PT Thoughts/General Discussion: Attack of the Clones

Can you defend Attack of the Clones? Or maybe it be better to say, Can you explain to the intellectual side of my brain, that can't check itself at the door, some of the inconsistencies that I perceive when I watch this film?

I've watched this film dozens and dozens of times...Lord knows I've tried to like it (And I still am)..I've read analytical essays explaining the deep mythological themes that are present throughout...and I appreciate them...it's just some of the story elements that seem illogical to me.

And i am no way trying to dissuade people from liking this film. In fact I'm trying to get MYSELF to like this film...I'm not here to make you feel like your "wrong" for liking this film...I want to be dissuaded, I want to be wrong...because it will only get me to enjoy all six films rather than just five...

So I'll just start with this one right here:

“I think Count Dooku was behind it (the assassination).” – Padme

“You know my lady, Count Dooku was once a Jedi. He couldn’t assassinate anyone. It’s not in his character.” –Mace

Firstly, the notion of Padme suspecting Dooku doesn’t make sense at all. Why would Dooku want to assassinate the person who DOESN’T want to create an army to fight against his forces? Of course we, the audience, know Dooku is playing both sides but why does Padme think this? If anything Padme should think that Dooku would want her vote against the creation of an army so that he can create his Separatist movement without any hindrances from a Republic military. Does she think Dooku wants a war? If so, wouldn’t an all out slaughter against a Republic with no army be better for Dooku? The fact is that Padme has no liable reason to suspect Dooku and this line of dialogue makes no damn sense at all. If anything she should be suspecting the Trade Federation’s Nute Gunray, who at the moment of this scene has yet to officially join Dooku’s movement.

As for Mace’s line, I understand why this line was placed in the film. It was to convey to the viewer that Dooku used to be a Jedi but this line completely makes the Jedi seem like fools to me. Why would you say this about someone who abandoned the Jedi Order and is a leader of a confederacy against the Republic? Why would you COMPLETELY rule out the possibility of this person being behind the assassination when on the surface he’s the one who appears to be the most likely culprit? In addition, if the whole point of Padme coming to Corusant is to vote on the creation of an army for the Republic to fight against the Separatist, doesn’t this infer that the Separatist are being aggressive to begin with? Why wouldn’t Dooku resort to assassination? What he probably should have said was, “You know my lady Dooku was once a Jedi and even though he is the leader of the Separatist, I’d like to believe that he still adheres to the principles of peace and compassion which were so central to his life as a Jedi. I don’t think he would resort to a means so appalling as assassination,” at least this way Mace conveys that it is his own personal belief and his previous experiences with his former comrade that is guiding his rationale.

And if the Separatist were not aggressive as a whole (only some of the systems breaking away from the Republic have armies such as the Commerce Guilds & the Corporate Alliance) why would Padme specifically still accuse Dooku? The knowledge of Dooku supporting an armed aggression isn’t found out until Obi One caught him conspiring with the Commerce Guild and Corporate Alliances. Again, her accusation makes no sense at all.

"I'm so confused" - C3PO

 

Can you link us to negative threads about the OT films? Once i see your "why ROTJ sucks" thread and your "How boring and predictable was ANH" Thread, ill entertain this one. PEACE

 

It seems that you're overthinking the political aspects of the film. Especially the initial scenes. My argument is that Padme perhaps saw through Dooku, regardless of what his political motivations seemed to be, he clearly had a sarcastic and manipulative method of speaking to people; as seen when he tried to trick Obi-Wan into joining him. He also told Obi-Wan some half-truths, but Obi-Wan saw through it. My estimation is that Padme saw through him as well. I don't see much wrong with Mace's lines as well, in fact the line you gave there really drags on and sounds like robot-speak. That's probably why your not a screenwriter!

AOTC is on of my fave of the saga, I find myself going to back to it a lot. Visually it's the most colourful and stunning, in the scenes of both Coruscant and Naboo you get a real feel for society in the prime of the Republic and the Jedi Order.

But to each their own

Touchy!

 

All I need are these few words.



Your arguments are invalid.

 

Funny. "Padme perhaps saw through Dooku" is the best answer answer anyone has ever given. Which leads to me to ask, if she could see through him and not the Jedi who are blessed with the powers of the Force, doesn't that make the Jedi seem a little...dumb

 

I would very much agree with The Supreme Chancellor above me. And if that's not good enough of an explanation for you, then I'm afraid you'll never come to grips with AotC. We as an audience are simply not given enough information to decypher Padme's reasoning for accusing Dooku.

Too bad that you can't accept AotC because of this unexplained aspect of it. Because I absolutely love the film, particularly it's mysteriousness and the underlying feeling of something or someone pulling the strings behind the scenes of it all.

 

Exactly.

This is also the first Star Wars film showing a large scaled battle. (Temporarily)

I was interested in the visual arts of the First Battle of Geonosis. (Like so....)



You got to admit, that's pretty good looking for a film released in 2002.

 

So that his actions against the Republic are justified (in the eyes of the galactic citizens).

Same as above.

Dooku is offering an alternative to the Republic, not a dictatorship. Hence why he needs a military move on Republic's part to justify a military action on the Separatist side.

Yes.

No.

Yes, she has and the sense is explained above.

 

yes I could defend attack of the clones

unfortunately due to a condition out of my control I won't be able to articulately put down my thoughts in writing as I would like to.

But I will say there is a lot more to Attack Of The Clones than meets the eye, as far as I'm concerned.

 

The Jedi Council were influenced by their relationship with Dooku. They had known him for decades. If you read the original Republic comics there is a storyline where Mace Windu confronts Sora Bulq, and is not able to see through Bulq's lies until the evidence is obvious, because he is more wary after being unable to see through Dooku. It may seem dumb of the Jedi, but I think we have all been victim to someone we thought/knew we could trust and were disappointed by the outcome.

 

Defending Attack of the Clones is easy if you ignore the romance. I wish I could wish away those romantic scenes.

 

Agreed.

 

I think AOTC is a fantastic movie. It has flaws, but I definitely enjoy it very very much. My only complaint is that it does get a bit confusing explaining the Sifo-dyas character and his connection to Tyranus, the Jedi, etc.. (Yes I know what the official explanations are but if it has to be explained outside the movie, then that means it was a shortcoming of the movie itself). I also don't like the asteroid chase scene.

But please don't take those minor criticisms as anything significant. There is much in there to love. The climax is fantastic. So is the Coruscant chase. And while I like ROTS more than AOTC, I think AOTC is John Williams' best work of the prequels.

 

I can't. I hated it because we never got to see much of the Clone Wars which should have been started right from Movie 1.

 

Oh man, but for me, that scene is a total audio-visual orgasm

 

Well first we have to start with the opening scroll:

So the opening crawl tells us the state of the Galaxy, and this information would be known to all parties at the beginning of the movie. We see that Dooku leads the Separatist movement, and we also see that the Jedi Knights are having trouble keeping order in the galaxy because of these separatists. There is obviously a large segment of the Republic that feels there is a need to create an army to help the Jedi. This all points to the fact that the Separatists, under Dooku, are engaging in skirmishes across the Galaxy, it is spreading the Jedi Knights thin. So there is the setup of the galaxy as we enter the movie. This tells us Dooku is purposely trying to engage the Republic in hostilities.

Don't forget also that Dooku, under his political idealist guise, left the Jedi Order because he was unhappy with the corruption of the Republic, under this same guise he wanted to change things for the better. He didn't want to slaughter anyone, he was trying to engage the Republic in hostilities because while he wasn't looking for a slaughter, he was trying to poke the Republic into making a brash move (creating an army) to show that the Republic was corrupt and aggressive. It suits Dooku's plan to have the Republic create the army. This would draw even more planets to the side of the Separatists.

So now we enter the office of Chancellor Palpatine (after the attempt on Padme's life). We are further introduced into more politics. We see that the Jedi are warning Palpatine that if his negotiations fail, there won't be enough Jedi to counter the Separatists. This shows us that the Jedi are in favor of the military creation act, they need help, and they are telling Palpatine that they need help. So Palpatine then tells the Jedi that he can only hold off the vote for so long. So this tells us that if there was a vote at that very moment, the Military Creation Act would fail and there would be no Army Of The Republic to assist the overwhelmed Jedi. So Palpatine is holding off the vote so that hopefully over more time, the vote would somehow go the way the Jedi want.

Obviously Padme is against the Military Creation Act.

So there we have the players:

Dooku wants the Military Creation Act to pass to suit his needs to make the Republic look corrupt and aggressive...
The Jedi want the Military Creation Act to pass because they need the help maintaining order across the Galaxy...
Padme is the biggest supporter and I got the feeling the biggest Flag Waver for the Anti-Military group...

As it stands in the begging of the movie, the Military Creation Act would not pass, as I noted above from the conversation the Jedi have with Palpatine.

So why does Padme assume it was Dooku that tried to kill her?

Politics! She knows and is open minded enough to realize that her death might cause a break in the loyalist committee that is anti-military. She is the biggest voice within that group. She realizes that Dooku is trying to get the Republic to engage in open aggression against the Separatists, so she realizes that Dooku is the main benefactor behind that plot.

Dooku wouldn't openly try to assassinate her because he is trying to make the Republic look like the aggressors, so he hides the plot behind the story of disgruntled spice miners. She sees through that however.

Why do the Jedi brush her off? Arrogance! There is a constant theme running through the Prequels that part of what brought the Jedi down is their own arrogance. First in TPM we see that when Qui Gonn approaches the council about running into a Sith Lord, he is balked at. Not because he doesn't have any real evidence to back up his claim, no, he is balked at because some members of the Jedi Council believe they would have known if the Sith had returned, because they are just that powerful. Yoda reminds them not to be so hasty when it comes to detecting the Dark Side. Also later in AOTC we get the scene where Obi Wan worries about letting Anakin go on his first assignment, that Anakin might be too arrogant. Yoda then agrees with Obi Wan and points out that it is a flaw that is more common among Jedi, even the older more experience ones.

So now we go back to the start of the movie:




Now some people suggest Mace was just sticking up for an old Jedi buddy. I disagree with that premise totally. If Mace was trying to stick up for an old friend he would tell Padme something along the lines that he knew Dooku for "x" number of years, and they knew each other very well, so he knows Dook wouldn't do something like that. Mace doesn't say anything like that. Mace simply tags Dooku as an ex-Jedi, so everyone should automaitcally recognize that the Jedi are incapable of murder, even ex-Jedi. This again shows the arrogance of the Jedi. The belief that just because someone is or was a Jedi, they are automatically above certain behaviors.

So there's my explanation as to why Padme thinks it's Dooku, and why the Jedi don't

 

It has been said before, it appears Padmé had some kind of "suspicion" about Dooku. It's also quite likely that Padmé already suspected Dooku was in league with the TF (or vice versa ), which was hinted in the Throne Room scene later. I think you would agree that Dooku had plenty of motivation for an assasination, if it's only as means of creating fear among Senators in general. Fear eliminates rational thinking to some extent and this helps the Separatists.

I also wouldn't call the Jedi "dumb". It's funny, because Ben Burtt and Lucas talked a lot about finding a balance for the Jedi in AOTC so they wouldn't know too much but also wouldn't appear too weak or whatever in case they didn't. As a matter oft fact, the Jedi are a ... family of a special kind. It's very hard for family members to "admit" that one of "theirs" has done or gone wrong. Think about parents whose children have become criminals, even murderers. There is a certain degree of "denial", it's a natural phase of dealing with that kind of things. So I think it's very legitimate that Mace didn't instantly suspect Dooku and I certainly like the little hints of "disappointment" in Mace's expression that we saw after he had found that Dooku has indeed become "evil".

And yeah, I can defend AOTC to no end
AOTC is brilliant, it's probably my favourite of the six right now, but it's just so ... extreme and even extravagant, I can understand why it puts many people off.

 

I absolutely can defend my fave of the PT. However not really addressing the OP's contentions with the film. Sir Christopher Lee/Dooku, enough said! Without question the highlight of AotC for me.

 

Two things:
-Great animations
-Paved the way for s lot of EU and games
-Obi-Wan's hair in AOTC was AMAZING

 

We saw a LOT of the Clone Wars. Three full-scale battles' worth. Plus a bunch of glimpses of skirmishes on various planets during the Order 66 montage. How is that not much of the Clone Wars? How many full-scale GCW battles do we see in the OT? About the same amount.

Anyway, a lesser filmmaker may have been tempted to start the PT in the midst of a full-scale war. But Lucas was prudent enough to understand that the Clone War needed to be carefully set up over the course of a couple movies if he wanted to actually say something with the films.

 

I love AOTC because of its innocence it's the calm before the storm protecting Padme is just another mission for Anakin and Obi-Wan but little do they know it's the beginning of the End, so if it's a little silly and childish or cartoonish so what? it can be forgiven because this is truly the last time any of these characters or the galaxy for that matter have any kind of peace

 

Not really. If he really wanted to effectively set up a massive scale cinematic event like The Clone Wars he should have used Easter Eggs and effective foreshadowing throughout the film(like the Marvel films for example) rather than using a self-contained plot and then re-using the villains from the previous film in the sequel.

 

You know what's also "silly and childish or cartoonish"?

 

I don't think I need to defend it against someone who's watched it "dozens and dozens" of times. Surely one doesn't watch a film that much unless there is something they can enjoy about it. And if not, well, perhaps it's time to let it go and concentrate on the films you do like.

 

Let me just say, I don't think anyone should be taking any pointers from the Marvel movies on how to make a film.

With that out of the way, well, he kind of did do that. The entire Trade Federation plot in Episode I is sort of an "easter egg" in that it at first appears to have little to do with the larger story, and in fact seems to have been definitively resolved through the defeat of the droid army and the arrest of Nute Gunray. But then the subsequent movies reveal that the blockade of Naboo was actually a direct precursor and cause of the conflict that would grow to become the Clone Wars. There's even foreshadowing: the battle droids are themselves "clones" of a sort, and by overtly waging war against the Jedi they subtly betray the true purpose of the human clones that will come later.