Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones (2002)

After the atrocious acting of Jake Lloyd in "The Phantom Menace", George Lucas must have been relieved that enough time had passed in the saga that he could recast. And surely, he couldn't fail as badly twice. Hayden Christensen uses only a single scene to prove what a dire miscast he is. And hence must of the premise is destroyed already. This trilogy was supposed to be the epic evolving from Anakin Skywalker to Darth Vader, and a simple casting-problem leads to the destruction of the entire character's believability. Devastating.

So, a bit of a spoiler early on there. Thankfully, Lucas seems to have understood that most fans loathed Jar-Jar, and has taken him more or less out of the picture (though he does manage to be pivotal to the rise of Palpatine). This move single-handedly makes all actions and drama better, as he is no longer in them with his idiotic antics and squeals. The action-sequences are actually better all around. Particularly Obi-Wan vs Django Fett is a thrill to watch with a brilliant scenery in the background. Oh, and seismic charges in asteroid fields are wicked cool!

Furthermore there are less Looney Tunes here than in the first instalment and that can only be good. Dex is much more likeable than all the twits from the predecessor.

As would be expected from my intro, Christensen has no screen-chemistry with Portman, and is only marginally better with McGregor. Either no screen-testing was done or no one had the courage to tell George Lucas that "These guys are the worst screen-couple since Chris Tucker and whoever stupid enough to star in a film with him": This hurts the flow of the film badly, and makes Lucas' tepid dialogue seem even worse. The romantic scenes are hopelessly lost and makes you cringe every time. Portman seems like an adult adoring a little child and Christensen... well, who knows what he is trying to portray.

Honorable mentions though, to the utterly brilliant Christopher Lee wielding his lightsaber against our little green friend (another great scene). Lee and Ian McDiarmid are the only actors on show that are able to create sparks of tension without CGI and massive amounts of "pew-pew".

The suspense and action seems much more adult this time, and since there's more of it this increases the value of the film quite a lot. The arena-scene is another example. Dozens of Jedi fighting side by side was definitely worth the wait.

So naturally, "Attack of the Clones" is a rather big improvement on "The Phantom Menace". But the fact that they managed to improve a few awful things, doesn't really make it good. That this film is miles better than "The Phantom Menace" is not really a comfort. It is still nowhere near what he had hoped, hell demanded, it would be.

As expected with the second instalment of a trilogy, it ends a rather dark note. Except for a nonsensical wedding of course.

It seems Lucas believed that mostly kids would watch and that they would get to watch the characters grow between the films, like the Harry Potter-series managed so effortlessly and brilliant. There are two flaws in that plan. Firstly, there are hardly 10 directors in the world that are worse at developing characters than George Lucas. Secondly, most people who had been waiting anxiously for these films for 30 years were, shockingly, not 8 years old.

5/10