Blu-ray Review: 'Star Wars: Attack of the Clones' (2019 Buena Vista Home Entertainment Reissue)

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The new slipcover (and jewel box) art for the Multi-Screen Edition of Star Wars: Attack of the Clones. © 2019 Buena Vista Home Entertainment and Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL)
On September 22, Buena Vista Home Entertainment and Lucasfilm Ltd. reissued the 10 existing Star Wars live-action films in Multi-Screen Editions in Blu-ray and DVD along with codes for digital versions for streaming on Movies Anywhere and other Disney partners. Dubbed the "Multi-Screen Edition," this re-release came three months in advance of the theatrical premiere of the last Skywalker Saga film, Star Wars - Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker, which opens on December 20.

This promotional photo shows nine of the 10 titles in the Multi-Screen Edition collection of Blu-ray/Digital Code sets released by Buena Vista Home Entertainment and Lucasfilm on September 22. © 2019 Buena Vista Home Entertainment and Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL)

Although Buena Vista and Lucasfilm (both wholly-owned subsidiaries of The Walt Disney Company) have released the four post-George Lucas Era films (Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Star Wars: The Last Jedi, and Solo: A Star Wars Story) on home media before, this Multi-Screen is the first time that the Classic and Prequel Trilogies are reissued since the Disney-21st Century Fox merger, a deal that was finalized earlier this year.

What's New...and What's Not

Star Wars: Attack of the Clones made its Blu-ray debut eight years ago when Lucasfilm and 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment released two box sets: Star Wars: The Complete Saga and Star Wars: The Prequel Trilogy. Since then, George Lucas's 2002 film about the headstrong and ambitious Jedi apprentice Anakin Skywalker's perilous balancing act between his commitment to the Jedi Order and his reignited love for the beautiful Padme Amidala has been reissued in various configurations, including Blu-ray/DVD combos, a 2015 repackaged Star Wars: The Complete Saga box set, and 20th Century Fox's final reissue in the Limited Edition Steelbook series. 

A pensive Jedi Master Yoda graces the cover of 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment's Limited Edition Steelbook reissue (the last one under the Fox brand) of November 2015. Art © 2015 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment and Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL)


Now, I must point out that although Fox and Lucasfilm went the extra mile with the marketing and packaging of the reissues, there is one thing that remained unchanged: the Blu-ray discs (BD) and their content. Except for variations on the discs' label art  ﹘ some sported the film's title and a large Roman numeral that denoted the Episode, while others had "character-centric" labels, i.e. the disc for Star Wars - Episode I: The Phantom Menace featured Yoda on its label, while the BD of Star Wars - Episode IV: A New Hope featured "old" Obi-Wan Kenobi. (Curiously, all of the Fox-issued Star Wars BDs in my video library are the ones without illustrated labels, even  though I own three different editions.)

Promotional photo of the original (2011) Star Wars: The Complete Saga DigiBook, featuring the "illustrated" variant BDs. © 2011 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment and Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL)

Regardless of which edition/packaging variation consumers purchased, the content of the BDs remained the same throughout the four-year period in which 20th Century Fox exercised its distribution rights per its contract (signed way back in 1976!) with Lucasfilm and re-released the first two Star Wars Trilogies on Blu-ray. The main menu, the language (audio and subtitle) options, and the audio commentaries (there are two such commentary tracks on the BDs), and scene selection/bookmarking options are the same in every re-issue.

Well, if you're expecting the Multi-Screen Editions of the Classic and Prequel Trilogies to have re-designed menus or new extras, such as a collection of movie trailers for each title or even a trivia track (a feature I'd love to see on a Star Wars BD), forget it.

To be sure, Buena Vista gave Star Wars: Attack of the Clones newly designed slipcover/jewel box art. Based loosely on Drew Struzan's 2002 theatrical poster, the new illustration features three lightsaber-wielding Jedi (Anakin in the foreground with a gun-toting Padme at his side; Obi-Wan slightly behind him; and Mace Windu slightly off in the background), the clone troopers of the Republic's new "Grand Army," and, looming menacingly in the background, the helmeted visage of the deadly bounty hunter, Jango Fett.

But when you put the BD in a Blu-ray player and watch it go through the startup process, you'll see that Buena Vista's 2019 reissue is just the 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment disc with - literally - a new label with the service marks and indicia of Lucasfilm and the current distributor of Star Wars home video content. (The new label, in case you're wondering, shows a host of clone troopers in parade formation on Coruscant as a Republic assault transport - a ship that foreshadows the Empire's Star Destroyer - heads off for space on its way to a Clone War battlefield.)

Other than this cosmetic (albeit necessary) change, the 2019 Buena Vista Home Entertainment BD is identical to its Fox-issued forerunner. So much so, in fact, that the Blu-ray player will ask you if you want to resume playback from previous viewings, even if you are playing the 2019 disc for the first time. 

So, what is new in this reissue, you ask? 

As I said in my opening remarks, this reissue is marketed as the Multi-Screen Edition because each BD (or DVD) single-disc package includes an insert with the code that activates a digital copy good for storing/viewing on such venues as Amazon Prime Video, iTunes, Movies Anywhere, and Vudu.

Such inserts have been included with the Blu-ray/DVD editions of the new Star Wars films produced and released by Lucasfilm and Walt Disney Motion Pictures Studios,. Fox, on the other hand (maybe due to the terms of its contract with George Lucas) did not include digital copies in its many BD releases of the first six Star Wars films; the first HD digital copies of those films made their online debut in 2015 and only came about after complex negotiations between Disney, Lucasfilm, and Fox, which at the time owned the distribution rights to five of the six Lucas Era films and owned Star Wars: A New Hope outright. 

Thus, if you buy the Multi-Screen Editions of Star Wars: Attack of the Clones and the other five Star Wars films previously released by 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, you are now able to own the individual films of Star Wars: The Digital Movie Collection with their unique extra features. 

On Movies Anywhere, for instance, the digital version of Star Wars - Episode II; Attack of the Clones (marketed as Star Wars: Attack of the Clones) is bundled with a plethora of extras. Some, like Conversations: Sounds in Space, are exclusive to the digital edition and aren't on any of the Bonus Discs I own. Others, such as From Puppets to Pixels: Digital Characters in Episode II, are ported over from either the DVD or Blu-ray Bonus Discs. 

As I've mentioned in my previous reviews of the Multi-Screen reissues, the opening logos sequence in Star Wars: Attack of the Clones tends to vary from one streaming venue to the next. I can access my digital copy on two services - Amazon Prime Video and Movies Anywhere - and the viewing experience of the movie's start is vastly different. 

If I want to see Attack of the Clones with the traditional 20th Century Fox Fanfare (which John Williams re-arranged and recorded in 1977 for the original Star Wars film and was used by Fox in many of its subsequent films) and "searchlights" logo, I have to do it on Movies Anywhere.

In contrast, the Amazon Prime Video "cut" omits the 20th Century Fox logo and Fanfare altogether. In its place, the Lucasfilm logo appears onscreen, accompanied by a snippet from the score of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. 

Bottom Line: If you are new to the Star Wars franchise and have not yet bought any of the movies either on physical media or digital format, by all means, get the Multi-Screen Editions. However, if you already own them in either format and aren't interested in yet another re-issue, you can skip this reissue.

Blu-ray Specifications:

Video
  • Codec: MPEG-4 AVC (30.59 Mbps)
  • Resolution: 1080p
  • Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
  • Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1

Audio
  • English: DTS-HD Master Audio 6.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
  • French: DTS 5.1
  • Portuguese: Dolby Digital 5.1
  • Spanish: Dolby Digital 5.1 (448 kbps)
  • Note: DTS 5.1@768 kbps - DD 5.1@448 kbps
Subtitles
  • English SDH, French, Portuguese, Spanish, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish
Discs
  • Blu-ray Disc
  • Single disc (1 BD-50)

Digital
  • Movies Anywhere, iTunes, Amazon Prime Video, Vudu
Playback
  • Region A

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