be sure to come back and visit you every week.
        (At that moment, the sun breaks through the heavy cloud cover and the rain stops.)
        J: Wow, I’ve never seen that before! Let’s check it out, Daisy!
        (The duo flies up toward the shining sphere.)
        J: It’s so warm….I’ve never felt anything like this before.
        (Suddenly, Daisy’s wings melt and fall apart. The pair crashes into the ocean and drowns. Jeepy’s parents look on in horror from their dock.)
        G: My son! Noooooooooo!
        (Greeter starts to cry.)
        PM: Don’t worry, honey. We can always clone more.

  9. clayfoot says:

    I figured the Camino system was like industrial cities or oil-rich nations on a grander scale. We say that Pittsburgh is a steel town, though they obviously have a mayor and hairdressers and Pier One shopkeepers, too. If you could flit about the galaxy the way we flit about the planet, it wouldn’t be surprising to have whole systems that concentrated on something they could do especially well.

  10. mitejen says:

    I think it’s classic of Lucas’s oversimplification of things. There are all these planets with ONE type of environment, like a desert planet, a water planet, a swamp planet. It’s just clumy symbolism, I think. And I did like the Cloner’s. They seemed very elitist and very class-conscious, especially when Obiwan mentioned something about payment or something and the Prime Minister gave a sniff and cleared his throat, as though he found the subject distateful.

    Also, right after I saw it, I went to a Thai restaurant where the hostess strongly reminded me of the cloner’s. She was six feet tall and SKINNY, but she wore these flowy garments that made me think she had long feet and reverse-hip action happening. She even had that slow, stately walk, but she had cheekbones and the Caminoans did not.

    I also thought it funny their name was a blatant fetishization (sp?) of one of Luca’s muscle car affection-objects. But not too funny.

  11. sheherazahde says:

    Hi

    You don’t know me. Some meme that is going around said I might be interested in Friending you.
    I was checking out your journal and this post made me laugh out loud. So, I added you to my friends list.

    “Hey, can I be queen next week?”

    There is a scene like that in “Reaper Man” by Terry Pratchett. Only it involves the High Priest of a Lost Temple.

  12. Anonymous says:

    I assume you aren’t incorporating any of the ret-con information from the sequels, which make it (unfortunately) explicit that it really was “just ghosts” all along – only really, really EVIL ghosts.

  13. Anonymous says:

    This movies not on IMDb. How strange.

  14. Anonymous says:

    OOH with mounted lasers! Don’t forget the lasers!

  15. Anonymous says:

    Wow! That explains why Eric Bogosian can write such stellar plays and such unfrickinsufferable flicks.

  16. Anonymous says:

    Im New

    Hello All
    Im New…