Last year, I rewatched and reviewed 1999's Phantom Menace in honor of its anniversary rerelease. I ended up having a good amount of fun reliving that first movie after not watching it for years, so I decided to revisit the sequel. Still have a few years before the 25th anniversary of Attack of the Clones, but I really don't feel like waiting years to do this rewatch, so I'm just doing it now. Also, it will get me ready to do the rewatch and review of Revenge of the Sith, which has its 20th anniversary in May this year... that actually hurt to type. Much like the Episode I rewatch, I haven't seen this one in years, so I am going in pretty fresh and hopefully go in with a more positive outlook. I remember always liking this movie a decent amount more than Phantom Menace, but I guess I'll see if that's still true.
The movie kicks off 10 years after Phantom Menace as the Republic continues the struggle to keep peace in the galaxy and the Jedi struggle to keep up with all the conflicts. A new foe named Count Dooku is leading the separatist movement; he was a former Jedi who left the order. Padme returns to the story, this time as a senator of Naboo who is trying to keep the peace in the galaxy. As soon as the movie starts, Padme is almost assassinated by a bomb on her ship, but she is spared as her decoy is killed instead. This sets up the rest of the movie for her as she's constantly in need of protection from these attempts on her life. Enter Obi-Wan and Anakin, who haven't seen Padme in a decade but agree to protect her. Right away, one of the biggest problems in this movie presents itself here.
One of the main focuses of this story is the romance between Anakin and Padme. In the first movie, Padme was a lot older than Anakin, and their relationship in that movie felt more like big sister and little brother. This time around, Anakin immediately starts flirting with her as soon as he sees her. It's kind of a nice moment to see Anakin super nervous to see her again after 10 years, like his crush on her never went away after a decade. That goes from cute to creepy faster than you'd expect as Anakin's crush on Padme starts to feel inappropriate. One of the main problems with their romance in this movie is that Anakin spends A LOT of his time with Padme crying and complaining about the Jedi and how they keep holding him back. I'll get to this more later as they spend more time together, but right away, you see Padme's not super into Anakin's constant whining and creepy flirting.
The next scene is the first big action sequence, where Obi-Wan and Anakin are chasing an assassin. After using Padme as bait, they are able to find one of the assassins, but she gets away, and they are forced to chase her across the city in a flying car. We get to see a little more of Obi-Wan and Anakin's relationship here as they constantly bicker at each other, and Obi-Wan complains about Anakin's style of flying and recklessness. I mentioned in my last review how I felt it was a missed opportunity that Obi-Wan and Anakin barely interacted in the first movie. Here, they do get split up pretty early in the movie, so yet again, we don't get to see them together much, but this is done to further the romance between Ani and Padme. It makes sense for that, but it's yet again another movie where we don't get to see Obi-Wan and Anakin's friendship. It would have made the third movie even more impactful if they had an established friendship in the first two movies and weren't just bickering at each other for most of this movie.
Obi-Wan eventually ends up going into a club/bar in town to chase the assassin, and this leads to the greatest scene in Star Wars history.
"You wanna buy some death sticks?"
"You don't want to sell me death sticks."
"I don't want to sell you death sticks."
"You want to go home and rethink your life."
"I want to go home and rethink my life."
Pure genius. George Lucas, you've done it again.
The next couple of scenes are just the characters talking and building to the next part of the movie where Obi-Wan searches for the bounty hunter who tried to kill Padme while Anakin and Padme go into hiding. It's here that I noticed how much CGI is used in this movie, even when compared to the last one. Seems like most scenes are filmed on a green screen and feature the characters walking and talking in CGI rooms. It's actually more distracting than I would have thought, especially with how dated a lot of the effects look. I praised Yoda's effects in the last movie, but it was only because compared to the original puppet they used, the CGI version was much better. Seeing him more in this movie, it really stands out how outdated the effects are, but I think at the time this was some of the best effects you could get so it's understandable. Maybe watching it on a remastered Blu-ray also makes the outdated parts stand out more too. Really should have brought out the CRTV for this one.
I'm going to split the Anakin/Padme and Obi-Wan stories and talk about them each one at a time. Starting with the Anakin/Padme storyline since it's a little slower and more about the romance between the two characters. I mentioned before how the romance between the two characters isn't very convincing, and the middle part of the movie where they spend a lot of alone time is the main reason why. Anakin is presented as an emotional, naive, and impatient man. He's constantly complaining about being held back from his true potential and he doesn't hide the fact that he has feelings for Padme, despite the fact it's forbidden for him to be with her. Yoda and the Jedi council deciding to put them alone together was stupid unless Yoda knew what would happen and was cool with it. Anakin continues complaining to Padme about his Jedi training and he often makes her uncomfortable with his flirting and he even argues with her in front of her peers. At the end of the day though, these are two young attractive people spending all their time together on a beautiful planet so I guess it's not too strange that they still end up in a romance. After Anakin has a nightmare about his mother, he decides to take Padme to visit his home planet and check in on her.
The romance here takes a break as Anakin visits his mother's new home only to learn that she's been taken by raiders. The family had given up hope of her return and presumed her to be dead, but Anakin still feels like she's out there and needs his help. This leads to one of the more important scenes in the movie where we see Anakin finally lose control of his emotions. After finding his mother right as she's dying he loses all control and slaughters an entire village of Tuskens. It's clear that this scene is supposed to be one of the main catalysts of Anakin's eventual turn to the dark side. I guess in that sense it works, though it still makes no sense why the Jedi continue to train him after this, despite Yoda knowing how much of a risk Anakin is becoming. It's also strange that Padme continues her romance with Anakin after his scary rant about how he enjoyed killing all the Tuskens, including the women and children. Nothing says husband material like a man talking about how much he enjoyed killing a whole village. Are there no other men in the universe who are a little more... not crazy? Is therapy not a thing in this universe? We can create a clone army, but we haven't discovered the concept of therapy yet. Joking aside, I will say I did enjoy Hayden's acting here. I haven't really talked about Hayden Christensen much actually, and how much hate he got for these movies. Maybe not as bad as Jake Lloyd from the first movie, although he was worse cause he was just a child and is still new to acting, at least Hayden is a grown man. That being said, I think Hayden did a good job and was mostly held back by the awkward romance writing and direction. I mean that's what made a lot of great actors in this trilogy look bad, the bad writing and directing when it came to dialog. Not saying that Hayden couldn't have done better, but that it was far from his fault in my opinion. Although the other movies I saw him in after this weren't great either so... maybe it's a bit of both. Sorry, Hayden. I was still very happy to see him in the role again in the Obi-Wan show (one of the few good moments in that show).
Obi-Wan's story is all about him tracking down the bounty hunter who's trying to kill Padme. It's mildly interesting as it leads to Obi-Wan finding a planet that's been deleted from the Jedi archives. This leads to one of the more important reveals in the Star Wars movies, the clone army. For some reason, I thought it was Qui-Gon who was the one who set the cloning army plan in motion, but I guess it was actually a Jedi named Sifo-Dyas whose not really known at this point in the Star Wars movies. Actually, I don't think he's really mentioned again after this movie. He only appears in the Clone Wars cartoon show a few times, but that's about it outside of maybe books and comics. The introduction of the Fetts is kind of interesting, although seeing Boba Fett as a child doesn't really add to his character from the original trilogy, although it's interesting to know his dad was the template for all the clones. Jango Fett felt like a missed opportunity as he really didn't do much outside of just helping make the clones. He has an awesome suit though. It reminds me of Darth Maul from the last movie, a villain who could have done a lot more before getting killed rather quickly. I think it's one of those things where we didn't really need to see Boba Fett in these movies, but for whatever reason Lucas thought it would be a cool fanservice moment. If he really wanted to please the fans we could have gotten more Darth Maul.
I also forgot to mention Dexter Jettster. And now I have.
The two stories come together on the planet Geonosis, a very ugly red planet that looks like Kissimmee on Mars, no offense to Mars. Obi-Wan has been captured by Count Dooku and Anakin and Padme must rescue him by going against the Jedi Council's orders. Something Anakin has no real issue with. This leads to a pretty fun scene where Anakin and Padme are on a droid conveyor belt trying not to be killed by the machines and the local Geonosians. Geonosians are these giant bug-like people with the ability to fly with their dragonfly-like wings. It's understandable why Anakin would want to kill them, but really they were clearly trying to help him off the machinery and he reacted poorly. C-3PO and R2D2 join in the fun as comic reliefs during this whole sequence, and it's kinda alright. The continued tradition from the original trilogy of 3PO getting himself into trouble until R2 saves him continues. I will say seeing 3PO forced to shoot at his friends was pretty funny. At some point, Padme falls into a giant pot that reminds me of a Mofongo mortar so that was cool.
After all the hijinks in the droid factory, we get the epic battle where Anakin, Padme, and Obi-Wan fight in the Coliseum against three cool-looking monsters. I guess epic was too strong a word, but it is an entertaining sequence where we finally get to see Anakin and Obi-Wan fight together again for a bit. This eventually leads to the Jedi reinforcements arriving and a full-on battle against the droids/monsters happening. Unfortunately, we also get to see Jango Fett get embarrassed by Mace Windo, as he barely struggles to pop his head off with his purple lightsaber. After the Jedi are eventually outnumbered by the Droid army, Yoda shows up at the last second with the clone army from earlier in the movie now ready to fight back... and thus begins the Clone Wars TM. The idea of the Clone Wars was cool, but really ended up not being much of anything in the movies, but at least we got the animated show that was loved by many fans. This whole Geonisis part of the movie is very enjoyable, despite some of its flaws at least it's fun action. All this is setting up the final battle of the movie where Anakin and Obi-Wan battle the Sith Count Dooku.
It is interesting to see how powerful a Sith can truly be when seeing Count Dooku fight two Jedis and eventually even get the better of Yoda himself. Seeing that Anakin is not quite on the level of all of his peers, but knowing he eventually becomes the most powerful Sith in the galaxy is interesting. Despite not being on that level yet, he keeps up with one of the strongest Sith for a decent amount of time, showing just how much potential he has even without being a Jedi Master. But after losing we finally get to see Yoda battle for the first time in the Star Wars movies. It was... weird? I always find it a little funny to see Yoda bouncing off the walls and doing 360 spins with a lightsaber even though he looks so old and walks with a cane most of the time. Weird dude. So, much like the second movie in the original trilogy (Empire Strikes Back) this one ends with the good guys losing a big fight and Anakin losing a hand like his son. Padme and Anakin get married in secret and probably break a bunch of other Jedi rules that night. Yoda's gonna be sensing a lot of disturbances in the force if you catch my drift.
I had a good time watching this movie again after many years, but it's still a very flawed movie. The romantic parts of the film aren't great and yet again we split up Obi-Wan and Anakin for most of the movie. The movie has its first tease at Anakin's dark side turn, but by the end of the movie it seems like it's all forgotten and moved past. In a few months, I'll be watching Episode III for the 20th anniversary and will probably drop another long-ass review. Many people still love episode III, even a lot of people who dislike the first two episodes. It'll be interesting to see what's changed since the last time I saw it in terms of my opinion on it. Until then, go force choke yourself. I mean, may the force be with you.
Final grade: 3/5 Death Sticks
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