Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones

* * *

2002, 20th Century Fox. Directed by George Lucas. Ewan McGregor, Natalie Portman, Hayden Christensen, Ian McDiarmid, Samuel L. Jackson, Christopher Lee.

MPAA: PG

US Conference of Catholic Bishops: A-II, Adults & adolescents

Stylized outer-space and hand-to-hand combat sequences involving laser fire and laser swords (leading to a decapitation, a severed arm, and other injuries and deaths); various explosions.

Overall Recommendability: A: Highly Recommended

Artistic & Entertainment Value: 4 stars (out of four) – Superior

Moral and Spiritual Value: Positive

Appropriate Audience: Kids & up, with discernment

For more information on this movie's ratings, visit the Decent Films Guide at the link below.

Steven D. Greydanus does film criticism for a variety of media. He is the webmaster of the Decent Films Guide website.

(c) 2002 Steven D. Greydanus. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

Better Than Its Predecessor

This story began three years ago with the much-anticipated Episode I — a film that blew away all previous standards for visual invention and splendor in fantasy worldbuilding, but also alienated many fans with its wooden characters, uneven acting, flat dialogue, lethargic middle act, “midi-chlorians,” and widely disliked Jar Jar Binks.

True, even in the original trilogy Lucas’s characters were one-dimensional, indifferently acted, and given to cheesy dialogue. Yet Luke and Leia and Han had been easy to like, with their cheerful bickering and easygoing camaraderie. By contrast, the all-business Jedi knights and stiffly formal Queen Amidala of Episode I struck many as overly serious and unaffecting, and wide-eyed little Anakin Skywalker wasn’t as endearing as Lucas hoped.

Despite these limitations, I was (and remain) appreciative of the unprecedented visual achievements in The Phantom Menace — the first film ever to put fantasy images on the screen to rival or surpass what I saw in my own mind’s eye. So visually lavish was it, in fact, that a single viewing was insufficient to appreciate what Lucas had accomplished. Even people who said they didn’t like it went back to see it two, three, or more times to try to grasp it all.

A Slam-Dunk Success

For Star Wars fans who appreciated The Phantom Menace as I did, Attack of the Clones is a slam-dunk success; while fans left cold by the first prequel may find the new film a reason to get excited again. Once again, even critics who say they didn’t like it talk about going back to see it again.

What’s better about Episode II? Start with the lead characters. Ewan McGregor (Moulin Rouge!), raises the bar with his reprisal of the role of young Obi-Wan Kenobi: No longer a padawan-learner under the shadow of his master Qui-Gon (Liam Neeson), Obi-Wan emerges as the commanding, powerful figure we always knew Alec Guiness’s old wizard must have been in his youth.

McGregor looks and sounds even more uncannily like a young Guiness, and in this film he makes the role his own. He’s relaxed, authoritative, and having fun, and in a bar scene (a sequence that recalls another bar scene in the first Star Wars film) he gets a line that’s the movie’s funniest. In his bantering antagonism with his own difficult apprentice Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen) are echoes of the familiar bickering of the earlier trilogy.

As the adolescent Anakin, Christensen is as petulant as Luke and as cocky as Han, but with an angry reserve foreshadowing his inevitable fall. If his budding relationship with Amidala (Natalie Portman) lacks the cornball appeal of the Han-Leia romance in the original trilogy, this is a different sort of romance, forbidden to Anakin due to his aspirations to Jedi knighthood, and destined (given his dark future) to end in tragedy. Despite this, Anakin and Amidala do have fun moments that sometimes recall the lighthearted camaradarie of Luke and Leia — particularly a jaunty exchange about terminology during a pitched battle in an alien coliseum.

In Episode I, Portman’s character maintained dual personas for security reasons, sometimes appearing as the starched china doll Queen Amidala, other times going incognito as the demure handmaid Padmé. In Episode II, now a senator rather than an elected queen, she goes by either name (the credits list her as “Padmé Amidala”), and her manner is relaxed and unaffected. No longer hampered by such lavish costume changes, she’s more able to operate in the action-heroine mode associated with her daughter Leia. Portman’s clearly having more fun this time around (the actress recently commented on how miserable she was filming Menace and what a better time she had making Clones), and she almost manages to sell us on her character falling for the brooding padawan assigned to protect her.

Among the supporting cast, the most noteworthy performance may be that of new all-computer-generated Yoda (still voiced by Frank Oz), looking every bit as real, and a lot more expressive — not to mention, um, mobile — than the puppet ever was. If you can “tell” right away that he’s CGI, consider that this may not be because of any telltale limitation in the computer-imaging technique, but precisely because the limitations of the puppet are no longer a factor. Yoda’s more persuasive than ever, and he’s got a much-ballyhooed action scene at the film’s climax that will give fans goosebumps, and should leave anyone watching seriously impressed.

Other supporting characters include Jedi master Mace Windu (Samuel L. Jackson), charismatic and tough as nails; Chancellor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid), oily and disingenuous as ever; the new Count Dooku (Christopher Lee, rogue wizard Saruman from Fellowship of the Ring, here playing a rogue Jedi); and Jango Fett (Temuera Morrison), a bounty hunter and father of sorts to the well-known character Boba Fett (seen here as a young boy) from the original series. Jimmy Smits (“NYPD Blue”) appears briefly as Senator Bail Organa, the man who will become Leia’s adoptive father, and Pernilla August briefly reprises her role as Anakin’s mother in a scene that contains a twist on one of Christendom’s best-known sacred images.

Many will gladly note the greatly diminished presence of Jar Jar Binks (Ahmed Best), who’s onscreen just long enough to make a disastrous mistake that will give fans a real rationale for hating him. (Another welcome absence: no mention of midi-chlorians.)

On the down side, much-beloved See-Threepio (Anthony Daniels) is not in top form, and has a couple of back-to-back lines as cringe-inducing as the worst Episode I clunkers. Fans may also nonplused when Artoo-Detoo suddenly reveals a previously-unguessed ability to fly (will Episode III explain why he never flies in episodes IV–VI?).

Marriage, Celibacy, and the Afterlife

Of all the Star Wars films, Attack of the Clones has perhaps the least interest in developing the mythology of the Force. The Phantom Menace introduced us to the theism-leaning concepts of “the living Force” and “the will of the Force,” as well as the concept of the prophesied “Chosen One” destined to “bring balance to the Force”; but, apart from a passing reference to this prophecy, these concepts mostly lie dormant in this film.

The film does, however, develop the Star Wars universe in other ways. Not only is there the revelation that the Jedi are celibate, but we also see the first wedding in any Star Wars film, complete with clergyman and witnesses (even if the witnesses are Artoo and Threepio). Both celibacy and marriage are positively depicted; Padme and Anakin explicitly reject the possibility of “living a lie” by tacitly violating the Jedi rules, and Anakin, not yet a Jedi, must choose between Jedi knighthood and marriage. In our present cultural climate, it’s refreshing to see these complementary vocations taken for granted as valid institutions in a fantasy story of this sort.

Attack of the Clones is also the first film in the series to allude to the afterlife of characters other than Jedi: When one character dies and is apparently buried (not burned, as Jedis have been), another character utters this interesting eulogy: “I know wherever you are, it’s become a better place.” It’s nice to have this confirmation that religious feeling and spirituality isn’t limited to Jedi mysticism. (On the other hand, See-Threepio, who in the original Star Wars film had the series’ lone explicitly theistic reference — “Thank the Maker” — is here given another reference to “the Maker,” but this time in a non-theistic sense. While it’s obvious the phrase is used two different ways, the earlier theistic reference may be felt to be somewhat diminished by the new one.)

One of the surprises in Attack of the Clones is whom the clones are attacking, and why, and on behalf of whom (the “Clone Wars” themselves are apparently still in the future, though the film does feature a clone skirmish).

Interestingly, like real-world advocates of cloning experiments, those who commission the clones in Episode II promise great benefits from their work. Yet we know how this story ends, and the familiar appearance of these white-armored soldiers tells us that, whatever short-term benefits may result from this cloning project, the end of it is oppression and enslavement.

It’s entirely likely that the phrase “attack of the clones” will become a media catchphrase in future discussions about real-world cloning experiments (the way that “Star Wars” itself came to refer to Reagan-era missile defense research). While Lucas’s story doesn’t touch upon the underlying moral issues of human dignity and the sacredness of human life in its origins, the progression it shows from the optimistic promises of cloning technology to the dehumanizing reality that actually follows remains an evocative metaphor for the false hopes of human cloning experimentation. Whatever Lucas’s intentions, his story resonates with the prophetic warning of John Paul II that “man must be the master, not the product, of his technology.”

Being the master of his technology, for George Lucas, is what moviemaking is all about. For him, moviemaking technology represents a means of unfettering the imagination, of giving breathtakingly detailed reality to the most soaring flights of fancy.

When Lucas creates visuals like these, he’s doing something quite simply unmatched by anything anyone else in Hollywood is doing, or has ever done. He may have the tone-deaf ear for dialogue of a dime-store pulp novelist, but he’s still got the visionary eye of a technological Tolkien, and the worlds he creates are pure magic. For those like myself who have a taste for it, simply to revisit this galaxy far, far away remains a pleasure unlike anything anybody else’s movie can offer.

In any case, the best thing about Episode II is its more satisfying exploration of the astonishing vistas Lucas created for Episode I. Where that film had tantalizingly brief glimpses of such wondrous sights as the Naboo capital city in its Greco-Roman glory, perched atop towering cliffside waterfalls, or the fathomless urban canyons and layered airborne traffic of the capital city-planet Coruscant, Attack of the Clones gives us the opportunity to slake our eyes on these wonders to our hearts’ content.

The first act gives us an extended aerial car-chase sequence across Coruscant that’s reminiscent of a similar scene from The Fifth Element, but worth more than that entire movie plus the pod race from Episode I thrown in for good measure. Later, on Naboo, Anakin and Amidala lie on the grass framed by an astounding horseshoe-shaped waterfall that makes Niagara look like a courtyard fountain.

Other sights in this film to stagger the imagination include the largest-scale battle yet staged in a Star Wars film, and footage of vast hosts of white-armored clones marching in formation into the monstrous entrance portal of a transport vessel — a vast army that dwarfs any previous assembly of stormtroopers or battle droids. I also liked a rather Spielbergian laboratory facility, spartan and white, staffed by attenuated aliens reminiscent of the tall visitor from Close Encounters (and the super-mechas from A.I.), located on a tempestuous ocean planet.

There’s a lot of action, of course, including two sequences (Obi-Wan’s dizzy aerial pursuit of an assassin, and the big coliseum sequence) that more than anything in Star Wars history evoke the series’s matinee inspirations, Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon. There’s also a rousing hand-to-hand combat sequence between Obi-Wan and Jango Fett, and the climactic lightsaber battle. Instead of trying to outdo Ray Park’s stunning martial-arts choreography from The Phantom Menace, the new film goes for pyrotechnics, using striking lighting and editing in a dramatic duel sequence looks and feels more like a tango than a battle, before pulling out all the stops with the crowd-pleasing finale.