Despite being one of the most pioneering films in history, Attack of the Clones still goes down as one of the worst Star Wars movie ever made.
"Anakin Skywalker: “I don’t like sand. It’s coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere.”"
When The Phantom Menace (1999) first came out, Star Wars fans were mostly forgiving towards George Lucas. After all, he hadn’t officially directed a movie since A New Hope. Even if several aspects of the movie were bad (most of them having to do with Jar Jar Binks), there was still action, adventure, space dogfights, weird aliens, a thrilling pod race, and one really excellent lightsaber duel to keep folks entertained–everything a Star Wars film was supposed to have.
But when it came to Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones (2002), that’s when the Star Wars fandom truly began turning on its creator. Even those who liked the movie–and even thought it was better than The Phantom Menace–felt that Lucas should just hang it up and hand the reins over to someone else. And when even famed film critic Roger Ebert stated during his review that Clones didn’t have “one line of quotable, memorable dialogue” except for Anakin Skywalker’s infamous, “I don’t like sand” speech, maybe those fans had a point.
…[George] Lucas took the criticism of The Phantom Menace so personally, it practically gave him writer’s block. Even while concept art, scouting locations, and even set design was being approved [for Attack of the Clones], Lucas barely had a working draft.
But it’s not as if the movie is completely devoid of anything good. The planet Coursant–particularly during Anakin and Obi-Wan Kenobi’s pursuit of Padmé’s (Natalie Portman) would-be assassin–looks like a less grimy version of Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982) with a dash of Lucas’ own American Graffiti (1973). Ewan McGreggor’s reprisal as Obi-Wan Kenobi, along with his expanded role in the story, is light-years improved from The Phantom Menace. Almost everything about the water planet Kamino looks inspired, and the chase through Geonosis’ asteroid ring is particularly stunning.
So then what exactly makes Attack of the Clones arguably the worst thing Star Wars has had to offer since The Holiday Special? Plenty. And once again, it starts with the script.
According to Michael Kaminski’s The Secret History of Star Wars, Lucas took the criticism of The Phantom Menace so personally, it practically gave him writer’s block. Even while concept art, scouting locations, and even set design was being approved, Lucas barely had a working draft. After managing to get through two of them, he ended up bringing in Jonathan Hales, one of the writers on The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles TV series, to finish a third. And finish it he did– three days before shooting was scheduled to start. Even then, they didn’t still didn’t have a working title until after they completed filming.
Unfortunately, Hales’ experience consisted mainly of writing for television, not blockbuster Hollywood movies. And unlike movies, television, with its limited budget, must rely on dialogue–and lots of it–to create dramatic tension. This may account for why so much of why Attack of the Clones has characters over-explain what’s happening, over-explain what did happen, over-explain who they are, and especially over-explain what’s on their mind. And because there’s also a startling lack of action until the end, Attack of the Clones ends up being one of the slowest movies of the entire “Skywalker Saga.” That Droid Factory scene? That was added in by Lucas during post-production (and shot in four-and-a-half hours) to pick up the movie’s pace.
Throughout the entire movie, [Hayden Christensen] never changes the cadence, tempo, or inflection of his voice, even during violent outbursts, crippling sorrow over his mother’s death (Pernilla August), and professions of his “agonizing” love for Padmé.
Another big problem was the actor Lucas and company cast as Anakin Skywalker: Hayden Christensen. Although Leonardo DiCaprio was almost cast as the young Darth Vader, Lucas wanted a relative unknown, just like he did when casting Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, and Harrison Ford for the original Star Wars. But while Hamill, Fisher, and Ford have the gift of making even the most wooden of Lucas’ dialogue sound believable, Christensen does not. Throughout the entire movie, he never changes the cadence, tempo, or inflection of his voice, even during violent outbursts, crippling sorrow over his mother’s death (Pernilla August), and professions of his “agonizing” love for Padmé.
What’s weird is that you can still tell why Christensen plays Anakin the way he does. Given that “Annie,” in this movie, has spent the last ten years being trained to control and suppress his emotions, it makes sense why he would sound (ironically) like a robot, struggling to keep his frustrations, impulses, and hormones in check. Yet at the same time, you also wonder why someone like Padmé would ever fall head-over-heels for this guy, particularly during those moments where he exhibits really creepy behavior.
Thus between Lucas and Hales’ stiff, expository writing and Christensen and Portman’s lack of on-screen chemistry, Anakin and Padmé’s star-crossed, forbidden romance–the crux of Anakin’s fall from grace–sputters like the Millennium Falcon’s damaged hyperdrive. It’s also widely inconsistent. In one scene, Padmé tells Anakin to stop staring at her because “it makes me feel uncomfortable.” The next time we see them, they start flirting with each other. In another scene, Padmé rebuffs Anakin after their first kiss. Later, they end up rolling around together in a grassy field. Romance may be messy in real life, but it sure progresses more logically than this.
Another curiosity comes from acting legend Christopher Lee as the secondary villain, Count Dooku. Well into his late-70’s and despite the lines he’s given, Lee delivers what is, perhaps, the best performance of the entire film. However, having just finished work on Peter Jackson’s adaptation of Lord of the Rings, it’s also clear that Dooku is pretty much the evil wizard Saruman in all but name. Also, the idea that Dooku was human was another last-minute change. Originally, the former master of Qui-Gon Jinn turned Sith Lord was envisioned as a female alien (Dooku’s early concept sketches would later form the basis for Asajj Ventress in the Clone Wars cartoon).
It’s also obvious while watching Attack of the Clones how much Lucas made it in response to fan reactions. Because of Boba Fett’s popularity, Lucas created the character of his father, Jango Fett (Temuera Morrison) as the donor for the clone army. In turn, he reveals that Boba (Daniel Logan) is actually Jango’s clone. This was a departure from his original idea that Lando Calrissian was a surviving clone from the Clone Wars. But if the idea was to show how cool Boba Fett was through his “father,” it actually does the opposite. Now, along with his inglorious death in the Sarlacc Pit, the “greatest bounty hunter in the galaxy” wound up being a literal carbon copy of somebody else.
Using a combination of digitally-animated storyboards and rough green screen footage (often filmed in someone’s garage with production assistants playing certain parts), these “videomatics” were then later shown to the actors on-set for them to re-enact in front of blue screens.
Also, C-3PO (Anthony Daniels) and R2-D2 (Kenny Baker) are given more screen time and return to their comedic roots. By contrast, Jar Jar Binks’ (Ahmed Best) on-screen presence is greatly diminished, as are his comedic antics. He does, however, wind up becoming crucial to the plot (and ultimately dooms the galaxy), as he’s tricked into convincing the Republic Senate into granting Chancellor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) “emergency powers.” It’s almost as though Lucas is punishing Jar Jar because of the hatred the fans had towards him.
But the surprising downsides about Attack of the Clones involve the filming process itself. Partly to save time, and partly because the script wasn’t finished, Lucas and editor Ben Burtt relied heavily on what they called “virtual filmmaking.” Using a combination of digitally-animated storyboards and rough green screen footage (often filmed in someone’s garage with production assistants playing certain parts), these “videomatics” were then later shown to the actors on-set for them to re-enact in front of blue screens. The idea was that this would result in more “believable” performances than if the unit directors verbally described what was happening to the actors.
In addition, advancements in CGI also allowed Lucas’ Industrial Light and Magic to not only create fully computer-generated characters and environments but also computer-generated “stunt doubles.” Furthermore, Attack of the Clones was one of the first major motion pictures to be filmed completely in digital, using what was considered a still-experimental camera system from Sony. This highly controversial for its day, particularly since most movie theatres back then didn’t have the right projectors to even show the film.
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Keep in mind, this was all still relatively new technology back in the early aughts. In that sense, the scenes of the droid factory, the colosseum, and the first battle of the Clone Wars can be seen as groundbreaking. It can also be seen as looking very, very fake, especially when the real-life actors are in the scene. If anything, filming in digital exacerbates how unreal the movie looks, particularly the pre-Stormtrooper Clone soldiers. The same goes for the much-hyped lightsaber duel between Dooku and Yoda (voiced by Frank Oz). It may sound cool on paper, but it ends up looking unintentionally hilarious on-screen.
It also didn’t help that Attack of the Clones was released during a time when moviegoers started turning to other movie franchises. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring had been released the year before, with The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers was on its way. Same for another cinematic adaptation of a beloved novel series, Harry Potter, with Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (2001) and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002). It was also the year when the modern superhero movie craze really took off with Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man (2002). All of these movies would outdo Attack of the Clones at the box office. With $640 million in ticket sales worldwide, it remains the lowest grossing Star Wars movie to this day.
With The Phantom Menace and now Attack of the Clones being lackluster disappointments, it definitely seemed as if the bloom was off the Star Wars rose. Whereas Empire Strikes Back raised the original Star Wars trilogy into mythic status, Attack of the Clones is what made the Prequel Trilogy be seen as (back then) the low point of the franchise. What’s curious is how, when one thinks of the Prequel Trilogy, it’s still The Phantom Menace that receives most of the flak, proving that it’s better to be despised than to be all but forgotten.