As mentioned in the previous post, May is chock full o' Star Wars movie birthdays. The most prominent perhaps is the upcoming Episode I birthday on May 19 (3 days!), which will reach the ripe old round number of 10.

But today is the first Star Wars movie birthday of the bunch - Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones was released on May 16, 2002. Happy birthday/anniversary AOTC. Does anyone have cool memories of AOTC's release date? Or better yet, what are your favorite (or not-so-favorite) parts about Episode II? Mine is probably the back story given to storm troopers and Boba Fett (edited out the Geonosis-Utapau mix up).

Attack of the Clones factoids (largely borrowed from Wikipedia, but also just from the random Star Wars trivia forever entrenched in my mind):

- As most could have guessed, it ranked #1 at the box office for it's opening weekend, but by the end of it's 25 week theater run (who sees that anymore?) it became the first Star Wars movie ever to be out-grossed by another film(s actually) during it's release year.

- It has the lowest box office gross of all the Star Wars films

- It is currently the 35th top grossing film worldwide according to boxofficemojo.com

- It was the first feature length movie to be shot completely in digital high definition. Episode I was filmed partly filmed this way, and it was actually the Lucasfilm team that helped develop and further high definition digital technology for the purpose of these films. Once again, we can thank the maker for the technology we have today.

- AOTC's VFX team members Rob Coleman, Pablo Helman, John Knoll, and Ben Snow were nominated for Best Visual Effects at the 75th Academy Awards, (but got beat by LOTR: Two Towers).

- It was the last Star Wars film to be widely released on VHS. As many completists know, the European version of ROTS is practically impossible to find!

- I love this one - (Direct from Wikipedia) "The outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas from Chicago predicted that U.S. companies could lose more than $319 million in productivity due to employees calling in sick and then heading to theaters to see the film."

- Ewan McGregor wore a fake beard during the filming of certain scenes

More select AOTC trivia from Wookieepedia