Revisiting Attack of the Clones

The gap between the general consensus of the Prequel Trilogy and my own opinion of George Lucas's sophomore slump is widening by the day, and I think I know why. Growing up as a massive Star Wars fan, I only ever watched movies and shows that were a part of it, and never exposed myself to the wider world of cinema. I have a theory that when someone says Attack of the Clones is a good movie, they are mostly comparing it to other Star Wars movies. As for me, I'm setting it up against both its own franchise and a wide swath of other sci-fi, fantasy, and romantic thrillers like it. Its ambition is undeniable, but it can sometimes feel like watching a middle school poetry club with all the confidence in the world enter a nationwide writing competition of professionals.

That said, the movie still outpaces The Phantom Menace, which is far and away the rotten spot of its franchise. The planets it visits are more vibrant and dynamic than before, and there are a handful of sensible plotting choices that add layers its predecessor lacked. And then, you have the things about it that don't work, the overly theatrical dialogue, performances so wooden they would make a carpenter blush, and an inescapable sense that this movie exists because Episode III needs it to. If its predecessor felt like an irrelevant tangent, this one feels like an obligation. The happy medium that is made up of things like fun and imagination gets lost in the paperwork. 

Long story short, someone is after Senator Padme Amidala. Of course, few in the Republic would be happy to hear that, but it's also bad news for whoever wants Padme dead, because Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker and his forbidden feelings for her will do whatever it takes to catch this wannabe assassin. Eventually, the Jedi Council gets the bright idea of sending these two young and hormone-ridden singles to the romantically lush planet of Naboo...alone. As both the case and the feelings develop, it becomes clear that someone will walk away from this charged encounter very unhappy, be it Anakin, Padme, or the Council. All this time, the threat of war between the slowly crumbling Republic and the greedy Separatist forces looms in the background as hidden hands pull the strings of imminent violence.

If The Phantom Menace was an expanded visual guide of its own universe, then Attack of the Clones has the flavor of a political espionage thriller. Personally, I like the change of pace. This movie has a substance the first one lacked, and it features many impressively realized planets, each with its own unique ecosystem and environment. The city planet of Coruscant is my favorite, with a Cyberpunk-adjacent nightlife that blends neon signs and seedy clubs with ne'er-do-wells out to get a drink, a promiscuous woman, or whatever else their depraved hearts desire. Its atmosphere feels more lived-in than any of the other planets in the movie, mostly because we are given ample time to stew in it; a wonderful chase sequence through its airborne traffic lanes really stirs the pot.

This movie can be a mystery movie, and occasionally a good one. Assassins run wild, and our heroes are sent on dangerous missions to hunt them down. The cloak-and-dagger element works well, and though I already knew how it ended, watching the mystery get unraveled in reverse was interesting. This movie is also more methodical than The Phantom Menace and somewhat more fun, too. I have to applaud it for sticking its neck out to try something new.

Yes, the concept of Attack of the Clones is interesting, but the execution of its ideas is where the good things about it begin to wear thin. The wannabe-Shakespearean dialogue is disgustingly corny, and the more poetic it tries to be, the more painful it is to listen to. The worst of it concerns Anakin and Padme's blossoming love story. If the movie's mysterious aspects work, it's the romance that ultimately derails it. Hayden Christensen and Natalie Portman's acting is serviceable enough, but the lines they're given to perform are some of the worst I've heard in a major motion picture, an imitative mockery of opera. The rest of the dialogue never rises above mediocrity either, though we are mercifully spared much of Jar Jar Binks and his bumbling anti-English. 

The acting, though it doesn't fall to the depths of the deplorable Jar Jar, suffers from a flat, wooden quality that doesn't convey the emotional depth the movie aspires to. This movie is about its characters, and they're just not very interesting or distinguishable from one another in anything beyond their appearances. A part of me wonders why Lucas didn't insist on more takes to capture a different emotional tone or even adjust some of the dialogue, but this is the movie we got, and that fault lies with either Lucas, writer Jonathan Hales, or both. That said, Attack of the Clones is more invested in its worldbuilding than it is in its characters, even though they take up roughly the same amount of weight and space; it just doesn’t know how to give the characters it wants you to love a personality that doesn’t feel like a mockery of Shakespeare, so it's often running elsewhere to try something different.

Attack of the Clones is less of the cut-and-dry self-parody that we saw in The Phantom Menace, and it can sometimes even feel like an epic. Other times, watching it looks like sitting on the couch and staring at a half-done chore, an occasionally cheesy checklist of obligations that need to be fulfilled so that the trilogy can finish its own story. It sheds some of the weaknesses indigenous to Episode One, emulates others, and develops some of its own. It’s definitely superior to its predecessor, but it’s nowhere near the top of the list when compared to the rest of the Star Wars saga, and features too many poorly done plot threads and too many quasi-Victorian cliches too suffocating to take seriously. It’s a tad painful to watch because George Lucas is obviously trying so hard to make this movie a classic; it’s just equally as obvious that the pieces aren’t meshing here, no matter how hard he tries to make them fit.

Star Wars: Attack of the Clones - 5/10

Song of Solomon 2:3-7