Welcome to my latest series of articles called “Why I love Star Wars”. This is a series that was inspired by reading Ken Napzok’s Why We Love Star Wars: The Great Moments That Built A Galaxy Far, Far Away, a countdown of the top 100 moments from Star Wars that made him love it all, including canon stories from every medium. As I was reading this book, I found myself thinking of some of my own favourite moments and wanted to discuss them.
While there are certainly some films that I do not like as much as others, every movie has some wonderful moments that I would always say outweigh the bad, so for that reason I wouldn’t say that I hate any of the Star Wars films. With the way that too much Star Wars talk has gone down a dark hole in recent years, hopefully reminding ourselves of the great moments and focusing on the positives will help the fandom recover.
Why I Love Star Wars:
Unlike in the book, I will not put the moments in any specific order (I do things like that enough in my Top 10s!) as the order would probably change on every viewing. Today I will be looking at Attack of the Clones
Beware: this will contain spoilers for the movie!
Obi-Wan fights Jango Fett
One of the highlights from Obi-Wan’s storyline in this movie, after tracking an unknown bounty hunter to Kamino and discovering the clone army, he deduces that their template Jango Fett is the one he is looking for. As Jango and “son” Boba look to leave in a hurry, Obi-Wan confronts them on the landing platform. What follows is a great fight in the rain between Jango and Obi-Wan. This is the first time that we see someone without the Force holding their own against a Jedi, which makes us excited to see how this guy in Mandalorian armour will do for the rest of the movie.
Seismic charges
After a tense first meeting and a hard fight on Kamino, Obi-Wan tracks Jango Fett to Geonosis, only for Jango to release a series of seismic charges in the asteroid belt. The seismic charges were a wonderful idea, both from creating a real danger for Obi-Wan with minimum effort on Jango’s part, to the sound of the charges themselves. The sound, especially, is a true highlight, with the momentary absence of all sound creating a wonderful contrast to the eruption of sound as they explode. A real treat for the ears in a great sequence.
Jango’s death
The 3rd moment on the list to include Jango Fett (I could have also added Obi-Wan’s first meeting with Jango, but I thought this would be Jango overkill!) is his final moment. Having taken a bit of a beating from the Reek, Jango calmly dispatches it on its second charge with a single shot of his blaster. He turns to find none other than Mace Windu charging towards him. He tries to dispatch with the Jedi master as he did the reek, but finds his shots deflected. Realising his danger, he tries to escape with his jetpack, but the scene has already shown it sparking from the reek’s attack and it leaves him stranded to be quickly disarmed and beheaded by Windu. While on first viewing it may look a poor death for someone who has been quite dangerous to this point, the sparking of the jetpack clearly speaks towards his overconfidence in his technology, while even Dooku seems shaken by the death of his key warrior.
Attack of the clones
“Around the survivors a perimeter create.”
With Padmé and the Jedi all surrounded and set to die, Padmé hears something above and looks up just in time to see the Grand Army of the Republic arrive to rescue them. As Acclamator-class assault ships fill the sky, LAATs descend into the arena and begin to fire on the battle droids while creating a perimeter around the survivors. What follows is a hectic sequence of madness on the ground as droids fire at the new forces in the air and the trapped forces on the ground, while the LAATs land to take on Padmé and all the surviving Jedi. While it is hard to imagine that their arrival should be such a surprise to the Separatist forces in the arena, I think the sequence does a great job of showing the madness of war, while the final moment as we track one LAAT out of the arena and see the wider battle unfolding on the planet shows that the war really has begun. Watching this back to remind myself of the sequence as I was writing, I also noticed and really appreciated the one shot of Dooku, who appears unsurprised by the clones’ arrival as he would have known that his master was planning to create a galaxy-wide war that would likely be triggered by their actions on Geonosis.
Imprisoned
After being captured on Geonosis by the Separatists, Obi-Wan receives a visitor in the form of Separatist leader Count Dooku. The posturing between the 2 in this scene is brilliant, as Dooku attempts to seduce Obi-Wan into becoming his apprentice, revealing to us that Dooku had been Qui-Gon’s master. What is incredible is when you know the whole story, you notice just how much information Dooku gives Obi-Wan in that scene:
“What if I told you that the Republic was now under the control of the Dark Lord of the Sith?”
“No that’s not possible! The Jedi would be aware of it.”
“The dark side of the force has clouded their vision, my friend. Hundreds of senators are now under the influence of a Sith Lord called Darth Sidious.”
He literally tells Obi-Wan everything that the Jedi need to know in an attempt to seduce him, but due to the Jedi’s arrogance and their belief that Dooku is lying, the information that could have saved the galaxy is ignored. How different could things have been if they had acted on this information…
What are your favourite moments from Attack of the Clones?
Thanks for reading. May the Force be with you…
The Canon Padawan 