Thus, Jar Jar is quickly sidelined, the upgraded CGI Yoda gets a showcase and those damn Amidala-clones are killed off on page one.

Empire hits the ground running on ice planet Hoth, Clones however, has a truly cold start to contend with, aware perhaps that the movie’s most pressing task is to simply atone for the more egregious sins of Episode I. Where Episode V fairly zipped around the galaxy with all the breezy confidence of youth, unafraid to travel anywhere, even dark places, the second middle child of the saga is saddled with an altogether heavier burden from which it struggles to escape. But, as the little Jedi might say, in doubt it was. Indeed, when Yoda finally unsheathes his mini-saber and kicks Sith ass the faithful can reliably be found standing on seats hollering as if the outcome was never in doubt. There are certainly stretches in the patchy Attack Of The Clones when Lucas’ flat-packed dialogue struggles to keep the hecklers quiet – Anakin’s seduction of the former Queen has all the charm of a teenage lunge behind the bike-sheds and none of the feeling – but by the time climactic ‘reel six’ cranks into high gear the saga’s reputation as the godfather of modern sci-fi spectacle is more or less restored. Casual spectators, once stung, had decamped en masse to the newly discovered Middle-Earth, leaving George Lucas with just the few million hardcore fans - true believers who, with all the apprehension of parents at a nativity play, willed their defrocked hero back towards respectability. The collective fever that characterized the countdown to The Phantom Menace had long since dissipated by the time the first sequel prequel rolled off the ILM production line.

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