Star Wars: Episode II-Attack of the Clones (2002) Review

 

Star Wars: Episode II-Attack of the Clones (2002)

Attack of the Clones follows Anakin, who is tasked with protecting Senator Amadala, a mission that finds him falling in love, while Obi-Wan tracks down a secret cloning facility on Kimono, as the galaxy descends into galactic Civil War. 

Ugh. I have avoided this movie for so many years and after tonights viewing, I will avoid it for another great many years because man, is it just downright hard to watch. I understand where Lucas was going with this, making Anakin an angsty, disobedient, and lustful young man, but he completely missed the mark, making him into a whiney, arrogant, and unbelievably creepy guy for the whole affair (how Padme fell in love with that is beyond me). The attempted forbidden love angle could’ve been okay (had it not lasted half the movie) but in his attempts to make Anakin awkward, he came off as a violent incel that almost forced Padme into a relationship. The dialogue and writing was absolute shit and that went a long way in making our lead character incredibly unlikable and more on the detestable side. Admittedly, I did enjoy the hints ad Anakin’s pending fall to the dark side, it’s just a shame all of them were at the expense of decent development with Padme. 

The few positives all really revolve around the cast of supporting characters though. Obi-Wan gets an exciting side story that finds him face to face with Jango Fett, we finally get to see Mace Windu and the rest of the Jedi in action, and the final battle between Dooku and Yoda is a fun little cap to an otherwise painful movie. 

Episode II, despite it being such a tough watch, sports a nice cast featuring Samuel L. Jackson, Temuera Morrison, Frank Oz, Natalie Portman, Christopher Lee, Ewan McGregor, and Hayden Christiansen. McGregor again carries this movie with a grounded and wiser performance that showed a great deal of growth as a character. Christiansen however, is downright awful and I don’t know if it was just a bad script or what, but his Anakin was creepy, forceful, and way too unhinged to be likable as the star of this series. 

Attack of the Clones, directed by George Lucas, saw Lucas not learn anything from Episode 1’s over saturation of content and ideas, resulting in a creative mess that albeit had a solid story, but just too many badly drawn out story lines, especially for Anakin, in what is one of the most painful watches to date for a Star Wars movie. 

3.7/10