Restrictions have started to ease – we can go outside, sit in cafés, see friends, walk in the park without having to conduct a drug deal. Obviously watching The Phantom Menace worked. Yet we still aren’t fully out of this, so I must subjugate myself to more misery. So, Attack of The Clones it is!
During the lockdown I lost the ability to have feelings, or recognise time passing. I underestimated the ability of a truly awful movie to reinvigorate my sense of hopelessness and dread. For the first time in two months I could feel time passing, all 2 hours and 22 minutes of this god forsaken picture. This is the film they show on movie night in Guantanamo Bay.
We begin with an assassination attempt on the now Senator Amidala – with the bomb seemingly timed to go off at the exact moment a dummy says, ‘gUeSs tHeIr wAs nOtHiNg tO wOrRy aBoUt.’ She survives, unfortunately, then Palpatine initiates his Jeffrey Epstein plan to get a now teenage Anakin to fall in love with and lose his virginity to the former queen (who I will remind you, met him when he was 8 and she was 15). She is more than happy to unwittingly oblige – GROSS!
Anyway, Armadillo (or whatever the name is) has run out of lookalike human shields to sacrifice for her protection. So, Anakin’s decided that she should get a taste of her own medicine and should actually be the lure for the assassins herself.
Maybe that’s what he says but in reality, realised that Armidale was a massive creep and really wanted her to go. Unfortunately for poor Annie, the assassins are dumber than Jar-Jar and used a snake(?) to try and kill her, instead of just, you know, shooting her, or blowing up the apartment.
A not-hilarious hijinks-filled chase ensues and Obi-Wan and Anakin end up at ‘da club’, where they are promptly offered ‘death sticks’ the hippest drug in the galaxy since ‘blinding balls.’ Just say no to death sticks, kids. After that act of virtue, Obi-Wan slays the assassin without even attempting to arrest her. What a cop.
Also Jar-Jar becomes the acting senator – HA!
Our beloved protagonist pair split for the time being, with Anakin charged with protecting Queen Amadingdong and Obi-Wan tasked with finding the assassin’s lair. Who care?
Obi-Wan ends up on the planet of the really tall aliens, who look like they have sickle-cell anaemia if I’m going to be honest, while Anakin confesses his feelings towards sand similar to the way I feel about most of the Star Wars movies.
‘I hate sand. It’s coarse and rough and irritating, and it’s everywhere.’
I feel so sorry for George Lucas’ wife if a contrast with SAND is what he considers the height of romantic prose. Then again, maybe I’m misreading and Padmé would have jumped his bones no matter what natural element Anakin hated, because she is a MASSIVE CREEP.
Obi-Wan is doing some stuff too. SKIP!
How about some more amorous dialogue between the least believable couple since Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes.
Anakin: ‘I’m. haunted. by. the. kiss. you. never. should have. given. me.’
Senator Pantene Pro-V: ‘You’re a Jedi and I’m a Senator. We can’t.’ (somebody tell Barnaby Joyce that #AmIRiteFolks?)
Obi-Wan discovers some more dark secrets about the clones and the Trade Federation. BORING!
Anakin has taken bae, Pad Thai, to visit his parents! But OMG, they’ve been murdered! By sand people (always got to have some racism in it)! So, in some not subtle at all foreshadowing – Anakin commits a genocide against them. But he feels bad about it – so reassuring.
Obi-Wan meets Count Dooku. cool.
These horny morons are still struggling with their feelings. JUST WORK IT OUT ALREADY. Embrace your inner creep or don’t Senator Padded Armchair. JUST DO SOMETHING.
Obi-Wan and Anakin have met up again in sci-fi Gladiator spin-off.
You’ll never guess, they escape, and Anakin confronts Dooku (why you would name a character after a synonym for a turd I don’t know, but that’s for another day). They fight and Anakin loses a limb, which is George Lucas’ other fetish besides over the top racism and women grooming children.
Stuff happens, they get out, movie ends, and Anakin marries Senator Podcast. I wish my limb was cut off instead.
Next time…Episode III. The one everyone insists is alright but is also really, really bad.
