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This is MJ. Welcome to my fully operational Star Wars podcast as I discuss Star Wars Episode 2 Attack of the Clones in summer of 2023 as I am on my journey towards the Ahsoka streaming series.

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And I watched, well that's pretty much it. I watched Attack of the Clones today. I thoroughly enjoyed it and I want to talk about it a little bit.

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So, as I'm doing these episodes, I'm thinking about different ways I could do them, different ways I should be doing them, and I'm going to have to change up my method a little bit.

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But you don't really care about that. You just want to hear me talk about this movie. This fabulous, fabulous movie. So, I'm jumping right into it.

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I really find that despite the fact that it's a nearly insane move to jump 10 years from one movie to the next, it works remarkably well and it's very interesting.

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I think perhaps, well I don't know. Yeah, the story of Attack of the Clones is very interesting.

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So, if you break it down from, you know, you started with Episode 1, because I watch these movies in order because they tell a single story in order.

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You start with Episode 1. It is the story of this young queen who fights to free her people and she assembles a group of allies along the way.

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In Episode 2, she and those allies have a sort of reunion. Well, they do have a reunion.

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She's actually working with Jar Jar all along over the course of the 10 years or so. It could be less than that, that he's a senator or whatever.

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Which we don't know his history, but it doesn't matter. It doesn't factor in here.

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Because what the film gives you is the story of this queen who is now, or who's no longer being threatened with invasion on her planet.

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She's no longer a queen. She's now a senator representing her planet in the Galactic Public. It's like this bigger, wider scope story.

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Because originally it was just her protecting her planet, which I know it's a whole planet of people, but in the galaxy where there's thousands of planets, thousands of planets or star systems with planets, then one planet, what is one planet?

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It's a town, it's a village, it's a city, whatever. It doesn't really matter in the Grand, well, I mean, morally it matters because every person matters.

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But beyond that, it's not that big of a deal given the whole scale of things.

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Especially when you have, you know, there's slavery on Tatooine still at that time and there's, you know, I'm sure much worse things happening other places in the galaxy.

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So now she's trying to prevent a war from happening and the Sith are back and we see that they are still manipulating things.

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They're almost even deeper though, even farther, even more hidden and cloaked in how they are manipulating things to start a war.

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In fact, one of the last lines in the movie is, has the war begun?

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I'm paraphrasing. Has the war began? Yes, my master. Things are proceeding quite well or better than expected or something along those lines.

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And that's amongst the Sith. That's Darth Tyrannus, who we knew as we were introduced to as Count Dooku, a political idealist, not a murderer, who turns out to be both a political idealist and a murderer.

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Well, maybe he's not a political idealist. Maybe he's a Sith devotee and therefore he's willing to do whatever he has to do in order to bring about the Sith's machinations.

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And he's serving Darth Sidious, who was the master of Darth Maul in the previous movie.

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So we see this, that the Sith have succeeded again, that the victory in Phantom Menace was a hollow victory because, and that wasn't really apparent in the movie.

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Looking at it afterwards, thinking about it, you can see that kind of, but in this movie, it's directly called into question.

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Obi-Wan at the end of the movie says, without the clones, we wouldn't have won today or we wouldn't have had victory like we did.

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And you know what it says? Victory. There's no victory. There is no win here. Nobody came out on top.

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Or we certainly didn't, because now the Clone War has begun.

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And it's really interesting because while the overall story of the movie, basically it pushes, in the course of this movie, the Republic is pushed from the edge of war into all out war.

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And things are, I don't know, things are like really ratcheted up and escalated in a really interesting way.

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That gigantic story is countered or counterbalanced or has, that gigantic story is the backdrop, rather, you could say, for this burgeoning romance between Anakin and Padme.

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It's ten years, he's 19 years old now, she's 24. She's been a senator for some time, I think a couple years now.

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And they're reunited because there's an attempt on her life and Chancellor Palpatine is still chancellor ten years later.

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I don't know if that means it's a ten year term, it's a five year term, he got reelected once, or if he gets reelected every single year, or what the deal is.

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But regardless, he's still holding on to that position of power.

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He's still in that place where he was, you know, thanks to, thanks to manipulating, or oops, I'm sharing too much, based on his interactions with Amidala in the last movie, right?

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So now he's empowered and in place and he suggests that Padme would be comfortable being escorted, being protected, being guarded by Jedi who she knows.

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Obi-Wan comes up specifically, but Anakin is with Obi-Wan as well because he's his padawan learner, right?

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So he goes along with him and learns everything he has to learn from his master by living with his master, living like his master, and imitating his master's actions and methodology of things.

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So, if, so, despite all that being said, a large part of this movie is Obi-Wan Kenobi's movie.

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We get to see him take on the investigation, we get to see him jump out a window ridiculously, and you know, not die because he's hanging on to this droid,

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which apparently, despite the fact that all it had to do was carry bugs is powerful enough that it can carry a, you know, 180 pound, 200 pound man through the air and fly around with him in crazy ways.

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Anyway, but we get to see like this weird kind of detective story where he's, you know, he's gum shoeing, he's chasing down clues and leads so that he can ultimately uncover who the assassin is

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or who's behind the assassination attempt on Padme, but it ultimately, interestingly enough, leads him into the Geonosian, I don't know, death pit or whatever, and into the first battle of the Clone Wars.

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That's all really interesting, and we get to see a lot of Obi-Wan's character, much more, you know, he takes over the Qui-Gon position,

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and I guess you could say Anakin takes over the Obi-Wan position in this movie where you have the Jedi Master having the primary role and then his padawan having a secondary role,

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and I would argue that Anakin definitely has much more of a prominent role than Obi-Wan did in the last movie.

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It's very different, and it feels unique, and there's not all this, there's not like a replay or, there's no, you're not tired of it because this isn't something that you're seeing, you're getting to see them share the story,

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and I mean, but the stories that they're involved in are so different from each other, it makes it really interesting.

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Like I said, Obi-Wan's doing this detective thing, he makes one of the greatest characters in all of Star Wars, Dexter Jettster, who I absolutely love and adore, and I don't quite know why, but he's amazing,

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and I just was grinning, I was grinning watching his whole scene with Obi-Wan, it's just, it's absolutely fabulous.

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So you've got Obi-Wan doing this old school detective thing, and he goes to a 50s diner and talks to a cook who's like a Navy veteran, or I don't even know what he is,

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but he's got a lot of experience, and he's an interesting contact that Obi-Wan is able to get information from, and he sends him on this quest.

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Something else interesting that is pointed out in Dexter's diner, and that gets brought up, basically this point of the story is established in three modes,

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and that point is that the Jedi need to be careful not to be arrogant, and that the Jedi hubris will hurt them or lead to their downfall,

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and really that, you know, the hubris, the arrogance can be said to bring about the downfall of anybody, but it's like, it's a story point in this movie.

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So, point one, yeah, point one, the Kamino Sabre dart which Jango Fett fires at Sam Wessel to kill her, Dexter tells Obi-Wan what it is,

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and he tells him what it is because he recognizes it because he's seen something like it before out, I don't know if he was in the, I don't know if he was, he was prospecting somewhere, so we know that,

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and he knows that it comes from the Kaminoans, and it has to do, he's able to know that because of the form function of the dart,

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it has these notches or ridges in it that are a telltale sign that was made by the Kaminoans.

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So, he establishes the point that the Jedi's analysis droids only look at symbols and they don't look at the different details, like the notches in the actual physical form of the item,

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and that failure to recognize or appreciate the difference between knowledge and wisdom, as is said in the movie, is a problem, and it's why the Jedi droids fail to identify the Sabre darts,

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and had they done that, they would have led him to Kamino, well, they wouldn't have led him to Kamino anyway because the Jedi archives do not have Kamino in their system anymore,

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and Jacosnu, the like, librarian of the Jedi, tells Obi-Wan that if something doesn't exist in the archives, it must not exist in reality,

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so this old woman, this old Jedi, is so sure of herself and of the Jedi archives that she knows that there's no way that they're lacking this information,

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she's so prideful and arrogant and sure of what the Jedi have that she just is blind to the reality that we could be mistaken, and this mistake could be deadly,

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and if we're mistaken in this one area, where else are we mistaken, and where could we have humility and look at ourselves and say,

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maybe we don't know everything that we need to know about this, and that point is brought up, I believe, when is it brought up,

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well, anyway, Yoda, Mace, and Obi-Wan are in a hallway talking, and Yoda mentions that some of the, even the masters, even older Jedi who should know better,

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are arrogant and too sure of themselves, and then we get to see, I think it's the Dexter instance, first where he mentions the droids,

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then it's Yoda mentioning in the hallway, and then it's Jacosnu displaying the arrogance of the Jedi in full force,

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and those three elements make a really interesting plot thread, and you could say it even ties back into Ki-Adi-Mundi saying that Dooku is a political idealist,

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he's not a murderer, and Mace saying there's no way he could be the assassin, or could have hired an assassin, he used to be a Jedi,

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it's not in his character to do this sort of thing, and then who but Mace Windu himself is pulling a lightsaber on Dooku in the Geonosis arena,

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so it's very interesting that they're so blind, that they're so foolish, that they're so foolhardy, and that's how they've been operating for,

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I don't know if it's ten years, or if it's been more than ten years, but Mace at one point says to Yoda,

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I think it's time that we reveal to the Senate or whatever, that the Jedi Council can no longer sense the Force,

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or sense things, see things, in the way that we used to be able to, and Yoda doesn't want to be transparent about this,

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because he's afraid that it'll multiply their enemies, which I think that's a bit of wisdom, and it's dishonest, yes,

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but in like Sun Tzu's The Art of War, he talks about the fact that you want your enemy to believe that you are more powerful than you are,

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you don't want to reveal the enemy, or to the enemy, your weaknesses, you don't even want to deal with the enemy at a time when it's to their advantage,

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you basically want to hide and deceive your enemy as long as you can, and then sneak attack them or lure them into a trap,

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and then immediately kill them, so that the battle's over, the battle wins the war, and there isn't this prolonged suffering to many people,

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because Sun Tzu also says that no society, no people have ever profited from prolonged war, and that's a paraphrase there,

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and I believe that's true, so it is wise on Yoda's part to not want to reveal this weakness to anybody,

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because it would just make things worse for them, oh you're vulnerable, here I'm going to attack you in all these different places,

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I'm going to test your vulnerability to see how far I can go and how I can exploit you,

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and how I can kill you and cause the deaths of many other people or harm to many other people, so that's interesting,

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but again, that all came from me discussing Obi-Wan's cool detective story where he's finding out all this stuff,

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and ultimately it leads him to facing Count Dooku, who we discover, who it's revealed to us, who Dooku tells us himself was Qui-Gon's master,

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and it was interesting, he says, just as you were once his apprentice, disciple, padawan, he was my padawan,

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and it's kind of a, I don't know, you would be accused of being a sloppy tell instead of show,

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but I mean, how else are you supposed to communicate that information? Do a flashback? The way that Dooku carries himself,

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his bearing, the way he speaks, it all makes sense in the context that that type of character would expose it, kind of like that,

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and I don't think it's a negative thing at all, I think it's impactful, and I think it's like a verbal chess,

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or it's like a verbal tactic to maneuver to, there's a Star Wars book I'm thinking, it's not Shime, anyway, whatever,

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he's basically using his persuasion and his D20 to see if he can persuade Obi-Wan into being open to hearing him,

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listening to him, and joining forces with him against supposedly the Sith that is controlling things in the Republic,

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and anyway, yeah, that whole conspiracy of the Sith is this bigger story that I guess, I don't know if I want to talk about that right now,

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if I want to talk about it more when I talk about the next movie, but I probably will, I'll just leave it for now,

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so you have this crazy, like, the Sith are pushing the galaxy towards war, the Jedi are blind to that,

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while trying to do the right thing, Obi-Wan and Anakin are presented as an option to help protect Padme,

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and figure out who the assassin is, so they can stop the assassin, but that action, that arc, that trajectory that they're set on,

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ultimately leads to Obi-Wan finding Boba Fett on Kamino, chases Boba Fett from Kamino, or Jango Fett, rather, Jango and his son Boba,

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who's an unaltered clone, to Geonosis, where the Geonosians are working with the Trade Federation and other people as these separatists,

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and they are planning on, you know, building, they basically have a weapons foundry where they are trying to make forces

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so that they can break away from the Republic. Now, you might ask yourself, why would it be necessary to fight and kill people

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who you are in a relationship with if you no longer want to be in a relationship with them? And I think that's an excellent question.

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Because of the American Civil War, there is an assumption that the only way for a state or a smaller part of a nation to break away

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from the other part of the nation and have sovereignty, have independence, have self-rule and self-control, is for them to be,

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is for there to be a war first, and then, I guess, if the person who wants to break away wins the war, they get to break away

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and be free and be sovereign, and if the person who is being left by the other person wins the war, then they get to force them to be

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with them, to stay with them, to remain with them. And I just want to ask you real quick, how moral is it that if someone wants to leave

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a relationship with you, you have to fight, or you get to fight, you get to use a physical confrontation as the method by which you

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choose who is right and whether or not the person who wants to leave is allowed to leave the relationship. Why is it that that has to be the case?

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Why can't you amicably divorce? Why can't you choose to separate from each other? Now, I will grant you this. The Trade Federation

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and the separatists who we see here are bad dudes. You do want them to not be in power. You do not want them to be in control.

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They blockaded a planet. They put people in concentration camps, the Trade Federation that is, and they did a lot of other things.

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They built a bunch of nasty weapons that are very powerful. However, again, because of the Sith machinations, you have this clone army

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that was built up as well at the behest of the Jedi, at the behest of the Republic. So, I'm not saying everybody, I'm not saying nobody should have weapons

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or nobody should have the ability to defend themselves. But it's interesting because in the last movie, you had Naboo seeking sovereignty

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and seeking to not be in a trade relationship with the Trade Federation, or at least not on the terms that the Trade Federation wanted to force on them.

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And that was good and noble, and our heroes were in support of that independence and that sovereignty and that autonomy, self-autonomy.

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However, in this movie, you have the Trade Federation, etc., wanting to, and under the leadership of Count Dooku, wanting to break away from the Republic,

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wanting to be outside of that relationship with the Republic. And yet, it's, well, it hasn't been stated or clarified yet that it is the moral thing to do

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for the Republic to attack them in order to keep them in. Because really the issue is, and why it's so immoral, is that the Trade Federation,

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the type of tactics the Trade Federation is going to use are violence and force and attacking and all this stuff. And they try to kill our heroes.

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Kill? No, they try to kill them. Obi-Wan, Anakin, and Padme. And that necessitates them, that necessitates the heroes fighting against them

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and killing them because they're trying to kill them in self-defense, right? And then when the Jedi come to rescue them,

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there could have been a peaceful resolution to the situation. Fine, take your people back and we'll leave them alone.

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And who knows what would happen there? But instead, Dooku and his forces pushed for war. But that's the thing.

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They were pushing for war. They're trying to foment war. So again, I keep coming back to that bigger Sith plot because it does drive a lot of the story forward.

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But I don't really want to talk about that. I just think it's kind of interesting to discuss.

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What I do want to talk about is the Anakin-Padme relationship because it's really interesting and it, in an odd way,

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despite the fact that there's all this serious stuff going on and the fate of the galaxy is at stake, it kind of...

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I think it's unfair to say that it carries the movie, but it's a gigantic part of the movie. It's at least one third of the movie.

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But it feels more like half of the movie. And I think it's really interesting because you go from Anakin kind of being a creeper,

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to Anakin definitely being a creeper, to Padme resisting or denying that she's interested,

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to telling him that she's utterly interested and she's willing to lay it all out on the line or put it on the line because they're about to die anyway.

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And there's something terribly romantic about it all, even though, like I said, Anakin does start off as a creeper,

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but it makes sense to me that he wouldn't know how to flirt with a woman or how to garner her affections because he hasn't been able to do that.

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He's been raised as a celibate monk for the last ten years, so there's no context in which he would have needed to be able to flirt with a girl.

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And even if there were nascent preteen or young teen feelings between Jedi Padawans, I don't feel like that would be addressed.

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I think the Jedi Masters would have helped nip that in the bud as soon as possible. And I just don't think there was a chance for that really to develop.

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Now again, I'm only operating based off the movie, so you can't argue either way for what Anakin had done,

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except you can say it doesn't seem likely that he would have been hitting on girls or flirting or dating as a Jedi because it's just forbidden.

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It's forbidden for him to do that, to have that kind of attachment.

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And I think it's very reasonable to assume that when he was under the closer watch of Obi-Wan that he wouldn't have been allowed to do any of that sort of thing,

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and that the other Padawans would have been in the same boat. So that neutralizes that threat or that aspect of the character development, I guess you could say.

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So anyway, it is interesting. They definitely have chemistry with each other, and there's like a weird, like triple play, triple threat of chemistry and relationship going on.

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She knows, you know, he was in love with her as a nine-year-old. She didn't trust him, but then he helped save her planet because he got her off of Tatooine.

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He got her, he destroyed the ship, the droid control ship as a kid. He did all these things while being, you know, openly affectionate towards her and having a friendship with her.

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He had lost his mother, so she in a weird way became, you know, maybe a surrogate mother for him at that time as he was a kid, even though he was still, you know, broadly speaking, interested in her.

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And then after the incident with the Sand People where he actually does in fact lose his mother, she's there for him, and she offers him solace and comfort, consolation perhaps,

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and it makes for a really interesting, really weird, like, I don't know, like toxic cocktail that makes it make sense that they fell in love the way they did and that she was able to excuse his actions the way she was and that she just kind of let things slide.

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I want to back up now and talk about Anakin's state of mind. He's been having dreams about his mother for a while.

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She's been taken by the Sand People for a month. During that time, she's been mistreated and potentially tortured.

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Is there any sort of exterior? Just based on the film, he hasn't been sleeping well. Obi-Wan notices and tells him in the beginning that he looks bad.

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And Padme, it's obvious that he has continued to have nightmares because she's noticed them and realizes that they are having an effect on him.

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So if you've got this young guy in a high stress situation, he's out on his own, he's, you know, with this woman that he's super interested in that seems to not be interested in him at all, he's made moves and, you know, wanted to be closer and closer with her and it just seems to be failing.

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Meanwhile, he's been distracted for a month thinking about his mother. During that time, he hasn't been sleeping well because his nightmares wake him up and they're disturbing a vital aspect of health.

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So when he finally finds Shmi and holds her while she's dying in his arms, his dream of coming back to Tatooine and freeing all the slaves crushed and dashed before him in a very real, you know, presentation, manifestation, whatever, I get him snapping.

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And I don't think it's right that he went and murdered all the Sand People, especially the women and the children. If he had just killed all the men, I'd feel a lot better about it.

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The fact that he wiped out an entire Sand People enclave or village or whatever is like, it's chilling and it's scary.

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But it's also kind of understandable. And I don't know, like he's got a history with the Tusken Raiders up until the time he left Tatooine.

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So I don't know what he knows of them or what he's seen of them. But before Shmi dies, before he finds Shmi, he hears from Klee Glars that they may look like men, but they're animals.

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And he uses that language, too. They're animals. And I slaughtered them like animals. And I hate them.

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And it's interesting because perhaps he used that. He leaned on that emotionally.

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There is a saying that we act emotionally and then we justify our actions rationally.

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So he used everything he could to try to eschew the responsibility from himself, even though he knows that he did the wrong thing in giving into his hatred and killing those Sand People.

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And especially because of how many he killed. Again, had he killed the guys in the immediate proximity and then was able to escape from the camp with his mother, that would be one thing.

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But the way he went about it, I think is definitely morally wrong, even if it's understandable why that would have happened or how that could have happened like that.

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So I think that's really interesting. Some more on Anakin's state of mind, our frame of mind.

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And yeah, I can't really think of anything at the moment, but I want to get back to Padme.

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She has had this guy with her as her protector. He's the savior of her planet. He saved many of her people.

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He was good to her in so many ways as a chap, as a young lad. And that's good and interesting.

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And now she's with him. She knows that he's lost his mother. She is used to him.

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She knows him in the context of being a warrior who kills when he has to. And he killed the little bugs that were trying to kill her.

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And to think that his mother basically died in front of him. I could see her justifying it to some extent.

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But also I just think that there's some weird dynamics, some weird relationship with him.

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He's this crushed man in front of her. He's totally collapsing in on himself. And she has this thing where she wants to save everybody.

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And she wants to be altruistic. She's heroic. She's willing to self-sacrifice.

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And if self-sacrifice means not telling this guy he's crazy and he needs to check himself before he wrecks himself,

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and instead getting down on the floor with him and holding him as his heart is breaking and bleeding in front of you,

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I can see that. So like I said, it's a weird toxic cocktail of stuff that led them to be together and to be so into each other.

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Aside from the fact from their physical chemistry that they have with each other, which they clearly have.

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And I just think it's really interesting. And oddly enough, then we get the stuff in the prairie where they're flirting,

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and she's in that yellow dress that's been turned into the meme now, and he gets crushed by that weird flea creature or whatever.

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All that stuff, it's all very charming. And their sojourn in the Lake Country, that's part of the Lake Country, it's kind of neat.

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And then being on that transport and just being on this little adventure together as a young man and young woman,

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you can see things developing for them just besides the chemistry that they already had with each other.

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It's really interesting how it's done. Not my favorite thing in the world ever, but just still really interesting.

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And yeah, I think that carries a lot and it makes a lot of weight in the movie.

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And you have the whole thing where she's willing to go back to violate the Jedi's mandate to go to Geonosis to save Obi-Wan.

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And his mother just died and now she's helping save his father, essentially, in the person of Obi-Wan.

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And after that, she admits to him that she loves him.

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And it's just a really interesting arc if you stop and think about the story of their love and romance and how it comes together.

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It makes a lot of sense, even if it is weird.

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And there's a really good concrete example of how Padme could be more open to accepting broad stroke violence from Anakin,

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because when they're in the droid foundry on Geonosis, he's killing Geonosians left and right.

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These are fully sentient creatures. Yeah, they sleep upside down, huddled together with their brethren,

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sticking to the rock wall or whatever in Geonosis, which is freaky and makes them seem less human.

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Because it literally is less human, but it isn't necessarily less sentient.

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However, he's just able to kill and kill and kill these guys who are directly attacking the two of them.

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But it's OK. So it's not that he killed the Sand People that's the problem.

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It's the context that he killed them in. However, Padme was removed from that, and she could probably easily justify to herself in her mind,

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Anakin saved me by killing dozens of these Geonosians, just like he killed dozens of Sand People after he failed to save his mother.

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It feels kind of like the same thing. Even though I know he didn't slaughter Geonosian women and children,

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well, maybe women, maybe they have women warriors as well as the men.

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If it's anything like a beehive, it might mostly be females, actually.

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Anyway, you've got Poggle Lesser, who seems to be a big deal, but then in Clone Wars we see later there's a queen of the Geonosians.

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But again, that's neither here nor there. So yeah, it's interesting thinking about that again, thinking about it some more.

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You do have this context of lethal Jedi force is not uncommon.

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And despite the fact that Padme doesn't want an army of the Republic, and despite the fact that Naboo is a peaceful planet,

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this peaceful planet still had the N-1 Starfighters. Padme carries a gun, she knows how to fight. I'm sure she's killed people.

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So in the context of this crazy Saturday morning serial world, these people all have blood on their hands.

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The difference between the good guys and the bad guys is that it's not the amount of blood on their hands,

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it's the context in which that blood was shed. And for Padme, taking a life is a necessary evil in order to keep her and other good people alive.

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And I think she can kind of, again, act emotionally and then think about it rationally to say,

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okay, I'm going to get down with this guy and comfort him and basically commiserate with him and be with him in this way to console him and such.

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And then, you know what? Yeah, I'm in love with this guy, he's attractive, I'm attractive, let's be together, whatever, we're going to die anyway.

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I can forgive any of his misdeeds or anything that might have been over the line because who cares? We're probably going to die now.

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And then they proceed to kill a bunch of other people as they're trying to escape. Again, these people are trying to kill them.

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It's not the killing. And there's a difference between murder and killing.

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And I think Anna can cross the line from killing to murder in somewhere where he was killing the Sand People.

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And definitely later on crosses that line a few more times that we get to see in the next movie.

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So it's very interesting. It's very interesting.

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And I think I'm not saying I think George Lucas's writing could be helped, could be punched up a little bit, could use some assistance.

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However, I think it's pretty solid and I think he's working with like a very interesting mix of psychological stuff that makes all of this work, even though it's uncomfortable.

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Just because something is uncomfortable or a little awkward or weird doesn't mean it works or it's functional.

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Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good in your life or in your writing.

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And please understand that just because Anakin wasn't perfect at wooing Padme doesn't mean he wasn't good enough.

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He might have had the least amount of, you know, woo points that he needed to win her.

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And it was enough for her. I mean, obviously it happened.

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So it worked whether or not you like the style or the approach of it.

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And that's more me responding to, you know, the very sharp, I don't know, 15 years or so of people criticism that we got before we got the, you know, getting the sequel criticism.

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So anyway, I do think I want to wrap up this because I am trying to focus just on the story of each of these movies as we're on the road to Soka.

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And as I just do a quick refresh, going to the movies and enjoying them again.

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And there's not really much more I want to say.

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But, you know, it's funny.

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There's the broad galactic skill story.

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There's Obi Wan's detective story.

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And then there's this weird romance with Anakin and Padme that, again, is weird, but I like it's quirky, but it's, you know, I would still be friends with it, basically.

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In fact, I think I have been in the past.

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So, yes, I don't have much more to say about this.

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So I'm going to go ahead and wrap it up so I don't make the episode too long or force myself to say things over and over again, which will bore you.

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So stick around. Revenge of the Sith is next.

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And, gosh, I hope you enjoy talking about that.

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Well, I hope I enjoy talking about that. I'm sure I will.

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I'm not sure what I'm going to say the story of that movie is because it's been such a long time since I've seen it.

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A few things are popping into my mind. But what is the story of Revenge of the Sith?

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Oh, I mean, yeah, I know what it is.

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I know what it is. And I have an alternate title for that movie.

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I gave an alternate title for Phantom Menace, which I don't remember what it was.

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Now you can listen back to that to see what it was.

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I mean, maybe I'll post it in the show notes. We'll see.

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I am going to have a transcript generated for me, so I should be able to see, like, you know, I can search for the word title and find it pretty quickly.

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But we will see about that. Let me see.

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What about Attack of the Clones? Huh.

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See, it's so broad. It's very difficult to give it an alternate name.

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I wouldn't want to call it something about the romance or the love between Anakin and Padme.

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That doesn't make sense.

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I wouldn't want to call it anything about Obi-Wan's detective work.

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What would I want to call it?

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Because Attack of the Clones is about the fact that there was a Sith conspiracy.

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How about the Sith?

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The Sith. I think the return of the Sith was episode one.

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The Sith conspiracy could be episode two. There you go.

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And then Revenge of the Sith is perfect. It's great. I love it. I'm a genius.

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I'm an absolute genius.

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And because this movie is basically the downfall of the Jedi being set up or this war,

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it's the further machinations of the Sith propelling the Republic into war against...

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or the war of a drone army versus a clone army, which is why it's called Attack of the Clones.

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But yeah, definitely whatever I said, the Sith conspiracy or something like that could be a good title.

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My genius title that I can't remember the name of 30 seconds later.

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But anyway, let me know what you think you would retitle both movies,

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Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones, based on what the stories are about

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or what your focus on the stories is, as I've been talking about the last couple episodes.

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I'd be curious to know what other people think.

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I hope you enjoyed that.

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Go to MJMunoz.com to leave any questions, comments, or other feedback you might have.

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There you can find all of my analysis, art, and fiction.

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I cover books, tokusatsu, comic books, anime, and more.

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Look around. You're sure to find something else that you'll enjoy as well.

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This has been a Story Over Everything production.