Star Wars: The Clone Wars

The Clone Wars was a show created in 2008 which followed the adventures of Anakin Skywalker, a young Obi-Wan Kenobi, and Skywalker’s new apprentice, Ahsoka, in the period between Episodes II and III. It was a massive hit with Star Wars fans and newcomers, expanding upon a time period of Star Wars lore that was severely wasted and dumbed down in the prequel series, and it did the impossible task of making Anakin a likeable and even tolerable character to watch, enough so that people were actually able to get something out of an era that was seeped in flaws. How this all started was with an introductory movie simply titled ‘’Star Wars: The Clone Wars’’ released in 2008 in theatres surprisingly, almost as a taster for the series to show people what awaits them when their favourite space-faring adventure is taken to an episodic format. Thankfully, the TV show that came from this proved to be infinitely better than what the movie offered because this was a painful experiment that did not set its show up in the best way. Set during the ‘’wonderful’’ time of Star Wars when it was solely about politics, Obi-Wan (voiced by James Arnold Taylor) and his Padawan, Anakin Skywalker (voiced by Matt Lanter) are introduced to a new young Padawan named Ahsoka (voiced by Ashley Eckstein) who is commission to be Anakin’s new Padawan, which he is not the most thrilled about. Given to him as a new test, the two are paired together and are tasked with retrieving the son of Jabba the Hutt, who has been secretly taken by Count Dooku (voiced by Christopher Lee), a Sith supporter who wishes to win the favour of Jabba against the Jedi in their war against each other. While being trailed by Dooku’s own Padawan, Asajj Ventress (voiced by Nika Futterman), Anakin and Ahsoka will need to adjust to their new master/apprentice situation and learn to work together in order to get this mission done cleanly. While subsequent shows like Clones Wars and Rebels would help expand upon the Star Wars world in an episodic format, this movie adds nothing of value to the overall Star Wars experience and doesn’t feel that much different to the other poor quality content Star Wars had released in that time period. It takes a franchise that effortlessly connected with both adults and kids with simple but powerful ideas and dumbs it down to the lowest grade where even kindergartners would be bored. With a boring story, lack of character progression, odd animation style, and a distinct lack of personality, this Star Wars product should have stayed to DVD-only.

It is very apparent that this movie was soon to be based around a TV show, as the entire narrative of the movie feels like a drawn-out TV show pilot (which is exactly what this film was with two episodes that were the show’s pilot split apart to act as a movie). The pacing is horribly off and segmented in ways that feel like each act is its own episode with how long and drawn-out moments are, specifically the first act which seems to go on forever. It has very little risks, the lessons learned are as simple as greeting card sayings, and the actual outcome of this movie is too complicated for kids to understand and too boring for adults to care about. With the director of this film being Dave Filoni (who would go on to create Clone Wars and become a big name within the Star Wars fandom), you can feel from his deep cuts and odd character inclusions, that he is a person who knows and appreciates Star Wars, but is clearly not well versed in pacing out a film as his nature feels very television and doesn’t do any favors to this story or this film in general. It suffers with similar problems that the prequel films have in that it doesn’t focus on elements of a story that work for Star Wars; the simple connectable approach would be the relationship between Anakin and Ahsoka, yet the goal of this movie involves blockades and trade agreements and war alliances and political treaties, stuff that isn’t made interesting in this world and instead a slog to get through. The themes in this movie are incredibly black and white, and from a franchise that excels at crushing the simple ‘’black and white’’ world views, it’s a shame that during a period where the line between ”good and evil” should be so fine and constantly switching (as it would later on in the series, to its credit), nothing about this plot or this screenplay by Henry Gilroy, Steven Melching and Scott Murphy is complex at all . Nothing is really that interesting or even elaborated on, nothing is gained from the journey, nothing is learned or developed, it comes and goes without any reason or consequence. It’s a massive leap down for Star Wars which does at least take risks, even in the prequels case which at least attempted to be grand and epic with its muddy ideas whereas this is just lame and annoyingly generic. For a franchise with such a distinct personality, this movie feels like it could belong to any run-of-the-mill space fantasy, it doesn’t have the same atmosphere or tone, it feels hollow.

The characters from this movie, and by extension the show, aren’t ones that people have that much favour for, as they were very poorly established roles to begin with in their respective films and this smaller-scale movie doesn’t evolve that to a different level. Thankfully, some of them are made much less annoying through this movie at least. Anakin is made less whiny and heavily more competent, as well as getting a great voice actor to portray him who is able to bring out that cocky and arrogant side to the role without making it feel pathetic and irritating.  Padmé (voiced by Catherine Taber) is barely given a role outside of a damsel in distress and she really doesn’t seem to have much of a character or identity outside of being Leia-light, but she is at least handled a touch better here. Obi-wan is barely used in the movie, but the voice actor for him easily captures his poetic tone and sophisticated demeanor very well, so that is appreciated. While they are portrayed better, they don’t evolve or progress through the film, leaving them feeling weak and less complex than regular Star Wars characters should. The new introduction to the roster, as well as one of the key main characters of the show, is Ahsoka, who starts off quite annoying. While she is handled much better in other shows and developed into a much better character, as well as having a pretty good designs, and potential for a great set-up with being taught by Anakin and the both of them learning and working off each other, here her purpose seems to be the complaining new kid who spouts one liners to the older generations that most superhero shows had at the time. That mixed with the lack of development, the simplistic set-up and Ashley Eckstein sounding a bit too young and grating, the character isn’t given a good introduction. The villain is given a cool look and sinister voice, but she is only there to be an obstacle, not a character. She has no character, personality, goals, anything other than a force to fight against. Christopher Lee is great as Dooku, but his plan is so simplistic even children would be used to it. The baby that needs to be saved is hideous to look at and is so unappealing the film doesn’t even try to hide the disgust for him (his nickname throughout the movie, even in serious moments, is ”Stinky”, so it’s pretty hard to feel anything for him). The one addition that feels like a fresh one is the introduction of a good clone trooper named Rex (voiced by Dee Bradley Baker), who feels likeable and distinct enough that people would want to know more about him. While he wouldn’t get any form of that in the movie, he would later be given much better treatment, much like the rest of the cast, elsewhere, so it’s nice to see where some of these seeds were sprouted and later blossomed.

An animated Star Wars property already seems to have great potential, as the widely creative locations and creatures would be allowed to come to life easier, and the action would get that much quicker and more inventive. At times, the movie does manage to pull that off decently. The backgrounds on some of the planets do have a nice shine to them and allow for some visually nice-looking areas, particularly a desert planet where they get some fun shots and a cool night-time aesthetic. The alien designs as well as the robots have that rustic old-fashion look that works with this animation’s rougher robot-like textures as well. With that said, the humans look like Legos with how blurry they look and how segmented most of their bodies look, particularly the hair. It would become a style that had favorable results in their own series, but that had to work up to it, so here it literally is just a beta test that doesn’t look that strong. The action isn’t that much stronger either, as the movements come off as too fast and jerky, feeling less organic and instead like computer programs orchestrating a duel. While sometimes the choreography can be handled fine enough and the final battle with Dooku in the desert has some okay visuals, even for a kids show level, the action could have been upped to standard. The writing is especially terrible; the lines given back and forth between Anakin and Ahsoka are pure prequel lines that sound equally as awful. The dialogue is predictable, the lines are corny, the humor is really off (especially coming from some enemy droids), and it overall feels incredibly lazy and not thought out.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars would later become a TV show that the world would love and appreciate for taking a questionable moment in Star Wars film history and develop it into a more interesting likeable world, but this movie does nothing of the sort. Even with Star Wars at its worst with the prequels, it still tries to elevate itself above childish nonsense and takes its audience seriously, this movie seems to be too simple even for young children. Objectively, the movie is harmless but fairly pointless to show to anyone, even huge Star Wars fans. The story is generic and horribly paced, the characters aren’t developed throughout the movie, the animation has nice colors but bad presentation, the writing is childish and bad even for a kid’s cartoon, and for Star Wars, it is drawn out, boring and simplistic, everything Star Wars shouldn’t be. Not worth a viewing even for the biggest fans, just focus the attention on the shows. The biggest plus this movie has to offer is at least there’s no Jar Jar Binks.