Star Wars II: Attack of the Clones

Why, oh why, did Lucas choose this name for the movie over The Clone Wars? That's the correct name. Unless that's the name of the next one.

I decided I didn't need to battle the crowds to see this one opening week, let alone opening day.

I'm embaressed to say this about a Star Wars story, but I'm not certain I followed all of the intrigue. We have Senator Palpatine who's obviously the emporer. They show one short scene where he's talking to Anakin, (no, I'm not related to him) and the dialogue implies that they've been in contact for some time. But it was totally isolated. I don't remember even a single reference to it after that, which would tell us what their relationship really is. Similarly, the relationship between Obi Wan and the Jedi council felt to me like it had internal inconsistencies.

Also, the entire clone production lost me. It was unclear to me if a Jedi had commissioned their production, or if someone had impersonated the Jedi to do that (I'm typing this a month later, so I can't remember if some of the contact with the Jedi was after his death.) The Federation step in and make use of them.

Lucas apparently doesn't consider clones to be fully human. At least, he sure killed a lot of them off without any apparent consternation during the later fight scenes. Hmm, they might have overlooked a couple of potential jokes playing off the fact that these clones would likely behave so similarly, and even think pretty much the same. Oh, well.

In many ways, this movie was better than the previous. I don't remember any non-obstacles like the last movie was so rife with. They had full-fledged dilemas in this one. Jar Jar only had about three minutes of total on-screen time and I think not a single line of comic relief. They also had a somewhat-gratuitious bare-midrift scene for Natalie Portman (she's grown up into a full-on babe.) Nothing anywhere near approaching Carrie Fisher's Return of the Jedi outfit, but there's still hope for the next one.

And, of course, you get to see Yoda mix it up. He was a whirling dervish. The setup to that fight was a bit contrived. Lucas had to figure out how to knock everyone else out of commission without killing them. That didn't work for me very well. I think I would have rather seen a chase through a tunnel that collapsed to cut off pursuit, or something like that.

The entire set and costume design is still too slick and clean. The atmosphere and tone of the movie is much closer to Jedi than the original Star Wars. I would much rather see the grunge of a used universe over the plastic look they've ended up with.

On Mighty's Baby Brother's Total Movie Value Scale, Matinee with Popcorn and Drinks. Better than the last one. Almost no Jar Jar. Still not enough grunge, like in the original

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