50 Fun Facts About Star Wars: Attack of the Clones

Attack of the Clones co-writer Jonathan Hales had scripted which hero's boyhood adventures for TV?

Indiana Jones. Hales had written episodes of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, so Lucas brought him in on the third draft of Attack of the Clones, which became the shooting script.

Which film followed Attack of the Clones?

Revenge of the Sith. It closed the prequel trilogy in 2005 as the first Star Wars film rated PG-13, and Lucas said he wouldn't take a five- or six-year-old to see it.

Ten years after The Phantom Menace, Anakin holds which Jedi rank?

Padawan. The nine-year-old slave boy is now Obi-Wan's apprentice, and during the Clone Wars Yoda assigns him a learner of his own, Ahsoka Tano.

On which planet does Attack of the Clones stage its arena battle, the first of the Clone Wars?

Geonosis. Its insect-like natives build the Separatists' battle droids, and as the fighting ends Dooku slips away with their design for a planet-killing weapon: the Death Star.

On which ocean planet does Obi-Wan discover the clone army?

Kamino. All trace of the planet had been erased from the Jedi Archives, so Obi-Wan had to work out where the missing world was before he could meet its cloners.

Which bounty hunter serves as the genetic template for the clone army?

Jango Fett. Apart from his considerable pay he demanded only one thing: an unaltered clone for himself, whom he raises as his son Boba.

Which Jedi Master kills the clone army's template during the arena battle?

Mace Windu. He beheads the bounty hunter in front of the man's young son Boba, who grows up hating the Jedi and later bombs Windu's starship in a failed attempt to kill him.

Which moisture farmer freed and married Anakin's mother, Shmi Skywalker?

Cliegg Lars. He rode out with thirty farmers to rescue her after her abduction, and only four came back; his son Owen later raises her grandson Luke.

Who abducted Shmi from the Lars homestead?

Tusken Raiders. Anakin finds his mother barely alive in their camp a month later, and when she dies in his arms he slaughters the whole tribe.

On which planet do Anakin and Padmé secretly marry in Attack of the Clones?

Naboo. A Jedi is forbidden such an attachment and could be expelled for it, so the wedding stays secret, with only two droids as witnesses.

Which limb does Dooku sever from Anakin during their duel?

Right arm. Anakin goes to his wedding with a mechanical replacement, and a generation later, as Darth Vader, he cuts off his own son Luke's right hand in another duel.

Which Separatist leader demanded Padmé's death as the price of his support for Dooku?

Nute Gunray. Padmé had broken his invasion of her home planet ten years earlier, and the Trade Federation viceroy wanted her dead in retaliation before he would commit to the Separatists.

Who proposes the vote that grants Palpatine emergency powers?

Jar Jar Binks. Standing in for the absent Padmé, he is nudged into it by Palpatine's allies, and the vote lets the Chancellor mobilise the clone army.

Which bounty hunter is hired to make the first attempts on Padmé's life?

Zam Wesell. After a speeder chase across Coruscant the Jedi corner her in a nightclub, but her employer shoots her with a toxic dart before she can name him.

In Attack of the Clones, Anakin tells Padmé he dislikes what for being coarse, rough and irritating?

Sand. He is setting the desert world where he grew up a slave against the soft, smooth surroundings of her home, and the complaint doubles as his attempt to flirt with her.

In whose name was the clone army in Attack of the Clones secretly ordered?

Sifo-Dyas. The Jedi Master foresaw a war and commissioned the army behind the Jedi Council's back, so by the time Obi-Wan stumbles on it he is dead and no other Jedi knows it exists.

By what Sith name is Sidious's apprentice known in Attack of the Clones?

Darth Tyranus. It is Count Dooku's secret Sith name, and it slips out when the clones' template tells Obi-Wan he was recruited by 'a man called Tyranus'.

Which actor plays the Separatist leader Dooku?

Christopher Lee. Then nearing 80, he fenced in the close-ups himself, and a stunt double took over for the shots that needed the most vigorous footwork.

Which New Zealand actor plays the bounty hunter cloned for the Republic's army?

Temuera Morrison. Because every clone shares his face and voice, he later re-recorded the original Boba Fett's lines for the 2004 DVD of The Empire Strikes Back.

Who plays young Boba Fett in Attack of the Clones?

Daniel Logan. The New Zealander was 13 when he filmed the part, and he came back as a grown man to voice the same boy in The Clone Wars.

Which actor plays Senator Bail Organa in Attack of the Clones?

Jimmy Smits. His senator goes on to adopt the infant Leia, and Smits was still playing her father twenty years later in the Obi-Wan Kenobi series.

Which Australian plays Owen Lars in Attack of the Clones?

Joel Edgerton. His young farmer grows into Luke's Uncle Owen, and Edgerton came back twenty years later in Obi-Wan Kenobi, where Owen confronts an Inquisitor hunting the boy.

In Attack of the Clones, what does Obi-Wan mind-trick a nightclub dealer into no longer wanting to sell?

Death sticks. Obi-Wan waves a hand and adds, 'You want to go home and rethink your life', and the dealer repeats the words and walks out.

Which Australian plays Dormé, Padmé's handmaiden?

Rose Byrne. She has only a brief appearance, yet in the year she filmed it she won best actress at the Venice Film Festival for The Goddess of 1967.

Jocasta Nu, sure that an unrecorded planet cannot exist, holds which Jedi Temple job?

Librarian. Her boast that 'if an item does not appear in our records, it does not exist' is wrong: the missing planet had been erased from her archives, and Obi-Wan finds it anyway.

What kind of business does Dexter Jettster run on Coruscant?

A diner. Its four-armed cook, an old friend of Obi-Wan's, recognises the toxic dart at a glance after the Jedi Temple's own analysis droids had failed to match it to any known culture.

Which star met George Lucas about playing Anakin but declined, saying he wasn't ready to take that dive?

Leonardo DiCaprio. He later confirmed the meeting and called it the 'same scenario' as his one meeting with director Joel Schumacher about playing Robin, another franchise part he felt he wasn't ready for.

Which boy band filmed a cameo for Attack of the Clones that was cut in post-production?

NSYNC. The daughters of George Lucas and producer Rick McCallum wanted them in, so several members filmed scenes as Jedi, though Justin Timberlake and Lance Bass sat it out.

In Attack of the Clones, Count Dooku tells the captive Obi-Wan that he once trained which Jedi?

Qui-Gon Jinn. Dooku uses the bond with Obi-Wan's late master to ask for his help, then tells him the truth, that a Sith Lord now controls the Senate, and Obi-Wan refuses to believe it.

The cloners in Attack of the Clones engineer their soldiers to do what at twice the normal human rate?

Age. Growth acceleration turns an embryo into a combat-ready soldier in about ten years, which is how an army ordered only a decade earlier is standing ready when Obi-Wan arrives.

While drafting The Empire Strikes Back, George Lucas first imagined which new character as a clone?

Lando Calrissian. Early notes made him one of a clan of identical clones, part of Lucas's first attempt to explain the 'Clone Wars' mentioned in the original film.

In which city was Attack of the Clones mainly filmed?

Sydney. All four earlier Star Wars films had been based at studios near London, but Lucas moved Episodes II and III to Fox Studios Australia.

Which Italian lake's Villa del Balbianello stood in for Padmé's retreat in Attack of the Clones?

Lake Como. The romance scenes were shot at the villa, and a few years later the Bond producers brought a wounded 007 to the same house to recover in Casino Royale.

The Plaza de España that plays Theed in Attack of the Clones is in which Spanish city?

Seville. Four decades earlier the same sweeping plaza had played the British Army's headquarters in Cairo in Lawrence of Arabia.

Which company built the digital cameras that shot Attack of the Clones entirely without film?

Sony. Lucas had wanted its high-definition cameras for The Phantom Menace, but they weren't ready in time, and the final version reached this set only a week before shooting began.

What lightsaber colour did Samuel L. Jackson request for his Jedi in Attack of the Clones?

Purple. Jackson asked George Lucas for it so he could pick himself out in the big battle scenes, breaking the saga's rule of blue or green for heroes and red for villains.

Ewan McGregor shaved for which film, forcing a fake beard in the Attack of the Clones reshoots?

Black Hawk Down. McGregor had already cropped his hair and shaved for the war film when Lucas called him back in 2001, so Obi-Wan wears a hairpiece and a false beard in the added scenes.

Whose puppet performance did the animators copy when Attack of the Clones made Yoda fully digital?

Frank Oz. He still voiced the part, and ILM's Rob Coleman copied even the puppet's quirks: 'When Frank would move the head, the ears would jiggle.'

How did Attack of the Clones put its armoured clone troopers on screen?

Computer animation. The trick carried into the sequel, where even a clone seen without his helmet is an actor's head on a digital body: he wore a blue bodysuit and the armour was added later.

What is the title of Attack of the Clones' love theme?

Across the Stars. John Williams wrote it for Anakin and Padmé, and in 2019 he rearranged it for violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter, who made it the title track of their album together.

Which Empire Strikes Back theme plays as the army departs in Attack of the Clones?

The Imperial March. Darth Vader's theme swells as the Republic's new troops assemble and depart, foreshadowing the Empire that the Republic is about to become.

Which weapons does the bounty hunter's ship drop on Obi-Wan in the asteroid chase of Attack of the Clones?

Seismic charges. Each one draws in the sound around it, then bursts in a wave of brilliant blue light that shatters the asteroids in Obi-Wan's path.

Which inaugural New York festival hosted the Attack of the Clones premiere in May 2002?

Tribeca Film Festival. Robert De Niro and his partners had just founded it to revive Lower Manhattan after the September 11 attacks, and the screenings raised money for the Children's Aid Society.

Attack of the Clones earned its only Oscar nomination, at the 2003 ceremony, in which category?

Visual Effects. The four-man Industrial Light & Magic team lost on the night to The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers and its motion-captured Gollum.

Which superhero film outgrossed Attack of the Clones in North America in 2002?

Spider-Man. It opened two weeks earlier and stayed ahead, which made this the first Star Wars film that failed to finish as the biggest earner of its year.

Who won the 2003 Golden Raspberry for Worst Supporting Actor for Attack of the Clones?

Hayden Christensen. He took the same Razzie again for the trilogy's final film, yet Lucasfilm brought him back as Anakin two decades later in the Obi-Wan Kenobi and Ahsoka series.

In the droid factory of Attack of the Clones, whose head ends up welded onto a battle droid's body?

C-3PO. The swap sends both his head and his body into the first battle of the Clone Wars on the enemy side, until R2-D2 puts him back together.

Which author wrote the adult novelization of Attack of the Clones?

R. A. Salvatore. Three years earlier the creator of the dark elf Drizzt had written Vector Prime, the Star Wars novel in which Chewbacca is killed.

The clone troopers of Attack of the Clones became the first generation of which soldiers of the Empire?

Stormtroopers. The clones' white armour was designed as an ancestor of theirs, and under the Empire the clones were phased out in favour of ordinary human recruits.

Matt Doran, the nightclub dealer in Attack of the Clones, played Mouse in which 1999 film?

The Matrix. Doran played Mouse, the rebel crew's programmer, and three years later turned up as the hustler Obi-Wan brushes off with a Jedi mind trick.