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

Compared to The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones is a little more of what I’m looking for from a Star Wars prequel, delving deeper into Anakin Skywalker’s fall from grace into the throes of the Dark Side.  But while Clones rectifies some of its predecessor’s excesses and missteps, it’s not an unequivocally good film, hampered as it is by bad acting and deliberately opaque plotting.

Ten years after the events of the previous film, Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) and his apprentice Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen) are assigned to protect Senator Padmé Amidala (Natalie Portman) after an attempt on her life.  The search for the assassin leads Obi-Wan to the bounty hunter Jango Fett (Temuera Morrison) and an army of clones, while Anakin and Padmé attempt to avoid the romance burgeoning between them.

I’m not sure if George Lucas or his newfound cowriter Jonathan Hales is to thank, but Attack of the Clones improves on The Phantom Menace in two ways that are guaranteed to facilitate an enjoyable moviegoing experience – less Jar Jar Binks and more action.  Everyone’s least favorite CGI character is virtually absent from this film, and in his place are more action sequences, including a great battle between Jango Fett and Obi-Wan, a gladiator-style arena scene, and an opportunity for Yoda to throw down in a duel with, of all people, Christopher Lee.  As setpieces, these are good fun and quintessential Star Wars, even if the end gets a bit messy with so many lightsabers flying about that the plot becomes somewhat indistinguishable.

As for the plot, Lucas and Hales do commit the cardinal sin of cinema – abandoning mysteries.  In the Star Wars universe, this is especially problematic when the work of addressing plot points is relegated to the Expanded Universe of novels and comics – where, I’m told, the mystery of Sifo-Dyas and the clone army is explained.  But this instance crosses the line between immersive multi-platform storytelling and, honestly, lazy writing.  It’s introduced with some fanfare – this is essentially Obi-Wan’s major plot thread, and he makes some to-do about how the mystery defies reason, but it’s dropped.  (The answer, according to the Internet, is more complex than need be, though I could think of several easier options right off the bat.)

The biggest problem with Clones, though, is Hayden Christensen’s performance as Anakin.  Although the prequel trilogy is supposedly anchored by Anakin’s fall to the Dark Side, Christensen’s portrayal is entirely unconvincing.  In the moments when he’s not blatantly underperforming, his scenes of intense anger often come across as a petulant child shouting in order to get what he wants.  That statement, however, does a disservice to child actors, who could actually muster up plausible emotion.  To be fair, much of the romantic dialogue in the film is astoundingly hamfisted, and many of the finest actors might be stymied by lines like “I'm haunted by the kiss that you should never have given me.”  But whether we blame the poor writing, the languid direction, or a simple inability to emote, the film’s emotional center feels somewhat creepy with Portman – who’s trying, you can really tell – inexplicably falling for a man who seems to admit he’s been stalking her.

Christensen is just one example of just how drastically this film lacks any human soul.  Lucas likes to boast about how much of the film is not real, how much is computer-generated – but it’s not something of which to be proud.  Much of Clones feels artificial and sterilized because it’s all so very unreal; while the CGI effects on Yoda and R2-D2 allow the characters to transcend their stodgier incarnations and literally fly around, one senses that it comes at a price, the loss of (if nothing else) a Benjamin-ian aura of authenticity.  It doesn’t help that some of the effects – mainly the ones to do with backgrounds – have not aged quite well and are very apparently the work of green-screen filming.  (You’ll understand Ian McKellen’s lament when you see just how synthetic some of these shots appear.)

But there are things in Clones that work, so I’ll rattle them off briefly.  The John Williams score is, again, top-notch, especially his “Across the Stars” piece that underpins many of the romantic scenes; in fact, put the dialogue on mute, and the score alone could carry the plot better than the acting.  McGregor starts to own Obi-Wan beyond a mere Alec Guinness impression, though he’s still more a slave to the logic of the plot than a full character in control of his decisions.  It’s a real treat to see Samuel L. Jackson swinging a lightsaber (purple, no less), and I’ll never say no to the distinguished pedigree of Christopher Lee, who manages to circumvent the clunky opacity surrounding the mystery of his character’s allegiances.

While Clones is still a far cry from the Star Wars prequels you really want to see, it’s a few steps closer to the right direction, perhaps due to some degree of delegation on the part of George Lucas (it’s no surprise that The Empire Strikes Back, certainly the best of the series, is the film with which he had the least to do).  Its greatest flaw, though, is reducing the greatest villain in the galaxy to a whiny lovestruck 20-something who misses his mommy – played, I might add, rather unsuccessfully.

Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones is rated PG for “sustained sequences of sci-fi action/violence.”  The film contains lots of blaster fire (droids against clones), lightsaber battles (including one decapitation and one arm amputation, both bloodless), and a trio of scary beasties, one of whom mauls a character’s back, drawing blood.  Oh, and the occasional kissy-face.

We’ll be back in two hours with the final prequel film, Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith!