by Edward Gross
RAY MORTON
(senior editor, Script magazine)
The box office success of The Phantom Menace ensured the prequel trilogy would continue. Lucas began preproduction on what he initially called Jar Jar’s Great Adventure (a mischievous poke at the legions who disliked Mr. Binks so intensely) and what would eventually be titled Attack of the Clones not long after Menace was released.
JOHN KENNETH MUIR
(author, Science Fiction and Fantasy Films of the 1970s)
At the time of its release, Attack of the Clones was felt to be a step up from The Phantom Menace, perhaps because it featured a more breakneck/even pace. However, the film did not feature the deep allegorical visual design or plot that had bolstered The Phantom Menace. Instead, George Lucas seemed dedicated to paying homage to his friends and his own work. This means that the planet of the Cloners was populated by the aliens from his buddy Steven Spielberg’s movie, Close Encounters of the Third Kind. This means that Obi-Wan visits a 1950s diner straight out of Lucas’s own American Graffiti.
RAY MORTON
As he did on Return of the Jedi, Lucas wrote a basic outline for the movie, but put off writing the actual screenplay until well into preproduction. He did not complete a rough draft until three months prior to the commencement of filming. Lucas then produced a first and second draft in quick succession before bringing in the British writer Jonathan Hales, who had written a number of scripts for Lucas’s The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles television series, to help him craft the script’s third and final draft, which Lucas then polished.
GEORGE LUCAS
I’ve used cowriters a lot. The first Star Wars I wrote myself, but the other two were cowritten. Phantom I wrote myself, but when I finished it, I was tired and burned out and I took a vacation for about a month. As a result of that, I did four or five drafts of Attack of the Clones. It was to the point where I could show the script to the crew and they could start working on things, but it was one week before we were to begin shooting and I was about to direct the movie. So I brought in Jonathan Hales, whom I had worked with before in Young Indy and whom I trusted. We sat down and I said, “This needs to be fixed.” I turned into a director and let him be the writer.
RICK MCCALLUM
(producer, Attack of the Clones)
I would describe the George Lucas–Jonathan Hales collaboration as great and easy. Once George was done with the first draft, he needed a little help, so I called Jonathan and he was waiting on standby. He came in and spent about four or five weeks on the film, helping us focus on the thematic issues and plot points. And then we were on our way.
JONATHAN RINZLER
(nonfiction editor, Lucasfilm 2001–2016)
The general idea was, you had to have Star Wars in your blood. I know George had problems with the films and the prequels in particular in finding writing collaborators. His problem was he couldn’t find someone like Lawrence Kasdan and Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz to come in and polish his scripts. There was Jonathan Hale, but I don’t think he was able to do it. I’m not sure exactly what happened there. He’s a very good writer, but you know, sometimes it just doesn’t click. George wasn’t the kind of person who would have a long, “this is my philosophy” kind of thing. You either learn by doing it and pick it up, or you didn’t.
GEORGE LUCAS
Obviously, I’m telling a story about a good guy’s descent into the depths of evil … In the second act, the plot thickens. That’s always more interesting, because things start to happen, things start getting revealed and, in this case, you descend into both the evil of the Empire and Anakin’s struggle to maintain his goodness. In the third one, we get to conclude that.
HAYDEN CHRISTENSEN
The film is, in some ways, a coming-of-age story for Anakin, because we meet him as he’s fully evolved in his Jedi training and learning to master the Force. And then he falls in love with Amidala when he’s on this mission to protect her. It’s a conflict of interest for him. Does he choose love or his responsibilities and obligations as to the way of the Jedi, which are really in direct conflict? The Jedi aren’t supposed to know any sort of romantic love. At the same time, Anakin’s a very passionate character and unwilling to make any compromises. He wants both to play prominent roles in his life. He wants to be a Jedi and he also wants to develop a romantic relationship with Amidala.
GEORGE LUCAS
Film is generally plot-heavy. Television is character-heavy. So, in television, you move characters in and out depending on their popularity. I can’t do that in Clones, because the plot is very important. In this case, the main story—which is the first three films—and the backstory—which I’m telling now—are, ultimately, to me, one story. Again, it’s one six-part, twelve-hour story and all the characters who are there in Menace and Clones are really only there to move the plot along. They have a very specific reason for being there in terms of making the plot. So, they’re not there arbitrarily. People tend to think I just put characters in for the fun of it. I can create personalities for the characters for the fun of it, but every character has to revolve around the plot.
JOHN KENNETH MUIR
The resulting plot of Attack of the Clones is unnecessarily complicated, too, involving a Jedi who died and mysteriously put in an order for a clone army before doing so. This was a strand introduced and never really followed up in the subsequent film. The film’s action is very cartoon-like as well, particularly the aerial car chase on Coruscant, which involves Anakin defying gravity, falling hundreds of feet, and landing without being hurt. Obi-Wan and Anakin defy gravity, get electrocuted, and come out no worse for the wear, which is baffling. Jedi are still supposed to be mortal, I believe, not superheroes.
RAY MORTON
Lucas began writing Attack of the Clones in the same way he began writing The Phantom Menace—by returning to his early work in Star Wars, in this case, his rough and first-draft screenplays. In those drafts, the Empire attacks Princess Leia’s home planet Aquilae. General Skywalker assigns his Jedi apprentice Annikin Starkiller to collect the Princess from her school and protect her as he and Skywalker help Leia and her siblings escape from the invasion and make their way to safety in the Ophuchi system. In the course of their adventures, Annikin and Leia fall in love.
JOHN KENNETH MUIR
As the script evolved, he kept the love story, which should have been the heart of the trilogy, but has been criticized by many for the bad dialogue in it, particularly Anakin’s line to Amidala about how much he hates sand. Fair enough. However, this was the year 2002, a time when movies were still in the post-Titanic [1997] blush of young, doomed love affair stories.
PETER HOLMSTROM
(cohost, The Rebel & the Rogue podcast)
I liked the sand line. It was a character beat, to say Anakin hadn’t gotten over his PTSD from being a slave and leaving his mother behind. Tatooine has a lot of sand … if you didn’t know. That’s beautiful writing.
NATALIE PORTMAN
(actress, “Padmé Amidala”)
Anakin is at the center of it all—it’s his story—but then there’s this love story in the middle of this great action movie.
GEORGE LUCAS
That was challenging in its own way, because Star Wars films have a tendency to be very action-oriented. To be able to slow that down a little bit and tell a love story in the middle of it was a challenge to make happen. I had managed to do this philosophical lesson plan in The Empire Strikes Back. I was very worried about, “How do I have Luke and this little green man sitting around and philosophizing about the Force?” I thought it would really stop things dead, because it was going to be about twenty minutes of the movie. But by intercutting with Han Solo and Leia, I was able to make that work. On this film, I thought I would use the same technique, because it worked then. Essentially a love story does stop things. But I figured I would have the film noir mystery of Obi-Wan trying to find out who the assassin is, and I would intercut that with the romance. Ev
en though it’s not as action-oriented, I thought I could get away with it, because it has a suspense through-line. It was a little tricky, but it seems to work.
NATALIE PORTMAN
I’d never worked with the same cast and crew a second time, so that was really wonderful. Padmé wasn’t a queen anymore; she was a senator. And because of that, she was allowed to wear less-formal clothes, have more free time, doesn’t have as many formal dues—which gave her the time to fall in love with Anakin, who in this film came back as her protector. All of a sudden, this kid is a strapping young gentleman and they hit it off. They also have this tension, because their formal roles don’t allow for both of them to fall in love, but they can’t help it. You can’t put those kinds of restrictions on love. It’s the classic duty-versus-love story and obviously love always wins out.
JOHN KENNETH MUIR
I remember reading a review of Titanic asking how many young people could enjoy a love story with such obvious clichés and wooden dialogue, when it had all been done a million times before. The answer was that for thirteen- to fifteen-year-olds, it was all new. They hadn’t seen it all before. It was that simple. I think this also explains the success of the Twilight saga. Filmmakers, including Lucas, were aiming at a generation of moviegoers who would take the love affair between two attractive young people at face value, rather than as something that had been seen before—and in better films.
NATALIE PORTMAN
Anakin and Amidala meet up on Clones and they haven’t seen each other since the audience last saw them together in Phantom Menace. It’s a fossilized relationship that has been resurrected. It was caught in a time capsule—not unlike film—and now it’s back and they’re bringing it to life again. It has changed, though. It’s not the same relationship. Now it’s about a woman and a man. And it takes a while especially because Anakin hasn’t matured as much as she has. But he has this real passion and it excites her, because it’s very much like her own passion for what she does and her intensity, although there’s something much more sinister about his. Hers is a very youthful, idealistic, save-the-world kind of passion and his is not quite as clear-cut and sunny. Also, for someone who thinks she can make everything better and save everybody, obviously Anakin’s issues are very attractive to her.
RAY MORTON
Lucas took those early plot strands and reworked them for Clones. In the new version, it is ten years after the events of The Phantom Menace and many systems are seceding from the Republic to join a separatist movement led by one Count Dooku. With the galaxy in turmoil, the Jedi are having trouble keeping the peace and a faction in the Senate is pushing to create a grand army of the Republic to help in this task. No longer a queen, Padmé Amidala is now Naboo’s representative in the Senate of the Galactic Republic and she opposes this proposal, certain it will ultimately lead to war.
* * *
As the story opens, an assassination attempt is made on Padmé’s life as she arrives on Coruscant to vote against a proposal to build a grand army of the Republic. Padmé survives the attack, but is still clearly in danger. Obi-Wan Kenobi, now a Jedi Master, and his apprentice Anakin Skywalker, now nineteen, are assigned to protect her. Anakin has not seen Padmé since they parted a decade before and reveals to Obi-Wan that he has been carrying a torch for her ever since. Obi-Wan warns Anakin not to pursue these feelings, since Jedi are forbidden to marry. Following a second attempt on the senator’s life, the Jedi Council orders Anakin to escort Padmé back to Naboo, where she will be safe. During the journey, Padmé finds herself growing attracted to Anakin. During their time in hiding in Naboo’s lake country, Padmé and Anakin fall deeply in love.
Lucas joined this material with a parallel plotline, in which Obi-Wan investigates the assassination attempts on Padmé to discover who is behind them. Obi-Wan’s search for answers leads him to a secret cloning facility on the ocean world of Kamino, where he discovers that an army of clones made from the DNA of a bounty hunter called Jango Fett has been created, supposedly at the request of a long-dead Jedi Master acting on behalf of the Republic. Realizing that Jango commissioned the hits on Padmé, Obi-Wan follows him to the planet Geonosis, where he learns that Jango is working for Count Dooku, a former Jedi who once trained Qui-Gon. Dooku is conspiring with the leaders of the villainous Trade Federation previously seen in The Phantom Menace, and other big business leaders, to create a droid army that his separatist movement can then use to attack the Republic. Dooku captures Obi-Wan and tells him that the Republic Senate is corrupt and under the control of the Sith. Dooku invites Obi-Wan to join him so they can destroy the Sith. Not trusting Dooku, Obi-Wan declines.
Padmé and Anakin travel to Geonosis to rescue Obi-Wan, but they themselves are captured. Dooku has Obi-Wan, Padmé, and Anakin placed in an arena, where they are set upon by a pack of vicious monsters. The trio do their best to hold off the beasts, but even after succeeding, Dooku orders destroyer droids to finish the job. Just as the droids move in for the kill, the Jedi—led by Mace Windu—arrive.
A battle ensues—the Jedi against the monsters and Dooku’s droid army. At first, the Jedi do well, but eventually, they are cornered by the droids. Just as the mechanical soldiers are about to open fire, Yoda arrives with the clone army from Kamino. The clones battle and ultimately drive the droids to retreat. Dooku tries to escape, but Obi-Wan and Anakin pursue him and wind up engaging in a lightsaber duel with the crafty Count. During the fight, Dooku chops off Anakin’s arm and knocks Obi-Wan unconscious. Yoda then arrives and faces off against Dooku in another lightsaber duel. This duel also ends in a draw and Dooku escapes again.
Dooku travels to the far side of Coruscant—a dark, grimy, industrial landscape—where we learn that the Count is actually a Sith Lord in thrall to Chancellor Palpatine / Darth Sidious, who has manufactured the separatist conflict as an excuse to gain emergency dictatorial powers over the Republic and to create a massive military he can use to conquer the galaxy.
Palpatine/Sidious’s plan works. As the story comes to an end, the Senate votes to give him emergency powers and to create a fleet of star destroyers, which are used to take the clone army into battle against the separatists—the Clone Wars have begun. Meanwhile, Anakin is fitted with a new mechanical arm and he and Padmé marry in secret.
JOHN KENNETH MUIR
As a start to the Clone Wars, the film is relatively disappointing. So many questions are unanswered, or more aptly, un-asked. Why does Yoda accept an army, built and gift-wrapped for him? Why does Amidala accept Anakin’s massacre of the Sand People without at least suggesting, let alone pursuing, the idea that maybe he should see a therapist?
RAY MORTON
The screenplay for Attack of the Clones is a definite improvement over the script for The Phantom Menace. It has a stronger movie-specific narrative—both Obi-Wan’s investigation and the Anakin/Padmé love story have more drama and forward momentum than the largely plotless Menace. The story also has more action and its tone is less juvenile. Thankfully, Jar Jar’s role has been significantly reduced (although not enough—in the brief time he appears on-screen he manages to destroy the Republic). However, in relation to the storyline of the overall prequel trilogy, Clones is still mostly prologue. The only elements relevant to the trilogy’s larger narrative are Anakin and Padmé falling in love and Anakin’s fear of losing more of his loved ones.
JOHN KENNETH MUIR
On a positive note, certainly one can see Lucas weaving the War on Terror, post-9/11 worldview into the film, since it opens with Amidala under threat from terrorist attacks. But not much is done with that real-world issue. In my judgment, Attack of the Clones is the weakest of the prequel series. It is less uneven than was The Phantom Menace, but even if it doesn’t have that film’s lows, it gets nowhere near its highs, either. For instance, the Dooku lightsaber duel is a relatively disappointing affair, especially after the elaborate “Duel of the Fates” battle with Darth Maul in The Phantom Menace. Clones is probably the low-point of the saga, a
t least until Rise of Skywalker was released in 2019.
RAY MORTON
Apart from these bits, Clones is just more filler and backstory. And so, while it is a more energetic tale than Menace, like the earlier movie, Clones is pretty much irrelevant. This, however, is not the screenplay’s biggest problem. The script’s biggest problem is Anakin. As conceived, Skywalker is supposed to be talented but headstrong and impulsive. This by itself is not a problem—many young heroes start out this way. However, as scripted, Anakin is also arrogant, angry, and reckless, as well as whiny, petulant, and frequently obnoxious. In the movie, these problems are compounded by Hayden Christensen’s acting. Although Christensen has done good work in other films (especially in Broken Glass), in Clones his awkward performance amplifies Anakin’s negative qualities without providing the charm and charisma that would make them tolerable. So, from the get-go, Anakin is a hard character to like and to feel much sympathy for.
