Star Wars Episode II: Attack Of The Clones often competes for the much sought-after title of “worst Star Wars film ever” alongside its predecessor The Phantom Menace. There a few things Episode II does quite a lot worse than that which came before it, but as a whole, it does slightly improve on the 1999 film.
However, in terms of continuity errors and plot inconsistencies, this film stays basically on par with Episode I. We’ve gathered 10 of the biggest blunders at the mid-point of the prequel trilogy.
C-3PO Shouldn’t Be Able To Speak
By introducing C-3PO as the creation of Anakin Skywalker (AKA Darth Vader himself) George Lucas created way more problems for himself than he did answers. Most notably, the fact that Anakin created Threepio makes absolutely no sense. Surely Vader would have said something about his ex-droid facing off against him in the original series?
Anyway, the film also establishes that the control for Threepio’s voice is in a power source on his back and he was unable to talk until this was activated. Therefore, when Threepio’s head was attached to that of a droid, he shouldn’t have been able to speak at all.
No One Talks About Blocking Force Lightning
The prequel trilogies really grab onto the idea of Force lightning and run with it, probably because it’s a cool animated effect that works wonders every time it’s on screen. Count Dooku seems pretty fond of it and blasts it around where he can, leading to both Yoda and Obi-Wan blocking it.
While later in the sequel trilogy, Rey seems able to repel the attack, no one ever seems to have taught Luke this particular technique. This means that when Luke is taking on Darth Sidious, he is unable to block something that seems quite easily blockable to powerful Jedi.
Where Did The Monsters Go?
When the centerpiece fight of Attack Of The Clones takes place, we are surrounded by a multitude of monsters and a battalion of droids with loyal clone troopers fighting back. Two of the big bad guys are reeks and acklay. They are killed quite dramatically, and they’re absolutely huge so their dead bodies would really stand out on the battlefield. However, when the camera pans out to show the scene, they haven’t been animated in. When Boba goes to take a closer look at his dad’s severed head, one of the corpses has been animated back in.
Padmé’s Incredible Scream Power
There is a particularly cool-looking scene in which Padmé falls from a ship that was shot by Count Dooku. Pretty scary stuff, and its impressive she’s sort of alright despite falling from a great height.
We hear her provide a huge scream (which is very much understandable when falling out of a ship) but for some reason, her mouth doesn’t move at all. This suggests that Natalie Portman had to dub over this particular scream, as for whatever reason, it wasn’t captured on film.
Anakin’s Silent Words
There are many, many shots in Attack Of The Clone that show Hayden Christensen’s mouth moving with nothing coming out, or we hear him speak without seeing his mouth move. It happens when Anakin is talking on the couch with Padmé (his mouth is clearly moving without speaking), and when they’re talking in front of the fireplace (he continues to talk despite his mouth having stopped moving).
The Green Screen Takes Away Shadows
Everything wrong with the Star Wars prequels eventually lands back on the overuse of green screen technology. It’s obvious pretty much every time and only makes shots look worse. One of the more subtle problems is its lack of shadows.
There are certain times when particularly prominent shadows are edited in, but a lot of the time it is forgotten about. For example, when Padmé and Anakin are talking about Anakin’s return to Tatooine, their shadows move around all over the place beneath them. The same thing happens with reflections, too.
Ki-Adi-Mundi Changing Lightsaber Color
We all know that Samuel L Jackson was allowed a special purple lightsaber when joining up to play Mace Windu. What we didn’t know is that Silas Carson was given a lightsaber that changed color. Well, he wasn’t. It was just another editing error. When Ki-Adi-Mundi first draws his weapon in the arena, it’s blue. A few seconds later, it’s green. Then it’s blue again. Very confusing.
Ewan McGregor’s Fake Beard
One of the problems with having to reshoot scenes is the issues regarding consistent aesthetic. It’s most prominent when filming with children, who are prone to drastic and sudden changes in look and sound. However, it also proved to be an issue for Ewan McGregor, who had grown a huge beard for his role as Obi-Wan. When production wrapped, he shaved it off. This meant he had to wear a specially crafted beard-wig for the reshot scenes. It’s pretty obvious when you know what you’re looking for, and it actually leads to a relatively interesting way of determining which scenes were original and which were reshoots.
Weak Structures
Considering this is a Star Wars film we’re talking about, there are a lot of seemingly low-budget moments littered throughout, from the cheap green screen and glaring animation issues to the flimsy set design.
This particular issue sees Obi-Wan bump his arm on the wall of his ship as he gets out. Obviously, this thing is supposed to fly at high speeds through the vacuum of space, so it needs to be pretty hardy. Instead, it bends to reveal its true, cheap nature.
The Traffic Is Still Repeating Itself
One of the more frustrating things about the lack of effort across the prequel trilogy is that the depth and scope of animation available to the creators just isn’t used to its advantage. Just like in The Phantom Menace, the air traffic shown outside of the windows is simply on a repeating loop. If you look through Palpatine’s window, you can see the ships repeating themselves every few seconds. It seems weird that they wouldn’t use this as a chance to add some cool details that eagle-eyed fans could really take something from.
