PT Am I the only one that loved Attack of the Clones?

Nor do child queens, but you’re going along with that just fine.

Because maturity and wisdom don’t come from books. They come from life experience and failure. There was a great episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation called “Tapestry”, where Picard gets a chance to go back and correct his youthful mistakes, only to learn that the lessons he learned from those mistakes made him into the wise Captain that we all know and love. The impetuous hothead that Picard was as a youth never could’ve been a great Captain like the older, wiser and more mature Picard was.

Further, since when are 14-year-olds known for listening to their elders? Hmmm?

I don't recall any of that being noted in the films.

Have you evidence that the young of Naboo cannot do any of these things?

Also, child rulers have actually existed, and they did make decisions for people like you.[/QUOTE] Yeah, and you end up with rulers like Joffrey from Game of Thrones.

Even The Lion King made the point that kid Simba would’ve been a terrible king, since as a kid, all he does is go around lording it over everyone how awesome he is and how great it is that he’ll get to rule over everyone.

Hell, even in the original trilogy, we see that Luke has to grow and mature before he can become a wise Jedi Knight.

Yet we’re supposed to believe that Padmé has what it takes at age 14 to be Queen? Gimme a break!

For the same reason people objected to Wesley Crusher. People don’t like kids suddenly being thrusted into positions of power in a series where that wasn’t really an element for decades. Luke and Leia were both young adults, whereas characters like Han and Lando were both assumed to be somewhere in their 30s.

I’m not a huge Harry Potter fan, but at least that was always part of the series’ DNA, and Robin was introduced very early on in Batman’s run. Also, notice that some of the darker and more serious takes on Batman tend to avoid the character, such as the Tim Burton and Christopher Nolan films. Probably the most successful incarnation of Batman to feature the character was the campy Adam West TV series, which was meant to be taken as a joke anyway.

If Batman is a fantasy where adolescent sidekicks make sense, why not just have Batman start flying around like Superman? Totally logical point, right?

e: Also, not to get too political here, but I'd literally--one hundred percent not joking--trust my thirteen-year-old sister to run the United States better than the current occupant of the White House. For one thing, she functions at an objectively higher reading level.[/QUOTE] So because one adult is an illiterate moron, suddenly we should be electing children to positions of power. Makes sense.

Star Wars was ALWAYS meant to be the start of a series. In the event of the film’s failure, Lucas even had a low budget sequel written out. It was called Splinter of the Mind’s Eye. Naturally, he abandoned that idea when the film was such a huge success.

And my comment re: LOTR could easily be applied to the books. Fellowship sets up what comes later. Phantom Menace really doesn’t.

 

Is very fairytale like thinking to assume that queen=absolute monarch and she rules by her own, only this is not the case of Naboo. Naboo is elected monarchy (and before saying the biggest stupidity that there is no such thing, google it). So as the others already said, Padme is not making decisions alone, she has old counselor and so one. Also, I thought it was obvious why Naboo as highly developed planet prefer the presumably risky discourse: the choice of the innocents vs. the choice of the experience which again, surprise, surprise, is real world tradition in some countries.

For the question of what is to be a child: a huge theme of course, but is not the driving or the voting or the enlisting to the army, because there are countries where you can drive at 16, i.e. risk to kill people in accident, enlist in the army: i.e . deliberately kill people at 18 and still you are not mature enough to drink alcohol. So yes, being a child is not this, these are some consequences. Being a child is being innocent and is what the ruler of Naboo represents. She also a queen , i.e. potential mother of the nest, as Naboo is peaceful but also balanced because it has a male governor. Also, ironically Padme is maybe questioned to be too young queen even from people in universe (Darth Sidious, for example) but no one never questioned Anakin to be too young to be a slave or to work nonstop for Watto and to risk his life in the races. Oh yes, this effect is also deliberate, but obviously not for the viewer who want Anakin to be in chains to see the real ugly face of the slavery.

Speaking of what is simple and what is not: yes, is not that simple to cut this, either is simple to show Anakin's fall.

Why? There is no one reason for Padme to be someone so important. Even if we know that she is important for Anakin nd for some causality he is put around her for some reason, this doesn't mean that she should be someone of GREAT importance. In AOTC she is a politician attacked in Coruscant that tends to be criminal but still peaceful planet. Speaking of how important the people are, the mechanism of Star Wars is not that. SW is the franchise of the underdogs who suddenly become important and to important people who look like or begin like underdogs. Also being Senator in the Galactic Senate is a huge thing but as the Senate is community like body having influence in it is completely different theme. Padme has influence in it in AOTC because while being a loyalist she is part of the opposition that refuses to fight back the separatists and wants diplomatic solution. The beginning of the story, otherwise is more classic for SW: the events begin in two at first sight not so significant planets: Naboo which while rich and high developed is SMALL and with practically no influence a difference from the Trade Federation and Tattoine which is small, poor and in the Outer Rim.

@BloodyCaligula , I see you have your own ideas on SW and that's great, but you should clarify your assumptions, because they are assumptions not facts. Like this

. No, the first event has nothing to do with Padme assassination, or not directly. In AOTC Padme is side obstacle for both Palpatine personalities: as Chancellor and as Darth Sidious. The real goal for Palpatine is to become the Emperor. The plan in this movie is to become supreme Chancellor that cannot be changed by election , i.e. to achieve more power. So the war is the real game. Padme is still in the role of the pawn here.. or maybe rook. Palpatine uses her in his advantage as usual, to achieve what he wants but he would initiate the war anyway. yes, at the end, the attempts on Padme's life lead to series of events that accelerated the clone wars but we see that the war was on its way with or without Anakin's and Padme involvement of the events. That's another part of the tragedy of the Republic shown in PT: the decay would be inevitable at that point.[/quote][/quote]

 

Again, TPM doesn't have to, because it's a PREQUEL, Fellowship isn't. If you want to compare LOTR to SW, then better pick ANH. In that one everything is set up perfectly, we are told all we need to know. In TPM everyone knew that young boy would later become Darth Vader, everybody knew chancellor Palpatine would become the Emperor (at least those who were familiar with the OT and read the ANH novelization, which I assume all older SW fans did). So where exactly does TPM fail to set anything up? That we don't know Darth Maul's or Obi-Wan's background? We don't really need that for the story to work. Everything else is perfectly clear to me.

 

This sounds like goal-post moving. Also, Star Wars isn't supposed to be dark and serious, sorry. It's for kids. Can you admit that Star Wars is for kids?

 

(Double post because I got timed out)

TPM sets up AOTC perfectly. Anakin has become Obi-Wan's Padawan. Anakin is in love with Padme. The Sith have returned. Palpatine has become Chancellor. The Senate has problems. The Trade Federation has allied with the Sith against the Republic. Their plans were thwarted by Padme Amidala. All these things are established in TPM and pay off in AOTC.

TPM sets up AOTC far better than even ANH sets up TESB.

 

When Barack Obama was elected, many questioned whether he had the political experience to be President. He was 47. I question whether a 14-year-old would have the life experience to manage her own affairs, let alone the affairs of an entire planet.

As for children in power, here’s one of your “innocent” children after being made king:



What an innocent child Joffrey was. Or to use a less extreme example, let’s look at the most popular children's film of the last 30 years- The Lion King. Simba gets an entire song dedicated to the idea that being King will be great because he can order everyone around and get his way all the time:



What a great King he would’ve made as a kid, huh? Even Zazu points out that “with an attitude like that, [he’s] shaping up to be a pretty pathetic King, indeed”.

Even Luke is told, in the original trilogy, that he must learn patience and discipline before he can become a Jedi. And he only gains these things with maturity and, yes, experience. No 14-year-old has the kind of life experience necessary to make the kinds of decisions that a leader has to make.

I want Anakin to be in chains for the emotional impact it would have on the viewer, so that you could see how this trauma would lead him to make the decisions that ultimately result in Darth Vader. Show, don’t tell, after all. It would especially make the separation from his mother more traumatic since, up until this point, she was the only person whom he could trust and the only person who showed him any decency or kindness. As for why nobody questioned it, well, it’s kind of obvious that child slavery is evil, is it not? Does it even need to be questioned? I say if you’re gonna go there, show it all. Go all out, as Lucas himself did years earlier in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

She has to be someone of importance so that her assassination (or at least attempted assassination) would inspire a strong sympathy vote would allow Palpatine to be elected Chancellor. If she’s unimportant, then why bother assassinating her in the first place?

[/quote][/QUOTE] My idea is that you simplify the whole story. It doesn’t make it less complex, just less complicated. Her attempted assassination spurs the sympathy vote that gets Palpatine elected Chancellor, starts the Clone War, and allows Anakin to be made her bodyguard, thus causing them to fall in love with each other.

In my revised version, Valorum would apparently look weak for allowing the Separatists to nearly assassinate a prominent Senator right there on Coruscant. Palpatine would use that to get himself elected Chancellor as well as to declare war on the Separatists. It ties together quite nicely, especially once you realize that Palpatine orchestrated everything- the attempted assassination, the Separatist movement and the war.

As I see it, there are two main plot threads running through the prequel trilogy- the rise of the Empire and the fall of Anakin Skywalker. Everything that doesn’t pertain to these two plot threads is fat and should be cut.

We don’t need to know Darth Maul or Obi-Wan’s background, but we do need to establish the thread of the trilogy.

It fails to lay down the foundation of the trilogy’s central conflict, fails to really establish our main characters and how they will relate to each other over the course of the trilogy, the main villain is hidden in the shadows and his real plan isn’t revealed until Episode III.

Walt Disney once said, “You're dead if you aim only for kids. Adults are only kids grown up, anyway.” If you can name me a figure in the 20th century more successful at entertaining kids, to the point where his very name became synonymous with children’s entertainment, I will concede your point.

And SW was never intended as a campy joke, ala the Adam West Batman series, either.

By that logic, I could argue that The Hobbit sets up The Fellowship of the Ring better than Fellowship sets up The Two Towers. We see how Bilbo finds the Ring, we’re introduced to Gollum and Gandalf, we see Gandalf’s relationship with Bilbo and why he respects and admires hobbits so much, as well as seeing the true courageous, pure and resilient nature of hobbits that will prove to be so essential in LOTR, and we get a broad view of Middle Earth. In fact, watching the prequel trilogy really feels like reading The Hobbit and The Fellowship of the Ring, then skipping over The Two Towers and heading directly into The Return of the King. It feels very disjointed and poorly structured, at best.

But in reality, we’re really only introduced to adult Anakin’s personality in Attack of the Clones. The way that he and Obi-Wan relate to each other is only first seen in Clones, and their relationship in the movie seems quite strained, the relationship between Anakin and Padmé feels rushed and overly dependent on clichéd and corny declarations of love rather than a bond with real chemistry that naturally develops, the Clone War story arc is underdeveloped and not really given the attention it deserves, and most devastatingly, we have to rush through Anakin’s turn to the dark side, which feels less like a gradual tragic turn and makes him feel more like an unstable person with severe mood swings who eventually just stops trying to be good.

In fact, since you’re insistent on calling SW a stupid film meant only 5 year olds, let’s compare the romance in Clones to that of another children’s film- Disney’s Aladdin. Aladdin is not one of the great movie romances the way Beauty and the Beast was, but it does have this scene:



This actually feels like a real conversation I could imagine two people having. They talk about their problems, how they both feel trapped by their life circumstances and how they both desire to break out. Aladdin admires Jasmine’s spunk and independence, Jasmine admires Aladdin’s compassion and sincerity, as well as the fact that he likes her for who she is, rather than as the Princess. In fact, we later see how contemptuous and dismissive she is of him when he tries to approach her as the Princess (while he’s in his Prince Ali disguise) rather than as just a person.

The two main characters in Aladdin are often dismissed as being bland, boring and forgettable; but while they’re not great, they ARE well-written and likable enough to move the story forward and they do have genuine chemistry. Of course, Robin Williams overshadows both of them, due to his larger-than-life scene-stealing presence, but it does work in a way that Anakin and Padmé don’t.

 

This is where I stop engaging with you. Congratulations, take a bow.

 

Not sure what is being talked about now but yea i love aotc. Probably my least favorite star wars movie though i dunno it could also be solo. Either way i love all the star wars movies so i would still give it like a 7/10 and a 9/10 for the battle of geonosis.

 

Do you mean the books or the movies? The BOOK The Hobbit doesn't really set up LOTR. Only the movies were retconned to fit in better with the other trilogy. There is no Sauron, Saruman, Aragorn, Frodo or Legolas in the book. And I fail to see how Fellowship (either book or movie) feels disjointed with TT. All the actors are the same, the timeline picks up directly from the end of Fellowship, stylistically it fits in perfectly with the first movie. So I really don't see how TT doesn't fit in with rest of the trilogy.

 

I was talking about the books. And please read between the lines. My point was sarcastically addressing the claim that Phantom Menace does a better job of setting up Clones than the original film does of setting up The Empire Strikes Back, since The Phantom Menace contains as much setup for the other two prequel films as The Hobbit contains for LOTR. And of course, The Two Towers doesn’t feel disjointed. But imagine LOTR without it. Then it would feel very disjointed. Imagine if LOTR only consisted of The Hobbit, Fellowship and Return of the King, with no Two Towers. That’s how the prequels feel to me.

 

And as I said before, TPM does not HAVE to set up that much, because we already know what is going to happen. When Lucas made TPM it was certain that Episodes II and III would follow. We see all we need to know in TPM. The rest of the story is told in AOTC and ROTS, just the way it's supposed to be.

Then what exactly is it that you find missing in the prequels?

 

I actually think that the first 45 minutes or so sets Anakin and Obi-Wan’s relationship up quite well. Sure, the second act is dull, but the third is very entertaining. I think AOTC is one of the more enjoyable SW films, even though it’s one of the worst overall

 

I was 15 watching Episode II in 2002 on May 18th. I fell in love with that movie the Minute it was over. For me it was, it is, pure STAR WARS.

AtoC brings me back to a time where it was easy to enjoy a movie without any Hobby critics to tell me on YouTube or Faceook what I had to think about a movie. The movie itself was the one which really cemented my fandom for SW. I was a fan when I saw Ep IV back 1997 as Special Edition and I became an even bigger fan watching Episode I as 12 year old. But Ep II hat SO much lore, so much deepness and so many great worlds, visuals, Music that from that movie on I was a DIE HARD SW Fan and Lucas Fan.

I was able to relate to Anakin very well and felt like the Story progressed naturally from Ep I to EP II. I felt the dread which surrounded the galaxy. I was completly emersed into the univerese back then and when I think back Ep II for me was the true awakening. It was my Citizen Kane which made me a Lover of film too.

Lucas in my opinion outdone himself with the movie. Yeah it has its flaws, its not perfect. But still its a movie which visually sets the stakes so high for the entire Franchise. Many users here have displayed the language Lucas uses with Pictures and how he sets mood and tone by a certain way to shoot the Scenes, the pics. Never ever did I feel like I the dialogue was bad or out of place...in fact that Kind of dialogue I can relate more to then the cool, ironic, smart stuff Tarantino writes (not that that stuff is bad, just that nobody talks like that eighter!)

The only think that bothers me is the question Padme asks when Anakin is confessing his slaughter of the Tuskens: "Whats wrong Ani?" after he said that Obi-Wan is Holding him back. I know the question is related to anakin looking at his Hands in Horror but still the question isnt that fiiting or the delivery isnt that good in a beside that outstanding Scene.

I love Ep II. I've been watching the movie countless times and will do countless times more.

 

Very well said. Though AOTC didn't really make me a fan of the saga, it certainly revived my interest. I first saw ANH at 12 when it first came out. But my interest sort of faded away after ROTJ. And I have to admit I wasn't that impressed by TPM, though I appreciate it more now. But then I saw AOTC and for the first time in many years thought "now THIS is SW again, finally, and THIS is exactly what I felt young Vader would have been like". After ROTJ and TPM I found that Lucas got it right again. So you see, even older OT fans can like AOTC and the prequels in general.

 

I agree; AOTC is very underrated. Even the bad parts are so bad they're good.

The most important thing about it is that it's fun. TPM has always bored me, and ROTS is dark. The PT needed one that was just a rollicking good ride.

 

True, however, the Tatooine sequence is pretty dark as well. But of course nowhere near as dark as ROTS, which gets dark very early and never gets light-hearted again the way AOTC does.

 

I remember how much I anticipated Episode II back in 2001 and 2002 after the first trailers dropped. The Breathing Trailer of Ep II was EPIC. Showed so much and yet it showed nothing really. Some moved images, first looks at Anakin and Jango and the Vader Breathing in the Background. Goosebums! It had so much atmosphere and looked so much like STAR WARS. I loved it.

It was back in the day when most people didnt had such a fast internet connection and stuff wasnt shown online at first. You had to buy magazines or wait for it to premier on TV!

Here is the trailer for you to revisit the great emotions from the past:

 

I liked Attack of the Clones - out of the prequel trilogy, I thought that was the best one.

 

My least favorite SW film by far. It does have some cool sequences, however. The asteroid chase scene for one.

 

Strange, AOTC was my least anticipated SW movie, the one I had read or heard about least before I watched it. I think the first time I realized there was a new SW coming out was when I bought a bootleg DVD in February or March 2002, which I never even watched because of bad quality. Then around June clothing chain stores started putting up posters and sold SW T-shirts and caps. I lived in China at that time. Besides the posters with Hayden and Natalie, I had no idea what the movie would be about and who else would be in it. Having had no expectations, naturally I was very positively surprised when I saw it on the big screen.

 

I love AOTC. It's both my 5th favorite Star Wars movie and my 5th favorite movie of all time.

 

Once Anakin escorts Amadala to Naboo, the Attack of the Clones isnt half bad, actually.

 

AOTC is great movie. Very innovative, very experimental, very beautiful. It still stands as my favourite SW movie, after so many years.

 

Even tho I prefer his Episode 3 performance, Hayden did a great job of setting up an incredibly flawed yet complex protagonist in AOTC. There's something very childlike and naive about Anakin in AOTC, yet I always feel like he genuinely is a good person at heart. Its hard to explain if ya know what I mean, but Hayden really made Anakin Skywalker one of the most complex and interesting characters in the two films he had.

 

I honestly never understood the critics about the portrayal of Anakin by Hayden. I really do dig it and love his performance.

I know exactly what you mean about Anakins innocence. Until the slaughter of the Tusken Anakin is very much like the boy we met in Ep I. Childish, naive, wants to help. Yet he developed some more adult characteristics like arrogance and a bit of selfishness. Mostly though you can see very good how the you g boy from Ep I became this young man.

I really could connect to that character and still can. There are so many little details in his performance which I adore. Like his style of talking is slightly the way JEJ talks as Vader.