Clone Schmone: New Star Wars movie is more of the same

In defense of the Clone Wars

The latest Star Wars film, the animated action adventure The Clone Wars is not good theater, nor is it good theatre, it’s only a mediocre kids movie at that.

So why defend it?

I’ve read about a dozen reviews which slam the film for being what the franchise became as soon as the Ewoks took over Jedi in the mid-eighties…wooden and dumb. Of the seven movies only four of them are good, and only two are great. When Lucas revisited the story line he began with episode IV in the 70s it was the cinematic equivalent of the Stones reuniting for yet another world tour. The newest four films are rehashed formulas with familiar rhythms parents and their small children can move in and out of with ease. Look R2 is going to fall off a cliff and scream….Look Threepio is going to make an awkward entrance….Look Anakin’s got that dark glint in his eye again…oh no another cheeky droid soldier!

The animation style of the Clone Wars is a mix of blocky game enhanced graphics with shades of paint thrown in. In one scene R2’s dome looks like a charcoal painting and much of the images of the planets are spectacular while many of the characters have near simian or block cut features. I didn’t find the human images as distracting as other reviewers, but at least the style is distinct.

The action is what you’d come to expect from Star Wars films, lots of zipping ships, fancy lightsaber clashes with a few tired one-liners thrown in for the ten year olds. Empire Strikes Back it ain’t.

Yet my four year old loved it and in-between explosions you could hear the little kid chatter of preschoolers asking their parents “where’s R2D2?...what’s happening, Mommy?...is Luke Skywalker in this movie, Daddy?” There was even rousing applause at the end. Somebody liked it.

What kills me about most reviews is that they still hope that Lucas will resurrect that old cinema magic from IV, V, and heck, even Raiders. That’s a crazy notion for what little of that magic left sizzled to embers in Jedi and didn’t burn again until III when Anakin became Darth Vader. What I haven’t read is how CW could have, and should have broken from the formula altogether. For once there is a variation of the John Williams theme (disappointing) and there is no rolling narrative script to update the audience, instead it was like news footage that accompanied matinee and bijou flicks in the forties. Which would have been cool if the director had seen this through, panning back to an audience of aliens, or an audience of one…instead the action rolled on, a machine powered by Lunchables, Legos, and action figures. Just like the films have been since the beginning; a kids virtual megaplex of possible playworlds and toy combos. To think CW would be anything else is contrary.

But still…the animation could have freed up some money to hire a dialogue coach, or a character coach. To that end CW took only one risk…Zero, Jabba the Hutt’s uncle, leader of the Hutts, and owner of a seedy club on the city planet of Coruscant. He spoke English with a fey southern accent that reminded me of Tommy Lee Jones’ corrupted New Orleans pansexual in JFK, and was either tattooed or made up like a Mardi Gras reveler. Zero’s voice and characterizations are jarring, out of place, and at times ridiculous for the adult, but humorous for the ten year old, but at least someone took a risk with something other than silly bad guy names like Dooku or Ventress, whose characterizations are shades of Vader circa 1982.

Clone Wars isn’t great, but it isn’t nearly as bad as many reviewers perceive. Compared to the folly of Jar Jar and the wooden romance of episode II, it’s just more of the same tired Lucas.