Star Wars Episode II: Interview

Review by By Clint Morris

Interview with Anthony Daniels
Actor from Star Wars: Attack of the Clones film.

The time has come, my fellow Star Wars fans, to gear up in your Stormtrooper costume, roll up the Bobba Fett socks and lock your puppy, Greedo, in the kennel for the night - an outing is in order.

George Lucas' latest chapters in the highly anticipated Star Wars prequel series, Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones, is released on May 16 and suffice to say, the Mos Eisley Cantina will be lucky to see a patron all night. Returning for the fifth time as droid C3P0 in the film is actor Anthony Daniels, and as Daniels explains to our Clint Morris, it's a world he was very happy to be visiting again.

I am C3PO - human cyborg relations...

"When the first movie was coming out people didn't even know I was in it," explains Daniels.

"I wasn't in any of the advertising, because they wanted the audience to believe that 3P0 was a real robot. Even though I had a big role in it, nobody knew. They didn't want people to know it was an actor in a suit. And now, of course, I'm back in the new series.

"The Cast of 'Episode 2' is great. Hayden Christensen is very good. He is going to have a huge career after this," says Daniels.

"Now that we have access to digital playback, we watch shots of filming straight after on a three-foot screen. The Rushes, and Hayden is great. Hypnotic. I mean he's the boy growing into that odd man (Vader). We start to see some of those impending problems in Episode II," he adds.

"It will become known in Episode 3 though, that he is Vader."
Daniels spent quite a few months working in Australia on the film and in that time he got to know a lot of the co-stars, including our local talent.

"Out of all the Australians involved, Joel Edgerton is great. I mean I knew his character, Owen Lars, as a 65 year old. Edgerton walked up to me on set and said 'I remember watching you as a child,' and I said to him 'I remember you as a 65 year old'," he laughs.

As for our always in-the-heat-of-the-action droid duo - R2D2 and C3PO - there's never a dull moment for the nuts and bolts variety in this round either. "3P0 is more involved. I actually control the puppetry of the character in this one. I control his walking. I work out every morning at the gym, because I'm holding this big albatross. I'm the puppet master - scary, very scary," he explains.

"It's essentially the same costume as first time. It's the old ones, painted. Justin Dicks, an Aussie guy did it. It's a new look - I look like a walking scrap heap, because I'm made of old scrap. It looks the best though," he says.

"ILM (Industrial Light and Magic) shot scenes of 3P0 getting up and back into a chair, but I think it got cut. It takes so much. Think about it, we never actually see 3P0 sitting down and sitting up, the magic of cinema. We think we do, but we don't."

As for C3PO's minute sidekick? "R2 is brilliant in this one. Don Bies controls him. The motives etc are great. I mean with R2, I am ten feet away, and their Don is with his control panel, behind something."

Daniels, like most of the original cast members from Star Wars (1977), admits he never dreamed the little space movie would grow to be as popular as it is.

"I was cast against will actually. I was quite insulted to be offered a role as a robot; I mean I was a serious actor. I wasn't going to be in some eeird American movie as a robot, yet my agent insisted on it," he laughs. Now, as Daniels says, that first Star Wars film is one of his favorites.

"It was unpretentious and unselfconscious."

Next, it's no surprise to discover Daniels will be back in the C3P0 suit for round 6 - but he's not complaining. He too finds it hard to distance himself from such a much loved character. "He's my best friend. I guess we are both stuffed in the worlds we live in."

Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones, commences May 16
Click here for the review.

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