when pop culture critics talk about attack of the clones, they often frame it as the worst film in the worst part of the star wars’ franchise (although the modern era has certainly given us some more contenders)—a blight upon the star wars legacy and all who find identity in it. but that’s not how i remember it.
growing up, i didn’t know I wasn’t “supposed to” like star wars—a benefit of having parents who weren’t overly concerned with enforcing traditional gender roles (and probably also my stint as a weird homeschool kid). no doubt spurred by my father’s affection for the pulpy american science fiction stories he grew up with in the 50s, i spent my childhood watching lots of media with “star” and “earth” in the title: star trek. star wars. earth: final conflict. earth 2. if it was about characters banding together to explore the unknown, then my family borrowed it from the library or found it on TV.
it wasn’t until much later, when i’d properly made it past the mountain edges of my white, poor, rural community and my family unit didn’t loom so large in my day-to-day life that i began to understand that a girl liking “fanboy” stories like star trek or star wars was meant to be noteworthy. what a monumental, collective failure of imagination and empathy on the part of our popular culture.
growing up, i didn’t know i wasn’t ‘supposed to’ to like star wars…
attack of the clones came out 20 years ago this week (happy birthday!). in the spring of 2002, i was a 14-year-old finishing up my freshman year of high school. i was living in the worst place my working class family probably had ever lived (unfortunately, kind of a competitive category): a dilapidated former hotel that had been hastily half-renovated by my dear father, who was trying his best with not nearly enough resources. but i had my own room (there is no shortage of rooms in an old hotel) that i could paint any color i wanted. i painted it pink, layering the walls with tacked-up images of girl-power athletes and hayden christensen in anticipation of the way i would be spending my summer: playing various sports and drowning myself in my favorite stories.
when i tell you i was hyped for attack of the clones, i need you to understand the many, many ways in which i mean that. when hayden christensen was cast in attack of the clones, he was an unknown to many, but not to this kid. i had spent my eighth grade year obsessing over higher ground, a troubled teen wilderness camp melodrama that, in addition to christensen, starred a.j. cook, kandyse mcclure, jewel staite, meghan ory, and joe lando.
when fox family cancelled my favorite series in 2000 after only one season, i wrote into the network to ask for its renewal, not yet fully aware of how these decisions were based not on mini bottles of tabasco sauce or packets of peanuts, but on a network’s bottom line. (and, at the time, the network in question was being sold to disney.) while i have irrationally never forgiven fox for cancelling higher ground, seeing my tv crush christensen cast in one of my favorite movie universes shortly after was a salve for my wounds. somehow, i was able to carry on by writing higher ground fanfiction in my journal, listening to sheryl crow’s “i shall believe” (featured in the climactic scene of the last ever episode of higher ground), and looking forward to christensen’s burgeoning career as a film star.
i had also grown up watching star wars; i quite literally do not remember a time when i did not know the story of a galaxy far, far away. my family had a well-worn taped version of empire strikes back; it was missing the first few scenes of the film and therefore started with luke hanging upside-down in the wampa cave, but i still managed to piece the context together from various clues. i loved listening to my dad’s story of having seen star wars in theaters—how the entire room burst into applause when the credits rolled. i liked to imagine myself sitting alongside him in that theater and what it must have felt like to be part of that moment when pop culture changed forever.
but i’m not a time traveler, so, circa 2002, i had never seen a star wars film in theaters. i wasn’t yet alive for the release of the original trilogy, and—even though my dad loved summer blockbusters with his entire heart and soul—my parents had limited income to take their four kids to the movies. (my brother got to see phantom menace, paid for by his friend’s family, and i don’t want to talk about it.) anywayyy, attack of the clones was my first chance. i had a $7.25/hour summer job lined up (💰) so, even though my beloved local movie theater would only ever sell out a screening once in my entire time going there (premiere night for lord of the rings: the fellowship of the ring), i convinced my friend to convince her stepdad to buy us advanced tickets (actually, a movie theater gift card from a local motel that was counted as a ticket at the door).
sure enough, my friends and i were among only a handful of people who attended the opening night screening. but i didn’t care too much about that. despite that moving story about my dad watching a new hope in theaters, in this case, i wasn’t actually there for the collective experience, which was always limited in the desperately rural northern new hampshire. i was there fore the giant screen and the dolby surround sound and for the social etiquette that dictated no one talk while the movie was playing. most of all, i was there to wrap myself in the next installment of the star wars story—a plot i already knew because i had bought and read the attack of the clones novelization that had come out a few weeks prior. i was there to see the plot and emotions realized on the screen by some of of my faves—yes, christensen, but also the effortlessly cool natalie portman, who would be reprising her role as a brave and stalwart political figure with cool hair and an even cooler gaggle of female friend-employees (i really hope they got paid) who would (and often did) sacrifice their lives for her when assassination plots came calling. (honestly, also very romantic.)
reader, i had a pretty good time! it’s not like i didn’t see the film’s flaws (discussed ad nauseam elsewhere on the internet, if you want to check that out). even as a teen, i had a highly developed critical eye that i would call upon to write television without pity-style recaps of the latest episode of alias “for my friend,” who was only the most casual of fans of the spy drama. of course i could already pull stories apart to see what they were made of—i had spent my childhood using pop culture to access narratives different from the stories i saw played out around me.
i’m not here to tell you attack of the clones is a misunderstood masterpiece (it’s not). i am here to say that i remember the experience much more fondly than most of the adult male film critics of the era who led the cultural conversation. perhaps this is because, as a higher ground fan, i was better prepared for what christensen’s performance might look like in the film. (even more so than a new hope‘s luke skywalker, teen boy anakin is petulant, confused, and emotionally all over the place, which basically made higher ground an extended audition for the role.) past that, as someone who was growing up socialized as a girl, i didn’t have the same attachments to idealized performances of traditional masculinity as some of the more vocal humans in the greater audience. where some may have seen anakin’s emotional volatility as weakness; i simply saw it as a teen boy struggling with his mentor’s expectation of stoicism all while dealing with the trauma of losing his mother and also his crush/obsession with objectively the coolest character in the film. (but cool it with the murder, anakin.)
attack of the clones is not a great movie. but it’s entertaining, occasionally epic, and unabashedly romance-forward in a way that, unbeknownst to teen girl me, would only become rarer in our summer blockbuster season once marvel entered the game. and, in that spring of 2002, it had a lot of what teen girl nerd kayti burt was looking for: time spent in a world i loved ✔️. some of my favorite actors in one of my favorite franchises ✔️. a doomed love story playing out against a backstory of political intrigue and jedi interpersonal drama ✔️. new and aspirational hairstyles from padme. ✔️ was this film, dare i say, for me? (you don’t get to answer that question—only i get to.)
“mainstream” culture likes to pretend that fighting is more interesting than flirting, but it is an arbitrary construction of story hierarchy. as a kid, i wonderfully didn’t understand the forced framing that decides certain genres belong to certain groups of people, and then proceeds to rank those genres based on how much power each respective group has in our society. my love for science fiction and action stories didn’t feel any more or less important than my love for stories that prioritized interpersonal complexity and the interior action of emotion. and if i waited for stories that only featured people who looked and lived exactly like me, then i would never get to be a part of the pop culture conversation.
‘mainstream’ culture likes to pretend that fighting is more interesting than flirting…
there’s immense value in seeing yourself reflected onscreen in stories that are authentic to your lived experience, and we need to keep talking about that. but there’s also a freeness to being able to see yourself in snippets of an “other”—in traits and choices, if not the entirety of bulk of a fictional character. how limiting it must be to believe you can only see yourself in fictional characters who look and live like you, or to believe that canon is where story or character stops.
genres don’t belong to any one intersection of demographics. pop culture is for all of us because culture, by definition, is shared. pop culture is for all of us, even when an absurdly narrow demographic of people get to shape which movies get made and the critical consensus that follows. pop culture is for all of us, even when corporations can’t figure out a way to squeeze profit from you or have decided it’s not even worth trying. you get to decide which characters to identify with and how to build transformative frameworks around them when necessary. you get to decide which stories are for you. you get to decide how attack of the clones, for better and worse, is remembered.
also, i hate the beach and anakin skywalker was right about sand.
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