And where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god; where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves; where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence; where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world. (Joseph Campbell)
So, a lot of
Star Wars fans are crazy about the “machete order,” where you watch IV and V, skip back to II and III, and finish on VI—without ever touching
Phantom Menace. I get it—Jar-Jar’s cringe (and probably racially problematic); plus there’s a nice parallel in ages and development between Luke and Anakin that gets emphasized if you watch this way. But ultimately I think these fans miss the point of
Star Wars, because they trust their own nostalgia, and public reception, more than they trust George Lucas. This is the kind of crazy ass-backwards justificationism that you see in e.g. fans considering Lucas’s 1997 Original Trilogy edits as “cultural vandalism.”
And the thing Lucas has always maintained is that
Star Wars is Anakin’s saga, first and foremost. We’re all attached to Luke, but it’s Vader who’s the centerpiece: our central hero in the prequel trilogy, and our central villain in the original trilogy (OT). Fans tend to disagree out of sentiment: either they’re more attached to Luke, or they find it hard to identify with a guy who massacred hundreds of little kids in cold blood. Fair—but still misses the point.
Before we get into why
Attack of the Clones is a masterpiece, we have to contextualize it within the saga, which includes a general defense of the prequels.
Star Wars is the story of Anakin, and the prequels are the most interesting and thematically—philosophically, conceptually, whatever pretentious word you want to use—richest part of the saga. Because they tell you how Anakin became Vader, and watching the process of Falling is always more informative than simply seeing someone who's already Fallen.
Star Wars isn’t special because it has a story-arc about good guy rebels taking down a big bad empire. That’s a very simple story, a a children’s story. Light and dark, good and evil, are consistent and clear-cut, with only the slightest final disruption to this logic in Vader’s
Return of the Jedi defeat of Palpatine. (See how that title doubles? It’s the Jedi in Vader who has his return. It’s still as much Anakin’s story as Luke’s.) We might even go so far as to say that the overtly "childish" elements of the prequels (see: Jar-Jar) were inserted precisely because they are otherwise more adult films than the original trilogy—full of trade negotiations, political treaties, a gridlocked senate, the conflict between romantic love and duty, the maneuverings of Palpatine, the rape and torture of Anakin’s mother, and the graphic slaughter of innocents.
What's special about
Star Wars is the Fall of the Republic, whose Fall of course goes hand-in-hand with Anakin's. What's special is watching the Republic's failures and decadence and moral lapses of the Republic—which play out through Anakin, who (as one victim of the Republic, who makes the Republic his victim) stands for its more systemic failures. Those systemic failures, almost by definition, happen off-screen, to anonymous characters who aren’t important enough to merit screen-time. What’s interesting is how damn blurry good and evil are in the prequel films. Some people take a long time to show their true colors. Some people don’t have true colors—just cultural upbringings and complex situations. Evil is done in the name of good. Good is done in the name of evil. The problems of republicanism stand side by side with the problems of tyranny, rather than falling into a politically naive good and evil dichotomy.
Star Wars is a phoenix myth, a rebirth myth, a karmic myth. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. In these mythic cycle’s, it’s always the Fall that’s what’s interesting—the Eden myth, the Golden Age myth. The redemption arc’s a feel-good tack-on. Emotional palliation, from which we learn no lessons. In the pain of the prequels is real wisdom.