Rewatching Attack of the Clones after 9 years

Hello there. Man, agree with you again. The love plot is pretty weird. Some lines of dialog are dumb. But except this, the movie is pretty good. The action is well executed and the separatist plot, as you said, is really good.

 

I did enjoy the screenplay for AotC* more than the final product, even though I did enjoy the film itself. The screenplay I suppose was devoid of iffy acting, while also presenting some longer scenes. I found it a surprise to see scenes edited or removed entirely from the final product; AotC was my favourite of all the SW screenplays in its published state.

*In The Art of Attack of the Clones.

 

Once again Skaro, I agree with an awful lot of what you say.

I have always felt that it was a mistake to have made Anakin a small child in TPM, because it required Lucas to start from square one with the character in AOTC. And, as you've so aptly pointed out, this "reboot" of the character failed miserably. It's not just that he comes across as creepy, or that he's essentially dipped his toe in the dark side even at the very beginning of AOTC (though these are real problems that hamper AOTC and, to a lesser extent, ROTS). It's also that there is virtually NO character continuity between TPM Anakin and AOTC Anakin.

There is continuity of the role itself - Anakin is Obi Wan's padawan, he has a kid-crush on Padme, he left his mother behind on Tatooine, and all the checklist stuff like that. But in terms of Anakin the person, there is virtually no connection between the kid he was in TPM and the teenager he is in AOTC. Almost NOTHING about AOTC Anakin reminds me of TPM Anakin. And, of course, this ends up negating everything that we learned about Anakin in TPM - that he was kind-hearted, loyal, patient, easy-going, etc. In other words, everything that would seem to make him a good Jedi. And everything that he was NOT in AOTC.

The love plot was terrible. Just flippin' awful. A lot of it was that Lucas had completely changed Anakin's character, but more than that it was just scripted badly. Now, I've heard the excuse that "It was supposed to sound like courtly dialogue from medieval times" or what have you, but it didn't even rise to that level - it was just plain old bad writing, and sounded as though it was written by somebody with only third-hand theoretical knowledge of how people in love actually speak to one another. The motivations behind the love plot were almost worse, though. Anakin is obsessed with Padme, comes across like a stalker, slaughters an entire village in a rage over his mother's death, and somehow that ends up hooking Padme? Oy...

There was also the fact that, as you point out at least once, many of the action sequences that centered around Obi Wan seemed like they needed to center around Anakin instead. Who leaped out the window in a frantic attempt to grab that floating assassin droid? Not the guy who desperately wanted to prove himself to Padme. Who flew like a bat outta hell through that asteroid field with Jango Fett hot on his tail? Not the guy who was "the best star pilot in the galaxy."

I have always found AOTC to be more watchable than TPM, but like TPM it seemed like an early screenplay draft that needed a few more rounds of major revisions before it was ready to be filmed. Plenty of cool elements in there, but it's all such a jumbled mess, dragged down by one of the single worst romantic plots I've ever seen.

 

It is a very odd beast of a film (AotC). It's so loaded with 'world-building' that it's almost a spin-off rather than a bonafide Episode. The only far-reaching components of any consequence are the Anakin-Padme romance (although not handled well), Anakin's rage-outs, and the emergence of the clonetroopers.

 

AotC was my least favorite Star Wars movie.

The droid factory scene was just bad. The scene started off poorly with a CGI Threepio getting pushed off the ledge by Artoo and falling so unrealistically that I remember wondering why they didn't just push a stuntman in a Threepio costume, like the did in Jedi when Threepio got knocked off Jabba's sail barge.

After that, the scene just got worse. Poorly timed, poorly acted, and the special effects were NOT convincing. In fact, they were distracting. And Threepio's head switched with a battle droid's? That just didn't work for me.

At all.

The big battle between the Clone Army and the Droid Army was packed so full of, um, so full of EVERYTHING that no matter what I tried to look at, I felt like I was missing the battle. Was that a cool vehicle? I don't know - I really didn't see it behind all the explosions. Which side is winning? I don't know, I can't see through all the blaster bolts. The movie just got too busy. Besides, I wasn't really emotionally invested in the clones or the droids. It's hard to care about one side or the other when you've got no one to root for and no one to root against.

I thought Christopher Lee was TERRIBLE as Count Dooku. Just so meh, so unmemorable, so unremarkable. He had no presence, which is the only unforgivable characteristic of a Sith Lord. Vader had presence. Maul had presence. Sidious had presence. Dooku had, um... And the fight scenes with Christopher Lee were a letdown after the Darth Maul fight scenes of the previous movie.

Anakin Skywalker's dialog was bad, no question. Lucas should have either cast a younger actor to play the part or rewritten the dialog for Hayden, because he was much too old to play a believable tween. Seriously, the character is about as emotionally developed as a twelve year old.

But there were things I liked about the movie. The fist fight between Jango Fett and Obi Wan was fun to watch, the seismic charges dropped out of Jango Fett's ship were very cool, and the whole clone story line was well done.

 

This is the worst movie I know. There are technically less impressive films of course but this one HURT. I left the theater in anger, not just because we all hoped and expected that this one would compensate for TPM, but also because it is such a tepid, uninspired, horribly written, painful, badly acted, unevenly paced, terribly designed, boring suckfest.

Sorry if this offends you but I find AOTC offends my senses, offends the legacy of the original trilogy and it is just so full of awkwardness. Every aspect of the production failed here with the possible exceptions of Ewan McGregor and Ian McDiarmid. Set design, direction, dialogue, plot, CGI, creature design, etc etc it's all bad. I wish I could wish away this embarassing episode. It tried to be ESB and became the opposite.

Cheers!!

 

well one simple thing they could of done is just make Jango Bobba fett.Also Christopher Lee need more screen time,would of been nice to see the charcter set up in the Phantom

 

Yeah, that romantic storyline was complete dissaster and I didn't enjoy it much.
But well, from realistic standpoint, imagine you being a boy a lot younger than the woman of your dreams,
living in celibate behind the temple walls. I for sure can tell, that I will also be telling that woman retarded, naive and unmature stuff,
which will in real life cost me a brutal gloat from the people around and not her heart.... Like: ''it's not like in my village I came from, where there is grass and cow dung, that get's everywhere. Your knees are green and everything smells like hell.'' and then I gently touch her hand....

You know, I tried to defend the hellride of Anakin and his actor in Episode 2, but I realized in a try, that it's completely impossible. Not from the standpoint of it being a fantasy movie, with bad lines and casting of great actor, who reinforced them and added some of his flavour to it....

Episode 2 romantic scenes remind me of this movie:

 

I'd have to say I agree completely with your review. The main "bad" aspect about it is the forced romance part. I have found a compromise by skipping those scenes when watching the movie. Makes it feel less slow and far less creepy.

 

I never get bored watching it over & over again it comes in handy if there is nothing to watch.

 

I remember how badly I wanted to like AotC when it came out. Mostly because TPM was such a letdown. But it didn't take long to realize that basically every aspect of it was so poorly executed. Like many others have said, the "romance" of Anakin and Padme was atrocious and made me feel genuinely uncomfortable. I wanted to break something when Anakin said "I wish I could just wish away my feelings". How could that dialogue be approved? They even squandered the surprise of Yoda wielding a lightsaber at the end when Obi-Wan told Anakin that if he worked as hard on his sabre skills as he did his wit he'd rival master Yoda as a swordsman. I've rewatched it several times and ignoring all the things I don't like and focusing on the Obi-Wan-Jango fight and the clone facility and a few other okay aspects I enjoy it somewhat. It's just SO far from being an acceptable Star Wars film.

 

Me too! The general feeling at the time amongst most of the SW fans I knew was that Lucas had gotten off to a rusty start with Episode I after being out of the game for so long, and that AOTC would almost certainly HAVE to be better than TPM.

Sadly, no.

I will admit, I don't find AOTC as painfully dull and boring as TPM (there are at least a few visuals that I really dig, such as the pan upward after the opening crawl and the slow descent of the Naboo ship into the Coruscant fog) but it's still a lousy movie. A lousy movie that LOOKS good a lot of the time, but still a lousy movie nonetheless.

And the worst thing is, it didn't have to be a bad movie. If Lucas had had even ONE close confidante who could have helped him to refine his story the way Marcia did for much of the OT, I think AOTC could have been turned into something at least halfway decent, possibly even good. But left to his own devices with his entire production team looking to him as the LFL CEO rather than as a fellow filmmaker and storyteller, Lucas just bricked it.

But yeah, I remember how much I wanted to like AOTC when it came out, and how many chances I gave it to grow on me. Oy...

 

I really gave The Phantom Menace those chances. I bet I watched it a 100 times on VHS. Somehow I tried to convince myself I liked it. But it all came down to digging Darth Maul. Remember that scene where Palpatine tells the Neimodians that his apprentice will find them? That's an example of what's so wrong with the PT. In that one scene, Palpatine looked like he was playing the piano, and it's so blunt when he goes, "This is my apprentice, Darth Maul." It's like he's talking to the audience. What a way to introduce a character. Yech-koboob.
Anyway, when Attack of the Clones came I watched it once more that year. That evening at the premiere, Clones convinced me right away that it was just awful. When those Jedi came running with their lightsabers, it was so laughable I searched under my seat for a bag but alas I was not on an airplane. The choreography during the entire Geonosis battle was so awkward, with the exception of a few cartoon shots of clone troopers.
Everything is not Star Wars in this Episode II. Characters act and talk out of character. Often they talk past each other, not with each other. Scenes that could have had some emotion are ruined by zany ideas like those balloon bugs on Naboo. Samuel L. Jackson looks like he has constipation.
Of all the Star Wars films, including I and III, this one had the most derisive laughs from the audience - the fireplace scene, when Anakin admits he's a mass murderer and Padmé's reaction suggests he just told her his favorite color is beige, the droid factory sequence of uselessness, Yoda spinning around and around, the under-developed Count Dooku and his boring cronies, the ESB rip-off-asteroid-thingamagoogy, the fake Obi-Wa/Jango fight (only redeeming factor: finally a scene with rain!), oh man I am going to stop now.
It's all your fault, Dekka!

 

I'm going to shock you guys in that AOTC is the only PT movie I remotely like and still do to this day. While TPM seems totally out of left field for a SW movie (10 year old Anakin, Kenobi gets very little screentime, Padme isn't Padme most of the movie), and ROTS just butchers the scenes we all waited for (Anakin's turn, Padme loses the will to live, only 5 minutes of Suited Vader), AOTC is suprisingly the only movie that consistently moves the plot and consistently moves the characters motives.

Now don't get me wrong, its no masterpiece! There are some cringe-inducing scenes as you guys stated with Anakin by the fireplace will go down as one of those scenes I have to look away when I watch. But I really liked the whole Kamino/Clone sequence with Kenobi as it put a different spin on the Stormtroopers and The Empire compared to what I thought during the OT days. But like every PT movie you have a good sequence that had a part that screws it all up having Jango Fett and Boba Fett who weren't needed.

I actually didn't have a problem with Anakin's tusken killings and his admission to Padme, because there is a motivation to get revenge after they did kill his mom. Unlike ROTS, where he just starts slaughtering Jedi 5 minutes after he turns because Palpatine MAY know how to save the dead???? I also like Christopher Lee more then Darth Maul (I'm probably in the minority), as he does a very good job as a fallen jedi to the darkside. The ending montage is very good too when Dooku meets Palpatine, and then Anakin is secretly married to Padme as he takes her hand with his metal and it is foreshadowing his turn to Darth Vader.

I was so stoked for Episode 3 after AOTC, because I really thought Lucas was on the right track after the Episode 1 hiccup. And then it all falls apart in ROTS, as that movie is just a total mess and the PT was never the same for me after that.

 

Although it was pretty meh when it came out, it's far better than most of the action films we're getting now. The effects have aged well too (aside from those CG troopers and the desert scenes)

 

The things I really didn't like about AOTC:
The Romance
Hayden Christinsenncerrrigattoni.....(AWFUL ACTOR)
Yoda/Dooku fight. (Dooku...lightning? I just don't like anyone but Palpatine doing this,and Yoda with a lightsaber? It's also one of the few problems I had with ROTS...Siddious fighting Yoda with a saber...really?.)


My favorite part was probably the Kenobi/Fett interaction.Between the fight which showed Jedis know how to use their fists,to the battle in the rings of Genosis.Great scenes.

 

Watched ATOTC last night never gets old.

 

Imagine if Lucas sought out Spielberg for advice and script revision. The story of the PT is fairly solid, just the dialogue and action could have been so much better. I mean, I love the PT even more than ever thanks to TCW, but let's look at Indiana Jones: The Temple of the Crystal Skull for example- a very flawed movie, yet it had cohesiveness, effect, and solid ratings. Spielberg and Lucas worked on it, and with a much less mythological based movie produced a decent work. If all the PT were the Crystal Skull quality wise, and maybe a bit higher, there would be much less hate. I actually support Hayden, as his acting in other movies is fairly decent, but I felt making Anakin explain his infatuation was stupid, as he was super creepy. If we saw Hayden act a bit like TCW Anakin, a man of only action, it would fit much better with TPM and AOTC. The concept of Kamino is awesome, I wish Obi - Wan could have sparred with several clones to show their resourcefulness and such, but really, the Separatist plot should' have been the only priority and moved the romance, not be separate for half of the movie.

 

I quite liked the action. I found the story to be most lacking.