Star Wars: Attack of the Clones (2002) - Review (Fair or Foul)
Originally published April 2016In all honesty, I really don't like this movie. I only put it in the Fair or Foul category because I did so for the Star Wars movie most people thought was the worst, so it seemed prudent to do one for this. From what I've gathered, most people just seemed to forget about Attack of the Clones. Rightfully so, as it is entirely forgettable and only serves to set up the Clone Wars as a franchise within the Star Wars universe to then further milk the universe of money. Still, being forgettable does not mean it is forgivable.
Attack of the Clones is by far the worst of the prequel trilogy movies. You can probably already guess what the verdict will be by the end of this thing, but I'll try to give it enough Fair points to give it a chance.
Fair: Mysterious Mystery
Image: 20th Century Fox
The film opens with an assassination attempt on Natalie Portman's character, Padme. Later, there's a dramatic hover-car chase through the city world of Coruscant, a planet of which, up to this point in the films, we've seen very little. The chase is exciting, the flying cars and atmosphere are reminiscent of the futuristic-noir classic Blade Runner, and the mystery that unfolds at the end of the chase hooks your interest.
Where it goes from there, isn't all that interesting, but it is a change of pace for Star Wars. The villains of the movies had always been pretty cut & dry, out in the open. Even in Episode I, the assassin of the film was the obviously evil Darth Maul, so they weren't exactly hiding themselves in the shadows. In Attack of the Clones, however, we don't even get a glimpse of the primary antagonist until halfway in. This was a franchise first to have the villains not be obviously present in the first half of the movie and to have some villainous subterfuge taking place in the plot.
Unfortunately, the mystery doesn't really lead to much for several reasons. We know that the true villain from Episode I still exists, and we also have a pretty good idea of who that villain is. Names are dropped to give us a sense of mystery as to who these characters are and who might be involved, but it's not like it's difficult to figure out. The new character we see in the movie is Jango Fett, so we know he's involved in some way and then Christopher Lee shows up, and the mystery part of the plot goes away pretty quick. In the end, some of the loose ends aren't really tied up and we're kind of expected to forget about them once the action scenes start.
Image: 20th Century Fox
I guess what I'm saying is, that there's no actual mystery to the movie, it's just a good opening.
Foul: Skywalker Segments
George Lucas really wants us to believe two things about Anakin Skywalker: He wants us to believe that Anakin is a sympathetic hero who is a good person who is destined for tragedy, and he wants us to believe that the love between Anakin and Padme is genuine.
With the 8-year-old Anakin replaced with a late-teen Anakin, this could have been Lucas' opportunity to show us his skills in subtle characterization and really allowed us to see the growing conflict of emotions in the character. Since we know how he turns out from the original trilogy, we know he's supposed to be a tragic hero who was a good person before he succumbed to the temptation of evil. In Attack of the Clones, he could have shown the selfless nature of the hero he was supposed to be through his decisions. He could have shown wisdom beyond his years by demonstrating a more considerate thought process. He could have shown how, despite his wisdom and careful nature, he's more susceptible to his primal interests, or just more easily persuaded to do the "right thing" than his mentor. There were plenty of ways this could have been shown and accomplished by making him an interesting and likable character, but George Lucas had other plans.
Image: 20th Century Fox
He'd prefer his main hero/future villain to be a petulant child who has a boner for the first girl he met who could tolerate him while he was a different actor. Instead of Anakin being a complex character who wants to follow the teachings of the Jedi and use wisdom in his decision-making, but feels a pull of morality, he just does and says whatever he feels like without much regret. Anakin just comes across as a hot-head creeper who doesn't think about his actions before doing them and constantly argues with his teacher, or lover, about these rash and immature decisions. There are no deeper thoughts involved here. He just wants to do something and, when it doesn't go his way, he gets upset. If he showed the wisdom and respect of a Jedi in training and then flipped out when his mom died, there would have been a greater impact on him as a character because we would have seen that he was a good guy with some deep emotions hidden under the surface (also known as "character complexity"). Instead, he is all out in the open, and everyone just goes along with it or still thinks he's cool. This not only diminishes him as a character but everyone else who believes in him.
Image: 20th Century Fox | You keep telling yourself that, chump.
Then there's the "love" story. The film practically barfs its sappy romance all over you and makes Anakin seem like a psychopathic peeping tom. It'll make you want a shower afterward. Good god, this stuff is terrible.
Easily the Jake Lloyd equivalent of the film, the "love" scenes drag this film down into a cesspool of crap. Cheesy lines and cheesy scenes force the "romance" down your throat, to convince you that what's happening on-screen is love, despite Natalie Portman and Hayden Christianson having next to no chemistry together. It's just as awkward and painful to watch at home as I remember in the theater. I can even recall the groans from audience members as they looked on in awkward disgust at each moment tainted by the soft filters and sappy dialogue.
Image: 20th Century Fox | Nothing says love like a good old eye-f*ck by the lake
What makes it all so much more awkward, though, is just Anakin as a character. He behaves like a crybaby brat so much through the movie, and talks back like an arrogant prick to everyone, including his girlfriend, I fail to see how anyone would fall in love with him. Not only that but some of the lines he has and the ways in which Christianson portrays him make his character seem like a perverted psychopath. There are moments in which Padme notices this behavior and reacts [almost] appropriately, but then there are others where she does not react appropriately at all and she somehow falls in love with him. When they kiss and when she delivers a love speech that's sappy to the core, it's just startling and unbelievable. In some ways, it's a bigger mystery than the plot's as to how the hell we're supposed to believe that these characters are supposed to be in love.
I wonder what it was that made him the most attractive to her: the way he wanted to spy on her while she slept, or how he talked about going through a village of sand people and murdering men, women, and children? I guess mass murder is pretty hot to space women.
Image: 20th Century Fox | Back away, slowly.
Fair: Obi-Wan
Meanwhile, Ewen McGregor keeps this movie afloat. Perhaps due to just how unbearable the Skywalker segments are, Obi-Wan's are much more interesting and at least give us something to latch onto. However, that's similar to being forced to eat a whole sugary cake that's covered and filled with frosting, with a small glass of milk on the side. In this instance, Obi-Wan is the glass of milk: he's not really anything special on his own, but at this moment, he's absolutely necessary.
He is the driving force of the movie; it's his story that we follow for the intrigue and action. Anakin, meanwhile, has next to nothing to do with the plot other than being a chauffeur to Padme as he "protects" her from possible assassination attempts. Except he's not good at that either because, while Obi-Wan is off flying in space, solving a lame mystery, getting captured, and encountering the main antagonist of the film, Anakin is frolicking in fields with flowers until it's convenient to drag him back into the plot. It's almost like two different movies are taking place with how distinctly separated they feel.
Image: 20th Century Fox | It’s a plot device.
Obi-Wan's sections aren't really great, but at least they give us the plot. Without him, we'd just have a straight-to-DVD romantic comedy starring a girl who's been much better in other films, and a guy who doesn't quite know how to convey emotion beyond the level of a 6-year-old.
Foul: Action
Though Obi-Wan manages to move the plot along, when the action does occur, it's not that great. There are some moments that are cool, like his encounter with Jango Fett on the cloning planet, but the big climatic battle doesn't captivate me like Lucas wanted it to. Throwing a bunch of Jedi on the screen with laser beams going everywhere doesn't do anything to get me excited. It's just like watching a bunch of pixels on a computer screen clash against each other. Not to mention, the big moment when Jango Fett gets involved is poetically brief, as though he's mirroring how he's just as ineffective as his son since he dies rather quickly in this fight. I think Boba and Jango are just a big joke by George Lucas that some fans haven't caught yet.
Image: 20th Century Fox
Then there's the big lightsaber battle with Count Dookie. It's perfectly fine but doesn't match the interest of the previous movie, even though we're not jumping back and forth between the action. It's more of an opportunity to show how Anakin sucks at all the things he does. They try to have some raver light show with their lightsabers in the dark, but it looks more stupid than stylized.
Speaking of looking stupid, Yoda eventually shows up, and CGI-jumps all over the place, proving once again that you shouldn’t always show the fans what they "want." I'm sure there were people who speculated what a lightsaber battle with Yoda would be like, but I doubt anyone was prepared for the computer-generated acrobatics he did. It looks dumb and deflates the illusion of this green little muppet being an awesome Jedi warrior. He would have been better off not fighting with a lightsaber at all and just making him use the force the old-fashioned way.
Image: 20th Century Fox
Fair: World & Sound Design
Once again, the worlds and the sound effects that Lucas and his teams are able to create are, at the very least, interesting. The water planet where the clones are being made and the rocky planet with the coliseum are both filled with interesting creatures and environments that make a cacophony of cool noises. One of the best scenes, the starfighter chase through the asteroid field, is enhanced by one of the coolest noises I've heard in a Star Wars film.
Image: 20th Century Fox
However, the world design also strays into foul territory a little because many of the environments are so clearly a green screen that it diminishes the effect. I was surprised to find that, in some ways, Episode I aged better than this, despite being several years older. I know that they touched up the physical look of all of the films again for the Blu-ray releases, but for some reason, Episode II actually looks worse. I'm fairly certain that part of the reason is probably just how many sets were actually constructed for each film. Episode I was a more old-fashioned film so it likely had more physical sets, while Episode II had more green screen sets, and it clearly shows.
Regardless, the art design is still as good as ever for a Star Wars film. Even though the actors stand out as something separate from the background, the backgrounds are still nice to look at. It's too bad it's all wasted on the most boring film in the franchise.
Image: 20th Century Fox
Verdict: Foul
Attack of the Clones is not a good movie and is worse than every other Star Wars film in the franchise. In several ways, it's a bigger disappointment than Episode I because it's just two hours of wasted potential for something more. Anakin could have been a deeper, more interesting character. Jango Fett could have shown that the Fetts weren't just a family of easily dispatched, bumbling bounty hunters with cool outfits. And the love between Anakin and Padme could have been a more genuine portrayal of respect between two strong-willed characters, instead of a girl who just felt sorry for the spoiled kid with magic powers and didn't mind his aggressively perverse, psychopathic tendencies. Attack of the Clones is boring, sappy, and bland. Maybe someday, someone more competent will remake the trilogy and it will be watchable.
Image: 20th Century Fox