Attack of the Clones Retrospective

Rating: 6/10 (29 November 2017)

Attack of the Clones is another widely disliked Star Wars movie, and until my most recent viewing, it was my least favorite. I've since changed my view, and I actually consider this to be a decent movie on it's own.
It fits into a tricky place in the Star Wars series, as this installment has to show us the rise of the Clone Army, as well as Palpatine's further progression towards supreme power. That's not really interesting in and of itself, but Attack of the Clones actually succeeds in developing the overall series plot, while being a decent movie on its own.
It does this by telling a much more focused plot than the first movie. Obi Wan and Anakin are tasked with defending Padme. When she is almost assassinated by a bounty hunter, Obi Wan goes to track down the bounty hunter, stumbling upon both the clone and vast droid army on the way. Meanwhile Anakin continues to protect Padme, and their romance drives that particular storyline.
This tighter storyline actually works well. Obi Wan tracking down the bounty hunter to Kamino (where he finds a clone army with mysterious origins being built for the Republic) and then to Geonosis (where we get a shoddy explanation of what exactly the separation movement is) makes for an interesting plot where many mysteries are slowly revealed. And we get to see some pretty good action scenes as well.
Anakin's storyline is not nearly as good. His character development here is actually great, and it subtly shows his movement to the dark side. Throughout the movie, he embraces of all the emotions that the Jedi warn against. The weak point is in his romance with Padme. Romance arcs require strong writing and acting to make them work, and this movie just does not have those. At all. It ends up being quite cringey.
Earlier on in the story the movie also adequately shows the growing rift between Anakin and Obi Wan. They are both very different characters and the movie shows that really well.
The film suffers from some of the same flaws as the first one. Clunky dialogue and some poor acting in particular. The villain is once again elusive, undeveloped and his motives unclear. He is introduced to us only by the brief summary of events at the start of the movie. Since we don't know him at all, the final duel between Obi Wan, Anakin and Yoda against the villain lacks is not very compelling. And unlike the first movie, the action is pretty terrible here, almost downright comical.
Overall, Attack of the Clones adequately fulfills it's role in developing the series plot, while being better as a stand alone movie than it's predecessor.
7/10