A long time ago in a
galaxy far, far away…
STAR WARS
Episode II.V
THE CLONE WARS
A galaxy divided! Striking swiftly after
the Battle of Geonosis, Count Dooku's
droid army has seized control of the major
hyperspace lanes, separating the Republic
from the majority of its clone army.
With few clones available, the Jedi generals
cannot gain a foothold on the Outer Rim
as more and more planets choose to join
Dooku's Separatists. While the Jedi are
occupied fighting a war, no one is left to
keep the peace. Chaos and crime spread,
and the innocent become victims in a
lawless galaxy.
Crime lord Jabba the Hutt's son
has been
kidnapped by a rival band of pirates. Desperate
to save his son, Jabba puts out a call for
help—a call the Jedi are cautious to answer…
Shortly after Attack of the Clones finally showed audiences
the truth behind the mysterious Clone Wars referenced in A New Hope, Lucasfilm
had tapped animator Genndy Tartakovsky (of Dexter’s Laboratory and Samurai Jack
fame) to create a series of short animated adventures to bridge the gap between
the beginning of the war in Clones and the end of the war in the upcoming
Revenge of the Sith. The result was Star Wars: Clone Wars, a traditionally
animated “micro-series” that ran on Cartoon Network intermittently between 2003
and 2005. It was a very positively received series, and was mainly famous for
introducing Asajj Ventress and granting fans an early look at General Grievous.
After Revenge of the Sith premiered, George Lucas wanted to
continue telling these interim stories, but he was intrigued by the idea of
using computer animation. He hired a whole new crew, led by Dave Filoni (most
famous for his work on Avatar: The Last Airbender), though the character
designs were purposely inspired by Tartakovsky’s. Lucas was also much more
involved with every step of production in order to lend a more authentic Star
Wars mythology to the proceedings.
 |
| "There's something happening here. What it is ain't exactly clear." |
The story goes that Lucas was looking in at the show’s first
three-episode story arc in addition to a short prequel pilot, and was so
impressed by the work that he ordered the episodes edited together into a
feature-length film and released theatrically. Thus The Clone Wars came to
theatres in 2008.
Of course, with Lucas’ reputation tarnished by baseless
accusations of corruption by the I-III hater crowd, there was somewhat of a
collective eye-roll that there would be a theatrically-released Star Wars
cartoon at all, even amongst some of Lucas’ supporters. Or at least that’s how
it seemed to me at the time.
 |
| "Of course I'm showing you the whole picture. What do you take me for?" |
I’ve spoken before about my worn state of mind when this
film came out. I was on the tail end of a dark period for Star Wars in my life,
where I always liked the entire Saga but had no arguments against the haters,
so I preferred to not even go there. I was on Star Wars burnout, so my first
thought when I heard of this thing was something along the line of “Really?
Just let it rest for a while.”
 |
| "ENOUGH!" |
It took me showing the Saga to the woman who would become my
wife, whom I had just started dating, to really re-invigorate my Star Wars
fandom. But I was still intending to skip Clone Wars until she won two tickets
to a sneak preview from a local radio station. So I thought, what the hell,
keep an open mind.
And while the film wasn’t the greatest I’ve ever seen in my
life, it was certainly an entertaining time and arguably the best Star Wars
spin-off I’ve seen. Well, that last one is more for the series as a whole,
which had improved in the years since this film was released. However, this set
the standard.
 |
| "Now you die..." |
First of all, even without the iconic crawl, the film goes
an interesting route by giving a sensationalist opening narration that A) would
have been the text of a crawl in the first place, and B) is extremely evocative
of the kind of classic serials that Star Wars was a love-letter to in the first
place. Secondly, the writing and characterizations, especially for supporting
characters, is top-notch.
 |
| "You could say I'm acting...In Cold Blood!" |
The story of this movie specifically is interesting. For
one, I would figure that the Hutts would stay out of galactic affairs as a
whole. Also, Jabba reproducing is not exactly an image that I want to think too
much about for a variety of reasons. At first, I was a little weirded out by
the characterization of Jabba’s uncle Ziro, thinking to myself “What child will
get a reference to Truman Capote?” But then I remembered that my favorite
Animaniacs cartoon as a child was a whole-plot-reference to Apocalypse Now, and
that all the best kids shows pull this kind of thing all the time.
Speaking of kids, this film famously introduced Anakin
Skywalker’s padawan, Ahsoka Tano, into the Star Wars universe. On my first
viewing, I immediately recognized that Ahsoka was Robin, the Boy Wonder. She
was the audience surrogate, the self-insert character for the kids, and her
sassing of the Chosen One in this film was right in line with this. While her
characterization did become much better as the series went on, there’s really
nothing wrong with how she started out. It was the beginning of a natural
progression.
 |
| "You can keep it, but it's your responsibility." |
The animation hasn’t aged quite as well, though that’s more
in comparison to how much better the animation became as the series went on.
Aside from that (and the fact that having Anakin and Dooku meet up so often
kind of takes some of the punch away from the duel in Sith), I can’t see
anything really objectively wrong with the piece – everything is at least
adequate, if not very well-done. However, there are a number of things that
kind of bugged me on a personal level, and they’re all issues that continued
into the series proper.
 |
| "I seem to have lost my voice." |
First and foremost, it’s the portrayal of Anakin Skywalker,
and I know I’m a broken record on this. I’m sorry, as good an actor as Matt
Lanter is, he sounds nothing like Anakin Skywalker because he’s not even trying
to sound like Hayden Christensen. At least the other replacement voices, even
if they don’t quite get it, at least sound like they’re trying (and, luckily,
they were even able to get Christopher Lee and Samuel L. Jackson to reprise
their roles for this film where they did not in the series). Matt Lanter
doesn’t sound like Anakin Skywalker, he sounds like a generic twenty-something.
And I harp on this only because it strikes me as an internal indictment of
Hayden’s performance, which is one of the most criminally underrated
performances in modern cinema. Like it or not, Hayden’s Anakin had a very
consistent cadence and quality which melded Vader’s monotone with Luke’s petulant
naiveté, and too few understand that.
Also, the B1 Battle Droids have fully evolved into the
Keystone Cops, devoid now of any danger they were given in Phantom Menace. And
honestly, as good as the animation is, I find the character designs as they
appear here just very ugly.
 |
| "I have literally no idea what's going on right now...Roger Roger." |
Again, though, these are my personal nitpicks and they do
not reflect the objective quality of the film or the series it spawned. And it’
a testament to everything that’s right with The Clone Wars that I still love it
and sincerely, wholeheartedly recommend it to any and all Star Wars fans in
spite of the sometimes major personal issues I take with it.
 |
| Medals, we should be getting, hmm?" |
The Clone Wars film and the series that followed kept Star
Wars in the eye of the general public, but just like before, it would only be a
matter of time before this generation’s satirists had their hands at parodying
the Saga. Except this generation’s satirists grew up with IV-VI, so how does
parody and satire look through the lens of nostalgia? The answer comes in next
week’s supersized review…
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