Attack of the Clones begins ten years after The Phantom Menace. After an assassination attempt on (now) Senator Amidala's life, Obi-Wan and Anakin are called in to protect her—Anakin as her bodyguard and Obi-Wan as a detective following an intergalactic trail of evidence to discover who is trying to kill her and why. The investigation leads him to discover many dark secrets about the Jedi, the Republic, and who has been pulling the strings this whole time. As a result, a war erupts between the Republic and the Separatists under the control of the mysterious Sith lord, Darth Sidious. Begun, the Clone Wars have.
Let me start by saying that this is definitely my least favorite of the six Lucas films. The love story is tedious, there's no exceptional actors to make up for the absence of Liam Neeson, the cgi is too much, and Anakin is so unlikable that you almost stop caring that he will eventually turn evil. George Lucas loves to describe Anakin's story as a tragedy in the vein of a classic Greek play, but a tragedy where the tragic figure is not sympathetic is not a very good tragedy at all.
All that said, I still enjoy this film a bit. The politics are probably the saving grace of this one.
THE GOOD
- Christopher Lee is the one great actor but unfortunately he doesn't even appear until halfway through the movie. Still, every scene he is in is a treat.
- The way Palpatine has manipulated everything is absolutely masterful to see. It can be lost in the mess of cgi and Anakin's temper tantrums, but in this movie it's established that Palpatine (possibly through Dooku) created a clone army with the intention of starting a civil war eventually and giving that clone army to the Republic as massive Trojan Horse. He then orchestrated the assassination attempts on Padme, in order to lead the Jedi to Kamino where they would discover the clone army created for them (and also made sure Padme and Anakin were placed together so he would develop a forbidden attachment to her--the fatal weakness he would eventually exploit to turn Anakin to the Dark Side). Meanwhile, he continued to play the Separatists from both sides to artificially create this conflict to keep him in office and allow him to accumulate more executive power. Finally, the whole time he was grooming Anakin and pushing him to explore his dark side so that he could eventually make him his new apprentice. All around it's a brilliant work of art to see in action, and really he deserved to become emperor because he was way smarter and more competent than the Jedi or anyone else in these movies.
- Love seeing the Slave I. It might be my favorite ship in the SW universe.
THE BAD
- Anakin is a petulant, unlikable, self-centered brat. I almost couldn't wait for him to fall into the lava in the next movie because then I wouldn't have to look at his stupid whiny face anymore. However, if you think about it, Vader was occasionally petulant in the original trilogy too, so I guess it's in character (strangling people for disagreeing with him, for example).
- The cgi is just...way too much. The alien that Obi-Wan meets in the diner in particular just looks so fake. And it really makes me angry (probably irrationally so) when they tell us repeatedly in the commentary that not a single clone trooper suit was built and they were all 100% cgi. The whole movie feels inconsequential and fake because of how overboard they went on the cgi.
- The love story is hard to watch. It's not believable that a brilliant, mature, and successful woman with a good head on her shoulders would fall in love with a petulant, emotionally unstable child. And Anakin is straight up creepy towards her in the scenes on Coruscant and Naboo. The scenes on Tatooine where he finally quits creeping on her and they talk like friends are actually very good and with more interactions like that, the love story might have been more believable.
- The dialogue, as always.
THE UGLY
- The fact that the Jedi don't seem concerned about the origins of the clone army and just decide to use it without asking any questions is pretty massive incompetence on their part. In fact, throughout these prequels their complacency and incompetence makes me think they deserved to get wiped out. Yoda is the worst offender here, as he is supposed to be extremely wise and powerful and yet throughout the movies he repeatedly makes critical mistakes that lead to the fall of the Jedi (allowing Anakin to be trained, using and trusting the clone army, not figuring out who was pulling the strings, etc.).
- I know the Expanded Universe is not canon and now isn't even part of SW anymore thanks to Disney, but the EU background for Boba Fett was that he was from a race of elite warriors called the Mandalorians and he has fought against the Jedi in the Clone Wars. This movie establishing him as a stormtrooper clone and a kid instead is just...infinitely less interesting.
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