A Thousand Stars: Episode II, Part 13
Feb. 16th, 2023 08:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
matrilOh boy, this is going to be fun. I've been looking forward to this particular bunch of sequences ever since I decided to do this series. The Kamino scenes are rife with fascinating, evocative imagery, and it's all the more striking when juxtaposed with the alternating cuts to Naboo. Let's dive in, shall we?
And diving is an apt term, because Kamino is all about mystery, the subconscious and hidden depths. We start with thick cloud cover, another journey through fog like at the beginning of this film.
Right away, this tells us there are secrets and hidden surprises on this planet.
Then it turns out we're on Waterworld. Literally no land in sight, and it's always raining. Choppy seas, too, indicating something troubling in the deeps.
Let's just appreciate this shot for a moment. The shadowy figure through the translucent door. It's almost ghost-like. Like something out of a dream...
And now, the striking design of the Kaminoans. First off Lucas was giving a little nod to his longtime friend Spielberg, to his famous aliens from Close Encounters. But I doubt it's coincidental that he choose this eerie, willowy, bug-eyed look for the mysterious cloners. They're humanoid yet just different enough to be unsettling. They're graceful in a sort of unsettling way; their voices never climb much above a whisper, and their thinness is a stark contrast to the curves associated with pregnancy and fertility. Note, too, the environment they have created:
Utterly sterile. Not just clean and white, but starkly empty of any decoration or touches of warmth and art.
Obi-Wan has plenty of practice with Jedi stoicism, but he's very quietly freaking out, as we see in the much-memed "visible confusion" shot.
The more he talks with the Kaminoans, the more he realizes: this is going to extend way beyond tracking down Padmé's would-be assassin. There's an entire clone army that has yet to be accounted for.
And then we have our first of many wipes that juxtaposes Kamino's sterile halls with the lush paradise of Naboo.
More on that next time...
And diving is an apt term, because Kamino is all about mystery, the subconscious and hidden depths. We start with thick cloud cover, another journey through fog like at the beginning of this film.
Right away, this tells us there are secrets and hidden surprises on this planet.
Then it turns out we're on Waterworld. Literally no land in sight, and it's always raining. Choppy seas, too, indicating something troubling in the deeps.
Let's just appreciate this shot for a moment. The shadowy figure through the translucent door. It's almost ghost-like. Like something out of a dream...
And now, the striking design of the Kaminoans. First off Lucas was giving a little nod to his longtime friend Spielberg, to his famous aliens from Close Encounters. But I doubt it's coincidental that he choose this eerie, willowy, bug-eyed look for the mysterious cloners. They're humanoid yet just different enough to be unsettling. They're graceful in a sort of unsettling way; their voices never climb much above a whisper, and their thinness is a stark contrast to the curves associated with pregnancy and fertility. Note, too, the environment they have created:
Utterly sterile. Not just clean and white, but starkly empty of any decoration or touches of warmth and art.
Obi-Wan has plenty of practice with Jedi stoicism, but he's very quietly freaking out, as we see in the much-memed "visible confusion" shot.
The more he talks with the Kaminoans, the more he realizes: this is going to extend way beyond tracking down Padmé's would-be assassin. There's an entire clone army that has yet to be accounted for.
And then we have our first of many wipes that juxtaposes Kamino's sterile halls with the lush paradise of Naboo.
More on that next time...
