Attack of the Clones

Irony, Thy Name Is Episode II

HAMLET

Now might I do it pat, now he is praying;

And now I'll do't. And so he goes to heaven;

And so am I revenged. That would be scann'd:

A villain kills my father; and for that,

I, his sole son, do this same villain send

To heaven.

O, this is hire and salary, not revenge.

He took my father grossly, full of bread;

With all his crimes broad blown, as flush as May;

And how his audit stands who knows save heaven?

But in our circumstance and course of thought,

'Tis heavy with him: and am I then revenged,

To take him in the purging of his soul,

When he is fit and season'd for his passage?

No!

Up, sword; and know thou a more horrid hent:

When he is drunk asleep, or in his rage,

Or in the incestuous pleasure of his bed;

At gaming, swearing, or about some act

That has no relish of salvation in't;

Then trip him, that his heels may kick at heaven,

And that his soul may be as damn'd and black

As hell, whereto it goes. My mother stays:

This physic but prolongs thy sickly days.

Exit.

KING CLAUDIUS

[Rising] My words fly up, my thoughts remain below:

Words without thoughts never to heaven go.

In this exchange from Act III Scene III of Hamlet, our tragic hero agonizes over whether or not to kill his uncle, King Claudius. For those unfamiliar with the plot of Hamlet, Claudius murdered Hamlet’s father. Hamlet is tasked by his father’s ghost with avenging his death. At this moment in the play, Hamlet has come across Claudius kneeling in prayer, vulnerable and unaware.

Hamlet hesitates (he’s Hamlet, it’s his shtick), fearing that sending Claudius to his final reward would be, well, an actual reward. He decides against killing Claudius in flagrate precaria (excuse my semi-Latin), lest he accidentally ensure the praying man ‘tis heaven-bound.

The moment Hamlet leaves, the audience hears the Shakespearean equivalent of a groaner: Claudius declares his prayers were empty and didn’t reach heaven at all. Hamlet has lost this opportunity to avenge his father for nothing. If you wanted a better example of dramatic irony, I couldn’t find you one.

What, pray tell, does this have to do with Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones? Because it is the Star Wars film defined by irony.

For those unfamiliar with the plot of Attack of the Clones, (and really, if you are, I’m surprised you’re reading this Substack), it consists of two parallel stories, one mystery and one romance, that serve as a precursor to the Clone Wars. Both are set in motion by an assassination attempt on now-Senator Amidala (seems like a step down from Queen, but hey, I just work here) as her shiny ship lands on Coruscant. She’s arrived to vote against the creation of an Army of the Republic, which will ultimately result in her second cinematic failure to be a pacifist.

The first of these stories, the mystery, revolves around Detective Obi-Wan Kenobi, as he talks to sources, searches the Jedi Archives, is aided by the (perhaps questionable) wisdom of children, and does some good old fashioned leg-work. He delves into the scant evidence he’s got - a toxic dart and that’s about it.

What does he learn? Besides the origin of Boba Fett? He learns, in spite of the debate in Galactic Senate, that the Republic already has an army, created mysteriously and in secret, ordered up by Jedi Master Sifo-Dyas.

(Side note: it’s painfully obvious that some version of this script just called the person who ordered the clones Sido-Dyas aka Sidious, and that it was changed in re-shoots. It created a whole kind of mystifying character with a complicated backstory, but honestly, the movie makes more sense on its face if ‘Sifo-Dyas’ is just barely disguised Sidious passing himself off as a dead Jedi. So it goes.)

While it’s certainly ironic that the very army everyone is trying to prevent already exists, but there’s another irony to be found in the proceedings. The Jedi are trying to uncover a secret kept from the Senate that might threaten the peace. Then, when they do discover the secret, Mace Windu and Yoda decide to keep their own inability to sense these self-same dangers…. a secret. “Multiply our adversaries will,” says Yoda, justifying obfuscation, even though he’s tasked Obi-Wan Kenobi with uncovering the truth.

In parallel, we watch young Anakin Skywalker (performed by a debuting Hayden Christensen) travel as a protector with Padme to Naboo. We are treated to a tragically unhip love story. He menacingly flirts, she blankly dismisses him. He says ‘I’m kind of a fascist’ as they sit under a wall of waterfalls, to which she responds with side-eye and laughter. He rides a space-tick-cow and falls off of it, nearly breaking his neck, only to laugh at how foolish she was to worry and literally rolling around with her in the grass. These two kids do not seem like they’re good at dating, which makes sense honestly, they’re pretty sheltered.

Eventually, they have the infamous scene were Anakin gives her the worst, most cringey teenage boy emo speech (“From the moment I met you, all those years ago…” yes, I can recite the whole thing by heart), utterly earnest, which prompts Natalie Portman to stand up in a costume that can only be described as snug, and declare that they ‘live in a real world, come back to it, you’re studying to become a Jedi, I’m a Senator!'‘ with a line-reading that makes their circumstances sound like, well, make-believe.

But that’s the execution and production, not the story. At face value, Padme is absolutely right. They cannot live secret lives. Even Doomed Anakin has to admit to Doomed Padme that she’s right. “It would destroy us.” And, as we know, they are not going to listen to their own sage advice to themselves, and do what young people have done in fiction and non-fiction alike: fall in love with someone they totally shouldn’t. They’re right about what's to come, they accurately predict their fates. Their love story could seem star-crossed and defiant, if we didn’t know they were walking in to a trap they are describing in eerie detail.

It makes for the least happy wedding ever committed to film, as Anakin and Padme kiss and take each other’s hands (sort of) and turn to face the horizon, with only Artoo and Threepio as witnesses. The music swells as we watch them seal their fates.

These stories converge, though, with the inception of the Clone Wars. Remember, in 2002, when Episode II was released, the Clone Wars were not an animated series that had been running for over a decade. Instead, they were a long-imagined mystery, hinted at by only one line in A New Hope in 1977.

And what do we find out, after a twenty five year wait? The Clone Wars were, in fact, a conspiracy designed to divide and conquer the galaxy. The Clone Wars were a way to inspire fear and threat, morally compromise the Jedi, and turn the Republic into the Empire.

It’s all summed up rather elegantly with one image from Battle of Geonosis. Although the Jedi arrive to save their captured allies, they are too few to defeat an entire army of Battle Droids. Outnumbered and literally rounded-up, the Jedi declare they will not be hostages in the face of certain death. Then, John Williams blazing, flanked by Clone Troopers in a Republic Gunship, Jedi Master Yoda himself arrives as a savior. The Calvary has arrived.

It’s emblematic of the central, unnerving, ironic truth that defines the last act of Episode II, and really the whole of Attack of the Clones: every time we watch a Jedi General stand before a squadron of clone troopers, they are serving the designs of the Sith.

There are other examples of dramatic irony laced throughout the film.

• Count Dooku confronts Obi-Wan Kenobi and tempts him with a “join me” in classic Star Wars Sith mode. Obi-Wan rejects Dooku as a liar, despite Dooku telling him the truth.

• Anakin returns to Tatooine to find his mother and reconnect with his past, only to find she’s the reason he is driven deeper into darkness.

• Padme tells Anakin she loves him because she thinks they’re going to die, an act that brings about her death…eventually.

• In an effort to fill Padme’s shoes as a Senator, Jar Jar Binks is the catalyst for the very militarism that Padme traveled to Coruscant to prevent.

But irony more essential to the film than individual moments. There’s no other Star Wars film that works quite like Attack of the Clones. The original trilogy is an old-fashioned adventure with surprises and twists, but what you see is what you get. The sequels continue the story of the original trilogy in a similar fashion. Both of the other prequels traffic in foresight and foreshadowing (“Anakin Skywalker, meet Obi-Wan Kenobi!”), but they’re either at a point that’s a little too early to mine irony (9 year olds don’t inspire much foreboding), or at a point in the story where the inevitable is unfolding (Volcano Planet! Birth of the Twins!). Irony, though, is in the pores and veins of Episode II. At every turn the characters’ efforts to do good are used to create a greater evil.

In Hamlet, the Price of Denmark’s overthought attempt to do the right thing results in dire consequences for all. If he had simply killed Claudius in that moment, Claudius’s false prayers would not have been rewarded, his father would have been avenged, and Hamlet himself would have survived the play.

In Attack of the Clones, Anakin Skywalker, Senator Amidala, Yoda, Mace Windu and Obi-Wan Kenobi fight to prevent a war, to prevent an army, and live up to their lofty ideals. But they are present at the very beginning of the war, they fight alongside that army, and they compromise their pacifism and Jedi Codes. At every step their best efforts, their heroism and credulity, aid in transforming their beloved Republic into everything they have sworn to destroy.