II: Into the Arena: The Tears of a Clone
Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones
Title: Attack of the Clones
Year: 2002
Format: Movie
Universe Chronology: Set 10 years after the first prequel movie, so therefore 22 years before
A New Hope and barely 3 before the birth of the empire.
Basic premise: The Republic is being shaken by upheaval, in the middle of which a discovery is made that an army of clones stands ready to attack, and that they are controlled by a dark faction within the Jedi.
Starring: Ewan McGregor as Obi-Wan Kenobi, Natalie Portman as Queen Padme Amidala, Hayden Christensen as Anakin Skywalker, Anthony Daniels as C3PO, Kenny Baker as R2D2, Ian McDiarmid as Senator Palpatine, Ahmed Best as (sigh) Jar Jar Binks, Christopher Lee as Count Dooku, Samuel L. Jackson as Mace Windu, Frank Oz as Yoda
Directed by: George Lucas
General reaction: Meh
Personal reaction: Not bad
Rating: 5/10
Well, Liam Neeson is brown bread, so at least that leaves us to concentrate on Obi-Wan as the head Jedi, and Anakin has by now shot up, no longer able to fit into one of those pod racers back on Tatooine. Queen Amidala has, for reasons which may or may not become clear, become Senator Amidala now, and there should be a touch of class and gravitas thanks to Christopher Lee. Will more droids get shot to pieces? I’d be willing to bet yes, they will, and possibly - though this is just a guess, you understand - a whole bunch of clones too. So once again, for the now fifth time, we open on space with a camera move - up this time, rather than down, just to give a little variety, if not much - and a ship - or in this case ships approaching a planet.
I mean, surely anyone who says “I guess there was no danger” should expect something nasty to happen? Guess that’s the end of the senator then. Oh no: yet another decoy. Kind of clever how now Anakin looks like Kenobi did in the last movie and Kenobi kind of looks like Jinn. Also good how McGregor looks sort of like Alec Guinness might look at this age. Nice link. Not so sure about the idea of a romance between Anakin and Padme though. Pretty much action all the way again, and we even get a car chase, if a hover car chase. Reminds me of
The Fifth Element. Very well done though. I like the in-joke when Kenobi asks Anakin “Why do I get the feeling you’re going to be the death of me?”
I do like the way they show how hot-headed and impatient Anakin is, how quickly he angers, and Yoda has him sussed. It’s easy to see how he turns to the dark side. Of course, the problem here is that we know how this ends, so it’s kind of hard to be surprised. His political ideas are decently developed; he’s a fascist in the making. And he’s blue-eyed and blonde. Hmm. So Boba Fett is a clone of his father, eh? Hey: that ship there looks like Deep Space 9! More fodder for the game market as Obi-Wan and the Fetts fight it out in an asteroid field. And now Anakin is back on Tatooine looking for his mother. Reunited with C3PO too. There’s that theme again as Luke, sorry Anakin sets out to rescue his mother from the Sandpeople.
Enter Christopher Lee as the villainous Count Dooku, who’s all ready to take on those pesky Jedi and kick the Republic up its arse. Poor old Mrs. Skywalker doesn’t look too well: think the Tuskens have been doing more than just having her wash the dishes and mend their clothes. And now she’s dead. What was that Jinn said to Anakin: a Jedi uses the Force for defence, never for attack? And never for revenge. Hmm. Guess the future Dark Lord skipped over that part of the Jedi manual, and those Tusken Raiders are going to be sorry they messed with his mom. There’s of course something tragic about Anakin carrying the corpse of his mother back to her home, but there’s something terrifying too. The look in his eyes: it’s like the thought of his mother was the only thing holding him back, and now, like a certain dictator popular in the 1940s, with the death of his mother all traces and vestiges of humanity - mercy, love, kindness, pity - are gone, and the man is a walking machine, bent on revenge and death. Anakin Skywalker is, to all intents and purposes, gone now, and Darth Vader waits to fill the void. Usage of the Vader theme really underlines this.
OKay, is Count Dooku a bad guy or not? Seems he’s a Jedi, and not just any Jedi, but the one who trained Jinn. He appears to be ready to take on the Dark Lord of the SIth, Darth Sidious, whom he says is controlling half the senate.Is there some smart subtext to the fact that Anakin and Padme fall onto a conveyor belt, as the franchise gets ready to become an unstoppable behemoth which will churn out movie, TV series and spinoffs, cartoons,games, comics and merchandise, to rise to be perhaps the largest and most profitable ever? Hey! I didn’t know R2D2 could fly!
To answer my question in the last paragraph, yeah, it would seem he is, as our friend Dooku is presiding over the arena-style thing in which he hopes to see the Jedis and Padme die. And he’s pally with the viceroy and Jango Fett too. Oh look! A full-on multiple Jedi fight. Now this will be cool. Ah, looks like poor old Jango quite lost his head. Sorry. I like the misplacing of C3PO’s head on a battle droid body: now that’s how to inject comic relief into the movie, not via a stupid annoying klutz like Jar jar Binks, who thank my various gods is hardly in this much at all. Hmm. Don’t those soldiers Yoda brings to the rescue of the Jedi have a distinctly stormtrooper look? Yeah and those ground assault vehicles look like precursors to the empire’s AT-ATs.
Another fight to the death between a Jedi with a blue lightsaber and one with a red. Is Lucas trying to make a political point here? Oh, and another arm sliced off. Jedis are nothing if not predictable. Ah, good to see Yoda actually fight like a Jedi instead of just being an annoying teacher. I like the way they bring the Death Star into it, too. Hold on a mo though: is Darth Sidious the emperor or is it Palpatine? The Sith Lord sounds, and looks, much more like the ruler of the empire we hate, but I’m pretty sure it’s Palpatine who rises to that station. Oh right, I see: they’re one and the same. How did I miss that?
Overall then, I’d agree there’s a marginal - though only marginal - improvement on the previous movie, with better and more appropriate comic relief provided by the droids, especially C3PO, and more action. It’s hard to argue with a fight scene that contains multiple Jedi fighting, after all. I was a litlte confused, and still am, at the plot though. The clones were being developed by or on behalf of Dooku, but then the Jedi took them and used them against him? So where does the Clone War come from? Are we to assume the clones - which I always took as being the enemy when they were mentioned - are on the side of the Republic? And who is the Republic? Again, I always took it the Republic was the enemy of the Empire. Did Dooku also get his clones, and are both now to fight against each other? What’s with the droid army? Where does that fit in?
I imagine it’s pretty obvious that when Anakin and Padme do the horizontal bop, she gives birth to Luke. Maybe that will be shown in the third movie, can’t remember. I do find it telling that, other than the opening credits, each of these three movies (well, two so far) have ended with very un-Star Wars-like themes, almost as if Lucas is trying to distance himself from the original trilogy. But then there are so many callbacks to that, so it’s hard to know if it’s just coincidence. Or maybe he’s just tired hearing the damn thing. I do think Anakin’s character is handled very well; once you know what happens in the future, it’s easy to see how it happens. Anakin Skywalker is a Jedi time bomb just waiting to go off and take half the galaxy with him, and Palpatine knows, and intends to profit by the young Jedi’s insecurities and grievances against his master and the Jedi Council.
Again though, the death of Jango Fett aside, we’re still talking about droids being killed here, and it does tend, for me anyway, to lessen the impact of so much violence. I suppose with the clones now operational the next movie will have more human deaths, but Lucas has used more droids here in these two movies than in any of the other three. I'd say this one is truer to the spirit of the original trilogy, with three heroes - one of which is a woman - fighting together against a dark force. Nevertheless, I don’t think I’ll ever change my stance that none of these are a patch on the originals, and I’m still not sure if it was a good idea to make them.
Well, apart from the final one. Maybe.