Star Wars - Attack of the Clones

I hate sand

Before I watch

I've been putting this one off, but I really want to rewatch Andor and Rogue One, so I must finally persist. My recurring memories of this film is that it's largely a detective caper with a sidebar into Anakin's lose of control, with some truly diabolical dialogue. On the flipside, we get one of the great villains in Dooku, the introduction of Jango Fett, and we actually get to see Mace Windu do something a little more exciting than sit in the council chamber.

It's been a while since the Phantom Menace (both from my watch and in-universe) and whilst I struggle through one of my least favourite films in the franchise I'll try and pull some themes out.

In the film

The narrow escape

A theme I didn't quite clock the first time around is that the prequels all start on ships and in space. The first started with our Jedi "negotiators" arriving at the trade federation blockade, this film starts Amidala's return to Coruscant, and the third starts (spoilers!) with the Battle Over Coruscant.

Anyway, that aside, we see Amidala in her new role here, which opens so many more questions about Naboo's political structure given royalty is both not typically elected in the first place and also typically rule for life. One might suspect that originally Jar Jar was to have a more prominent role here that got supplanted by Amidala after Jar Jar's reception with older Star Wars enthusiasts. It's never overly clear how joined up the plan to assassinate Amidala was, nor whether it was actually supposed to succeed given the ultimate orchestrator of that plot is well aware of Amidala's penchant for decoys and subterfuge. In any case we'll no doubt come back to how this all works out for Ol' Palps later.

Also, another aside but Naboo's ship designs are stunning as ever.

Return of the Jedi

So my memory seemingly erased the scene of the council meeting with Palpatine to discuss the rising Separatist threat. The Jedi show vulnerability in admitting to the Chancellor that they have no visibility of whether war is actually coming (though arguably they are the ones that end up starting the war), nor the capacity to defend the whole galaxy as a military force.

We also see the cogs of Palpatine's machinations continue to turn as Amidala arrives at his chambers with the Council still there, he wastes little time on insisting Kenobi be paired up with her as an additional security detail.

Shifting rapidly to an establishing scene with Kenobi in a frankly slightly ridiculous mullet as he's moved on from being a Padawan and stepped into the shadow of his master. A much older Anakin is now rocking a very similar Padawan look to Obi-Wan's from the previous film, establishing a somewhat consistent theme to the Jedi Order's hierarchy. Kenobi comments on Anakin's nerves but this pivots towards some fairly impenetrable filler as to what they've been up to for the last ~10 years. Anakin pretty much admits to having some kind of feelings for Amidala in this scene and all Kenobi with his goofy haircut does is shake his head in mild disapproval.

Cue meeting Amidala and the start of the incredibly cringe flirting attempts, which in fairness on the first instance she flatly puts him in his place by saying she still remembers him as the kid from Tatooine. Again in another amusing setup for a reversal, Kenobi is reluctant to do anything more than provide security, whereas Anakin wants to take up the investigation Amidala asks for. There's a point of tension here but ultimately it's Kenobi who literally throws himself out a window to chase a lead a short time later.

Assassination take two

The second assassination attempt is frankly harebrained, but aside from Anakin continuing to show himself as being a massive creep, the trap they're setting up is pretty sound. We get yet more tension between master and apprentice as they both attempt to out-sass each other. A recurring theme from the prequels is that the relationship between the two always seems brotherly rather than paternal (which Obi-Wan says as much towards the end of ROTS, so I'll no doubt go over further if/when I get to that post), which I can't help but think contributes to his eventual downfall.

Anakin talking about his dreams doesn't feel like it ever gets made as much of a warning note for Obi-Wan as it should have, as both threads eventually comes true with the later slaughter of the Sand People in retribution for his mother's capture and treatment, and his continued lusting for Amidala. Obi-Wan tries to dissuade him, but acts on the tack of politicians being untrustworthy rather than actually referencing the Jedi dogma for avoiding strong personal relationships. I wonder how much this is down to Qui-Gon being much more of an iconoclast.

Anyway, the actual assassination attempt scene is great, from the droid quietly inserting the deadly critters through a cut made in the window, to the tension as the critters make their way over to the sleeping Amidala, evading R2-D2, to the timing and reaction of Anakin's danger sense and response.

The chase scene is ridiculous but enjoyable, with a little bit of harking back to the podracing of the previous film, and the multiple phases of it is great. As much as the film frustrates me on rewatches this entire sequence is a great early peak. With still fairly early CG effects the mix of sound design, music, and acting amongst the few practical effects really sell the sequence. Additionally the quips come through quick and fast in particular through this sequence. As bad as the dialogue gets, there's some real fantastic one-liners.

Also Obi-Wan really has a habit of removing people's limbs in bars.

Following the breadcrumbs

In any case, they catch the assailant only for them to be assassinated before they can give up their employer, so we get another breadcrumb, giving the feeling that this part of the plot is in part inspired by 50s Noir detective stories (reinforced by the appearance of a very clearly American-style diner in that era's kinda scheme as Obi-Wan seeks information from a contact)

We also hit our first split storyline in the film that's been otherwise linear up to this point, as the story follows both Obi-Wan on his investigation and Anakin and Amidala on their side adventure, which only rejoin once the whole gang reunites on Geonosis

Naboo, Kamino, and Tatooine

At the beginning of Anakin's side adventure, we see him consulting alone with Palpatine, and whilst he did say in the Phantom Menace that he would follow Anakin's career "with great interest" it's curious to see how close the two already are, and it seems like the Council should have been more perturbed at the amount of influence and interest the Republic's executive had in one of their most promising but troubled students. But a recurring theme of the Jedi Order of this period is that they've let themselves be blinded by dogma. Obi-Wan expresses his doubts about casting off the wilful young apprentice solo, but the council, the same one that was reluctant to train him in the first place, is confident in its decision.

Amidala is frustrated at being sidelined during the investigation, and Anakin is being a surly teen/young adult. Also he's a little bit of a creep. We do get a bit of an insight into how Anakin sees his relationship with Obi-Wan, who get's a tough hand given he was pushed into taking Anakin as a Padawan too early when he was barely beyond being a Padawan himself.

This whole section of the film drags a little and is mostly continuing piecing the clues together mixed in with Anakin and Amidala. Obi-Wan's diner contact scene is a clear callback to 50's - 60's American culture that Lucas admires. Some plot points come up but they don't really conclude satisfyingly and this is too long a post already to get into them all.

The highlights from this section are the brief scuffle on Kamino, and the narrative highlight of Anakin and the Tusken Raiders, the first time we really truly see Anakin's dark urges come out

The other standout is the chase over Geonosis, simply for the spectacular sound and visual design of Jango Fett's seismic charges, one of the scenes that stuck with me the most when I first watched this in the cinema

Geonosis and ending

I mostly gave up trying to follow along, the film is dense with plot points that don't really pay off in the movie itself, but the main takeaways from this section is that the foundry scene is cool and thrilling and R2-D2 is a hero as always, the arena scene is fun but has the most cringe dialogue in the franchise and is one of the reasons I hate rewatching the film. The finale facing off against Dooku is underwhelming in the rewatch, the comedic effect of Yoda's surprising agility doesn't really land on repeat viewings. The arrival of the clones is cool though, the LAAT/i gunships are one of my favourite ship designs from the prequel, they seem loosely inspired by the Mi-24 Hind (a fascinating helicopter design in its own right) but it's clearly it's own thing. We also get our first look at the Acclimator assault ships that are the very first hint of things to come. Lore wise we get hints that Palpatine is actually behind both sides of the war from Dooku (referring to him as Darth Sidious), which is mostly dismissed by Obi-Wan and the Council, though they do intend to scrutinise the Senate more closely. The film closes on the Grand Republic Army assembling and departing from Coruscant, with a fantastic mix of The Imperial March with the senate's theme as musical foreshadowing.

Wider thoughts after watching

General views

Attack of the Clones is still one of my least favourite of the films (maybe I'll do a ranking after I finish my watch-through). Anakin and Amidala are by far the weakest characters in the film, mostly due to crappy dialogue, but also because of the incredibly unhealthy relationship dynamic. This budding relationship is also clearly the worst hidden open secret which at best gets mild discouragement from Obi-Wan and is wilfully ignored by the Jedi Council who only make this worse in the face of Obi-Wan's protestations.

In overall themes, this film suffers as a middle film of a trilogy, a lot of it is connective setup for Revenge of the Sith, but the pacing is inverted from The Empire Strikes Back. The latter opens, more or less, with a large action set piece, and then tells the story sprinkled with action and narrative twists through to the main twist in the finale. Finally, that set piece in the beginning was an easy lead up because we know that the first film doesn't destroy the overall threat, just their biggest weapon
The former doesn't really have twists as we mostly know how the story ends (the curse of being a prequel). It also has to work in the new threat to the narrative as the main threat in The Phantom Menace was shown to be defeated. The secondary villain, Sidious/Palpatine, is still under wraps at the end of The Phantom Menace, so that's where the main "twist" lies as to how that thread gets slowly unravelled. We also have to explain how Anakin and Amidala gets together, which thankfully gets split into an A/B plot with the central plot being driven by Obi-Wan's investigations. And speaking of Anakin...

Toxic relationships

Hayden Christensen doesn't really do anything wrong in his role as Anakin, he's hamstrung throughout by his character being, at this point, a childish brat. He's obsessed with Amidala and uses a variety of hallmark emotional manipulation tactics to pull Amidala into his web. He spends most of the film making his trauma her problem and effectively says he can only be happy if she's with him. This relationship is extremely toxic, and the directing choice to put Amidala in the most sultry dresses possible for the most charged of these scenes is somewhat unhinged. Someone should have said no to Lucas harder for this whole arc, having Amidala capitulate to this whiny brat just because he's trauma dumping on her and he's maybe a little bit pretty doesn't reflect great on her character.

Meanwhile, Anakin and Obi-Wan's relationship is all over the place. The tone is stuck halfway between brotherly and fatherly with him being scolding towards Anakin only to turn around and be flippant and sarcastic. Some of this may be down to them being relatively similar in age, and also in part because a lot of that dry humour was how Qui-Gon spoke to Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan uses sarcasm most when Anakin is seeking validation, which no doubt brings some truth to the rift Anakin perceives between them, you could have done better here Obi-Wan.

Overall review

I don't hate the movie, but it suffers from being in the middle of a trilogy that's also a prequel, so its only real job is setting the stage for the third film. This means a lot of busy work in narrative building, which is hamstrung by diabolically poor dialogue and a toxic relationship being passed off as genuine. There are some good action set pieces, but you really have to wait for them. If I could skip the entire B plot and just focus on Obi-Wan's plot throughout this film I think I'd struggle less with it

Up next

As much as I'd love to rewatch The Clone Wars, it's taken me long enough to push through this film that I won't, so the next one is Revenge of the Sith. One of my favourites, which might be controversial to some. I suspect this will also take a while as that film also has a lot of themes.
Following that, a sidebar onto Andor and Rogue One before I move on to the original Trilogy