8 Utterly Boring Openings That Spoiled Great Movies
4. Star Wars Episode II: Attack Of The Clones
George Lucas (circa 1977) had it right. Starting your space epic with a good dose of action gets audiences on board. The sequels explored the limits of this idea (Empire and Jedis superb openings are more slow burner than A New Hopes) and cemented the Star Wars movie structure. While the The Phantom Menace and Revenge Of The Sith stuck to this general idea with varying degrees of success, for some reason the 2002 iteration of Lucas thought some experimenting was need for Attack Of The Clones. Starting with an explosion, but then devolving into say-how-you-feel talking, the lead up to the speeder chase is a trial of watching-someone-piece-together-a-jigsaw slowness. Needless to say, it's frustrating. It's like Lucas tried to replicate Empires gradual character roll call and stake setting (as RedLetterMedia pointed out, he wanted the films to rhyme), but forgot we didnt know the characters in their current form and, as Episode I's backlash taught us, no one really cared about the galactic politics. Episode II isnt the train wreck fans always claim (it lulls, yes, but for every Anakin whine theres an Obi-Wan fighting Jango Fett), but you can't blame those who lost interest five minutes in. They needed to be enthralled, and sadly, they weren't.
