Attack of the Clones - TV Tropes (2024)

WARNING: Spoilers are unmarked.

• Anakin killing the Tusken Raiders, not just the men, but the women and the innocent children too.
  • Just before he starts his rampage, just after his mother dies in his arms...the look on his face. Darth Vader was born in that moment.
  • In the formerly official novelization, it is revealed that the Sand People whipped Shmi so much, she could only feel the whip as a brush across her back. That's how badly her nerves were damaged.
  • The novelization takes it further; Anakin kills every living thing in the Tusken village, men, women, children, and animals, and then burns it to the ground.
  • Another one from the novelization; the rescue attempt by the moisture farmers. The Tuskens strung a wire across the ground, resulting in at least half of the thirty farmers being decapitated, and Cliegg losing his leg.
  • Anakin's subsequent conversation with Padmé isn't much better.

    Anakin: I... I killed them. I killed them all. They're dead! Every single one of them! And not just the men, but the women... And the children, too. They're like animals! And I slaughtered them like animals! I HATE THEM!

  • That's not the worst part of the scene; when he declares his hatred of the Tuskens, the Imperial March begins to play. And before that, the Emperor's Theme. That day was Vader's birth.
  • The Legends continuity had it even worse, for a very simple reason: the Tuskens knew of the Jedi, as former Jedi Sharad Hett had lived with them and even led a coalition of tribes until killed by Aurra Sing. The Tusken Raiders know there's individuals with strange and extraordinary powers wielding blades of light out there... And one of them has just come out of a tent that was holding a prisoner, murder in his eyes, and killed the two guards in cold blood. The warriors attacking Anakin likely knew they were going to die but fought anyway to try and gain time for the rest of the tribe to escape... Only, they failed.
    • Worse still-Hett had a child from a Tusken-raised woman, A'Sharad Hett, who was taken in by the Jedi. His interactions with Anakin, colored by Shmi's death, would be one of the factors that would eventually turn A'Sharad Hett into Darth Krayt.
    • Apparently, during that scene, you can hear Qui-Gon's disembodied voice yell "ANAKIN NO!!!" followed by the sinister breath of Darth Vader.
• When Anakin charges at him during their climactic duel, Count Dooku casually throws some Force lightning at him, which causes him to scream in agony as Dooku then hurls him against the wall. While Anakin is laying there barely conscious, we see that his clothing is burnt and smoke is coming off of him. That must have hurt like hell.
• Jango Fett's beheading is pretty graphic. There's no blood, but look closely and you can see his head go flying out of his helmet. Now keep in mind that his 10-year-old son just saw this happen. That would traumatize him for life.
  • Considering that kid grew up to be BOBA FETT, he probably was traumatized.
    • Star Wars: The Clone Wars would later show the immediate consequences of this: Boba, still a young teenager at the oldest, goes out for revenge against Mace Windu for killing Jango and teams up with established bounty hunter Aurra Sing to do so. Their scheme involves Boba infiltrating a group of clone cadets in early training to try and assassinate him, culminating in crashing an entire star destroyer and nearly succeeding in killing both Mace and Anakin. When they learn that their attempt has failed, they reveal that they have some hostages—again including a few clones, Boba's own "brothers"—and kill one of them before they're stopped. All because Jango was basically just hired for a job and Mace was basically just defending himself in a pitched battle....
• During the fight in the droid manufacturing plant, one poor Geonosian falls over onto a red-hot plate. As if that weren't enough, he's immediately crushed by a hydraulic press. *shudder*
• Those creatures in the Geonosis arena. Jeesh.
  • Especially the acklay. That high-pitched roar sends chills up your spine. The stuff of nightmares, truly.
  • The nexu (the tiger-like one pictured) is arguably worse than the acklay. The Geonosian warriors seem to have at least some degree of control over the acklay and the reek. The nexu gets zapped once by a shock-prod and immediately pounces on the poor alien.
  • The reek is quite unsettling due to the EU statement that it's normally a herbivore. It's been starved into a mostly carnivorous diet, which is where the red coloring comes from.
• The sequence near the end where Dooku lands on Coruscant (which occurs at sunset). As his ship approaches Palpatine's secret lair in an industrial sector, the music shifts into a bone-chilling rendition of The Emperor's Theme, and then a One-Woman Wail as Palpatine himself (in his Darth Sidious guise) shows up to greet his apprentice, leading to this exchange:

  Dooku: The Force is with us, Master Sidious.
  Palpatine: Welcome home, Lord Tyranus. You have done well.
  Dooku: I have good news for you, my lord: the war has begun.
  Palpatine: Excellent. Everything is going as planned.

  • Palpatine intends to destabilize the galaxy by bathing it in blood, causing suffering for trillions, and that's not just a side effect of his plan. He enjoys it.
• Palpatine overseeing the clone troopers flying off to war. Knowing what lies in store, and with the usage of the Imperial March, the sight is quite chilling.
  • Even worse to those who only saw the movies and didn't already know the Emperor's name and secret identity: to them the scene was initially a moment of determination as the Republic prepares to fight the Clone Wars... And then the Imperial March starts to play and the kindly Chancellor gets multiple close-ups, informing them that they've been literally Rooting for the Empire the whole time.
• The fact that two armies capable of fighting a pan-galactic war were raised without anyone suspecting until shortly before they were unleashed on each other.
• While you can forgive some of it because with his past of course he's going to be awkward, Anakin shows off his darker side with Padme, advocating dictatorships and trembling whenever she rejects him.