Star Wars: The Clone Wars

After the disaster that was Attack of the Clones' ending*, Star Wars fans were clamouring for more action. This was promptly delivered in a short animated series. Very short. Each episode was exactly three minutes long, which most fans said was precisely 27 minutes too short. The whole season end to end is about an hour long. And then the only channel to show the series did so by replacing certain advert breaks with the episodes, so it because very difficult to watch the whole thing in the right order.

The series was intended to bridge the gap between Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith. It was highly stylised, very expressive and created by the same people who brought us Samurai Jack. Each character had been recreated in such a way as to be unique, but still very recognisable. There were two seasons of this (or three if you're American and rejigged it).

After Revenge of the Sith, Lucasarts gave up on making episodes 7, 8 & 9 and decided to embark on a series of TV shows**, one life action and one animated. Clone Wars is a film intended to kick off that animated series.

All of which leads to a film which if you haven't seen the animated series, would lead you to look at it and say "What the fluff was that?" The characters are 3D versions of the original cell animated series characters, so they're not as detailed as you would expect from a feature film, but are about par with a TV show.

There is some attempt to provide a little more back story, but it is brushed aside and relegated to wherever explosions aren't taking place, which is a limited amount of real estate. Anakin has an apprentice; Ahsoka Tano (about the only "new" character in the entire movie). However since so much of what is about to come has already been on the big screen, it becomes hard to care about a lot of the characters or become concerned for their safety. "She can't die because she's in the next film." "He can't die, because he gets killed in the next film." "She can't die because she got killed in the series." "He won't get shot because he's in the next film." And so on... In fact, there's only really one character who could possibly be in real danger throughout the entire film. Which kind of spoils it for me, I'm sorry to say.

Add to this a strange mix of voice casting. Only about half the actors in Revenge of the Sith reprised their roles for this. Most of the "classics" are present; Ian Abercrombie as Palpatine and Anthony Daniels as C-3PO, and Christopher Lee is back to play Dooku because frankly, who else could? Even Samuel L. Jackson comes back to play Mace Windu, though his part is small. And the voices for Jabba and Yoda are very good. Even the guy now doing the voices of the clone troopers is so close that I didn't realise it was a different actor. But Amidala, Anakin, and Obi-Wan have all been re-cast, for obvious reasons. And while the replacements do an able job, they just aren't quite right. Because they have so much screen time, little differences in the voices soon become annoying. Particularly when you realise that this man is imitating Ewan McGregor channelling Alec Guinness. And never being one to shy away from giving someone a kick when they're down, we're shown that once again an inanimate object (in this case a render-farm) can out act Hayden Christensen. I really wish that were a joke, but the animated character manages to emote more than Hayden did in the whole of episode 3.

Score: C Average, and watchable, but nothing special.

OQ: I hate Hutts...

Trivia:

• The official Star Wars website announced that the film will lead the way for a television series will debut in the fall of '08. The TV series will air on Cartoon Network, TNT, as well as CTV in Canada.
• This film will be the first animated ‘Star Wars’ feature film in theatres.
• This film will also be the first 'Star Wars' film not to be released by 20th Century Fox (Warner Bros. Pictures will handle distribution on behalf of Lucasfilm Ltd.).
• This will also be the first "Star Wars" film that won't have Frank Oz providing the voice of Yoda. Tom Kane provides the voice.
• The first Star Wars film not to have John Williams composing the music.
• This is the first ‘Star Wars’ film not to open in the month of May.

*Disaster in that the audience wanted to see the actual clone wars, but George for some reason decided to gloss over them almost entirely, so you see how they start and how they end and that's about it.

**Most Star Wars fans were instantly terrified by this announcement because Lucasarts have attempted two TV series before; Ewoks and the now non-canon Droids. Ewoks was truly dreadful and Droids, while entertaining was essentially The Littlest Hobo, except with droids. And in space. And now it's totally irrelevant as the story-line it followed no longer fits within the revised story-line set out in episodes 1-3.