Thirty years ago, The Clone Wars was part of a throwaway line in the
original Star Wars film, when Obi-Wan Kenobi was explaining to Luke
Skywalker how he had known his father. Simply, when Obi-Wan was telling him
that they had fought together, Luke asked, “You fought in the Clone Wars?”
Well, apparently that made-up-on-the-fly term has haunted Star Wars
mastermind George Lucas ever since. The Clone Wars have since played a role
in the fifth and sixth films of the series (The Attack of the Clones
and The Revenge of the Sith). They were turned into an animated
full-length theatrical film and became two animated TV series – a
2003 version on FOX (which had dropped the “The,” to become simply Star
Wars: Clone Wars) and this current Cartoon Network incarnation. There
have also been three video games (one in 2002, two in 2008), two comic book
series and a novel.
No one ever accused George Lucas of being unable to squeeze every last penny
out of a concept.
Continuing that… umm, thrifty… mindset, the current Star Wars: The Clone
Wars series is apparently being rationed out on video. Only the first
four half-hour episodes of the series are available in this package rather
than going the more traditional entire-season box set route.
And three of those four episodes have the word “Malevolence” in the title.
In
fairness, this sampler platter is priced rather cheaply – but still I'd
imagine most people interested enough to get this would be willing to pay
more to get the whole season.
The entire series (as well as all those other Clone Wars spin-offs
mentioned above) is supposed to look at the three-year period between
Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith.
Therefore, how much you enjoy Star Wars: the Clone Wars – a Galaxy
Divided pretty
much depends on how interested you are in the minutiae of George
Lucas’ galaxy (far, far away…) of imagination.
On
the plus side, The Clone Wars series – while far from perfect – is
significantly better than The Clone Wars movie. Unfortunately, like
the movie, the animation – in particular the character animation – looks
pretty bad. The ships look cool, as do the robots, but humans and aliens
really just don’t work very well. I said in my review of The Clone Wars
movie that the characters look like they were refugees from a 60s
Rankin-Bass Claymation holiday special, and that problem sadly hasn’t
changed.
As
with everything Star Wars since Return of the Jedi, the
dialogue is pretty awful. Their idea of a clever pun is having robot C3PO
greet his friend droid R2D2 with a relieved “R2, you’re a sight for short
circuits!”
That
being said, The Clone Wars actually works a lot better in half-hour
chunks.
Though it resides in a slightly uncomfortable netherworld – a bit too
violent for small children but a bit too juvenile for adults – the four
episodes follow the intergalactic war between the good (Yoda, Obi-Wan Kenobi
and Anakin Skywalker, who hasn’t gone bad as Darth Vader yet) and evil
(Count Dooku, Ventress and General Grievous.)
Each
episode portrays a different battle (although episodes
two to four are all
an different parts of a larger fight
arc) and while it is sometimes all a little silly, the action scenes
have the kind of immediate thrills the series has always offered.
At
the end of the four episodes, you want to see more – so they have to be
doing something right.
Jay S. Jacobs
Copyright ©2009 PopEntertainment.com.
All rights reserved. Posted:
April 3, 2009.
