"Well...it was better than Phantom Menace..."

Rating: 1/10 (8 July 2002)

That's pretty much the general sentiment about the Episode II, but I would have to disagree because that would imply that The Phantom Menace was any good. A better assessment might be that Attack of the Clone was no worse. It's basically a bunch of long drawn out sequences involving indiscernible politics (except, perhaps, to the fanatics) and a painfully forced romance, plus another annoying scene involving a fat, four-armed alien in a diner, punctuated by a string of action sequences that just barely save this film from being a total waste of $9.25.
But one other thing that kind of spoils Star Wars for me is that Boba Fett is given an origin. I don't know about anyone else but I thought the one thing that was cool about Fett was that he was just this bounty hunter sent by Jabba the Hutt to capture Han Solo. Period. He didn't seem to have to do anything with the Jedi; he only entered the picture because of Solo. He was a character that seemed to exist apart from the whole Jedi storyline and simply was doing a job for a powerful gangster. That made the Star Wars mythos richer for me, the idea that the Jedi storyline wasn't the only thing going on in the universe. Now ATotC has gone and entwined his story with that of the Jedi and it suddenly all seems less plausible. Now, presumably, Boba Fett will exact his revenge by killing some Jedi or some such but then what? In eps IV-VI, we see him as *just* a bounty hunter and, considering the import attached to him in ep II, his death in ep VI (falling into a living pit) comes across as anti-climactic. Just my impression...