Friday, August 10, 2018

10 Years Ago, In a Galaxy Far, Far Away...


 
Star Wars: The Clone Wars
2008
D: Dave Filoni
**********
Pros: Has Its Moments, Spawned Surprisingly Decent Series
Cons: Dull, Lacks Focus



        Ten years ago, Dave Filoni’s The Clone Wars debuted.  This movie was generally not well-received.  It was often seen as lacking even the entertainment value and clever ideas of the prequels, and was often contrasted with Genndy Tartakovsky’s beloved Clone Wars series.  It didn’t help that it essentially retconned the latter.  I certainly didn’t like it when it came out, and it still ranks as one of the worst in a relatively good year for movies.  Still, people eventually grew to like the resultant series to the point where they forgave this movie’s existence.
           The film begins with a narration (Tom Kane) that is distractingly similar to that of a World War II-era newsreel.  This always annoyed me about the series.  It seems out of place and takes me out of the universe.  Star Wars always mixed subtle visual cues from various genres, whether they be Eastern or Western, in a science fiction universe that seemed believable in its own way.  Nothing was so recognizable as to be jarring, but you noticed it on a subconscious level at least.  However, some of the more recent additions to the franchise have featured things that are a little too obvious, such as this, Cad Bane’s hat, and the tuxedos in the Canto Bight casino.  It also doesn’t help that Kane uses the same voice for Admiral Wullf Yularen.
        The narration helpfully reminds us that the Clone Wars are being fought and adds that Jabba the Hutt’s (Kevin Michael Richardson) son Rotta (David Acord) has been kidnapped.  This is significant because he controls areas of space that both sides need for the war effort.  Meanwhile Mitch has gotten rich  Anakin Skywalker (Matt Lanter) and Obi-Wan Kenobi (James Arnold Taylor) are fighting a droid army (Matthew Wood) led by General Loathsom (Corey Burton).  Anakin is disappointed to find out that the Jedi Council has sent him a new apprentice named Ashoka Tano (Ashley Eckstein) even though it was Obi-Wan who requested one.  I’m sure Yoda (Tom Kane) had a plan.  They butt heads momentarily and Anakin gives her the nickname “Snips” due to her snippy backtalk.  A protracted battle ensues in which Anakin and Ahsoka infiltrate the enemy deflector shield while Obi-Wan displays his playful personality, distracting Loathsom with a fake parlay.  After Ahsoka momentarily turns Anakin into Buster Keaton with a daring stunt, they win the battle and Anakin acknowledges that their shared recklessness would make him a more understanding mentor for her than most Jedi.
       The growing trust between Anakin and Ahsoka is the primary arc of the movie, but it only comes out in a few moments, and they seem to act like they’ve known each other for years halfway through.  She’s like a scrappy in this movie, but she eventually becomes more likable throughout the resultant series, partially because she seems less out of place in it. 
        Ahsoka and Anakin travel to Teth, where they retrieve Rotta.  With circumstantial evidence that the Jedi have captured the Huttlet, Asajj Ventress (Nika Futterman) attempts to recover the child, but the Jedi Knight and his new apprentice escape on a beaten-up old light freighter than Anakin ends up using throughout the series (we don’t see Anakin’s recovering the crashed ship from the middle of the desert, though).  Obi-Wan then gets into a rather tedious lightsaber fight with Ventress.  The problem with the action in this movie is that there is no build-up or emotional involvement.  Many of the battles also seem like padding designed to stretch this movie out to feature length.  This particular fight has no stakes aside from the fact that Captain Rex (Dee Bradley Baker) and a few other Clone Troopers have been trapped in the area.  So a character we like who has no arc fights a villainess whom we only know for dying a symbolic death in a retconned work and failing in this one for the sake of another character we know nothing about but possesses implied plot armor.  Rex does end up being one of the best break-out characters of the series,  but that doesn’t exist yet.
          As for the Huttlet, I don’t like its design.  The face is ugly-cute like that of a bulldog, but it seems to be a head attached to a rather stubby tail with hands sticking out the side; it has no body.  Also, it’s generally not a good idea to have a baby as the object for the protagonists to protect.  In addition to its having no potential for characterization, it creates a Catch-22.  Most movies don’t have the nerve to kill the infant so the suspense is false, but if the suspense were real it would sap any amount of entertainment value from the work.  It doesn’t help that Rotta is suffering from a life-threatening fever until Ahsoka provides him with first aid on the freighter.  Usually you should only use this trope if you are being ironic or so over-the-top it’s funny.  Shoot’em Up, for all its problems was an example of how to do this, and so is Hard Boiled.
           Anakin and Ahsoka land on Tatooine where Dooku (Christopher Lee) and his MagnaGuards unsuccessfully fight them off.  Dooku was apparently so confident he could head Anakin off at the pass that he had already told Jabba that the Jedi had murdered his son even after Ahsoka failed to keep them on Teth!  The stupidity of this attempted frame-up makes sense considering that it Palpatine (Ian Abercrombie) would want it to fail.  He would want the public, including crime lords, to trust the Empire by using the CIS for false flags.  Any moderately intelligent person like Dooku should be in on this, but a conversation between him and his master indicates he wasn’t.  He really was an idiot.
        About twenty minutes prior to end credits, the movie remembers there’s a political element, and Padme (Catherine Taber) tries to ameliorate the situation by negotiating with Jabba’s annoyingly flamboyant uncle Ziro (Corey Burton).  She finds out that Ziro conspired with Dooku to kidnap the Huttlet and she contacts Jabba to exonerate the protagonists after C-3PO (Anthony Daniels) calls in a rescue for her.  The Republic (but really Palpatine) wins the day, and Ahsoka proves her worth.
        The animation isn’t quite ready for the big screen, but good enough for the show.  There are some interesting stylizations of the characters (like Dooku) and some hiccups (like Jabba).  There’s a wonderful establishing shot of a Venator Star Destoyer approaching Teth, and Christophsis is a neat setting.  The expressions seem a little stilted, but this got better in the series.  Voice acting is pretty good, and many cast members display a nice talent for variety and mimicry throughout the series.  The Clone Wars demonstrates that the franchise has many great voice actors at its disposal and can make an animated film without wasting money on celebrities (hint, hint, Disney).  Samuel L. Jackson also voices Mace Windu in this.
           I found The Clone Wars to be the least watchable of all the canon Star Wars movies.  It’s even more of a chore to watch than Attack of the Clones or Last Jedi despite its substantially shorter runtime and better legacy.  A lot of this is because it lacks focus.  The character appeal that defined the Original Trilogy is compromised by action filler and only comes up in a few moments during the battles.  The political aspect that at least made the prequels somewhat interesting is toned down.  The action, for all its runtime, seems phoned in and lacks the artful execution of Tartakovsky’s Clone Wars; it just seems like white noise.  On the plus side, this movie did end up spawning a surprisingly decent TV Series (viewable on Netflix).     

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