‘Attack Of The Clones’ At 20: An Impossibly Dull Story, A Sumptuous Visual Feast … Or Both?!?

Twenty years later and Anakin Skywalker still hates sand.

Has it really been 20 years since Star Wars: Episode II—Attack of the Clones hit theaters? Yes, it has, and, perhaps more surprisingly, time has been … kind to it? I come to you from a far away system in the Outer Rim known as Generation X, where it is my people’s birthright to do nothing but trash the Star Wars prequels, but fair is fair: looking at it again, this movie has more positives than negatives.

For those too young to recall, AOTC came at a very weird moment. For fans of the original trilogy, we’d been through a lot. There was a little stretch of time, after Return of the Jedi conquered the galaxy, where Star Wars was really not in the cultural picture. To show up somewhere babbling about Boba Fett was like “why are you talking about Sesame Street?” It was something from your childhood, and a little embarrassing.

Then, in 1995, a souped-up, stereo VHS collection of the trilogy was released, reminding everyone that this stuff was unbeatable. Then came the Special Edition re-releases, in theaters, which made a killing, but also surfaced up some controversy. Yes, it was great to see our Droids and Jedis again, and to scream and yell at the cinema, but what is up with that new Jabba scene? And the Death Star’s explosion looks different? And why the hell did Greedo shoot first?

It was all okay, though, because new Star Wars movies—prequels—were coming. These were rumored about since before the first trilogy even finished. (I was there, man, I know.) “Empire Strikes Back says ‘Episode V’ because they are going to make three earlier ones and three later ones,” I was told on the playground. Then I was told I was “it” and seven guys especially that brute Ronnie Silverstein pummeled the crap out of me.

Anyway! Finally The Phantom Menace came out, after midwifing the entire online movie blogging industry. I personally could not get a ticket until, say, day 11 or 12 of release, that’s how hot the demand was. And the movie? Well … the movie was awful.

The plot was inscrutable, the kid actor was wretched, and what the hell was going on with Jar Jar Binks?!! The Darth Maul fight (and the music, and, okay, the podrace) was awesome, but that was it.

AOTC had its premiere at the first Tribeca Film Festival, and this is a more important fact than you might realize. In early 2002, New York City was still a chaotic mess after the 9/11 attacks. People did not want to go downtown, and were frequently hesitant to go places where there were crowds. We can look back now and think this was being overdramatic, but this was the reality. Lucas debuting the movie at this new annual event, meant to boost the most affected neighborhood’s economy, was seen as a righteous act. (That the first scene includes a terrorist bombing may not have kept nervousness at bay, but that’s nobody’s fault.)

Reaction out of the festival was that it was “much, much better” than the first one, and also there wasn’t too much Jar Jar. But when I was able to get a ticket (not opening night, but soon thereafter) I remained unimpressed. Star Wars just wasn’t working.

Though I have checked in on the prequels many times since then, I’m happy to admit that my opinion has changed … a bit. I have accepted that the younger generation who saw these movies at the same time in their cultural development that I saw the O.T. love them. I used to think they were only loving it ironically, but that’s just not so. They really do think these movies are great. Fair enough. And frankly, there is a lot to love.

From a purely cinematic point of view, the special effects and overall look of the movie remain, by-and-large, pretty great, and when there is action on the screen, it still grabs you by the throat. (Say what you will about Mr. George Lucas, but he knows where to put the camera.)

The music, the general vroom of the editing, the creature effects, Senator Amidala’s weirdly 1930s-meets-the-future Coruscant pied-à-terre, the guy selling “deathstiks,” the rain planet Kamino, Dex’s Diner, Yoda flipping around like Sonic the Hedgehog in a lightsaber battle, Christopher Goddamn Lee, the ambassador of the Techno Union Army (Wat Tambor), and many other moments (yes, yes, Natalie Portman’s ripped costume, too, I am not made of stone!) do indeed rule. If you let AOTC simply wash over you as a sound-and-light show, it is tremendously effective.

Some of the acting remains rough, but you just need to accept it as part of the film’s style. Even “good” actors like Ewan McGregor, Natalie Portman, and Samuel L. Jackson come off stilted, like they dropped in from a very early talkie. Hayden Christensen is a better actor than Jake Lloyd, but not by much. He sounds half-asleep and put these weird accents to words. (The sand, which he hates, gets ehhhhhvreywhere.) When he says the classic “I’ve got a bad feeling about this” line it is particularly rough, because you can hear Harrison Ford say it in your memory. But, I dunno, at this point, I almost find it charming. And since there’s only a smidge of Jar Jar, that whole ridiculous character is a little bit charming, too.

I have, however, pinpointed the one undeniable and not-so-minor issue: the story is horrible. I used to think it was too confusing—wait, are Count Dooku and the Separatists actually right, even though he is actually a secret Sith double-agent???—but when you hit pause (and Wookieepedia) you will find, after much study, that the plotting of the prequel trilogy does maintain an internal logic. (How something with so many reversals, hinging on inscrutable topics like trade negotiations, could ever be considered as a movie fit for eight year olds is another issue!) The problem is that the plot is boring.

Search your feelings, you know it to be true. The original trilogy is a hero’s journey with a band of righteous rebels toppling an evil empire. The prequels are a scattershot, highly complex series of revelations leading to something you already know: the main character (a bit of a douche to begin with) is going to become the worst man in the galaxy. This is not all that engaging! And it never will be.

But I have a solution. After all this time, we’re in a good position to realign our thinking. We’ve already (probably) made our peace with the prequels. They are an important part of pop culture. And considering how shattered our attention spans are today, these are the perfect movies to only kinda rewatch. You can (and should) peek at TikTok as you stream AOTC, because spending too much mental energy on the story is a loser’s game. Every revisit brings agony from trying to piece the intensely dull plot together. Don’t do it. The work has already been done. You should only take what’s on the surface: the sumptuous visual and aural feast.

Yoda might disagree with me, and call this a path to the Dark Side. But what did that guy, know? He got duped by Darth Sidious! Join me in watching Attack of the Clones in a half-assed way, and together we can rule the galaxy.

Jordan Hoffman is a writer and critic in New York City. His work also appears in Vanity Fair, The Guardian, and the Times of Israel. He is a member of the New York Film Critics Circle, and tweets about Phish and Star Trek at @JHoffman.