Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones - Movie Review

Maybe this whole "reviewing Star Wars in order" thing wasn’t such a good idea after all.

The Phantom Menace is bad. It's boring, the characters were flat, the writing was awful, it was just a mess and a disaster.

Attack of the Clones is much worse.

Much worse.

People thought it couldn't get any worse, but it did.

Like I said in the Phantom Menace review, I don't entirely hate the Star Wars prequels, because Star Wars is such an important thing to me, but this is my least favourite Star Wars movie, the one I come closest to absolutely hating. It has the most wrong with it in terms of...well, in terms of everything. Everything wrong with the Star Wars prequels is on full display and at its worst throughout this movie. Bad dialogue, boring characters, flat acting, over-reliance on CGI, it's all here.

The main focus is on the love story between Anakin and Padmé, so we can experience the romance, the beauty, the passion! You can't have a good romantic story, and that's really what this movie's trying to do, if the dialogue is terrible and the characters have no chemistry, and that's really the biggest problem. Obviously.

Hayden Christiansen is probably the worst thing in Star Wars for me, his performance is just awful. George Lucas' lack of directing can be blamed just as much, it's hard to watch. It really wasn't what fans wanted to see from Anakin Skywalker, you know? This wasn't the Darth Vader origin everyone imagined.

As a result, the scenes with him and Padmé are so cringy, because they don't talk or act or interact like normal human beings that are attracted to each other. It's like watching aliens recreate a terrible romantic comedy, except aliens might be more interesting. And it's Star Wars, so they could actually do that. Also, the relationship just doesn't make sense. Anakin can’t fall in love because Jedi aren’t allowed to love. I guess they needed to be weird monk men for some reason (even though that was never mentioned before). And Padmé doesn't want to love him because she's a Senator, and I think maybe we're supposed to get from that that she wants to focus on her career. Maybe that's it, but she says it like being a Senator forbids emotion.

But let's face it, it does, am I right? Haha, political satire.

Another huge problem with this film is the over-reliance on CGI, which is a huge problem with the prequels in general. But the CGI doesn’t even look that good, and that isn't a good thing when every single scene has a blue-screen backdrop; it just looks so fake. It kills whatever atmosphere they’re trying to establish because it looks so cartoonish, and since there isn't really anything else in the movie to be interested in, you're just kind of stuck in a puddle of boredom watching it. A good example of this is that not a single one of the clone troopers in this movie is real, they're all CGI. What's worse is that George Lucas bragged about this in interviews, saying "Isn't it great how we don’t have a single piece of armour on set?"

No, it's not. It's lazy.

It's that attitude that makes it seem like he doesn't know what he's doing, that he doesn't understand what makes Star Wars great (or even how movies work). I should say at this point that I don't hate George Lucas. I don't think that he's a terrible person or anything, because I think it's a bit ridiculous to say that about him just because he made some bad movies. George Lucas created Star Wars, and since Star Wars holds such a special place in my heart, I can't hate him, but he just did so much wrong here. He put everything on himself, writing, directing, producing, and he needed to get more people who were willing to tell him that his bad ideas were bad, but he was surrounded by yes men who agreed with everything, because he was signing the paychecks.

Okay, so back to the story, the movie opens with a failed assassination on Padmé, which is followed later by another attempt. And it is the stupidest, most illogical assassination plan ever. Jango Fett is hired to kill Padmé, so he hires Zam Wesell to send a drone to cut a hole in the glass and put some bugs in her room, which will kill her. Here's a thought: since Zam Wesell has a rifle, and is a pretty good shot, cut a hole in the glass and shoot Padmé in the head? Or, maybe Jango Fett should just do it, because why would a bounty hunter hire another bounty hunter?

You see what I mean about the writing having some problems?

So Obi-Wan tracks Jango down to Kamino, and we see Boba Fett as a little kid, because that worked so well in The Phantom Menace. It's these forced references that annoy me so much, the need to tie everything together with the original trilogy, but it just makes the actual canon have so many continuity errors. For example, R2-D2 can fly now. He can just fly, and I guess he never saw any situation where that would be useful in the original trilogy.

That entire sequence in the droid factory is just so dumb in so many different ways, because there’s no way anyone would last more than ten seconds in here, and it looks like a video game.

This movie also shows the beginning of the Clone Wars, and I will admit that I enjoy the Geonosis battle scene. It does just look like an animated movie, but it’s a cool battle. The only problem is that the way this war started was entirely the Jedi's fault, these guardians of peace and justice, and it's Yoda of all people who starts it. Yoda starts an intergalactic war to save 3 people, and that just doesn't seem to fall in line with his character. But in terms of the spectacle of the battle, when no actors are on-screen, just all the clones and the droids, it's fun, I guess.

And then you've got the final lightsaber fight with Count Dooku, where Obi-Wan gets beaten and Anakin gets his arm cut off. Actually, I have something to say about that. Look at this screenshot, why would Anakin ever put his arm in this position during a lightsaber battle? I watched the few seconds around this screenshot about a hundred times, and there's absolutely no reason for his arm to end up like that for any other reason than to parallel Luke getting his hand cut off in Empire Strikes Back, because we need more references back to the original trilogy.

So then, Yoda comes in, and he and Dooku throw a couple of rocks back and forth and decide that they're even in Force power - they clearly dug deep - so Yoda pulls out a tiny little lightsaber and starts flipping and jumping all around while they fight. And I'm torn, because there's a part of me that thinks it's awesome to see that, but I know in my heart that it's not what Yoda should be. Yoda in Empire Strikes Back was a wise old Jedi, the entire point of him is to subvert the idea of a great warrior, so to have him start flipping around with a lightsaber destroys the point of his character.

Between the unexciting choreography, the destruction of the point of Yoda, and the weird sight of Christopher Lee's face CGI-painted onto a stuntman, it's a really disappointing ending, and in terms of action, it's probably the most underwhelming lightsaber battle in the entire saga. So then we see that Dooku is working with Sidious, which was maybe supposed to be a reveal, but everyone knows that Sidious is Palpatine, so it doesn't matter. Anakin and Padmé get married, the end.

So yeah, when you have the most boring Star Wars movie, with the worst effects, the worst acting, and the worst moments in the saga overall, you have the worst Star Wars movie. That's just basic math, I learned that from my teacher last year. Actually, my math teacher made his final project based on Star Wars, and I helped him make it by getting him clips from the movie, and making an opening crawl. And he made math puns out of all the character names, like Luke SINEwalker, TAN Solo, COSbacca, TI83-PO, and my personal favourite, Right 2 down 2. See, if all math classes were like that, people wouldn't hate them so much.

I could go on, but this movie just bums me out, and it's not worth it, so I’ll just say that Attack of the Clones is without a doubt the worst of the Star Wars films (except for Clone Wars). It had the potential to set the franchise right, but just kicked its bloated, rotting corpse further into its grave. Everything about it is wrong, and while I can force myself through it, it's just not worth it. But next movie, I'll be a little happier, I promise.