by Roger Bourke White Jr., copyright September 2008
It was a dark and stormy night... I took refuge in a darkened movie theater... as I sat in my seat... the screen brightened... and on came... Star Wars: Clone Wars.
Well... almost. I admit I was pretty bored and finished working for the day. I came to the theater and got there at the right time to see this, so I did.
The critics have panned Star Wars: Clone Wars, and for good reason. The animation is good, but the story... <sigh>
This is a chronic problem that Lucas has with the Star Wars franchise. The original Star Wars was a good start, but Lucas has never really extended the concept. Whenever I see a Star Wars movie, I feel like the galaxy is as big a place as The Dukes of Hazzard TV series/movie -- just a backwoods county. In Star Wars we meet the same people over and over, we see the same places over and over, and everyone knows everyone. Extending this sameness problem is that all the combat hardware looks like World War Two vintage weaponry converted to 1930's-style Buck Rogers ray guns.
And it's a real shame, because the franchise did have the potential to introduce all of us viewers to a really wondrous and diverse galaxy. Instead, Lucas chickened out, and just gives us more of the same. Such a shame, such a shame. OK, editorializing done, here's what I saw, placed in technofiction format.
Clone Wars has nice animation. One of the big blessings of animation is that you can add dozens of strange things, such as strange space ships or strange creatures, and it doesn't up the cost a dime. Lucas has done a little of this, but just a very little. So, first off, he's tossed animation's biggest strength.
Here are some more specific problems with the movie:
o In the first battle scene, we have the recurring "Starship Troopers Problem" -- that of showing massed infantry marching across a wide open space with guns blazing. No... sorry... you only do this when your best weapons are slow-loading muskets. Once automatic weapons are plentiful, targets sneak, they stay out of sight -- this was the painful, painful lesson of World War I. In Star Wars times, infantry are not going to appear in the open until after all the enemy artillery and air cover are taken care of. When automatic weapons are readily available, formation marching is strictly for parades.
o Likewise, the assault on the temple where Young Obi-Jabba the Huttling is being held, was imaginative, but silly. The defense was silly, and the attack was silly. And... binoculars? Why would robots, or soldiers with smart helmets, use binoculars? What happened to heads up displays and remote imaging?
o Our new padiwan, Ashoka, was disappointing. She looked like, sounded like, acted like, some kind of Goth teenager -- a very human, very American, very 21st century, Goth teenager. This is a Jedi padiwan? Couldn't she at least look young, but really be a 120 years old? Or look eighteen but really be six? Or... something exotic? There was absolutely nothing exotic about her, no sign that Jedi training had changed her thinking in the least.
o I guess your first "Jedi Merit Badge" is for using a light saber to fend off ray gun blasts. Every Jedi seems to do it. It now looks so ho-hum. And... I never see a Jedi looking like they are getting tired while they do it.
o The communications systems are so whacky. You'd think everyone would have some kind of super Blackberry equivalent along with their heads up display. Instead, sometimes the communications systems work, and sometimes they don't. Once again, very World War II-ish in feeling.
o The space fight scenes all looked too, too, World War II-ish as well. Space ships can't hide in space, and even 21st century technology uses homing missiles, not machine guns... sorry, pulse lasers... that force you to point your plane where you want to shoot.
o The question of who can warp to where, and who can communicate to who, is very fuzzy in Lucas's universe. If just about any ship can warp to anywhere (the bucket-of-bolts cargo ship that Anikan and Ashoka commandeer being what I'm thinking of) then why are space lanes important? The premise of this plot is that Jabba the Hutt's people control a space lane important to the war. Time and space issues are routinely trampled over by space opera writers, but when you make time and space a major plot element, you should be a bit more consistent.
o This disdain of space and time is a major reason why the Star Wars galaxy feels more like a county than a galaxy. Everything is close, nothing is far away. This may also explain why so little seems exotic. That, and the retread nature of almost every character, scene and plot development in this particular movie.
o When the bucket-of-bolts cargo ship crashes on Tatooine, it is not located immediately by any Search and Rescue group... even though its arrival was of intense interest to everyone on the planet. Anikan and Ashoka then trek across a sandy desert, as if they are all alone, even though there are dozens of the little dwarf people around the crashed ship? Those dwarf people don't have a communication system? The ship doesn't have an emergency locator beacon? Man... this is pure plot device!
o These Jedi fights are high level warrior fights -- they should be over in an eyeblink. Beginner fights take a long time to resolve, high level warriors of any martial arts skill take just a few strokes.
o More of the "countyish" nature of this galaxy: for the leader of a rebel army, Dooku sure maintains a small staff. He's wandering around Jabba the Hutt's HQ for days on end, and we see no sign of staff officers running to-and-from him to keep him appraised of day-to-day events in the war?
So, even though I found the animation pleasing, I was unhappy because this movie was so much of a retread. Lucas seems to have run dry of new ideas and new imagination to apply to the Star Wars franchise. That's a big shame, because it laid the foundation for so much, and has produced so much already.
-- The End --