Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (2002)

The collective fever that characterized the countdown to The Phantom Menace had long since dissipated by the time the first sequel prequel rolled off the ILM production line. Casual spectators, once stung, had decamped en masse to the newly discovered Middle-Earth, leaving George Lucas with just the few million hardcore fans - true believers who, with all the apprehension of parents at a nativity play, willed their defrocked hero back towards respectability.

There are certainly stretches in the patchy Attack Of The Clones when Lucas’ flat-packed dialogue struggles to keep the hecklers quiet – Anakin’s seduction of the former Queen has all the charm of a teenage lunge behind the bike-sheds and none of the feeling – but by the time climactic ‘reel six’ cranks into high gea...

I'm not a diehard _Star Wars_ fan. I've seen all the movies, seen them all more than once even, and I have my opinions, but when I see the way people talk about _Star Wars_ online, I can't really find myself behaving the way that "true fans" or whathaveyou do. That being said, I think that the majority of the _Star Wars_ films have been pretty good. The notable exception to this, for me at least, is the prequels. And yes you can include the animated _Clone Wars_ movie that they made in that era too. These four movies, again, for me, are all bad. But even amongst them, there is still a ranking in my mind, and in that list, at the very bottom sits _Attack of the Clones_. Yes it is this movie which holds the title, of the very worst Star Wars theatrical release of all time.

_Final rating:...

Better than <em>'Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace'</em>, though <em>'Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones'</em> is again rather underwhelming - if still good on its own merits.

Liam Neeson is missed, with the likes of Ewan McGregor, Natalie Portman, Hayden Christensen and Christopher Lee failing to set the world alight. McGregor does give the best performance of that quartet; Christensen possibly the weakest, though his character's story is probably the most interesting - or its overall arc, at least.

Those onscreen aren't helped by the dialogue, which is very basic and run-of-the-mill. I found the score a little forgettable, even if it's still fun to hear the key pieces of it. The plot is watchable, but I did expect greater storytelling from these two follow-up ...

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Rewatching before OBI-WAN KENOBI.

I don't know if I dislike THE PHANTOM MENACE more or ATTACK OF THE CLONES less, but I didn't feel the (endless) problems of episode II as much as I - Jar Jar being left aside helps tremendously, thank God. Still, the issues are so many that I can't fit them in a single paragraph.

The dialogue is even worse in this one, mostly due to the cringeworthy romantic storyline between Anakin and Padmé. Some of the worst writing the big screen has ever witnessed. I'm usually quite defensive of acting performances, but Christensen is truly, deeply terrible here.

There are more lightsaber fights, but none come even close to Maul's sequence in TPM. Once again, the overreliance on CGI elements/characters doesn't he...

Romance really does know how to suck the fizz out of an adventure film! Here, with the complicit contribution of John Williams' string accompaniment we have to endure the nauseating love story between Hayden Christensen ("Anakin") and Natalie Portman ("Padmé"). Couldn't they just have got a room? "Palpatine" has seen to it that Ewan McGregor ("Obi Wan") has now been charged with guiding his young pupil to fulfil his potential with the "Force" but without being elevated to the status of Jedi master, so he is naturally a tad narked about that. Luckily for us, though, he discovers that there is a secret army of clones ("Jango Fett" lookalikes dressed a lot like Stormtroopers and just as useless in a gun fight) and so with the help of "Yoda" et al, he rallies the Jedi order against the evil "...