As the publicity machine prepares to make the jump to hyperspeed for the May 16 opening of ''Star Wars: Episode 2 -- Attack of the Clones,'' George Lucas and his team of marketers and merchandisers understand that some repair work was needed on their durable and lucrative series.

When the first ''Star Wars'' film opened in 1977, few predicted it would become a pop-culture behemoth that would transform moviemaking and usher in a quarter-century of bigger and bigger popcorn movies. So expectations are extremely high -- from fans, retailers and theater owners -- that Mr. Lucas's team will not only deliver another popular triumph but also overcome the bad taste that 1999's ''Star Wars: Episode 1 -- The Phantom Menace'' left in some people's mouths.

It might seem odd that a film that sold $915 million in tickets and more than $2 billion in merchandise worldwide -- as Episode 1 did -- could be considered a disappointment. But for many critics and die-hard fans, Mr. Lucas's resuscitation of the ''Star Wars'' series after a 16-year hiatus was a letdown, drawing complaints of pedestrian storytelling and uninspiring characters. Much of the abuse fell on a jabbering, computer-animated character named Jar Jar Binks, who struck many moviegoers as annoying and some as racially insensitive, with its bumbling, Stepin Fetchit gait and vaguely West Indian patois.

And to retailers, who bought into the ''Star Wars'' hype with great enthusiasm in 1999, the huge volume of sales only partly made up for the millions of dollars in unsold merchandise that remained on their shelves when those sales, big as they were, failed to live up to inflated expectations.