One of the first things that struck me about the opening chapters of R.A. Salvatore’s Attack of the Clones novelisation was the fact that Anakin, prior to the actual plot-line of the film at least, is a lot more like the young boy we meet in The Phantom Menace and, again, in Rogue Planet (which really does qualify as Episode 1.5).
The other striking thing is how readily the opening sets up a potential Shmi/Owen Lars scenario! Seriously, it really does sound like their relationship is slightly different from the one Salvatore was trying to portray! Insult is then added to injury when Shmi decides to tell her 20 year old stepson who dotes on her, just how special Anakin was and how he was too good for Tatooine. Wow. Way to build that kid’s self-confidence, Shmi. No wonder Owen is so angsty in ANH. Although an interesting question arises later on in this though about whether Shmi would have let Anakin go if she knew she was going to meet Mister Lars.
Another surprise for me was that the actual film storyline doesn’t begin until Chapter 4 – and the first level of the Lego Star Wars Episode II segment isn’t until somewhere around Chapter 14 or 15!Ignoring the EU for a moment, one of the biggest faults of Episode II and the material relating to Episode III (although I can’t comment specifically as I’ve never seen it) is that so much stuff just comes out of nowhere. I remember how shocked I was upon seeing Maul’s death in TPM, as I really thought he was the Mini Boss for the whole prequel trilogy. The way the following two stories follow on from is seriously disjointed. Both Count Dooku and Mister Grievous require a proper introduction and this story doesn’t give you that. In fact, it barely tells who Dooku is and it never once explains why he has signed up with the Sith.
I also genuinely believe that Amidala would not have fallen into a relationship with Anakin if he hadn’t pursued her.
Sadly, as soon as the film storyline kicks in, the main characters are suddenly possessed either by bad luck or malicious spirits that causes their dialogue to become clunky and their characterisation to begin to contradict the previous set up. Actually, Jar Jar is really creepy in this…it seems as if *he’s* manipulating Anakin and Obi-Wan, not Palpatine. Meanwhile, Obi-Wan and Anakin sound uncomfortably like Howard and Vince from The Mighty Boosh respectively during the scene where the two are hanging out in Amidala’s house waiting for the assassin to strike…
The chase scene on Coruscant remains as dull as it was on film. It almost felt as if Salvatore had cut and paste a chunk from Lucas’ script and just changed the tense to make it fit. It really is that bad. I don’t know if it’s because it’s an irredeemable scene but it feels like Salvatore just couldn’t be arsed to write about it.
As the story progress it also becomes more and more evident that the Anakin present in this story is not the hopeful child from Episode I, nor is he the brash hero from the recent Clone Wars film…in fact I strongly suspect him of being Order of the Phoenix era Harry Potter! I also genuinely believe that Amidala would not have fallen into a relationship with Anakin if he hadn’t pursued her.
Amidala mentions at one point that Anakin has ‘changed so much’, whereas Anakin thinks Amidala hasn’t ‘changed one bit’. I would argue that no one has changed – Amidala because she hasn’t been allowed to progress as a character and Anakin as he’s been replaced by angst!Harry.
Jango Fett remains another problem for me. I don’t understand his role in this story at all. I mean, I know he’s supposed to be the template of the clones but I don’t understand what he’s getting out of it. Why does he need a clone of himself? Why does he need to preserve the Mandalorian legacy? It’s not as if the Mandos are on the verge of extinction because loads of them trained the Clone troopers according to sources on wookiepedia – so why didn’t he just go and get married if he wanted a kid?
(I also don’t understand the two roles of Jango in this story because, to me, I would have thought he’d need to be on Kamino for some time, not just shooting off to try and kill Amidala whenever he had a spare minute. I’d also think that maybe it’d be a good thing if he wasn’t seen kicking around the universe whilst working on this project. I also don’t understand why would Jango use a weapon that could not only come from a specific source but come from the specific source where he was holed up? If that’s one of the most dangerous bounty hunters in the galaxy, I’d hate to see what the incompetent ones are like.)
The book mentions that Jango sees in Bobba what he might have become if he had loving father…and I just can’t buy this. I don’t know if this idea originated with Salvatore or Lucas but it’s thoroughly unconvincing. I just seem really inconsistent with everything else we know about Mandalorians.
There’s an interesting comparison between Qui-Gon and Dooku, exploring their dispositions in contrast to one another, but again this is quickly passed over in favour of details that somehow seem less significant in the overall scope of the story.
From the point of view of someone who has spent the majority of the past couple of years endorsing doomed non-canon relationships, it seems as if every single possible pairing in this story works, save for the central Anakin/Padmé one the story so desperately wants to sell. I really think Anakin/Beru works, maybe Anakin/Owen but definitely Anakin/Beru.
It does feel that Mace Windu’s comments about the diminishing connection between the Jedi and the Force is just a giant get out clause for why it’s so singularly unimportant for most people in the Original Trilogy and why everyone’s willing to settle on Luke being the hero?
Another, discordant note with the Original Trilogy is the manner in which Owen Lars managed to forget C-3PO. Seriously. He’s not the kind of personality you forget, especially if he was LIVING ON YOUR FARM FOR SEVERAL YEARS.
Owen is a lot less grumpy here than in ANH. I can’t believe he developed that much of an attachment to Amidala in the short time (Amidala/Owen anyone?) she stayed on the farm that he has such anger and hate for Obi-Wan and Anakin.
There’s never any real explanation for why the Tuskens, who seem vicious if amiable in all other sources, are suddenly attacking settlements. I really can’t help but think that Lucas picked this subplot because I couldn’t think of anything else to do.
I honestly don’t get why they captured one random woman when they’ve killed others and are torturing her as they go…what’s the reason? Why would they do this? I mean it seems kind of weird to me because there’s no indication of them ever acting like this before and if they’re just trying to start a war with the colonists and this is supposed to be some kind of Wild West analogy then, again, it doesn’t work because all their hate seems to be specifically focused on one woman. It’s almost like Shmi has done something really awful to make them hate her.
In fact, considering the Tusken culture, the only thing I can think of that would make them hate him so much was that if Anakin was a Tusken baby originally that she stole?
Anakin’s vengeance against the Tusken village only complicates the matter further. I understand his motivation for killing them, and I can square that on the understanding that they are a human culture but the way the book portrays the events, it seems like Anakin simply killed a bunch of vicious animals, and seeing as how we already have a very graphic scene of Obi-Wan doing just that upon encountering some reptiles on Geonosis, it seems like the story is trying to make excuses. If Anakin killed a village of people to the last man, woman and child, then fair enough. But if he just killed a pack of animals you can’t assign the same horror that the story is attempting to paint his actions as. I honestly don’t get this at all and, again, I can’t help but think that Lucas needed a better editor.
I also don’t think Cliegg Lars would have minded too much that Anakin killed a Tusken village, especially seeing as all he ever does is spout xenophobic abuse about them. In some ways, I think his portrayal is very clever, albeit unintentional. Mister Lars is the man who saved Anakin’s mum, he’s a loving husband and a ‘good man’ in terms of society…but he’s also a complete racist with a deep rooted hatred of Tuskens. Both Salvatore and Lucas could have made more of this.
Amidala’s attempts are likewise either very clever on the part of the writers, or very stupid as it’s hard to believe she would react in this way considering her background.
“You’re like everyone else…who has killed an entire settlement of people…”
I don’t mean to harp on about this Tusken issue but both Anakin and Amidala got over the fact that he’s called an ENTIRE village of people really quickly. There’s absolutely no doubt when, five minutes later, he starts carving into giant insect people – there’s no emotional resonance, no guilt, no sensation of nausea or trembling or any kind of sense of responsibility despite the fact that he is, yet again, killing a settlement of sentient people. Which kind of makes me feel all the more that the whole ‘kills a VILLAGE’ issue isn’t a big problem for anyone else or is supposed to be George Lucas’ attempt to compensate for the fact that he was unable to write a film in which Anakin gradually fell further and further into the Dark Side.
In all honesty, the Dark Side doesn’t even really come up. It’s just accepted that Anakin is allowed to kill people.
What I find kind of interesting is that, based on what we see in TPM and the beginning of the story, everything Dooku says is right. There is corruption in the Republic and there is no way to deal with it inside of that old framework. Again, I can only think that Dooku is a bad guy because Lucas didn’t know what else to do with the character.
It’s frustrating because somewhere in here there is a good story and Salvatore is a good writer as well. Having to trawl through his recitation of the absurd ‘Droid Factory’ sequence and C-3PO’s unwitting body-swap is just painful. Whilst I still don’t care for a lot of the characterisation in this story, there is occasionally the suggestion of what makes both Obi-Wan and Anakin so awesome in the CW film and the EU books and the credit for that is all Salvatore’s, in my opinion. He really does a good job at times of bringing these characters back from the brink of absurdity – it’s just a shame that the overall direction of the story-line lets him down.
How convenient that the three lethal animals in the arena know their specific targets and don’t try eating each other or more than one prisoner…also, how did the clones know how to use the battleships they arrive in? Surely the Kaminoans didn’t build the gunships as well? Even for a clone programmed to be a soldier, half an hour from Coruscant to the Outer Rim isn’t long to learn how to use an entire technological standard.
I really still do not buy the fact that Dooku and the Trade Federation came up with the Death Star. It’s a terrible idea and again demonstrates the shorthand this story uses to try and advance to a point consistent with A New Hope but fails to actually fill in the minor details.
I also don’t believe that no one knew about Force lightning until Dooku blasted Anakin – certainly Dooku didn’t invent it because there are surely enough sources to contradict that, but I just don’t believe everyone had forgotten about it until Dooku brought it back in fashion. I do like the fact that Dooku puts Obi-Wan down with fencing though especially as Vader and Obi-Wan do a bit of fencing in ANH.
Salvatore at least writes Yoda with presence during the end confrontation (which, to his credit, is a lot more exciting than I remember it being on film – at least the Obi-Wan and Anakin portions) – I’m still against the idea of gymnastic!Yoda though. He doesn’t need to do all that to prove how powerful he is.
And then it’s all over!
I vaguely remember it on the cinema screen and wondering if they were attempting some Empire Strikes Back level of despair and hope. And, like then, I can’t help but feel that it was a wasted effort. Salvatore really tried to wring a lot more depth out of the story he was given but, at the end of the day, it felt like he effort was all for nothing.
