Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones : This movie is an underrated masterpiece…3rd best in the Saga

This movie is an underrated masterpiece…3rd best in the Saga

I won't go over WHY I think it's so great as I've already reviewed it, (You can read that review right here; http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0121765/reviews-3847) but I thought that I WOULD address some criticisms that people have with it.

Criticism # 1~The acting sucks, especially Hayden Christensen: Really? Honestly, I thought it was among the best of the series (3rd behind Empire and Revenge) Christensen is required to play an angsty, love struck dork-o-doofus teenager who is constantly treated like dirt and lives in a society that shuns emotion and promotes stoicism. He does an excellent job being sincere and passionate a la the fireplace scene and can send chills down my spine when he taps into that anger a la the post-Sand people scene. He's an excellent combination of awkward innocence and rougeish darkness, his performance as Anakin and James Earl Jones's performance as Vader are tied for my favorite performances in the Saga. Portman does a great job going from stoic to more emotional and passionate over the course of the movie, and I liked just the warmth she exuded in her scenes with Hayden. Ewan McGregor made Obi Wan Kenobi likable for pretty much the first time in the whole Saga. Before Episode II, he came off as a self-centered, dishonest, manipulative dick but I like how he's shown here as a kind of strict father figure. Plus, Christopher Lee's been kicking ass since the Hammer movies from the 50s-70s and Frank Oz as Yoda is as fun to listen to as ever, and Samuel L. Jackson is Samuel L. freaking Jackson.

Criticism #2: The dialogue sucks: I'm not going to argue that the dialogue here is great, and there are some lines that I just CAN'T defend, ("I truly, deeply love you"... -_- ) but Star Wars has ALWAYS had bad dialogue. From "Only a Master of Evil, Darth!" from A New Hope to "I don't know where you get your delusions, laser brain!" from The Empire Strikes Back. Some of the lines in Force Awakens ("I didn't know there was so much green in the whole Universe.") prove that it always will. Bashing a Star Wars film for bad dialogue is like bashing a Stanley Kubrick film for being mean spirited or bashing a Terrance Malick movie for being too ponderous, or too a lesser extent bashing a Rob Zombie movie for being too mean spirited; that stuff is in their nature. And for the record, as cringey and lame as some of the dialogue in AOTC is, it DOES have my favorite line in the Saga after Anakin's mom dies. ("Life is so much simpler when you're fixing things.") A lot of the more emotional and meaningful scenes in the film depend on the acting, where I think the film REALLY delivers.

Criticism #3: The love story is AWFUL: Awkward, yes. Awful...Not even close IMO. Keep in mind, these are 2 people who have never seen each other in 10 years; one of them is a teenage natural dork who has never spoken to a girl his own age in that time and lives in a society that shuns the idea of romance, going after a girl he doesn't even know if he has a shot with. You're REALLY telling me that if you were in that position you'd be Mr. Smooth? As for why they fall in love, makes perfect sense. Anakin has a kind of adorkable personality to him and makes Padme feel special and Padme brings warmth and hope into Anakin's life; a life often devoid of those things. People rip apart the post-Sand people scene where Anakin cried to Padme calling Anakin a "murderer" (He's not. The sand people are animals, specified as such even in the original trilogy) but it was, until Revenge of the Sith, maybe one of the best character scenes in the Saga. It establishes Anakin as someone who is utterly and completely alone apart from Padme and gives a real weight to his love for her, and also helped me understand why he was so quick to do what he did in Episode III. Honestly, dialogue aside, it's one of the only fantasy/sci-fi romances to actually emotionally invest as I can actually RELATE to it. One of my favorites, not at all ashamed to admit it.

Criticism #4: Count Dooku is an awful villain; Surprised anybody who loved Vader can really say this, as he's essentially the prequel trilogy's mirror to Vader. An ex-Jedi "ends justify the means" gentleman Sith striking fear and anxiety with the mere mention of his name. The fight with Anakin where his red saber and Anakin's blue saber seemingly switch in the darkness does a great job symbolizing how similar the two characters are. He's acted phenomenally and his backstory is really interesting to the point where I'd love to learn more about him. Almost to the point where it's...Well, kinda DISAPPOINTING I didn't learn more about him.

Criticism #5: Yoda shouldn't use a lightsaber: You know, it's funny. People either really love this scene or really hate it. The way I saw it, Yoda IS the greatest Jedi ever, so it makes SENSE he's skilled in all aspects of their culture. Would it have been cooler to see him use the Force to wield his saber? Yeah. But I can still buy him fighting normally with it, especially seeing as he only uses it as a last resort, using the Force to fight Dooku first.

Criticism #6: TOO MUCH CGI!: Okay, this one is just reaching. We are in (And have been since 1997) an age where EVERYTHING is CGI. The MCU movies use nothing but CGI, the Hobbit movies use nothing but CGI, the X-Men movies, Harry Potter movies, Hunger Games movies and Star Trek movies use nothing but CGI. So why is it that when the prequels use nothing CGI, it's treated as some kind of crime? Do I prefer practical effects? HELL yes. IMO, the best special effect of all time is the transformation scene from 1981's An American Werewolf in London. But I'm not naive enough to think modern big budget filmmakers are going to do that stuff anymore. And for the record, the CGI in this movie while excessive is BEAUTIFUL. Absolutely gorgeous.

So yeah. Wish I could actually REVIEW the movie rather than just list a bunch of defenses, but that's what happens when I love a movie everyone else hates...Whatever, at least we can all hate Phantom Menace.

Re: This movie is an underrated masterpiece…3rd best in the Saga

Oh god, I had the misfortune of stumbling across your YouTube channel in the past. You're basically the epitome of a childish millennial trying to appear intelligent and edgy by rethinking thes prequels to make them seem like masterpieces.

Criticism 1: we've skipped over how Anakin was treated like dirt by the Jedi due to the time skip. Frankly, given his attitude and actions, Obi-Wan seems perfectly justified in his dislike for Anakin. And if you're honestly going to say the way he reads likes like "I don't like sand" or "I wish that I could wish away these feelings" are good, combined with his weird pouty inflections, are good, well I don't know what to tell you. It makes Mark Hamill in the OT seem like an Oscar contender. Not Christensen's fault really, more the writer and director's. And lol, he and Jones tied the character together with their performances? The two couldn't be more different in tone.

Portman meanwhile is monotone throughout. And hell, her flip-flopping between being creeped out by Anakin's glares, to leading him on, to giving in and dismissing his murder spree with an almost comical casualness is downright painful. Again, not as much her fault as it is George's, but it still doesn't make the performance good. If anything, what we see of Padme and her flip-flopping makes her out to be a pretty despicable character, especially when she's so shocked by her hubby murdering AGAIN (just like he did before they married) that she opts to give up living despite giving birth to two children.

And what? Guiness didn't make Kenobi likeable in ANH? What are you smoking? McGregor is fine, he nails one scene in ROTS, but the rest of the time he's just there. Never as bad as Christensen or Portman, but nothing special outside of the aforementioned scene. Hell, I could argue he comes off as a needless showoff and incredibly foolish in both AOTC and ROTS.

BAHAHAHAHA! Have you watched any other Samuel L. Jackson movies? Mace Windu's bland montone (rivalling Padme's) is nothing like the characters he tends to play, and play well. Seems to me you're confusing the actor's persona with the character's in the prequels (hint, Mace Windu has close to 0 personality, save for a couple of lines like "I don't think so" in AOTC that aren't backed up throughout the rest of the film, least of all by his awkward swinging of a lightsaber).

Criticism 2: the difference here is the lines in the prequels are desperate attempts at sounding important and flowery. It's George Lucas unchained, upping the ante on the more painful lines in ANH, or the rest of the OT, to 11. Simply because there's some corny lines in the OT, or TFA, does not excuse the depths of cringey-ness we go through in the prequels. Not helped by the performances being worse, and overall lacking the energy and engagement of the originals'.

Criticism 3: again, the movie is trying so damn hard to be flowery and important. It's basically going for Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet but ultimately shows George's romance dialogue doesn't have the wit that the former's does. And I'm sorry, but no, no teenager, even the nerdiest one, talks like that, monk or not. The fact that she eventually goes for it (despite being creeped out by his glares and knowing and respecting the rules of his Jedi order better than he ever does) after he rants and raves like a maniac about committing murder and how he craves more power? That's messed up.

Anakin is not "adorkable" in AOTC. He's a psychotic a**hole whose somewhat awkward but still gets the supposedly intelligent girl.

As for the Sand People being animals, sorry, but they're clearly capable of using tools and constructing things far more complex than any animals. But even if they weren't, if some guy admitted to viciously slaughtering a pack of wolves, including the pups, after they'd eaten his mother the way Anakin does, he'd still come off like a lunatic.

You can relate to Padme completely ignoring this guy's, ahem, issues to put it kindly, and basically giving in to his advances? Again, messed up. Especially given that Christensen and Portman have about as much chemistry as Edward and Bella...hell, maybe less.

Criticism 4: Dooku is introduced in the 2nd film and about an hour into it at that. We get to know little about his personal motivations (and nothing from him directly beyond Palpatine has him on a leash), and his relationship to the main characters' borders on nonexistent. George tried to ham-fistedly jam in him being Qui-Gon's mentor (which ultimately has no impact on Obi-Wan) and him being Yoda's former apprentice right at the end of AOTC (again, no impact on the story), and it failed. Give Christopher Lee credit, he does have a presence to him, but that's it. And the ease with which he's dispatched in the first 15 minutes of the next film shows how little he actually meant in the grand scheme of things. He's not Vader's equivalent. He's just another poor attempt by George to replicate to the OT in the PT.

Criticism 5: Except it undermines his role in the story to show that the Force has nothing to do with the physical. It also raises a question: if he's using the Force to jump around like that, and he and Dooku are pretty evenly matched in Force power, then why isn't Dooku also using the Force to jump around like an acrobat on speed? Why is he allowing Yoda to match him? Why wouldn't he want to kill one of, if not THE, most powerful Jedi standing in the way of his master's plans?

Criticism 6: this doesn't mean that the CGI in the prequels wasn't overused, and that some of it didn't look bad when it first came out (the scene in the Jedi temple of Kenobi, Windu, and Yoda walking, as well as Windu interacting with the clone troopers on Geonosis were bad then and look worse now). It shows George didn't understand the limitations of CGI at the time, and was more focused on playing with new toys than making a real-looking world (seriously, that scene on Geonosis, could he not be bothered to have armour created for the guys talking right to Windu, leavin the CGI for the mass armies in the background)? It also doesn't help the actors' performances when they often don't have sets to work with or even other actors to converse with when it comes to the aliens, whose nuances and reactions were put in after the fact. Basically all they had for most scenes were stand-ins reading off a script).

Re: This movie is an underrated masterpiece…3rd best in the Saga


Oh god, I had the misfortune of stumbling across your YouTube channel in the past. You're basically the epitome of a childish millennial trying to appear intelligent and edgy by rethinking thes prequels to make them seem like masterpieces.


Wow. Somebody's butthurt. For the record, I thought the prequels were masterpieces WAY before it was cool.


Criticism 1: we've skipped over how Anakin was treated like dirt by the Jedi due to the time skip. Frankly, given his attitude and actions, Obi-Wan seems perfectly justified in his dislike for Anakin. And if you're honestly going to say the way he reads likes like "I don't like sand" or "I wish that I could wish away these feelings" are good, combined with his weird pouty inflections, are good, well I don't know what to tell you. It makes Mark Hamill in the OT seem like an Oscar contender. Not Christensen's fault really, more the writer and director's. And lol, he and Jones tied the character together with their performances? The two couldn't be more different in tone.


Sorry that everything isn't spelled out for you crystal clear like in the original trilogy, but it's heavily implied in II and actually SHOWN in III. What actions did Obi Wan do that would make him justified in disliking Anakin? (Even though it's established NOWHERE that Obi Wan dislikes Anakin, but keep living in your fantasy land I guess.) I think he read the first line adequately, (Not great and not horrible) and the second line excellently. Not sure where you're getting the "weird pouty inflections" thing from. His facial acting was fantastic, go watch some old James Dean or Lon Chaney Jr. films and you'll find the acting's very similar. Or maybe you won't cause you're a biased, butthurt fanboy, I don't know. Also, Anakin and Vader are different personalities. You call yourself a Star Wars fan?


Portman meanwhile is monotone throughout. And hell, her flip-flopping between being creeped out by Anakin's glares, to leading him on, to giving in and dismissing his murder spree with an almost comical casualness is downright painful. Again, not as much her fault as it is George's, but it still doesn't make the performance good. If anything, what we see of Padme and her flip-flopping makes her out to be a pretty despicable character, especially when she's so shocked by her hubby murdering AGAIN (just like he did before they married) that she opts to give up living despite giving birth to two children.


She really wasn't monotone throughout. She was stoic, but that fit her character, and was done intentionally as she gets slowly more emotional throughout the trilogy. I will admit that the glares early on were weird, absolutely. That stuff shoulda been cut. The murder spree criticism is retarded and I already went over it. Anakin's actions while not justified were absolutely understandable acts committed against subhuman monsters (Who are VERY different from a group of sentient children that you brought up) that tortured and murdered the only other person in Anakin's life that mattered to him.


And what? Guiness didn't make Kenobi likeable in ANH? What are you smoking? McGregor is fine, he nails one scene in ROTS, but the rest of the time he's just there. Never as bad as Christensen or Portman, but nothing special outside of the aforementioned scene. Hell, I could argue he comes off as a needless showoff and incredibly foolish in both AOTC and ROTS.


Guinness sucked as Ben Kenobi. Don't give a fck what you think or if you think that statement's controversial. He maybe had like 3 facial expressions at MOST in the ENTIRE original trilogy and delivered ALL his lines the same. Doesn't help that his character is a dishonest, manipulative, self centered scumbag, but an awful performance nonetheless. Obi Wan made the character much more understandable and relatable turning him from the kind of person who manipulates a teenager mourning his aunt and uncle's deaths to help him exact retribution (Guinesses' sh!t take) into a strict-but-loving father figure for Anakin. Yeah. Way more likable. Fck off.



BAHAHAHAHA! Have you watched any other Samuel L. Jackson movies? Mace Windu's bland montone (rivalling Padme's) is nothing like the characters he tends to play, and play well. Seems to me you're confusing the actor's persona with the character's in the prequels (hint, Mace Windu has close to 0 personality, save for a couple of lines like "I don't think so" in AOTC that aren't backed up throughout the rest of the film, least of all by his awkward swinging of a lightsaber).


He's better in Sith, but he definitely exudes the darker, more rage filled kind of Jedi that you wouldn't expect to see as a Council member. It's subtle, but it's there. Don't expect a philistine like you to see it though.


Criticism 2: the difference here is the lines in the prequels are desperate attempts at sounding important and flowery. It's George Lucas unchained, upping the ante on the more painful lines in ANH, or the rest of the OT, to 11. Simply because there's some corny lines in the OT, or TFA, does not excuse the depths of cringey-ness we go through in the prequels. Not helped by the performances being worse, and overall lacking the energy and engagement of the originals'.


Right. Because "Only a Master of evil, Darth!" and "So what I told you was true...From a certain point of view." aren't desperately trying to sound important at all. Hell, Rogue One has probably the worst line in the Saga ("Rebellions are built on hope.") Already stated I thought the performances were better and had way more energy, not getting into that sh!t again.



Criticism 3: again, the movie is trying so damn hard to be flowery and important. It's basically going for Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet but ultimately shows George's romance dialogue doesn't have the wit that the former's does. And I'm sorry, but no, no teenager, even the nerdiest one, talks like that, monk or not. The fact that she eventually goes for it (despite being creeped out by his glares and knowing and respecting the rules of his Jedi order better than he ever does) after he rants and raves like a maniac about committing murder and how he craves more power? That's messed up.



I've said some pretty, PRETTY stupid and awkward stuff when I first started flirting. Throw in all the factors of Anakin's character, and I'm surprised he didn't say worse. Also, he "ranted and raved like a maniac" after his mom was tortured to death, even claiming that he specifically wanted more power to keep people from dying (He makes this clear twice. Once in front of Padme and again at his mom's gravestone.) I think when your mom is tortured to death and dies in your arms, you get a license to throw a mental breakdown venting your emotions.


Anakin is not "adorkable" in AOTC. He's a psychotic a**hole whose somewhat awkward but still gets the supposedly intelligent girl.


Having a mental breakdown after your mother's brutal murder isn't "psychotic." It's pretty expected.


As for the Sand People being animals, sorry, but they're clearly capable of using tools and constructing things far more complex than any animals. But even if they weren't, if some guy admitted to viciously slaughtering a pack of wolves, including the pups, after they'd eaten his mother the way Anakin does, he'd still come off like a lunatic.


Plenty of apes create some pretty advanced tools in the wild. Tents, weapons, nests, all kinds of stuff you wouldn't expect. If you want a better example though, I suppose you could use something like homo erectus. My point still stands. And I wouldn't call someone who did that to a pack of wolves after they'd torn his mom to shreds a lunatic. It'd be a pretty raw, realistic reaction ESPECIALLY from someone who doesn't know how to express anger.


You can relate to Padme completely ignoring this guy's, ahem, issues to put it kindly, and basically giving in to his advances? Again, messed up. Especially given that Christensen and Portman have about as much chemistry as Edward and Bella...hell, maybe less.


Anakin backed off Padme like halfway through the movie. He didn't give any creepy stares after she asked him too at the beginning. Even when Padme says that she loves Anakin, Anakin warns Padme that their union could "destroy their lives." As for why Padme fell in love with Anakin, let's see; Anakin's kind to her, saving her life and complimenting her multiple times as well as being emotionally supportive of her making difficult decisions, he's the most passionate lover in the galaxy, they've been close friends for quite some time, his mother's death makes him tragic and sympathetic and he's super physically attractive? You REALLY don't see it? Christensen and Portman dated while shooting this movie and while the dialogue doesn't sell their romance, the physical acting absolutely does. If you didn't see it, fine. But you basically came to this thread with the intent of insulting me, highly implying that your opinion is NOT opinion, it is verified fact.

Which is where I'm gonna leave this debate. You were clearly a troll when you stumbled on my YouTube channel and you're clearly a troll now.

Be seein' ya.

Re: This movie is an underrated masterpiece…3rd best in the Saga

Honestly, I just rewatched the PT...and I agree with you. I hadn't seen this movie since I young (I only ever rewatched ROTS because I thought this and TPM were terrible because of all the crap they get) so I went in with low expectations. But man, this movie has some of the most beautiful scenes in the whole series. The standout being his visit to tatooine. Also the score is some of the best in Star Wars which really says something. I just can't believe how much enjoyment I got from this movie. I'll definitely make sure never to skip this one when i go through Star Wars again.

Re: This movie is an underrated masterpiece…3rd best in the Saga

Thats the thing. The CGI can sometimes be way overdone, the acting is very questionable at times, the diologue can be iffy. But the prequels offer fantastic imagery, and are scored by John Williams in excellent fashion.

Re: This movie is an underrated masterpiece…3rd best in the Saga

Nice post and review. Pretty much agree with everything you said - along with having even more reasons of my own for loving the film.

Even as someone who loves the PT, AOTC was a clear least-favourite of mine until I rewatched the films again. Now its my favourite of the lot because it is the most consistent film - the only real downpoint it has is the awful Geonosis factory scene.

Re: This movie is an underrated masterpiece…3rd best in the Saga

I can certainly understand people like this movie. I do as well. But I wouldn't consider it a masterpiece. There are still a lot of issues with the acting, writing, and over abundance of CGI.

So many stories, so little time.
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