Star Wars: Episode 2 – Attack of the Clones

In the second movie of the prequel the story starts to turn a little darker. Episode 1 was a bit of a ‘the beginning’ story where we learn about the very young Anakin and the threat of the Sith. Now we find Anakin back as an adolescent Jedi apprentice of Obi-Wan Kenobi. Padmé returns Coruscant to vote on a motion to create an army to assist the Jedi. While there she is placed under the protection of Obi-Wan and Anakin. After 2 failed assassination attempts Obi-Wan is ordered to find the bounty hunter behind one of the attempts while Padmé returns to her home planet with Anakin as her personal body guard. Slowly the 2 fall in love and start a forbidden relationship violating the rules of the Jedi. While on Naboo Anakin has visions in his sleep of his mother in pain. Anakin and Padmé decide to go and find Anakin’s mother on Tatooine but they are too late. Anakin avenges his mother by killing a whole camp of Tusken raiders that held his mother captive, again going against the Jedi principles. The parts of the movie with Padmé and Anakin on Naboo and Tatooine bode ill for the future and an ominous tension starts to build. While Anakin is on Tatooine, Obi-Wan has gotten into trouble tracking down the bounty hunter and is captured. Anakin and Padmé get his distress signal and set out to rescue him. From here on the movie becomes a sci-fi war movie of the Jedi against the dark forces. Compared to the first episode this movie is darker creating a feeling of inevitability of bad things to come. That makes it a better movie to my tast compared to episode 1. And Haydn Christensen is better as the adult Anakin compared to the child Anakin of episode 1. Quite enjoyable mix of action, detective story and romantic character development against a background of doom to come.