Page 19 - Star Wars Insider #187

THE SKYWALKER SAGA
“Clones is cr ammed with
action, gr and digital design,
and a dark side Lucas hasn’t
fl aunted since 1980’s The
Empire Strikes Back”
Rolling Stone magazine
FACTS & he Star Wars
FIGURES prequel trilogy,
Title / Star Wars: Attack T preordained to
of the Clones end in tragedy,
Episode / Two started its tale
Poster Tagline / A Jedi with a much
Shall Not Know Anger. more hopeful tone. In Star Wars:
Nor Hatred. Nor Love. The Phantom Menace (1999),
Theatrical Release / May
16, 2002 a teenage queen, a young boy,
Run time / 142 mins and two Jedi Knights overcame a
MPAA / “Rated PG for number of nefarious obstacles to
sci-fi action/violence” liberate Naboo from occupation
Budget / $120 million by the Trade Federation’s droid
Domestic Opening army. As the opening crawl
Weekend / $80,027,814
rolls on Attack of the Clones
Domestic Box Offi ce /
$302,191,252 (2002), all that is good in the
galaxy begins its decline: the Jedi
Worldwide Box Offi ce /
$649,398,328 Order, the Republic, the lives of
Awards / Oscar our heroes—and the soul of the
Nomination for Best Chosen One.
Visual Effects
Politics is the grandest stage to
bear witness to the ways in which
greed and corruption can rise, even
among good people, and in that
light, it is no surprise that the fi lm
begins and climaxes with scenes
on Coruscant—the political heart
of the Republic. For its characters,
Attack of the Clones is a story
about the difficult choices faced by
those who wield great power, and
how easy it can be for someone
with the best of intentions to end
up treading the wrong path.
Screenwriter and director
George Lucas found the roots for
his political storyline within the
events of his formative years. World
War II had been a confl ict between
good and evil, right and wrong,
with the United States and her
allies defeating tyrannical regimes
across the world—an unbridled
heroism that inspired the original
Star Wars trilogy and the Indiana
Jones films alike. By the 1960s
and 70s, the morality play was
no longer so simple. The Civil
Rights Movement had exposed
the hypocrisy of the U.S. as an
advocate for human rights abroad
when it countenanced so much
discrimination and injustice at
home. The anti-war protests against
U.S. involvement in Vietnam
questioned whether the sacrifi ces
being demanded from American
soldiers in particular and society
as a whole were justified. By the
late 1990s, Lucas felt compelled to
use his modern myth to tell a new
cautionary tale of how powerful
political players could cause
countless innocent people to suffer
in service of maintaining their
status quo.
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