Product Details

• Actors: Ewan McGregor, Natalie Portman, Hayden Christensen, Christopher Lee, Samuel L. Jackson
• Directors: George Lucas
• Writers: George Lucas, Jonathan Hales
• Producers: George Lucas, Lorne Orleans, Rick McCallum
• Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
• Language: English (Dolby Digital 5.1 EX), French (Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround), Spanish (Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround)
• Subtitles: English
• Dubbed: French
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
• Number of discs: 2
• Rated: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Studio: 20th Century Fox
• DVD Release Date: March 22, 2005
• Run Time: 142 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2,216 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B00006HBUJ
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,700 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
  • #34 in Movies & TV > DVD > Fantasy
  • #34 in Movies & TV > DVD > Science Fiction
• Learn more about "Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (Widescreen Edition)" on IMDb

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

If The Phantom Menace was the setup, then Attack of the Clones is the plot-progressing payoff, and devoted Star Wars fans are sure to be enthralled. Ten years after Episode I, Padmé Amidala (Natalie Portman), now a senator, resists the creation of a Republic Army to combat an evil separatist movement. The brooding Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen) is resentful of his stern Jedi mentor, Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor), tormented by personal loss, and showing his emerging "dark side" while protecting his new love, Amidala, from would-be assassins. Youthful romance and solemn portent foreshadow the events of the original Star Wars as Count Dooku (a.k.a. Darth Tyranus, played by Christopher Lee) forges an alliance with the Dark Lord of the Sith, while lavish set pieces showcase George Lucas's supreme command of all-digital filmmaking. All of this makes Episode II a technological milestone, savaged by some critics as a bloated, storyless spectacle, but still qualifying as a fan-approved precursor to the pivotal events of Episode III. --Jeff Shannon

Product Description

The STAR WARS saga continues on DVD with Episode II Attack of the Clones. Anakin Skywalker has grown into an accomplished Jedi apprentice, and he faces his most difficult challenge yet as he must choose between his Jedi duty and forbidden love. Relive the adventure the way it was meant to be seen in spectacular digital clarity, including the climactic Clone War battle and Jedi Master Yoda in the ultimate lightsaber duel. Experience this 2-disc set that features over six hours of bonus materials, and see how Episode II unlocks the secrets of the entire STAR WARS saga.

See all Editorial Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 27 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars The dark side I sense in you, George! August 26, 2005

By G. Kroener

Format:DVD

[...]
They FIGHT. Well, not really. They throw some stuff at each other using the force, and it is filmed in an incredibly boring way.

Count: "This fight can't be decided by our knowledge of the force, but surely by our ability to shout out dull lines!"

They draw their lightsabres and Yoda bounces back and forth like a green rubber ball. The audience is overwhelmed by this mind- boggling sillieness.
Count Dooku seems to dominate the fight, and even cuts off future Darth Vader's hand, but eventually FLEES!

Annie gets a new hand and marries Padme, although half an hour ago they decided that it would destroy them. Anyone else slightly irritated by Padme's love for Anakin? They haven't seen each other for ten years (which is itself a joke, considering that the Jedi temple and the senate are only miles apart), and yet she loves him, although she's busy refusing him for a good part of Episode II?
Did she fall in love with young Ani in Episode I??

Exactly like in Episode I, our characters stumble from scene to scene, without any coherent reason. Exactly like in Episode I, there's no real threat. Count Dooku summons a group of cartoons we never knew and makes them join his evil plan, whatever it might be.
Every Star Wars hero we know is turned into a fool.
Obi- Wan, in true Jedi style, runs into every trap imaginable and needs a kid to discover a whole planet.
Yoda takes the army of clones with him, although they were designed after a bounty hunter and ordered by Count Dooku himself.
Padme falls for Annie's infantile grin, and leaves Jar Jar Binks her job as a SENATOR! It`s because of HIM Palpatine/ future emperor becomes chancellor! No kidding!... The Republic falls because of Jar- Jar Binks, THE worst character ever written ...
Future Darth Vader turns out to be a whiny teenager, who uses every cheap seduction method that even the screenwriters of American Pie would have turned down. Oh, and he rolls around in the grass in front of a beauuuuutiful waterfall landscape ...
In other words, Star Wars get further ruined.

The most hilarious thing about this DVD is the bonus stuff. The feature about Hayden Christensen is so incredibly pretentious; you can't help but laugh out loud when you hear people saying "there's so much in his eyes" or "he's such a talented young actor". And when Natalie Portman says that she adores his acting, you can only think of the blind who envys the one- eyed.

But the undisputed king of this hideous crap is George Lucas and his loss of reality, when he says about Episode II that all that counts is the storytelling, how skilfully you craft the story and how the effects are merely by- products of that.
Well, George, if this is your goal, you've failed miserably, more so than any other director in the history of cinema. And you've certainly come a looooong way.
And this, in a nutshell, is the problem: George Lucas is in complete control! He does everything, even though he has not the faintest clue of how to do it.
He's written this "film", and consequently, the story is quasi non- existential. There's an extreme gap between fluff and complex background stories. On one hand, the plot that drives this flick forward is incredibly superficial, on the other hand there are extremely subtle background informations that only die- hard fans can fully understand. Ironically, this background story sounds far more interesting than the actual, pretty despicable, story of Attack Of The Clones.
There are numerous oddities, illogical things and contradictions, which proof that George Lucas didn't care much about the story.
Number one: Padme is supposed to be 10 years older than Anakin.
Number two: Count Dooku is Palpatine's apprentice?? Isn't he about 20 years older than his master then? Maybe Palpatine said to himself "a young, dynamic man failed, maybe I should get an 80- year old ..."
Number three: why exactly can Anakin and Padme not be together? Aren't the jedi council and the senate supposed to work together? Wouldn't a marriage between a jedi and a senator enhance their relationship?

The best thing about the DVD features is that it tells you exactly why the prequels fail. Whether people want to accept it or not, the technical aspects of the filmmaking were in the spotlight for far too long. Rick McCallum tells us that Episode II is a completely digital film, that the actors literally stumbled from blue- screen to blue- screen. No wonder not a single person delivers in these films, when they are lost in a nothingness of blue and green wallpaper! It DOES affect the performance and therefor the quality of a film!
Then, some guy tells us that George Lucas doesn't really thinks about the question "Is that possible to do?" Well, he definitely SHOULD! That's why you are a director!
Alright, in order to move the industry forward, you've got to have visions and ambitious goals, but you also have to ask yourself "does that work?"
George Lucas only cares about bringing these things onto the big screen, no matter if it works or not!
In a movie, the settings have to be convincing, that's essential. If they don't, the audience gets distracted and the story won't work. The audience is literally thrown into a complete fantasy world, and this world just has to look real in order to make the movie work.
But this isn't the case here! It's like a video game with real actors.

No matter how hard you try, you can't spot a good thing in this flick. It can neither stand completely alone, nor does it have any real ties to either Episode I or III, except for the death of Anakin's mother.

I could give Episode II two stars for the sheer badness, which is almost entertaining, but the ridiculously high average rating forbids that.
By the way, the score also participated in this deterioration process, but for deeper thoughts on that, you can read my separate review.

Please, do yourself a favour, watch the Original trilogy and pretend the prequels don't exist! Read more ›

15 of 18 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars George Lucas has lost his mind. April 11, 2003

By T. Bux VINE™ VOICE

Format:DVD

First, let me say some positives about this DVD:

The image and sound quality are amazing. This DVD is probably the best quality DVD to date. Great for showing off a high quality home theater. Since the movie was shot on digital film, there was almost no ghosting or image quality lost.

Now the negatives:

What made the original Star Wars movies so spectatular was their campy dialog, fake but realistic special effects (even though you knew it was a fake spaceship you still knew it was a picture of a real model). The older Star Wars films were mostly a tribute to the cheesey sci-fi movies of the 50's and 60's. A true space opera, they were classics.

Episode II relies mostly on the impressive special effects to mesmerize and entertain. Acting and story are second to this. The totally cardboard acting of Haeden Christianson is so bad, that it makes you wonder if he should play an emotionally repressed andriod instead of the future Darth Vader. It made me miss Jar Jar.

Oustanding special effects that circumvent the rest of the movie. This movie seems to be made mostly just to fill a quota and to set up the clearly superior episodes 3-6. Makes you sad to see a performer past his prime, and Star Wars is way past its prime.

74 of 98 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars Utterly dreadful - the final nail to a once magical series January 23, 2003

By P. I. Johnson

Format:DVD

Before I incur the wrath of the hordes of Star Wars deadheads who seem to reflexively rate any negative review of this woeful movie "Unhelpful", consider this: I am a lifelong fan of the original Star Wars Trilogy and had as much hopeful investment as anyone in the success of the second trilogy. The sad fact is that Attack of the Clones - despite what you've heard - is even worse than The Phantom Menace (if you can bring yourself to believe that something so ghastly could actually exist). Willing this to be a better movie than it actually is (which seems to have been the response of most US critics and - it has to be said - Star Wars fans) is a pointless exercise in delusion. The sad reality is that even the weakest of the original trilogy - Return of the Jedi - is infinitely superior to anything we've seen since. The amount of times I found myself asking "Who wrote this [stuff]?" is matched only by the amount of times I had to hold back laughing aloud at the infantile dialogue and plotting of this utterly charmless movie. This is quite possibly the worst writing EVER in a major Hollywood production and should fast find its natural place in screenwriting classes as a case study in how NOT to write a script. The completely unmoving, unconvincing romance between a wooden Hayden Christensen and an uncharacteristically bland Natalie Portman is only the most obvious clumsiness. The [weak] fortune cookie dialogue given to Ewan McGregor finds appropriate expression in a disinterested performance (how else can any self-respecting actor work with wannabe banter that amounts to exchanges of "Yes Master"; "No Master"; "I try Master" ad infinitum?) Such puerile gems as "The day we take democracy for granted is the day we lose it" simply cry out for ridicule.... The deterministic, completely unconvincing and unsympathetic movement of the Anakin character towards the "Dark Side" - a process underpinned by a cynical array of contrived situations and the worst depiction of teenage angst ever put to screen - only further raises the rubbish factor. Anakin scowls around saying things like: "You're like a father to me master"; "He doesn't understand me"; "It's all his fault!"; "He's holding me back!" It's like the last teen movie George Lucas has seen was in 1955 (doubly strange for someone who was the director of the superior, textured teen movie, American Graffiti) - come back John Hughes, all is forgiven. It also has to be said that - in a series never characterised by great acting anyway - Hayden Christensen gives the worst-ever performance in a Star Wars movie. Possibly the most untalented actor of his generation by this evidence - his charisma-free range appears to be pouting and... pouting. When Christensen says "I have a bad feeling about this!" - a line most familiar to series fans courtesy of Luke and Han at various points in the original Star Wars - he only prompts reminders of the rugged charisma and naive charm of the actors - and characters - that preceded him. The comparison is fatal! As for the much vaunted digital effects - well! If the miserable CGI creations menacing our heroes in the stadium execution scene are a standard, then give me Ray Harryhausen anyday. Hopefully these will look better on the Playstation 2 - where they probably best belong. In this regard, Star Wars has aways been a commercial exercise but the ... plugging of possible videogame content is distracting (most obviously when Anakin applies platform-game timing and strategy in avoiding a series of blades and hazards). So it appears, unfortunately, that the best thing techno-merchandiser George Lucas can do for the final instalment of this truly pitiful second trilogy is hand over the directorial reigns (as he did with The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi) to a journeyman director (where are you Irving Kershner?) unpressured by the burden of pop culture expectation. The man is clearly no longer capable of telling a decent, well-paced story. Lucas recently said he welcomed the competition provided by Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings series. Don't kid yourself George! There's no competition. Peter Jackson is an infinitely better director - and Attack of the Clones against Lord of the Rings is like a shopping trolley against a Ferrari. And these - fellow Star Wars fans - are the sad truths we should stop denying! Read more ›

43 of 56 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars Bada Bing! May 8, 2003

By A Customer

Format:DVD

This film is so awful, I could write a full-length thesis paper about it. What's amazing to me is how many Amazon reviewers acknowledge faults in the movie, and still praise it with five stars.

Attack of the Clones is Star Wars for the Attention Deficit Disorder generation. Lucas has overstuffed sequences with frenetic visuals, hoping to distract viewers into thinking they're entertained, desperately trying to compensate for the lagging, flabby plot and woefully inadeqate characterization. It's really more of a glorified video game than an actual film. Wonder which demographic likes Attack of the Clones the most? It's mostly 12- to 21-year-old boys who grew up on Nintendo, PlayStation, and X-Box. Unfortunately, busy special effects alone do not a great movie make. Frankly, the visuals aren't even that great. There was no show of Force at the Oscars when Attack of the Clones lost the Special Effects trophy to Lord of the Rings.

The biggest flaws in this film center around the scenes between Padme and Anikan. First of all, the dialogue is atrocious, with wooden actors delivering hackneyed lines and cliches at every turn. Honestly, this stuff wouldn't even fly in soap operas. Why should we excuse it in a multi-million dollar movie? Secondly their "love" story has no believability, and doesn't develop naturally. Annakin is portrayed as a snotty, arrogant, obsessive boy with a violent temper and psychotic tendencies. So, what exactly draws Padme toward him? Plot contrivances are often awkward or totally head-scratching. Jango sends Zam who sends a droid who sends worms, to kill Padme? And what's with the title? Attack of the Clones? What attack? The clones don't show up until the end of the movie, when they are dispatched to *defend* the Jedi.... I will grant the film one star for interesting cinematography and costumes. Also, the fight between Jango and Kenobi is well-choreographed. But give more praise, I can not.

Most disappointing of all, this film is totally devoid of the magic infused into the original trilogy films. Maybe Lucas should have enlisted Lawrence Kasdan, scripter for *two* of the original trilogy movies, including the most critically-lauded, Empire Strikes Back. Lucas is now trying to do everything himself. He wants total control of the universe, but somewhere during his 10-year-plus hiatus from movie-making he lost his edge. Someday twenty years from now, another director will remake the Episodes 1-III. But it will be awhile. Good Star Wars prequels are still "far, far, away..." Read more ›