I Review Attack Of the Clones

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

Runtime: 142 minutes

Directed by: You Know Who

Starring: Ewan McGregor, Hayden Christensen, Natalie Portman, Christopher Lee, Ian McDiarmid

From: 20th Century Fox

Yep, I am finally reviewing a movie I have seen a few times in my life... and hopefully won't be watching again anytime soon. I think it's pretty bad. The Letterboxd review explaining why is below: 

As it's only about 3 months until Episode VII comes out and I was only halfway through rewatching the previous six films, I figured it was about time I saw this one, which I say is the worst one; I am not talking about such things as that one Clone Wars movie based off of the TV series; this is just bad, and I rightfully dreaded seeing this again.

As everyone knows the plot, I won't go over that... except to say that the Red Letter Media reviews of the prequels do a great job of explaining all the faults with them. I'll never comprehend the Mr. Plinkett character, why he's so off-putting, or why seemingly most people think the “humor” surrounding the character being a serial killer and abuser of woman is “funny”, but besides that tremendously stupid stuff (which has turned off more than one person I know) those reviews are worth watching and listening to as they bring up many of the issues with the prequels in general, including things that had never crossed my mind before.

I don't want to parrot those reviews and while I could probably write a dissertation on all the problems that are present, I won't; so I'll try to be brief here. The plot throughout the entire prequels is bad, and that is really the case here. Trying to untie that Gordian Knot is not even worth the effort. It's nonsensical and you really don't care about what happens here, about the mysterious creation of clones, or anything else. You certainly don't like Obi-Wan and Anakin and how they constantly bicker like an old married couple and the future Darth Vader is a whiny emo brat, which is quite the insult to the character.

Then there's the romance between Anakin and Padme... we've all laughed about it and how God-awful it was. What a goofy and strange view George Lucas has of romance and how he thinks a budding couple fall in love and act around each other. Him writing dialogue hasn't been great even in his best movies and here it's appalling, between Skywalker talking about not liking sand because it's coarse and rough and his deranged ranting & raving about slaughtering that tribe of Tusken Raiders. By the way, what a catch that Anakin is between that and his proclaiming of “Oh, a dictatorship sounds like a great form of government!” Why exactly did she fall in love with him?

This movie's quite bad but it's not completely worthless. Some of the images you see in the background are cool but pretty much all of the movie is greenscreened and on Blu in 2015 it doesn't always look great and then there's the issue of how it seems too busy and at times it's a cacophony of sight & sound, to the point it's too much for your brain to process. Both Christopher Lee and Ian McDiarmid do well with what they were given. The John Williams score is pretty much. However, much of this motion picture is still rubbish.

But at least now it will be a very long time before I decide to give this bad movie another spin.