Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones arrived in 2002 as the fifth film in the Star Wars series and the second chapter of the Skywalker Saga, directed by George Lucas from a screenplay he wrote with Jonathan Hales. It runs 142 minutes. It is an adventure film, an action film and a science fiction film, and its own tagline tells you what it thinks love is worth: “A Jedi shall not know anger. Nor hatred. Nor love.”
That is a strange promise for a movie whose plot turns on a romance. The film is set ten years after The Phantom Menace, with thousands of planetary systems seceding from the Galactic Republic to join the Confederacy of Independent Systems under Count Dooku, a former Jedi Master turned Sith Lord who once mentored Qui-Gon Jinn. Senator Padmé Amidala comes to Coruscant to vote against a motion to create an army for the Jedi. Someone tries to kill her. Two Jedi are assigned to keep her alive.
Trailer, via Star Wars.
Obi-Wan Kenobi and the Beacon on Kamino
The assassination attempt comes from bounty hunter Zam Wesell, who tries twice and fails twice. On the second attempt she is subdued by Obi-Wan Kenobi and his Padawan, Anakin Skywalker. Before she can name her employer, a jetpack-wearing bounty hunter kills her.
The Jedi Council sends Obi-Wan to find that bounty hunter. Anakin is told to protect Padmé and escort her to Naboo.
Obi-Wan’s search takes him to Kamino, an ocean planet where a clone army is being produced for the Republic — allegedly on the order of Sifo-Dyas, a Jedi Master who died before he could have placed it. The bounty hunter Jango Fett is the clones’ genetic template. Obi-Wan works out that Jango is the man he wants, places a homing beacon on Jango’s ship, and follows him and his clone son Boba to Geonosis.
Ewan McGregor plays Obi-Wan as a Jedi Knight who has grown wiser and more powerful in the Force in the decade since The Phantom Menace. McGregor is working hard here. The Kamino sequence plays as a detective story, and he plays it like one. That much the film earns.
Anakin Skywalker, Twenty Years Old and Certain
Hayden Christensen plays Anakin, a 20-year-old former slave from Tatooine, believed to be the “chosen one” of Jedi prophecy, destined “to bring balance to the Force.” Ten years on he has grown powerful but arrogant, and he believes Obi-Wan is holding him back.
Lucas auditioned a large field for the part, mostly unknown actors, before casting Christensen. Among the established names who auditioned or were considered: Jonathan Brandis, Chris Klein, Devon Sawa, Charlie Hunnam, Topher Grace, Nick Swardson, Rob McElhenney, Eric Christian Olsen, Joshua Jackson, Erik von Detten, James Van Der Beek, Ryan Phillippe, Colin Hanks and Paul Walker. Leonardo DiCaprio met with Lucas but declined, saying he “wasn’t ready to take that dive.” He made Catch Me If You Can and Gangs of New York instead.
Christensen thought the role would go elsewhere, having heard how many other actors were in the mix. Natalie Portman told Time that Christensen “gave a great reading. He could simultaneously be scary and really young.”
That is a striking piece of praise, and it is the most useful thing anyone says about the performance. The film itself gives Christensen little room to be either.
Padmé Amidala and a Rule the Film Cannot Sell
Portman plays Padmé, the former Queen of Naboo, recently elected the planet’s Senator. Despite the Jedi Code forbidding attachments, Anakin and Padmé fall deeply in love. The tagline says a Jedi shall not know love.
The rule is stated plainly. What the film does with it is another matter. Anakin is arrogant, aggrieved and quick to rage. Padmé is a sitting senator who has just survived two attempts on her life. The film asks the audience to accept the couple on the strength of the pairing alone, and that is a thin thread for a trilogy’s central relationship to hang on. Our view: the romance is the weakest load-bearing wall in the prequel trilogy, and Attack of the Clones never reinforces it.
Anakin’s other thread is stronger. He is troubled by visions of his mother Shmi in pain and returns to Tatooine with Padmé to save her. His former owner Watto reveals he sold Shmi to a moisture farmer named Cliegg Lars, played by Jack Thompson, who freed and married her. Cliegg says Tusken Raiders abducted Shmi a month earlier.
Count Dooku, Mace Windu and the Geonosis Arena
Christopher Lee plays Count Dooku, and Samuel L. Jackson plays Mace Windu. Frank Oz voices Yoda. Ian McDiarmid returns as Chancellor Palpatine, Pernilla August as Shmi Skywalker, Temuera Morrison as Jango Fett and the Clone Troopers, Jimmy Smits as Senator Bail Organa, and Leeanna Walsman as Zam Wesell.
Lee gives Dooku a stillness that the rest of the film does not have. Our view: he is the most watchable presence in the movie, and the Geonosis sequence is where Attack of the Clones finally becomes the war movie its title promises.
The production schedule is worth setting down plainly. Development began in March 2000, some months after The Phantom Menace. By June 2000, Lucas and Hales had completed a draft of the script. Principal photography ran from June to September 2000, primarily at Fox Studios Australia in Sydney, with additional footage shot in Tunisia, Italy and elsewhere.
What the Prequel Trilogy Was Building Toward
Attack of the Clones exists to put three pieces on the board: the clone army, the Separatist movement, and Anakin’s first real step toward the dark side.
The clone army is the strongest of the three. Obi-Wan’s discovery on Kamino is the film’s sharpest idea because nobody in the film can say who ordered it. Sifo-Dyas is dead. A Republic that is about to vote on whether to have an army suddenly has one. Our view: that is the film’s best-planted mystery, and it is delivered with almost no fuss.
The Separatist movement is thinner. Dooku is a compelling figure, but the politics that produced him are mostly asserted rather than shown. We are told thousands of systems are seceding. We rarely see what that costs anyone.
Anakin’s turn is the weakest of the three, because the film keeps telling us he is powerful and dangerous while showing us a young man who is mainly annoyed. The Tatooine sequence is the exception — it is the one place where Christensen gets to play the thing Portman described, scary and really young at the same time.
The Clone Wars Begin
- Obi-Wan Kenobi investigates the assassination attempt on Padmé Amidala
- Anakin Skywalker escorts Padmé to Naboo and falls in love with her
- Jango Fett is identified as the bounty hunter and the clones’ genetic template
- Anakin returns to Tatooine and learns Shmi was abducted by Tusken Raiders
- The trio converge on Geonosis, where the Clone Wars begin
The final act is a war. The trio witness the onset of a new threat to the galaxy, and the title stops being a promise and becomes a description. It is the loudest stretch of the movie, and our view is that it is not the most interesting one — but it does the job the second chapter of a trilogy has to do.
Here is where it sits in the series:
| Chapter | Film | Year | Chronological place |
|---|---|---|---|
| Episode I | The Phantom Menace | 1999 | First |
| Episode II | Attack of the Clones | 2002 | Second |
| Episode III | Revenge of the Sith | 2005 | Third |
Attack of the Clones is the hinge. Everything that follows depends on what it sets up.
The Verdict on Attack of the Clones
Attack of the Clones is a 5.4 out of 10. That is not a dismissal. The Kamino investigation is the best sustained sequence in the prequel trilogy, and McGregor carries it. Lee gives Dooku a stillness the rest of the film lacks. The clone army plot is a real idea about how democracies hand away their own power, and it is planted cleanly.
But the film’s central romance does not work, and the romance is not a subplot. It is the reason the trilogy exists. Anakin’s fall has to be tragic, which means the audience has to feel the loss when he chooses wrong. Attack of the Clones gives us the wrong choice without giving us the thing worth losing.
The dialogue does not help. The tagline is a warning about Jedi attachment, and the script treats love as a rule to be recited rather than a force to be dramatized. Christensen and Portman are both capable — Portman’s reading of Christensen is evidence enough — and the film strands them in scenes that ask them to announce feelings instead of play them.
The direction is the other problem. Lucas stages the talk scenes with the same flat coverage he uses for the action, so nothing has weight until something explodes. The Geonosis arena is well built. The conversations before it are not.
What survives is the machinery. The clone army, the beacon on Jango’s ship, the dead Jedi whose name is on the order — these are the parts that still work, because they are about institutions failing quietly rather than people declaring themselves. That is the film Attack of the Clones should have been, and the one it occasionally is.
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