Rating: 2/5
Classification: PG
Year of release: 2002
Run-time: 2 hours 22 minutes
Director: George Lucas
Cast: Ewan McGregor, Natalie Portman, Hayden Christensen, Ian McDiarmid
Genre: Sci-Fi
This review contains spoilers
Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones is the fifth Star Wars movie ever made and the second in chronological order and is set ten years after The Phantom Menace, after there have been assassination attempts on Padme Amidala (Natalie Portman) when she returns to the planet Coruscant. Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) is asked to track down the bounty hunter trying to kill Padme where he discovers a clone army requested in secret for the Republic, and Obi-Wan’s apprentice Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen) is asked to take Padme to her home planet Naboo to protect her where they then share a forbidden romance. Attack of the Clones is unfortunately another misfire in the prequel trilogy, first of all the prequel trilogy should’ve started here, this film takes place ten years after The Phantom Menace and nothing really happened in that movie so the story of The Phantom Menace feels really unnecessary, if you skipped episode 1 and went straight to episode 2 you wouldn’t have missed out on anything.
Attack of the Clones suffers from similar problems as its predecessor such as wooden acting, excessive blue screen effects, terrible dialogue, a surprisingly uninteresting story and many boring scenes; also Anakin Skywalker is once again played by a bad actor. Jake Lloyd’s performance wasn’t his fault in episode 1 because Anakin shouldn’t have been a kid in the first place, alas Hayden Christensen is playing Anakin this time around and Anakin’s acting hasn’t gotten any better, George Lucas could hire fantastic actors such as Liam Neeson, Ewan McGregor, Samuel L. Jackson and Christopher Lee for pretty much every other role in the prequels but he couldn’t hire a decent actor to play Anakin Skywalker, arguably the most important character in the prequels. While Hayden Christensen’s performance may not entirely be his fault, if he had a better script to work with and a director who cared about acting he may have been better. Furthermore Anakin and Padme’s love story is a huge aspect of this movie and it fails in every way, it’s both terribly acted and written and inducing audiences to cringe and groan whenever these scenes take place which is very regularly in this film.
The plot involving the creation of the clone army doesn’t make much sense either, when Obi-Wan arrives at the planet Kamino he discovers that Jedi Master Sifo-Dyas whoever that is, requested a clone army to help the Republic. If you’ve seen all the Star Wars movies you know that the clones turn against the Jedi in Episode 3 and obviously go on to be Stormtroopers for the Empire, however in the original trilogy it’s very clear that they were not clones but real men behind those helmets, and in The Force Awakens Finn is a Stormtrooper so in the other movies it’s very clear that Stormtroopers are real human beings instead of clones. I have never heard anyone say this about Attack of the Clones before but Jango Fett’s (Temuera Morrison) involvement in creating the clone army doesn’t make sense either. Jango Fett is a bounty hunter and the genetic template for the clones; later in the movie it is revealed that Count Dooku (Christopher Lee) is the one who hired Jango to assassinate Padme. Now if Count Dooku could afford a bounty hunter, wouldn’t Jango give him a heads up of this clone army that is being created for the Republic and if Jango Fett is on the Separatists side, why would he contribute so much to an army for the Republic?
The characters Owen (Joel Edgerton) and Beru Lars (Bonnie Piesse) are very out of place in this movie, C-3PO (Anthony Daniels) lives and serves the Lars family years prior to when we first see them and in A New Hope when Owen and C-3PO meet, it’s very clear they have never meet before. Yes I know C-3PO looks different in this movie then he does in the original trilogy but Owen and Beru would definitely have remembered his voice and name, it’s as if George Lucas never saw his own movies. The only scenes I like in this movie is when Anakin kills the Tusken Raiders after his mother dies, too bad the scene is way too short and should be a pivotal moment in the prequels, however brief it was it is a bright spot in a very boring middle act. The other decent scene is on Geonosis when all the Jedi are about to fight and light their lightsabers up, there has never really been so many Jedi fighting at once in a Star Wars movie since so that’s always nice to watch, but like The Phantom Menace, you have to sit through 2 hours of boring scenes to get there.
Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones is my least favourite Star Wars movie thus far, yes I am grateful there was less Jar Jar Binks in this movie, and he goes on to be a senator in Coruscant for some reason. Like The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones has a reasonably entertaining ending, however before that you have to sit through 2 hours of terrible dialogue, wooden acting, a very uninteresting story that makes little sense, and an awkward and cringe inducing love story that is should be emotionally gripping and when a love story is a big deal like it is in this movie the audience really has to be interested in it but it just falls flat in every way.