Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones - Review

This is by far the worst Star Wars movie. As I mentioned in my Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace review, I grew up with the prequels and was obsessed with everything Star Wars. Looking back at the prequels now, there is still a bit of nostalgic appreciation that can be had and the overall viewing experience can be enjoyable even though my film school adult brain tells me otherwise. Unfortunately with Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones, this was a miserable experience. This was always my least favourite movie in the franchise as a kid, but watching it again now was tough because now I can finally see how boring this movie is.

Now I am not here to pick apart plot points and look for every single nitpick I can find. To me, there is only one real problem with this movie and that is that it is almost impossible to have any sort of emotion while watching, other than boredom. Just listen to this synopsis and tell me at what point this sounds like Star Wars.

Padme (Natalie Portman), now a Senator is almost assassinated on Coruscant. The reason for the attack, although not explained particularly well, if at all, is because she was supposedly going to vote on some military creation act. The suspect of the attack? A former Jedi named Count Dooku who along with a group of separatists plan on leaving the Republic and to form their own new army of Battle droids. Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker are tasked with protecting Senator Amidala from any further attacks. After another failed assassination attempt, Obi-Wan Kenobi starts to investigate the attack while Anakin takes Padme back to Naboo for protection. However, Padme and Anakin start to develop feelings for each other and Anakin starts to have nightmares about his mother he left back on Tatooine in the first film.

I should state right off the bat that I don't expect every single film in a franchise to follow the same structure or repeat the same plot points beat for beat. So a story about Chancellor Palpatine using his power on both sides to create a crisis which would lead to the creation of the clone army, I don't have a problem with it, but the way that it was executed was flat out boring because the basics are broken.

In a movie like this, the audience needs a clear antagonizing force to understand what the stakes are. Our main villains are Count Dooku and Palpatine. The problem is that we only see Palpatine when he is playing the part of Chancellor and we don't get to see him as his other persona, Darth Sidious. We don't see him making plans with Count Dooku about what they are going to do and therefore we are in the dark for the entire movie. As for Count Dooku, we are told about him in the opening title crawl and briefly mentioned at the beginning of the movie, giving us absolutely no way to know his character or even know what our heroes are up against. About two-thirds of the way through the movie, we finally see an interaction between Obi-Wan and Count Dooku, but it has absolutely no weight or tension in the scene because we have absolutely no clue who Count Dooku is.

So with an antagonizing force that we know nothing about and a group of main characters as bland as ever, we are taken for a journey where almost nothing happens. Hayden Christensen and Natalie Portman have absolutely zero chemistry with some of the worst romantic dialogue I have ever heard, Obi-Wan Kenobi is off on his little adventure which is only interesting because of Ewan McGregor's charisma, and Count Dooku and Darth Sidious are planning their evil plan, which we never see.

It's a terrible mix to have in any movie. And because of this, all of the action sequences, which were the biggest we'd ever seen in a Star Wars movie up until this point, are extremely boring even though they look stunning visually. Also, the overuse of CGI and the lack of grit make the action sequences lack any form of consequence or stakes. The perfect example of this is a spaceship chase between Obi-Wan Kenobi and Jango Fett. Jango is shooting at Obi-Wan Kenobi and he is literally hitting every area around the ship, but the ship. I know this is a franchise about laser swords and aliens and whatnot, but our suspension of disbelief can only be stretched so far. The actual fight between Obi-Wan and Jango on foot and the brief moment where large creatures are sent into the arena to kill our heroes were much more enjoyable because there were legitimate stakes we could wrap our heads around. Other than that, the action is mostly a wide variety of CGI Clone Troopers and CGI Battle Droids just shooting at each other. Why should we care at all?

That's the biggest problem with the movie. Unlikable characters and a confusing plot make it next to impossible for us to care about what is happening on screen. Nice to see imagery from my childhood again, but count me out next time there is a Star Wars marathon and Attack of the Clones is up next.