Matt Reviews - Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones

WARNING: SPOILERS, I guess?

It’s been a while since I’ve seen the Star Wars prequels, and I feel it’s time for a refresher.

As ashamed as I am to admit this, I watched The Phantom Menace a lot when I was a kid. In fact, for a while, it was my favorite Star Wars movie. (It’s not much of a defense, but I was very young and though Jar Jar Binks was genuinely funny. I have since learned the error or my ways.) So needless to say, Episode I is still fresh enough in my mind to where I didn’t need to watch it again to remind myself of its strengths and weaknesses. Episodes II and III, on the other hand, I’ve only watched one or two times each, and it’s been about ten years since I’ve seen either one.

But more than anything, I wanted to settle a debate I’ve had with myself for some time. Which movie’s worse: The Phantom Menace, or Attack of the Clones?

Taking place ten years after the events of The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones sees Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) and his apprentice Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen) back in action as they protect Senator Padme Amidala (Natalie Portman) after an attempt is made on her life. As Obi-Wan investigates the bounty hunter hired to kill the senator – leading him to a Sith plot and a secret clone army – Anakin bodyguards Padme and grows closer to her as a romance blooms.

The biggest problem with this movie is that it’s dull. There are long stretches of this movie dedicated to talking about things rather than doing them. There is a point where three sequential scenes feature Anakin going to somebody’s office to talk to them about something, all within the span of about ten minutes. There’s only about three major action scenes in the movie: the chase on Coruscant at the beginning, the battle with Jango Fett on Kamino, and the final battle on Geonosis. While the last battle does last a while and make the last third far more engaging than the rest of the film, there is such a long stretch of time between the first two fight scenes that you’re probably still half asleep by the time you get to the clone army fighting droids and Count Dooku cutting off Anakin’s arm.

The infamous romance is another point of contention in the film. Well, I say “romance”, but what I really mean is “two cardboard cutouts attempting to mimic rational human emotions.” The film is trying to portray this epic sci-fi romance, with forbidden love between a Jedi – sworn only to protect the peace and never form attachments – and a senator. What actually transpires is an awkward, clunky, forced romantic subplot with awkward, clunky, forced dialogue delivered by awkward, clunky, forced acting. Anakin comes across as very creepy and stalker-ish for most of the movie. Pretty much every time he opens his mouth to talk about how beautiful Padme is, I always felt like he was going to be wearing her skin by the end of the movie. But apparently courtship protocols on Naboo must be different, because Padme finds these Dahmer-esque traits attractive.

Edward and Bella wish they could be this awkward.

Here’s an example of how ass-backwards these supposedly “human” characters are: Anakin tearfully admits that he killed a ton of sand people after his mother dies. Not just the men, but the women and children as well. (Many a Star Wars fan knows this scene by heart.) You’d expect Padme to pick up on these red flags, realize she might be witnessing the start of a serial killer, and get as far away from this psychopath as possible. But no, she instead sympathizes with him and says that “To be angry is to be human.” While that is true, there is a fine line between being angry and COMMITTING A TON OF HOMICIDE. Honestly, if someone recut the romance parts of this movie to look more like a horror movie or a psycho thriller, it would probably be a better movie.

When it isn’t focusing on the will-they-or-won’t-they of Ani and Padme (as in “will-they-or-won’t-they wind up on the evening news”), the other half of the movie is Obi-Wan travelling across the galaxy to investigate the bounty hunter conspiracy against Padme. While this is a more interesting plotline due to furthering the story along more and Ewan McGregor putting in one of the better performances of the movie, it’s still not a very good plotline. It suffers the same problem that the politics from The Phantom Menace had: it was needlessly complicated and boring. He visits a clone factory apparently commissioned by deceased Jedi Master Sifo-Dyas, but Jango Fett says that it was commissioned by someone named Tyrannus (later revealed to be Count Dooku). Neither Sifo-Dyas or Tyrannus are really brought up again in the movie in any more importance. Also, since this whole ordeal was set up by Palpatine and Count Dooku, what sense did it make to have two separate lies going on as to who commissioned the clones?

And before all of this, Obi-Wan visits a diner seemingly inspired by 1950’s America. A DINER inspired by 1950’S AMERICA. In SPACE, mind you. Where America may or may not even exist. And it may be well before the 1950’s for all we know. Also, the four-armed, mustachioed lizard-man that runs the joint is apparently the exact person Obi-Wan needs to talk to, since he can look at a poison dart and lead Obi-Wan straight to a planet that, according to the Jedi records, does not exist, and also just so happens to hold the clone factory. How in the name of Tarkin’s cheekbones does a diner owner know more about where the plot’s supposed to go than the friggin’ Jedi Council? Also, HOW DOES HE KNOW WHAT AMERICA LOOKED LIKE IN THE 1950’S???

I’m not saying that the “Detective Obi-Wan” sections of the movie aren’t entirely uninteresting, but they feel out of place in a Star Wars movie. Star Wars is all about big battles with laser swords or space ships, with grand conflicts of good versus evil over the fate of the entire galaxy. The movie kind of loses that sense of grandeur when half the film is a crime thriller set in space. It’s like if they made another installment in the bombastic The Fast and the Furious franchise, only this one was a psychological study into the minds of our main characters.

The Prequel Trilogy is often criticized for its overuse of CGI as opposed to practical effects like the Original Trilogy. Attack of the Clones is the apex of special effects overload. Nearly every scene in this movie has some sort of CGI element, and good god, most of it does not look good. There are good designs in the movie (the clone factory on Kamino is a highlight), but everything just looks so cheap, ugly, and fake. I kid you not, there are places in this movie where you can pause it and it looks indistinguishable from The Clone Wars cartoon. Go watch the “extremely pivotal” scene where C-3PO gets his head welded onto a battle droid’s body and tell me that that CGI in a blockbuster movie would not look out of place in a cartoon with half the budget.

"Your CGI is very impressive. You must be very proud."

And for a movie called “Attack of the Clones”, the titular clones don’t really do all that much attacking. In fact, they’re not even a big part of the movie. True, they wind up being an important plot point for the climax and the overall universe, but taking the events on this movie on their own, they’re not even the main point of Obi-Wan’s investigations. Jango Fett and the senator’s attempted assassination are the focal point, with the clones being a detail to lead Obi-Wan to a greater threat. The clones only ever start attacking people when there’s fifteen minutes left in the film, and they’re attacking the bad guys. So why does the title make the clones out to be antagonistic when at this point, they’re not evil yet?

I’ve ranted enough about the bad parts of the movie, so let’s discuss the high points (what few there are). Like I said before, there are some good designs for the different worlds, ships, and alien species. The prequels really allowed George Lucas to expand the different places he could take his characters to and not limit them to planets that just looked like different deserts or forests they could afford to film in. It’s just a shame that these designs are often negated by CGI that makes everything look more like a Star Wars video game than a movie. The last third does pick up considerably in action scenes, almost as if the movie is apologizing for the other dull two-thirds. After the Original Trilogy only ever had no more than two Jedi alive at one time, it is kind of cool to see a bunch of Jedi in one place fighting together against the droids, even if you can’t really tell what’s going on half the time or who anybody is. And Lucas seemed to have taken his fan’s criticisms to heart and greatly reduced the role of Jar Jar Binks, though making him the reason Palpatine rose to power does seem a little overkill in fueling the “We Hate Jar Jar” flames.

Despite the wooden, inhuman dialogue crafted by Scriptmaster™ Lucas, there are a few performances that make their lines work. Specifically Ewan McGregor as Obi-Wan, Ian McDiarmid as Palpatine, and Christopher Lee as Count Dooku. Though, it is a shame that the movie has an acting powerhouse like Christopher Lee and only has him in the last third, despite the fact that he’s supposedly the film’s MAIN VILLAIN. (Darth Maul had about 90% less dialogue than Dooku and I’m pretty sure he appeared more in his respective movie.) I know a lot of people give Hayden Christensen flack for his abysmal acting and butchering of a great character like Darth Vader, but I don’t entirely blame him. Granted, he probably doesn’t have the acting chops like Lee or McDiarmid, but actors give the performance that the director wants. I’m not saying Christensen is a great actor or a terrible actor (though, to be fair, I haven’t really seen him in anything else), but he probably gave the performance that Lucas wanted so he could get his paycheck and go home. It’s probably the same reason why such an emotive actor like Samuel L. Jackson winds up playing such a somber, dull character, and why we don’t trust George Lucas with the franchise anymore.

Attack of the Clones is not a good Star Wars movie, nor a good movie overall. When it’s not being a cringe-inducing attempt at romance with Silence of the Lambs overtones, it’s a boring, needlessly complicated, out-of-place political thriller mystery. The dialogue is terrible. The action scenes are scarce. The CGI is abysmal and in-your-face. They waste the potential of having a hide-and-seek chase scene with a shapeshifter. Yoda and Count Dooku spend three whole minutes lazily playing Force-catch with pieces of a building. Half of the fight scenes forget to turn on the background music, making them feel empty and awkward. R2-D2 and C-3PO are funny for about a minute before shoehorning them into an unfunny “Threepio gets messed up in a factory” bit that goes on for too long and does nothing for the overall plot.

So to answer the question that started this experiment, is Episode II worse than Episode I? In my opinion, yes. At it’s worst, The Phantom Menace introduces a lot of stupid new concepts into the Star Wars universe (like the midi-chlorians, a reliance on politics, and Jar Jar) and has insufferable characters (like Young Anakin and Jar Jar). But at least it’s memorable. I still remember the fight scenes and the podracing scene. I still remember that awesome new soundtrack by John Williams and how Darth Maul freaked me out as a kid. The forced humor with Jar Jar was bad, but it was so bad that it sticks with you.

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The worst thing I can say about Attack of the Clones is that it’s forgettable. I literally just watched this movie and I’m having a hard time recalling scenes from it. It’s no fresher in my memory than it was after not seeing it for ten years. At their core, movies are meant to be an experience designed to generate some sort of emotional response from their audience. Regardless if you walked away from a movie praising it or ranting about it, it still managed to strike some sort of cord with you that kept you talking about it and made it memorable to you. But if a movie is so forgettable that it leaves no impact on you afterwards, then what was the point of seeing it? In my opinion, a forgettable movie is worse than a terrible, yet memorable one.

But the real crime here is that this was a boring, forgettable Star Wars movie. Star Wars is one of the most influential film franchises out there. It’s inspired people with its visual style, storytelling, and handling of characters, and constantly amazes people with bombastic and memorable scenes like Luke attacking the Death Star, Darth Vader’s redemption, and the battle among the flames of Mustafar. This movie doesn’t deliver any of that, and instead opts for a more low-key Star Wars film for some reason. Episode I may be the movie that everybody complains about, but that’s probably because nobody can remember anything about Episode II to complain about.

Final verdict: 3/10

Next time I review a Star Wars movie, I’ll be answering a different question that’s also been plaguing me, one on the opposite end of the spectrum than the one I answered today.

Which is the better prequel: Rogue One, or Revenge of the Sith?