Broken Frontier

In 1977, the original Star Wars captured the imagination of an entire generation, forever changing the way that audiences around the world looked at movies. Two sequels and three prequels later, Star Wars: The Clone Wars—the first full-length animated film in the franchise—fills in some of the blanks between Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith while setting the stage for a weekly half-hour series premiering this fall on Cartoon Network and TNT.

While The Clone Wars may end up being a decent children’s cartoon series, releasing this glorified television pilot in theaters was an astronomical misfire. Lacking in cinematic flair, tension, plotting and characterization, the film never once attempts to engage anyone over the age of 12. Sure, there are the requisite spaceship dogfights, lightsaber battles and large-scale ground skirmishes, but none of it is even half as memorable as anything in even the worst of the live-action films (The Phantom Menace). It sometimes feels like Star Wars, but by the end of the film’s 98-minute running time, you’ll realize why creator George Lucas decided to skip over the Clone Wars in his films—they’re apparently not all that exciting.

The film follows Jedi Knights Obi-Wan Kenobi (James Arnold Taylor) and Anakin Skywalker (Matt Lanter) as they attempt to rescue the offspring of vile gangster Jabba the Hutt from the evil Separatists. Yes, Jabba the Hutt has a child and, thankfully, the film never goes into the details of just how that happened. Anakin is soon joined by a Padawan learner named Ahsoka Tano (Ashley Eckstein), a spunky, orange-skinned teenager whom he affectionately refers to as “Snips” (she’s snippy). In turn, she calls him “Sky Guy” and dubs Jabba’s son “Stinky” because he smells terrible. The sickeningly cute nicknames hardly stop there, and each one is repeated ad nauseum.  When Ahsoka begins to call R2-D2 “Artooie,” hardcore Star Wars fans will be fully convinced that this film was not, in any way, made for them.

Characters move with a puppet-like jerkiness, with filmmakers forgoing photo-realism in favor of a style reminiscent of Japanese anime. While the film’s faceless armies of droids and countless white-armored clones look just fine, most of the principal character models are downright ugly. Pixar films like Ratatouille and the recent WALL-E have proven that cartoon characters can be as compelling as flesh-and-blood actors, but no one in The Clone Wars seems to carry any dramatic weight due to their simplistic, rigid  design.

It should be noted, however, that director David Filoni manages to squeeze a better performance out of his digital Anakin than Lucas did with actor Hayden Christensen in the last two Star Wars prequels. This Anakin is actually somewhat likeable, making his inevitable turn to the Dark Side of the Force and transformation into Darth Vader all the more tragic.

Christensen is absent along with most of the live-action cast, but some series favorites lend their voices to their computerized counterparts. Christopher Lee returns as the villainous Count Dooku, while Samuel L. Jackson appears briefly as Jedi Master Mace Windu. Anthony Daniels once again plays everyone’s favorite protocol droid C-3PO, and is probably grateful that he can reprise this role in animation without getting into an uncomfortable costume. The rest of the cast is made up of soundalikes, who do a mostly admirable job given the oftentimes juvenile dialogue.

As unsatisfying as it may be as a film, The Clone Wars does have potential as a kids’ television series. It will be interesting to see how the show’s writers flesh out the teacher-student relationship between Anakin and Ahsoka, and what strategies they employ to keep their stories fresh without the series devolving into a succession of meaningless battles. Genndy Tartakovsky proved in 2003 with his Clone Wars micro-series that great things can happen when other creative minds are given a chance to play in Lucas’ sandbox.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars is not in any way meant to appease adult fans who remember growing up with Star Wars, but it will probably entertain those young aspiring Jedi who have yet to do so.