The Phantom Menace

The second prequel to the original Star Wars trilogy takes place ten years after the events depicted in Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. Now 20, young Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen) is an apprentice to respected Jedi Knight Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor). Unusually powerful in the Force, Anakin is also impatient, arrogant, and headstrong, causing his mentor a great deal of concern. The pair are ordered to protect Padme Amidala (Natalie Portman), the former queen of the planet Naboo, now representing her world in the Galactic Senate. Someone is trying to assassinate her on the eve of a vote enabling Supreme Chancellor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) to build a military force that will safeguard against a growing separatist movement led by mysterious former Jedi Count Dooku (Christopher Lee). After another attempt on Padme's life, Obi-Wan and Anakin separate. The young Jedi and Padme fall in love as he escorts her first to the security of Naboo and then to his home world of Tatooine, where the fate of his mother leads him to commit an ominous atrocity. Meanwhile, Obi-Wan travels to the secretive planet Kamino and the asteroid-ringed world of Geonosis, following bounty hunter Jango Fett (Temuera Morrison) and his son, Boba (Daniel Logan), who are involved in an operation to create a massive army of clones. A vicious battle ensues between the clones and Jedi on one side and Dooku's droids on the other, but who is really pulling the strings in this galactic conflict? Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones marks the first major motion picture to be filmed entirely in digital video, with director George Lucas using cameras modified for him by the manufacturer. In late 2002, the movie was released in IMAX theaters as "Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones: The IMAX Experience," with a pared-down running time of 120 minutes in order to meet the technical requirements of the large-screen format. Preview Boasting visual effects stunning in their detail and imagination, Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones continues to display both the familiar artistic strengths and weaknesses of director George Lucas. On the plus side, Ewan McGregor's delightful Alec Guinness impersonation is delivered with spot-on technical acuity and an ironic, subtle wink. Add to that the breathtaking vistas of completely digital imagery as seemingly real as anything ever put to film -- particularly eye-popping sequences involving an asteroid chase and a final battle between clone soldiers and droid robots. On the minus, there is bad writing, as evidenced by wooden, even immature dialogue and a dizzyingly complex plot line unlikely to be comprehended by the filmmaker's oft-stated target audience of young kids (a speciously revisionist argument from someone whose work once appealed to the kid in everybody). Lucas' touch with actors is not much more impressive than his screenwriting abilities, particularly in the laughably silly and strained love story unfolding between Anakin (Hayden Christensen, getting an "A" for effort in a whiny, unsympathetic role) and Padme (Natalie Portman, utterly devoid of personality and more robotic by a long shot than either C-3PO or R2-D2). Even the music from composer John Williams lacks the punch and scope of his career-high masterpiece score for The Empire Strikes Back, when he literally crafted a memorably rousing new theme for every one of the film's sequences. Both the best and worst moment is one in which ex-Muppet Yoda, formerly stiff as a two-by-four, comes to dazzling life as a whirling Tasmanian Devil of Jedi light saber-rattling payback. It's an audacious moment of heart-stopping frisson that stands as the prequels' high-water mark -- but it's also a reminder that gone forever are those days long, long ago, in movie theaters far, far away, when such genuine thrills arrived fast and furious