FAQ

It takes place in 22 BBY (Before the Battle of Yavin). Which means it takes place 10 years after The Phantom Menace and 22 years before Rogue One and A New Hope.

When a growing Separatist movement looks to divide the Galactic Republic and an attempt is made on the life of Senator Padmé Amidala (Natalie Portman), Jedi Knight Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) and his Padawan Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen) are sent to Coruscant, where Amidala is set to vote on a project to create an army to help the Jedi protect the Republic. While Anakin is charged with guarding Amidala on her return to her native planet Naboo, Obi-Wan heads for the planet Kamino where he discovers a massive army of clones has been developed by the bounty hunter Jango Fett (Temuera Morrison) as commissioned by Count Dooku (Christopher Lee), ex-Jedi and head of the Separatists. Meanwhile, Anakin and Padmé, reunited after 10 years apart, find that their feelings for each other have changed.

Like all of the Star Wars movies, Attack of the Clones is based on a screenplay written by American director and screenwriter George Lucas. A novelization of the screenplay, written by R. A. Salvatore, was released in conjunction with the movie in 2002.

Attack of the Clones takes place about ten years after Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999), and about 22 years before Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977).

If we look back at Episode IV, we will see that at no point does C-3PO give his number to Owen in the one and only conversation the pair ever have. Owen dies the next day, so this fact has no chance to come to light. In addition, we see throughout the series that C-3PO follows a standard protocol droid design which seems to be quite common. The metal plating covering C-3PO in Attack of the Clones was a rusty silver color, and not at all the shiny gold he sports in the later episodes, further obscuring his identity when he appears again, 22 years later. By that point, C-3PO had undergone a memory wipe, so he doesn't recognize Owen either (although R2-D2 presumably might). No explanation has yet been given, on the other hand, as to why Anakin simply walks off with the Lars' protocol droid without even asking. However, C-3PO is Anakin's, as he is the droid's maker (3PO even identifies Anakin as such when they meet again). Anakin gave 3PO to his mother when he left for the Jedi training, so it is no more than fair that Anakin receive the droid again after Shmi's death. Perhaps Owen had given his permission off-screen, before Shmi's funeral.

The army created by the cloners of Kamino was supposedly, according to the Prime Minister of Kamino, ordered by Jedi Master Sifo-Dyas; however, Mace Windu disputes any Jedi involvement. The genetic donor for the army, Jango Fett, also claims to have never heard the name, instead crediting the idea to a man named Tyranus, who had recruited Jango for the job (Darth Tyranus is Count Dooku's Sith alias).

In the Expanded Universe, it is discovered that Sifo-Dyas, after being manipulated into doing so, by Darth Plagueis, secretly commissioned the clone army knowing the Jedi council would not agree to the creation of an army. Dooku, a trusted friend of Sifo-Dyas, but already secretly Sidious's apprentice, recruited Jango to be the clone template. Once the clone army is commissioned, Dooku killed Sifo-Dyas, and removed Kamino from the Jedi archives. The latter part is confirmed in the Tales of the Jedi animated miniseries.

In the spin-off video game Star Wars: Bounty Hunter, which takes place shortly after The Phantom Menace and a decade prior to Attack of the Clones, Count Dooku hired Jango Fett and other bounty hunters to eliminate Komari Vosa, the leader of (the Bando Gora) a cult of Force-worshiping gangsters, at the order of Darth Sidious. Dooku placed a bounty on her head. When Jango succeeded in eliminating Vosa, Dooku (under his Sith name, Darth Tyranus) revealed that the bounty hunt was in reality a test and that the bounty hunter who succeeded in eliminating Vosa would go with him to Kamino and create the perfect army of clone warriors in his image (which Sidious had also ordered Dooku to find a host for the clone army as part of his plot). Jango accepted and agreed on only one condition: having an unaltered clone for himself. And thus, Boba Fett was conceived.

In Rogue One, it is shown that every kyber crystal (the crystal used to create the lightsaber blade) is clear. In the new canon novel Ahsoka, it's explained that the person's affinity with the force that will determine the colour of the saber blade. A Sith's blade is generally red, because they have corrupted the crystal with the dark side. The colour of the crystal will stay the same no matter who wields the lightsaber, however if the crystal is re-forged in a new lightsaber, the colour will re-align with the new user.

In many Star Wars Legends novels and spin-off series, it is established that, as part of Jedi training, the Padawan creates his/her own lightsaber. The type of crystals used in the hilt ultimately determine the color of the saber. Sith Lords generally use synthetic crystals that make the saber red in color. Jedi use a variety of colors. Some books attempt to put a meaning behind the colors, however George Lucas has stated that there is none. It is more a preference of the owner of the lightsaber.

In an interview, George Lucas said he had the intention of using the yellow lightsabers in the battle on Geonosis as the movie introduction to them; however, due to the desert landscaping of the planet, the yellow blades did not work well in long shots and therefore were scrapped. Outside of canon, it has been stated many times that Samuel L. Jackson (the actor who played Mace Windu in the movies) requested his own color of lightsaber. He asked Lucas whether purple was a possibility and Lucas said "you may get purple." (This exchange was captured by the on-set documentary crew and appears in part ten of the "Web Documentaries" section, entitled "Good to G.O.", on the Attack of the Clones DVD.) So the purple saber may have no more symbolism than that Jackson wanted his own color (as purple is Jackson's favourite colour and tries to work it in to his wardrobe in many of his films).

Dooku's aim is to start a galactic civil war, and so he appears to be playing both sides against each other. As Yoda points out at the end: being on the dark side of the Force, Dooku uses deception and creates mistrust to confuse his enemies. After Obi-Wan's capture, he claims to have good intentions towards the Jedi, and not to know Jango Fett. But we soon learn that this is merely a trick to get Obi-Wan to join him, as later scenes prove that Dooku is Jango's employer. But it is not unthinkable that Dooku is trying to get Obi-Wan to join the dark side of the Force, in order to destroy Darth Sidious. During the entire saga, we see Sith apprentices scheming to overpower their masters (Darth Vader twice states his intention to overthrow his master), so perhaps Dooku was partly sincere when he asked for Obi-Wan's help in destroying the Sith master, although he left out the part of wanting to become master himself. When Obi-Wan refused, Dooku probably abandoned this plan, also possibly because he judged Obi-Wan a disappointing opponent at the end, and thus an unworthy ally. He apparently also knew that in revealing the knowledge of the existence of his Sith master, Sidious, the risks are minimal for Dooku who being aware that the Jedi know that the Sith are master manipulators predicted exactly that Obi-Wan and the rest of the Jedi would not believe him about Sidious controlling the Galactic Senate from behind the scenes. Later, during the climatic battle sequence, Dooku claims to the Viceroy of the Trade Federation that he does not know how the Galactic Republic or the Jedi was able to produce such a large clone army that quickly. This is clearly a lie because, at the end, Dooku tells Sidious that everything is going as planned. It is safe to assume that Dooku most likely ordered the creation of the clone army himself, and recruited Jango under his alias, Tyranus, as well as bringing together the Separatists and their droid army through financial means.

As Jango is ducking into the entry hatch on his ship during his escape from Kamino, he's seen to strike his head on the lower lip of the door. The obvious explanation would of course be that Jango simply did not duck quick enough to miss the closing door. However, animation supervisor Rob Coleman has described this as an inside joke referencing an actual mistake that made it into the final cut of the original Star Wars. In that movie, when Imperial stormtroopers break into the control room where the droids are hiding, one on the right-hand side of the screen can be seen running face-first into the lower edge of the door; the implication is that the stormtroopers, who were revealed in the prequels to have been cloned from Jango, had inherited this slightly clumsy trait from him as well. However, this is almost certainly a case of the filmmakers sharing a winking reference rather than an actual, serious explanation. After all, most of the stormtroopers appear to be regular men.

As the Trade Federation is still under investigation following their illegal actions in The Phantom Menace, it is conceivable that their weapons production has been halted by the Galactic Senate for the time being. If this is true, then they may have started an illegal factory hidden on Geonosis. The secret production might necessitate using local minerals and ores (the surface of Geonosis is also quite red), as large shipment of the regular materials would attract too much suspicion. This would go some way to explaining why the droids look different. It could also just be that in preparing for the coming war, the Trade Federation has sped up production and therefore opened more facilities to create more droids in a shorter time. Perhaps shortage of the normal materials forced them to use other (local) materials. Also, there is the fact that this movie takes place ten years after The Phantom Menace.

No. This was deliberate. The weapon is called a seismic charge. Sound engineer Ben Burtt explained in an interview with FilmSound.org that he was searching for an action sequence "which allowed the explosion to be featured in a way that I could exploit the idea of delayed sound in space, what I call an 'audio black hole', an explosion so cosmic that the energy of the sound is unable to escape at the time of ignition, but is released a moment later." One cannot hear the explosion until the material is close enough—delayed after the detonation. Science dictates that there would be no sound in space at all, since there is no air or sound medium of any kind. However, in the case of a seismic charge, the sound would be more realistic than other Star Wars space sounds, as a seismic charge is a binary convergence device; it detonates when two substances are allowed to mix and are exited by an electromagnetic supercharger inside the weapon. The detonated mixture would create its own temporary medium for sound in its shock wave. Outside of the shock wave, there would be no sound, but the Star Wars movies have always fudged this fact for dramatic effect. The seismic charge bombs are thought to be modeled after underwater depth charges used against underwater submarines which give off a similar sound explosion. In the DVD commentary track, Burtt acknowledges what appears to be a mistake. He says that he and George Lucas debated the sound effect and in the end, Lucas agreed it would be a dramatic addition to the scene. The effect is the same on the DVD and Blu-ray disc as it is in the theatrical run of the movie.

It is said in the other stories that between the events of the sequel—Revenge of the Sith—and Episode IV, there was an uprising on Kamino where the cloners used an army of clones to rebel against the Galactic Empire but was defeated by the Empire. After the uprising, the Emperor ordered a new supply of clone recruits different from the Jango Fett clones. At the same time the Empire began recruiting large numbers of non-clone or Imperially-unaffiliated men into the Imperial stormtrooper units as well. By the time of the events in Episode IV, the stormtroopers were a mix of recruits and clones made from several different cloning templates. In the Star Wars Rebels animated series, some former Clone troopers appear in the second season, stating that the Empire decommissioned their clone squadron, and by this, it can be assumed that the same happened with most of the original clones, since they would already be getting too old for traditional combat due to a side effect of their growth acceleration causing them to also experience senescence (growing decrepit and dying) more quickly.

Originally the plan was the release each Star Wars movie, post-converted to 3D every February, starting with The Phantom Menace, in 2012. Though many fans complained about having to invest six years into getting to see each Star Wars movie in 3D. In late 2012, it was announced that both Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith would be released back-to-back in late 2013. However, once Walt Disney Studios acquired Lucasfilm, and the production of Episode VII was announced. Disney eventually declared that they were postponing the conversion to 3D and release of any more of the previous movies in order to focus on Episode VII. They also added that after production wraps on Episode VII they may continue to release the previous movies in 3D. Since then, there has been no word at all on the 3D. Given the fading demand for 3D films, it's likely they won't be converted.

In order for the film to obtain a PG rating in the United Kingdom (where ratings are issued by the British Board of Film Classification), the fight between Jango Fett and Obi-Wan Kenobi on Kamino was cut to remove the head-butt. All cuts were waived for the latest releases of the movie on Blu-ray and DVD.