Many critics whom I have read on the internet cannot understand why the Jedi Order forbids romantic love in Attack of the Clones. The same critics scorn the film’s romantic dialogue.
The Jedi Order was a monastic order of warrior monks, similar to the Christian monks of the Teutonic Order during the crusades or the Buddhist monks of the Sohei Order during feudal Japan. All monastic orders require celibacy for their adherents.
George Lucas clearly indicated in A New Hope that the Jedi Knights were a religious sect, and many religious sects encourage or even require celibacy for their most devout practitioners.
Why would the Jedi Order allow romantic love? Love could be a source of temptation for a Jedi; it could be an emotional weakness which any potential enemy of the Jedi Order could exploit.
I was eight when I first watched Attack of the Clones, and even I could understand why the Jedi Order forbade romantic love when I first watched the film. It seemed self-explanatory to me.
Is the romance between Anakin and Padmé really that unrealistic? I believe it is a psychologically accurate portrayal of a woman falling in love with a man suffering from Bipolar Disorder, an occurrence which happens much more frequently than you would imagine.
The fireplace scene in which Anakin confesses his love for Padmé is a perfect portrayal of how an extremely intelligent and emotionally repressed young man would express unrequited love, especially an unrequited love bottled up inside for almost ten years. In other words, the romantic dialogue is exceedingly realistic given Anakin’s unique situation.
Critics often scoff at the moment when Anakin says, “I don’t like sand. It’s course and rough and irritating, and it gets everywhere.” But if you grew up on a desert planet and associated sand with slavery and with abandoning your mother at a young age, you would hate sand as well.
Critics often say that George Lucas gave little thought to the prequels, but George Lucas gave far more thought to the prequels than his critics have given.
Most action movies only portray a normal, stereotypical love story in which a male protagonist saves a damsel in distress, falls in love with her, seduces her, and sleeps with her. Attack of the Clones portrays a much more emotionally complex and nuanced love story than any other film I have ever seen. And that love story is not even the main plot; it is only a subplot.
Attack of the Clones contains so many action sequences: the assassination attempts, the aerial chase through the skylanes of Coruscant, the confrontation between Obi-Wan and Jango, the chase through an asteroid field, the droid factory battle, the Colosseum battle against the monsters, the battle of Geonosis, ect.
Attack of the Clones contains so many plot twists: the discovery that an entire star system was mysteriously erased from the Jedi Archives, the discovery that a clone army for the Galactic Republic was made in secret, the discovery that a deceased Jedi Master ordered the creation of the clone army, ect.
I cannot understand why anyone would hate Attack of the Clones, as so many fans of the original trilogy do.
