THE ART OF STAR WARS: ATTACK OF THE CLONES

By: Chris Wyatt
Review Date: Wednesday, May 08, 2002

In a must-have volume for collectors, Mark Cotta Vaz has gathered and assembled development art from the STAR WARS: EPISODE II design departments. The lush edition is stunning. Included are literally thousands of character sketches, set paintings and photos of model sculpture?all laid out with a logical, but kinetic sensibility.

The book presents the design work pretty much according to the chronology of the film itself, so the book opens with elements from the planet Coruscant and ends with sketches for Padme?s wedding dress. Vaz, a long-time entertainment journalist and Lucasfilm archivist, offers the introduction to his collection, as well as smart mini-article captions about each section. He also includes quotes from the designers and artists about their thought processes going into each design.

For example, during the sections on the design of the clone pit laboratories, Vaz quotes Lucas artist Iain McCaig who says, ?I saw [the clones] as having bar codes on their foreheads: press their head into the infrared display, let it beep and get the next one. Back to George?s THX 1138 days.? Interesting items like this inform the artwork, giving it a sense of continuity. Readers are truly able to see the evolution of each of the stunning set pieces.

The only fault that can be found with THE ART OF STAR WARS: ATTACK OF THE CLONES is the fact that it includes none of the final images. It would have been nice to be able to compare the nearly finished art with what actually wound up on the screen. Perhaps Vaz didn?t want to waste pages on images that we could see just by looking at the movie, which is a reasonable argument?but it?s a shame nonetheless. However, that omission is small and excusable given the sheer volume of beautiful artwork that Vaz did include.


As a special treat, at the end of the volume Vaz includes the entire unedited script of the film as written by George Lucas and Jonathan Hales. He has the font of the script very small, to reduce page count?which can result in the reader needing to strain a bit to make it out; but as compensation he includes a full color storyboard panel on each page.

THE ART OF STAR WARS: ATTACK OF THE CLONES cannot be recommended enough to fans of STAR WARS, to film artists, or just to people who are interested in the process of making an epic movie. The book both entertains, through its interesting images, and engages, by intelligently presenting the filmmaking process.