Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones Review
It’s week #5 of my Star Wars review series, which means we’re talking about Attack of the Clones, not one of the strong Star Wars movies. But is it the worst Star Wars movie? Let’s talk about it!
The Review
To answer the question in the intro up above, Attack of the Clones is towards the bottom of my Star Wars ranking. I need to rewatch The Rise of Skywalker (which I’ll do soon). But either one of those two is going to rank at the bottom of my Star Wars ranking. Simply put, Attack of the Clones isn’t a very good movie. One of the things that has kind of surprised me with rewatching the prequels is how much nostalgia I have for these movies. In particular, how much nostalgia I have for the LEGO video games and remembering moments from different levels in those games. But sort of besides that, the plot and character for this movie doesn’t really work and drags the whole movie down.
There’s potentially an interesting plot in here about an assination attempt against Padme that sends Obi-Wan and Anakin on a mission to figure out what’s happening. On paper, that’s not a bad plot for a Star Wars movie. The problem here is that the mystery of the film is so obvious to the audience that we’re watching this mystery that we don’t care about. The audience can put the pieces together very early on that Count Dooku and Palpatine are up to Padme’s assination. I said that the plot isn’t bad for a Star Wars movie and I stand by that. But it’s bad for a prequel where we already know the outcome of these characters. If we didn’t know the fate of Padme and where the story goes then maybe this could’ve worked, but telling this story as a prequel makes the investigation much less interesting. So you’re watching a film that’s more frustrating and disappointing than overall a great film. The plot of the film should’ve put more of a focus on Dooku. They got a great actor in Christopher Lee to be a Sith, on paper that’s great casting that should work really well. But he’s sort of just wasted and doesn’t really show up until over an hour into the film. The speech that he gives Obi-Wan after he’s captured has ideas in there that tease a more interesting plot, that I would’ve preferred to have seen over the plot of this movie.
The other big thing watering this movie down is the whole love plot with Anakin and Padme is pretty terrible. Once again, I don’t think that George Lucas did a good job with directing Anakin in this movie. This is Hayden Christensen’s first Star Wars movie and I think he’s much better in Revenge of the Sith, I don’t know what went wrong here. I think it’s a mix of Christensen not being a great and experienced actor and George Lucas’ bad script with some of the cringiest dialogue in the blockbuster. Of course the “I don’t like sand” quote has been memed to death and picked on. But there’s just all of these moments where they’re trying so hard to make you care about Anakin and Padme and it just doesn’t work. With there being a new found appreciation for the prequels and Christensen over the last couple of years. There’s people trying to defend him and say that Hayden was just given bad direction by Lucas, he was never the problem. I think there’s some truth to that. But Ewan McGregor and Natalie Portman were given the same direction by Lucas and people don’t blame the prequels against them. They were able to launch their careers from Star Wars and have had tremendous success in a way that Christensen never has. I think it’s a mix of both, but in both this movie and The Phantom Menace, Lucas didn’t handle Anakin very well. Both the writing and the performance aren’t very good.
Also with this movie I think this is where George Lucas’ over abundance of CGI is at its worst. Where there’s so many shots that look terrible because Lucas wanted to use CGI everywhere. Even simple shots of Christensen and Portman on a grassy field look so fake because it’s clear they’re on a green screen and not on an actual field where they easily could’ve made these scenes better. When the clones are introduced in the film there’s a few shots of them that look terrible and like the entire shot and scene is CGI. It’s so weird that Lucas didn’t do anything practical and made everything CGI when it made no sense. It’s not that hard to put 50-100 guys in clone trooper suits and have them stand there. And then maybe in the background you can have a few CGI ones to make it look bigger. But having all of them be CGI is so bizarre to me. One interesting fact about the CGI in this movie is that there’s so much CGI and computers used for this movie that these movies can actually qualify to be submitted for the Best Animated Feature category at the Oscars. That’s so sad that that’s how much CGI was used in this movie. It’s not great CGI and it shows on the screen.
I will say, there’s some redeeming qualities in this movie. The lightsaber action can be very exciting. The battles with Dooku in the third act are pretty cool. The colors being used and the staging of them is pretty cool to look at. Of course the third act in this gladiator arena with hundreds of Jedi is very cool and exciting. The film is never boring, I’m never bored watching this movie. I think it does move quicker than The Phantom Menace does. It’s totally watchable but bad on a plot and script level.
Final Thoughts: Earlier I used the term “not very good” and I think that perfectly sums up this movie. Attack of the Clones isn’t a very good movie. The plot and script aren’t very good. The dialogue for Anakin and Padme is some of the worst dialogue ever put in a blockbuster. I’ll do my Star Wars movie ranking next month, don’t expect this movie to be particularly high up on the list.
The Score: 7.5/10 (C-)
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