The Big Picture
- Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones used groundbreaking digital effects, including the first CGI version of Yoda, setting a new standard in the film industry.
- The film was distributed as both digital and print copies, but Lucasfilm heavily promoted the digital screenings, paving the way for the widespread adoption of digital distribution in theaters.
- Attack of the Clones' innovative release influenced the global film industry by facilitating wider and simultaneous international releases, boosting the international box office and shaping the kinds of movies Hollywood produces.
Star Wars movies often make an impact on the film industry at large. The original Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope kicked off the blockbuster cycle in 1977; Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace introduced groundbreaking special effects in 1999; and Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens launched the legacy sequel trend in 2015. One Star Wars film in particular had a subtler effect from the audience's point of view, but from an industry's perspective, George Lucas' release plan created a ripple that would forever alter the way movies are packaged, distributed, and seen around the world. It did so through an ingenious release strategy that encouraged cinemas everywhere to take a major step in the direction of digital film.
Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones
Ten years after initially meeting, Anakin Skywalker shares a forbidden romance with Padmé Amidala, while Obi-Wan Kenobi discovers a secret clone army crafted for the Jedi.
- Release Date
- May 16, 2002
- Director
- George Lucas
- Cast
- Ewan McGregor , Natalie Portman , Hayden Christensen , Christopher Lee , Samuel L. Jackson , Frank Oz
- Runtime
- 142 minutes
Lucasfilm Promoted 'Attack of the Clones' for Digital Screens
Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones released in May of 2002. The second installment in George Lucas' divisive prequel trilogy, it has an ambivalent standing among fans of the franchise. By 2002 standards, however, it did distinguish itself through digital effects. Massive clone armies, wild original planets, and new creatures, ships, and sequences were all rendered digitally. Even Yoda appeared not as Frank Oz's beloved puppet, but as a CGI being for the first time. Essentially, Lucas took the digital innovations he introduced in The Phantom Menace and, for better or worse, upped them to the nth degree.
Attack of the Clones' digital experiment did not end with production, or even post-production of the film. It stretched up through distribution, where Lucas and Clones producer Rick McCallum decided to distribute the movie to theaters not just as a print film, but as a digital file. On top of that, they let audiences know that the best way to experience Attack of the Clones was on a digital screen.
How 'Attack of the Clones' Got Theaters To Project Digitally
Sharing movies via digital file is commonplace for film distribution nowadays, but back in 2002, it was a highly contentious move. For the majority of film history, films had been shipped form the studios that made them to the theaters that projected them as prints: big bulky canisters filled with literal film that could be sewn onto a projector and cast onto the silver screen. As digital technology evolved near the turn of the twenty-first century, however, the possibilities of distributing films on hard drives or even as uploading links became a viable option.
Studios were largely in favor of switching to digital distribution; the files would be cheaper to make, less prone to damage, and could easily be sent out to more theaters around the world. Unfortunately, screening these digital files required digital projectors, a rarity among the theaters and an expensive purchase that most were unwilling to make. The studios had to work with the theaters' stubbornness, lest their movies not play on the majority of the big screens. That is until a film so guaranteed to break the box office committed to digital distribution, twisting the theaters' arms to upgrade if they wanted the biggest piece of the profits.
Enter Attack of the Clones. Because only about eighty theaters around the world were equipped with digital projectors in 2002, the film was distributed in both digital and print copies. However, Lucasfilm pushed hard for audiences to gravitate towards the digital screens. In a 2002 Forbes article preceding the film's release, McCallum stated, "We're going to use all our marketing skills to differentiate between (digital and traditional theaters), and to point people toward digital theaters in their area... Digital is the way we would like you to see this film."
McCallum ended the article by noting how digital distribution was the way of the future, and it turns out he was right. A decade later, The Hollywood Reporter estimated that eighty-five percent of theaters around the world had switched to digital, a figure that's only increased since then. Those that still use traditional print projectors are now the archaic outliers — everywhere from your neighborhood cinema to multiplexes halfway around the world get their content digitally, and studios hardly bother to create or distribute prints anymore.
Attack of the Clones' Impact on the Global Film Industry
The effects of this digital revolution have transformed more than just the way we see films on the screen. Not having to ship physical prints to theaters around the world has facilitated studios sharing their films more widely and readily. A Hollywood studio can send an upload link to cinemas in India, China, France, or Australia just as easily as they can send it to a theater down the street. This, among other reasons, has caused the international box office to boom over the past decade. American films now earn more money outside the United States than they do at the domestic box office, thus effecting the kinds of movies Hollywood decides to make.
Similarly, without the physical transfer of prints, studios now release movies around the world on the same date. While it used to be commonplace for Hollywood to open its films domestically a few weeks – or sometimes even a few months or years – before the rest of the world saw them, movies now debut around the globe at the same time. In theory, this prevents piracy, and it creates a worldwide event out of the release date.
Digital Distribution Reaps Economic and Cinematic Advantages
In 2002, Forbes stated that studios spent about $3.7 million per film to create prints for distribution, and that a conversion to digital would cut the cost by 25%. Hence, while some celluloid-junkie cinephiles might swear by the prints, digital conversion has proved an economically sound direction for the industry. Even theaters have reaped financial benefits. Although the initial projectors might have been costly, they are more durable and the digital files are less easily corrupted than prints. Most importantly, digital files are also capable of producing a crisper image.
This transition did not begin or end with George Lucas and his audacious decision to promote Attack of the Clones as a film made for the digital screen, but the film's $650 million box office performance certainly prompted cinemas to evolve. It's not unlike how Avatar was made and marketed for 3D or how Oppenheimer was made and marketed for IMAX. Unlike these contemporary examples, though, the greatest impacts of Attack of the Clones' innovative release occurred far behind-the-scenes, shifting bottom lines, distribution patterns, and movie theater technology in ways largely invisible, but nonetheless consequential, to the audience's eye.
You can stream Star Wars: Episode II — Attack of the Clones on Disney+ in the U.S.
