For the fifth installment of the Star Wars saga director/creator George Lucas has found himself in the unfamiliar, and not to mention unenviable role of someone with a point to prove to himself and millions of movie-goers. This very notion seems absurd when one considers the career of Lucas who, along with his friend and peer Steven Spielberg, practically invented the big-budget blockbuster, particularly through his space saga which has endured as one of the most successful cultural phenomena of the last 30 years. Yet with success comes expectations, and this factor is heightened in sci-fi more than in any other genre. With Star Wars this is made evident by a worldwide fan base of incalculable proportions, a fan base which has come, in some strange way, to hold power over Lucas and co. If Lucas thought that the sheer devotion of these people to all things Force-like would make his job easier when he decided to make three prequels to his original trilogy then he was in for a rude shock when he made the first of the new trilogy, The Phantom Menace, in 1999. For the fans (who somewhat inconveniently lack a catchy nickname a la "Trekkies" for Star Trek fans) decided that TPM, the first Star Wars movie in 16 years, was an almighty disappointment which in no way met the high standards set by the original trilogy.

To the casual observer Phantom Menace was a fairly average sci-fi spectacle with stunning visuals and iffy acting, no better or worse than other 90’s effects showpieces such as Independence Day or Jurassic Park. To the Star Wars aficionado though it was nothing short of a travesty; a film whose plot and narrative were sacrificed at the alter of CGI which, they grumbled, did not even look as good as the models and animatronics of 20 years previous. Worse of all though was the acting: the original trilogy may have had its hammy moments but boasted a true star in Harrison Ford, a great actor in Alec Guinness and the underrated talents of Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher as the Skywalker twins whose birth this new trilogy surely must conclude with. In Phantom Menace even respected actors such as Liam Neeson and Ewan McGregor seemed awkward and wooden.

Happily, with Attack of the Clones, Lucas seems to have taken a giant leap back in the right direction. Enough problems remain to prevent it from being considered truly equal to the original trilogy; the acting, although vastly improved, remains stilted at times – McGregor, surprisingly, the biggest culprit – whilst the dialogue can be clunky and is 90% humorless. To look at the positives though, of which there are many, the results of the CGI this time suggest that the technology may have finally caught up with Lucas’s imagination. Attack of the Clones is a film which boasts stunning visuals, the best seen since the climax to Return of the Jedi, outstanding actions sequences and the most complicated and interesting plot of the series to date.

It is ten years after the events of TPM and we start with Obi-Wan Kenobi and his Jedi apprentice, Anakin Skywalker (Christensen), who is now 19 years old, arriving at the Republic’s capital, Coruscant, to receive their latest Jedi assignment. The Jedi, it becomes clear, are not so much leaders as agents of the Republic; a sort of galactic F.B.I. with lightsabers instead of pistols, and spaceships instead of unmarked Cadillacs. The ever-dour Obi-Wan is unimpressed with their latest mission which is to protect Padme Amidala (Portman), formerly queen of the Naboo and now a senator, from an apparent assassination threat. Young Anakin, however, is delighted to see the woman whom he last saw when he was knee-high to an Ewok and promptly lets his hormones get the better of him. Thus, we have the first strain of the plot -- the love story between Jedi and senator which will one day result in the birth of Luke and Leia. The catch is that this love is forbidden; Anakin, as a Jedi, is supposed to remain single, and Padme, as a politician, is supposed to be dedicated to her work.

Being a Star Wars film this love story turns out fairly easily and angst-free given the problems facing our two lovers, at least as far as this installment is concerned. Padme is obviously one of those women who’s attracted to the wrong sort of chap and thus lets her head get turned by Anakin’s devotion towards her, his Force-assisted juggling acts and – presumably – his pony-tail; not letting his professed belief in dictatorships and his admission that he has slaughtered women and children Tusken Raiders bother her unduly. Portman plays her part fairly sweetly and unselfconsciously, unburdened by the China doll gear she was forced to wear in the last film. The part of Anakin was possibly the most important one for Lucas to fill and luckily, with the relatively unknown Christensen, he seems to have made the right choice. This film needed to help show how the cherubic mop top of TPM becomes the Slobodan Milosevic-in-a-mask figure of the original trilogy, and Christensen portrays the right mixture of confusion, anger and impetuousness to make this conceivable.

Anakin’s actual descent towards the dark side does not happen until the final installment which we can expect in 2005, but the seeds are sown in this episode. The main reason is your run-of-the-mill bereavement; Anakin loses someone important to him and is blinded by anger and sadness over the injustice of it all. Christensen, to his credit, manages to utilize this somewhat hackneyed plot device expertly and turns the angry young man routine on quite nicely. We also get a picture of why Obi-Wan professes to feel such responsibility for Anakin’s fate in Return of the Jedi through their uneasy relationship, triggered mainly by Anakin’s refusal to toe the line to Obi-Wan, the ultimate jobs-worth, and his belief that Obi-Wan is holding him back due to jealousy over Anakin’s powers.

The remainder of the plot concerns a growing separatist movement within the Republic and murky goings on within the Senate, initiated by the corrupt Chancellor Palpatine. We are reunited at the climax with the evil Darth Sidious, the so-called Phantom Menace of Episode I, but it is not yet clear if we are meant to know that he and Palpatine are one and the same; puzzling, given that we know Palpatine is destined to become Emperor and will initiate the events of the original trilogy. Yoda, completely computer generated now, and Mace Windu (Samuel L Jackson) return to feature much more centrally this time, and we are introduced to the evil Count Dooku, played by the veteran Christopher Lee, who manages to inject the film with gravitas, a la Guinness in the original trilogy. We are also introduced to the bounty hunter Jango Fett (Temeura Morrison), father of Boba, and there is a superb battle between him and Obi-Wan at the midway point. Yoda, after years of talking the talk, finally walks the walk and takes on Dooku in a well-executed, crowd-pleasing moment.

There is also a second appearance for the much lamented Jar Jar Binks, the CGI buffoon of the last film, but Lucas has utilized him sparingly so that this time the scenes featuring him are not so wearisome. In a nice fingers-up to the critics Jar Jar gains importance in the saga by unwittingly helping to bring about the events that will enable Palpatine to create his Empire of Episodes IV, V and VI. There are a lot of politics involved in this movie, and it is clear by the climax that the apparent victory won by the Jedi is actually anything but, a situation which should set up the events of Episode III as successfully as Empire Strikes Back leads into Return of the Jedi.

In all, Attack of the Clones is a more than worthy addition to the Star Wars saga and a massive improvement on its predecessor. It manages to be fun and likeable which, try as it might, TPM could simply not pull off and yet is easily the darkest of the series after Empire Strikes Back. Lucas has proved that he is not just another advocate of the no-brainer blockbuster as is demonstrated by the intricate plot. Although it is hard to muster sympathy for a multi-millionaire whose pockets will be deepened even more by this outing, it seems a little unfair that a film such as The Fellowship of the Ring should be so critically acclaimed whilst Lucas's efforts are routinely dismissed as children’s fare, albeit massively entertaining. It almost seems that there is a cultural snobbery at play, where Rings is seen as worthy because it originates from literature and Star Wars is considered to be little more than a marketing tool, or at best a visual distraction. Perhaps when the final installment is completed Lucas can finally get to making the artier films we always hear he is interested in; maybe then his profitability will be matched by the acclaim that his craft, and imagination, deserve.

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(Phil Baron is a 24-year-old politics graduate who is currently working in a telephone call center for a large UK mobile phone (cell phone) company. His interests are music (he plays guitar and bass), football (soccer to us Yanks) and film & TV. It is his ambition to be in a multi-million selling band or, at the very least, to write about other people in multi-million selling bands on a professional basis.)