Saw The Clone Wars yesterday and while the Mannion boys were trying to talk themselves into believing they enjoyed it I was scratching my head over this: Whose idea was it to model all the characters after the puppets in Team America?
Strange and I thought off-putting choice for the animation style, but the movie might have been better if the producers had actually used puppets. You can make marionettes do a lot of interesting things, including have sex, it turns out. (Thanks for that innovation, South Park guys.) But, compared to CGI cartoons, the amount of leaping around while engaging in wholesale slaughter and mayhem they can manage is extremely limited. Having to worry about their lead characters' strings getting tangled if the action sequences get too wild might have forced the filmmakers to focus on character and story instead of blowing things up.
The first hour or so of Clone Wars is a big noisy mess, much like the first hour of Revenge of the Sith. It's like being trapped inside a video game controlled by somebody's cat walking back and forth over the console. There's no logical consistency in the courses of the battles, in the plans of attack of the two armies, in the capabilities of the technology and weaponry, or in the thinking and motivations of any of the characters. Guns that can reduce tanks to jumbled heaps of scrap metal can't shatter rock. Characters say mutually contradicting things sequentially. Obi-wan, Anakin, and Anakin's new apprentice bounce back and forth between being superheroes with powers and abilities far beyond mortal men or any Jedi we've seen in any of the live-action movies, even in the duel between Yoda and Darth Sidious, and just a couple of brave and clever guys and a junior high school girl who happen to be rather handy in a sword fight. No battle actually ever ends because both sides have an endless supply of reinforcements and new material. Not that this matters because very quickly it becomes clear that all the fighting and blowing things not only has no point or direction for its own sake, it is irrelevant---to the story of this cartoon and to the arc of the larger story of the live-action movies.
What little story The Clone Wars has on its own revolves around George Lucas' bizarre and persistent belief that we care about the details of the background politics of the Republic and that there is or could be an outcome to the Clone Wars worth rooting for. But nothing Anakin, Obi-wan, Yoda, and the other Jedi do is worth rooting for because, win or lose, whatever they do helps the Emperor further his goal of destroying the Republic and wiping out the Jedi. The filmmakers, though, insist on treating the kidnapping of Jabba the Hutt's baby son as something we need to care about. Since in the grand scheme of things it doesn't matter whether or not Jabba allows the Republic to use the trade routes he controls, it doesn't matter whether or not Anakin rescues little Rotta the Hutt. The movie tries to make us care by making Jabba a worried daddy and Rotta cute as a bug in a rug. So now, thirty one years after Jabba sent Greedo to kill Han Solo, twenty-eight years after he had Bobba Fett bring home Han frozen in carbonite, twenty-five years after he tried to feed Luke to a Rancor and made a sex slave out of Princess Leia, we're meant to think of Hutts as sympathetic?
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, George Lucas decided that he would allow the novels, comic books, and video games that grew out of the movies to fill in all the holes and gaps he didn't fill in himself in his movies. The Star Wars epic now includes a lot more than what's in the six films, just as the myth of the Trojan War includes a lot more than the Iliad and the Odyssey and the story of King Arthur far more than what's to be found in Mallory's Le Morte d'Arthur. The Clone Wars does not add anything to that epic.
But it could have.
About a little more than half way through, The Clone Wars settles down and actually starts to tell a story with a plot, narrative direction, and (minimal) character development. This story is the story of Anakin's attempt to return Jabba's son to him safe and sound while Count Dooku plots to prevent him. But this is also the story of Anakin's return to Tatooine, which besides not being a garden spot in its own right---as Luke says of the place in the original movie, "If there's a bright center of the universe, you're in the spot that it's farthest from."---is the last place in the galaxy Anakin wants to re-visit.
Tatooine, as we all know, is where Luke Skywalker grew up the adopted son of a hardworking moisture farmer and his wife, but, for those of you who never bothered to see any of the "prequels," it's also where Anakin grew up the fatherless son of a slave. Anakin left Tatooine to begin his Jedi training when he was ten, but he had to leave his mother behind and for some reason went ten years without seeing her or getting in touch with her, which broke her heart. The last time Anakin went back was to witness her death, for which he blames himself, and to slaughter the Sandpeople who killed her in an insane fit of vengeful anger, and we all know where anger can take a Jedi when he lets it get the better of him.
Tatooine, then, is the site of Anakin's first great moral failure, the place where he just about went over to the Dark Side all on his own, without any help from Emperor Palpatine. Coming "home" makes him understandably grumpy, but it ought to have been the cause of a more heroic psychological struggle and torment for him, and all it would have taken to dramatize this was an encounter with some Sandpeople and a chance meeting with one character from the first movie.
Luke's uncle, Owen Lars.
It's clear in the movie I'll always call Star Wars and think of as the first movie but which has been officially renamed A New Hope and which younger fans know as Episode IV that Uncle Owen holds a grudge against Luke's father, and this is without his knowing that Anakin Skywalker has become Darth Vader. (How could he have known? George Lucas didn't even know it at the time.) What you can't know, unless you read the novelization
Owen blames Anakin for breaking their mother's heart.
Owen Lars and Anakin Skywalker are step-brothers.
Shortly after Anakin went off with Qui-gon Jinn to become a Jedi, Owen's father freed Anakin's mother from slavery and married her. Owen was a boy at the time and he latched onto Shmi who latched onto him back. They loved each other as mother and son. Owen then grew up joining his mother every night as she sat outside staring up at the night sky, wondering where Anakin was and hoping he would come back to her. It's no wonder that Owen learned to resent Anakin and all his Jedi friends as a pack of cold, heartless bastards who didn't care about the pain they caused lesser mortals, and it's no wonder he would have done his best to make sure that Luke didn't follow in Anakin's footsteps, following Obi-wan on "some damn fool idealistic crusade" and breaking Owen and Aunt Beru's hearts the way Anakin broke Shmi's.
This dynamic between the two "brothers," based on Anakin's guilt and Owen's resentment, is an important subtext to Luke's story, which makes it an important subtext to the story. The only reason Luke is tempted to give in to the Dark Side is the same reason he doesn't give in. Owen taught him to put other people's feelings and needs ahead of his own. Owen taught him how not to become Anakin. And this isn't dramatized at all in any of the movies.
It could have been worked into The Clone Wars easily enough. But it could have been and should have worked into Episode II. And this brings me to what I regard as the goofiest scene in all the Star Wars movies that does not involve an ewok, C-3PO, or Jar Jar Binks, and it occurs in Episode II.
It's Anakin's first scene after he murders the Sandpeople. Padme finds him sulking in a workshop in the Lars homestead and makes the mistake of asking him what's wrong. It's a mistake because he tells her. He confesses to having "slaughtered them like animals," the entire tribe, men, women, and children. Then he blames Obi-wan for what he's done, at least indirectly. Anakin starts listing all the ways he feels Obi-wan has failed to respect him as if they explain why he killed all the Sandpeople and why he's right to feel it's not his own fault.
In other words, he confesses to being a mass murderer and then throws a self-pitying temper tantrum in which he refuses to take any responsibility for his own moral failure and Padme reacts...by not reacting.
Not as if she's been listening to him, at any rate.
It's as if she hadn't been paying attention at the crucial moment and only half-heard him and she doesn't want him to know. She's aware that something's bothering him, but as far as she heard it might be that he's misplaced his lightsabre again or that he feels a headache coming on, the kind he used to get when he was growing up here and sand got up his nose. A sympathetic response of some kind is in order, though, so she gives him a kind of general purpose "There, there" pat on the cheek and then waits for her next cue. Since Anakin lets the matter drop, so does she and the scene ends without us finding out what she thinks about the fact that her boyfriend is a raging psychopath and petulant narcissist with very little impulse control and what amounts to superpowers.
The scene is goofy because of Padme's lack of reaction and the bad acting it elicits from Hayden Christiansen and Natalie Portman. What made it maddening for me to watch, though, was that it was totally unnecessary. Lucas had Anakin confessing to the wrong person.
Anakin wouldn't have told anyone, willingly, except maybe C-3PO. Why would he want anyone to know he just did a premature Darth Vader? But he might admit to what he'd done to someone who'd already guessed it, someone already inclined to think badly of him.
All Lucas needed to have done was have it not be Padme who finds Anakin at that point but Owen.
It would have been natural for the two young men to try to talk about their mutual loss and for the conversation would turn ugly quickly, with Owen unable to hide his anger at Anakin for the pain he caused their mother. And Owen would likely have guessed right away what Anakin did to the Sandpeople, first because it'd have been something he'd have wanted to do himself, but second because it was something he wouldn't have done because Shmi herself wouldn't have wanted it, and doing things that would have disappointed Shmi is something Anakin does as a matter of course. He'd have confronted Anakin---You killed them all, didn't you?---and Anakin would have shot back that he did, he was glad he did, and he'd do it again, and that would have settled everything between the "brothers." Neither would have wanted to see the other again and Owen's whole relationship with Luke would have been foretold right then and there. Owen would always be on the lookout for signs that Luke was at all like his father and jump all over him whenever he thought he saw one.
A scene like that is there but not there in the Star Wars story. Something like it must have happened. Shmi's two sons would have talked at some point during that visit, and it's unlikely they would have gotten along. George Lucas is probably content with its existing in the subtext and if he's not, he likely figures that if it isn't there now it will turn up somewhere in one of the novels or comic books or in one of the two TV series that are coming down the pike, the cartoon based on The Clone Wars or the live-action series about Luke's boyhood on Tatooine. But it could easily have turned up in The Clone Wars. Anakin could have, should have, bumped into Owen and Beru along with all the Jawas he keeps shooing away. But a scene like that is hard to work into a video game, I guess.
As it is, The Clone Wars doesn't add anything significant to the Star Wars universe except a new line of action figures and toys.
There are a few positive things about it though. We see Anakin acting as a true hero, which is not something he gets to do in either Attack of the Clones or Revenge of the Sith. In the first he's just a spoiled brat with surrogate daddy issues with Obi-wan; in the second, he's already a lost cause. It's good to know that in Return of the Jedi Luke set out to save a soul actually worth saving.
And The Clone Wars goes a little way towards rescuing Padme from the role of helpless worrywart Lucas reduced her to in Revenge of the Sith, although unfortunately even as a cartoon she's still forced to serve as a display mannequin for the costume designers' ugliest and most ridiculous creations.
The best thing about The Clone Wars, however, is that it gives Christopher Lee, who does the voice work for the cartoon version of his character from Episodes II and III, far more to work with than he had in Revenge of the Sith---Count Dooku is more of a living character, and a more worthy adversary for the Jedi, in cartoon form than he was as the live-action version of himself we last saw him as.
I still think it would have been better all around if Lucas hadn't made him a Sith and allowed him to be the fallen idealist and hero we're told he once was, if instead of being a mere henchman for Darth Sidious, he'd been as much an unknowing puppet as any of the Jedi.
"The Clone Wars does not add anything to that epic."
Just out of curiosity, do you think the other bits of Star Wars universe-building (novels, comics, games, etc) have added to it?
Posted by: Thomas | Monday, August 18, 2008 at 05:19 PM
Sweet Jesus, if the movie is even half as boring as your review, you've convinced me to skip it...
Posted by: nikkos | Monday, August 18, 2008 at 05:54 PM
The animation style is based loosely around Genndy Tartakovsky's animated Cartoon Network series. The difference being that Tartakovsky actually used animation to make his stories lively and dramatic, whereas Lucas fell in love with technology (again) and immediately went CGI--which sucked out all the aforementioned liveliness and drama.
Weird thing about Tartakovsky's series: even though you only get literally a few seconds in the whole series that don't involve fighting, the characters feel more human and believable than anything Eps 1-3 managed. It's all in the subtle facial expressions and stolen moments. Anakin light-heartedly eating bugs while Obi Wan watches in disgust. Action sequences of immense imagination that still manage to convey the protagonists as sympathetic and relatable, rather than post-human cyphers. Why Lucas didn't ask Tartakovsky to continue with his ultra-successful version, I have no idea. Maybe he did, and Tartakovsky didn't agree with Lucas' vision.
Posted by: Daniel | Monday, August 18, 2008 at 10:21 PM
I loved "Whose idea was it to model all the characters after the puppets in Team America?"
"Star Wars" is disgusting in the way it unwittingly created point-and-shoot computer games (and then embraced them, literally), and taught a whole generation that it was totally cool to be fighter pilots bombing the shit out of peoples (see Iraq/Afghanistan/Yugoslavia). This is not to even mention Reagan and the billions spent on his fantasy "Star Wars" shield and weapons. Lucas has a lot to answer for, and not just bad narrative, bad acting, and shitty animation.
Posted by: sfmike | Tuesday, August 19, 2008 at 12:56 AM
Interestingly, Tartakovsky's next project is a comic book miniseries featuring Luke Cage.
Posted by: Dan Coyle | Tuesday, August 19, 2008 at 11:09 AM
Yes, because little boys never dreamed about being fighter pilots before 1977.
Posted by: Jason Lefkowitz | Tuesday, August 19, 2008 at 05:29 PM
Lance,
I'm unclear about why you're surprised. What Lucas ended up doing was trying to describe an aristocratic state: it literally can't be a democracy (some beings within it have massively greater natural psychic and physical powers - essentially miraculous and given by the gods - than the unbelievably vast majority of citizens). Further, these beings are given these powers partially through inheritance and partially through long expensive training - the definition of an inherited aristocracy (Lucas doesn't even seem to understand his impulse to give the characters feudal titles of nobility). George Lucas has roughly - no - ability to grasp (or experience with) what an aristocratic politics like that might mean. Even worse for him was that he decided to focus on the highest level of politics of an aristocratic state (i.e., precisely where an aristocratic state is the most different from what Lucas is familiar with).
Posted by: burritoboy | Tuesday, August 19, 2008 at 10:25 PM
Burritoboy very interesting comment! I never saw ST in that light but now that you bring this to light I see your view point and think you are right.
"Aristocratic state" interesting term.
Boy do I feel stupid not having read "Wealth of Nations" yet!
Must put aside some time for that!
UM
Posted by: Uncle Merlin | Wednesday, August 20, 2008 at 09:23 AM
Ok, to rephrase a bit: to sustain our interest over an apparently infinite series of products, what Lucas needs to do is ensure that we take the Empire's political appeal seriously. That is, to get you interested in all these minor political intrigues you need to have an audience really interested specifically in the politics of the situation. For example, in Jacobean theater, this is done through the vehicle of the fall of the Roman Republic (Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, Jonson's Sejanus, Shakespeare's Antony, etc). In Japanese samurai film, this is done through the vehicle of the rise or the fall of the Tokugawa shogunate. You're interested in seeing a drama about these events partially because the underlying events themselves are such compelling and important parts of real history that created parts of our current political situations.
Of course, the Star Wars political history is completely fake. You're not really interested in the Empire perse - it doesn't exist. That wouldn't be quite that much a problem if we were merely talking about a single movie or even three movies but the SW product line is now probably north of 100 movies, books, TV shows, etc. Even worse, Lucas apparently has no substantive idea about why the Empire would win out over the previous republic. Billions of people over the course of the movies are making some sort of conscious political decision in a manner they think is at least somewhat rational - and most of them decide that the Empire sounds like a reasonably good idea to them. And Lucas essentially doesn't bother to show us why the republic was worth fighting for, or even if it had any positive benefits whatever (except that Padme is cute). We're essentially given what I consider imbecilic reasons why we shouldn't support the Empire - effectively, that Palpatine is evil. (Well, yeah, he is, but why would anyone else follow him then?....................crickets chirping .............babble babble political intrigue babble babble).
Posted by: burritoboy | Wednesday, August 20, 2008 at 06:22 PM
So it sounds like this movie is a companion to the miniseries that was shown on the Cartoon Network ahead of the release of Episode Three.
That was a palatable story, even if it was as disjointed as this sounds, because it came at you in ten minute bites. Some stuff happens "off camera" but reference is made to it and then you move on.
This movie sounds like it's the "off camera" bit to those cartoons.
One quibble:
The only reason Luke is tempted to give in to the Dark Side is the same reason he doesn't give in. Owen taught him to put other people's feelings and needs ahead of his own.
Interpretive, at best. Remember, when Luke has Vader on the floor, lightsabre at the ready, and hears Palpatine's voice, his first instinct is to look at his artificial hand and flex it.
That's why he doesn't go over: Obi Wan's words from Ep V "He's more machine than man".
Indeed, one could make the claim that Luke is a secodnary character in Star Wars, that if you watch the movies one thru six in order, it is Anakin that is the ultimate hero, who must pass through hell in order to save himself, but also his son. That Anakin Skywalker saves Luke from the dark side is practically biblical.
Posted by: actor212 | Thursday, August 21, 2008 at 02:41 PM
interesting thoughts on Owen and Annakin, but I've long since stopped wondering what Lucas is doing to the Star Wars universe. He laughably insists on maintaining the pretence that he's had it all mapped out from the beginning, even when clearly he's been winging it since the first film. I know the expectation was so high that he was always bound to disappoint with the prequels, but have you ever seen a clearer argument for leaving the hell alone? I know Portman and McGregor can act, so why the hell do they look so bad in these films? Answer: George Lucas. Which is the best acted of the Star Wars films? ESB - directed by Irving Kerhsner, who encouraged his cast to improvise. It's always been about the effects for Lucas.
I wish he'd stayed the hell away from Indiana Jones too. Crystal Skull's alien plot and the big FX finish have his fingerprints all over it.....
Thoughtful post though and I enjoyed reading it (even if I shan't be troubling the box office for clone wars tickets!)
ST
Posted by: SwissToni | Friday, August 22, 2008 at 01:35 PM
Crystal Skull's alien plot and the big FX finish have his fingerprints all over it.....
I disagree. That's vintage Spielberg. See "A.I.".
Posted by: actor212 | Friday, August 22, 2008 at 03:31 PM
Maybe, but I think that Spielberg has a subtlety that Lucas entirely lacks (even if sometimes he smothers things in sentiment). The other IJ films had a "mcguffin", a mystical plot thread, but generally it was underplayed. Spielberg also prides himself on the old school stunts they use and the general absence of CGI, as when Karen Allen disappears into a doorway in Cairo with a saucepan, closely followed by a bad guy. *CLANG* bad guy falls out of the doorway stunned, and we see nothing. It's the whole 1930s serial thing, and SS loved it. You only have to look at the prequels and the special editions to know that, as soon as the technology allowed it, Lucas was going to tinker to his hearts content. Over tinker, in fact. In CS, the mcguffin is writ large from the very beginning, and the whole film suffers as a result, and don't even get me started on the crappy overreliance on CGI. The CGI ants are supposed to be the sequel to the snakes, bugs and rats of the earlier films, but they fall short precisely because they are fake and not actually there. I point the finger at Lucas for much of this. Yes, he's not the only one to blame, but as I recall, Lucas was pushing for aliens earlier in the IJ series and took a lot of convincing that the Holy Grail was the way to go. This time around, I think he got his way, and I think the film suffers terribly as a result. CJ is certainly more watchable than any of the prequels, but it's a terrible disappointment.
Somewhere along the line, Lucas has forgotten about what made his earlier films interesting and has got lost in the technology and in his own mythology.
Posted by: SwissToni | Friday, August 22, 2008 at 05:14 PM