Star Wars: The Clone Wars: Film Review

This article is part of a three-part series about Star Wars: The Clone Wars. Today, I will review the film. In a few days’ time, I will evaluate the film’s novelization and discuss the concept of novelization in general. Shortly thereafter, I will conclude the series by discussing my hopes for the Clone Wars subfranchise.

If you're a Star Wars fan, and you don't live under a rock, you must certainly be aware of the overwhelmingly negative reaction to Star Wars: The Clone Wars. Otherwise, the film probably flew completely under your radar. This film, intended to serve as the introduction to the animated series of the same name premiering this October on Cartoon Network, has been derided by critics as soulless, trivial, poorly animated, and boring. Such poor reviews have earned the film a rating of 18% on Rotten Tomatoes, making it less than half as good as The Star Wars Holiday Special, which received a 40% positive rating. I don't know, dear reader, if you've ever sat through The Star Wars Holiday Special, which includes nearly half an eternity of uninterrupted Wookiee domestics, as well as an extremely strange scene in which Chewbacca’s father enjoys the use of a device which shows him his fantasy (a human woman offering herself to him), then you know that if Rotten Tomatoes’ figures are to be trusted then you will have strangled yourself to death with your own shoelaces before you even get an hour into the film.

But there are no reports yet of mass audience suicides form any known theater in any region. At least not in reaction to this movie. And even the very concept of it being that much worse than the Holiday Special almost entirely defies logic. So, we must take the critical reaction with a grain of salt. The movie isn’t really that bad. In fact, I actually quite enjoyed it. However, I enjoyed it as a huge Star Wars fan rather than as a moviegoer. By this I do not mean that I was blind to the movie’s faults, but rather that I saw it from a different context. I watched it not as a “Star Wars Episode II.5,” as many reviewers did, but as one chapter of many in the saga of Star Wars’s expanded universe, and the first chapter in the upcoming animated series.

There is a crucial difference. Those who came to this movie expecting a seventh canonical Star Wars film were going to be disappointed because, while it is technically just that, the film does not (and was never supposed to) live up to the implicit promises that such a film would be expected to fulfill. Even if you utterly discount the Star Wars expanded universe (I don’t, but you can if you want to), then you would still expect when you went to the cinema that you would see something better than a Saturday morning cartoon. Because a saturday morning cartoon is exactly what this is, minus the Saturday morning part. This movie is more a part of the animated series than it is of the film franchise, and so I judged it on the standards of how I would judge an animated series, like Avatar: The Last Airbender or something similar. I’m not saying that this is the only correct way to interpret the movie, I’m saying that it’s the only way that makes sense to me as a fan of the franchise and an avid viewer of television, including animation. And by those standards, The Clone Wars excels: It is well above the average for a cartoon of its type, but it is well below the average for a film, particularly a film of such a beloved franchise.

The most interesting thing about the movie is not the story or the dialogue, but rather the animation. Many negative reviewers are deriding the animation for its wooden, unrealistic, inexpressive quality, while positive reviewers praise its heavily stylized and unique look. Personally I fall in the latter camp, although I acknowledge that there are some problems with the animation. The characters all look like figurines, which is strangely appropriate for a franchise with such a lucrative toy market. I feel as though it is an extremely effective stylistic choice. Little boys who grew up with Star Wars, whatever version, have bought the action figures and used them to act out new stories which put familiar characters, as well as obscure ones, in combat situations other than those portrayed in the movies. That’s the very point of the Clone Wars series, and the figures of the movie capture the spirit of childlike imagination which attracted so many people to the franchise in 1977. I really do believe that this was a conscious choice: those lucky enough to see the movie in a digital theater will certainly notice that the characters look deliberately unreal, as though they have actually been painted. It’s a cool effect that may be lost on television.

Not that the animation will look bad on TV. While, from a technical perspective, it’s certainly inferior to the efforts of Pixar and Dreamworks, it fares far better in comparison to its television peers. If this film’s animation is any indication, then this will be the most beautiful CG show on television, ever. The space scenes of The Clone Wars are as fully real as any of those in the films, and far more is possible in the action scenes acted out by the characters and machines on the ground and in the air. It is true that the animation style does not flatter the actions of walking and talking, but when the characters are sprinting, jumping, fighting, climbing, falling, and doing all of the things one does in the heat of battle, it looks truly stunning and it’s easy to forget that you’re watching an animated show. After all, this is Star Wars: The Clone Wars, and that’s a whole lot of war in the title, so a lot of action is necessary. And because most of the actual “War” is acted out between robots and men in Trooper armor, the violence of the war is never gruesome or objectionable. This allows the movie to maintain its action level and keep the thrills coming.

It’s all typical Star Wars action, balancing fun with melodrama, but that doesn’t mean that the format is the same as the one from the six episodes of the saga. Again, this is not one of those films, and it makes this clear immediately. It opens not with the familiar title crawl, but with a newsreel providing relevant explanation like a propaganda film over a version of the Star Wars main theme that is both familiar and strange. It’s a new device, used toward the same end: like the crawl, it recalls the old fashioned adventure serials from which Lucas drew the inspiration for Star Wars, but it also evokes a wartime feeling that is in keeping with the Clone Wars concept. It is this mix of new and old that characterizes everything from the machine designs to the music. Even the voice actors are a mix of new and returning, although this is less a stylistic choice than a budgetary one. The presence of Samuel L Jackson, Anthony Daniels, and Christopher Lee is appreciated. I miss Ewan MacGregor and Ian McDiarmid. I do not miss Hayden Christensen. The voice acing for all characters is somewhat uneven, sounding more like video game voice acting than cartoon voice acting.

The actors aren’t helped much by the less-than stellar dialogue they’re given. There are no moments that are truly George-Lucas-cringe-worthy, although Obi-Wan’s reference to Asajj Ventress as “darling” during their lightsaber duel comes close. The lack of truly terrible dialogue, however, doesn’t make up for the fact that most of the dialogue is mediocre. All of the Star Wars movies, prequel or original, have their share of terrible lines and immortal ones. This movie doesn’t even contain any references to dialogue triumphs of the past movies. The line “I have a bad feeling about this” isn’t even spoken once.

The dialogue isn’t the only issue in the film either. The characters are interesting enough, but for the most part they are only interesting insofar as we are already familiar with and invested in them. Few character moments of any interest occur for the established characters of Anakin and Obi-Wan, and new characters are only treated slightly better. Ahsoka Tano, Anakin’s new pupil, is less annoying than I feared and may even become likable, but in the movie there’s little to go by other than her fierce need to prover her self and equally fierce need to give nicknames to the other characters (“Artooey” is an unnecessary coinage when “Artoo” is already short for R2-D2). In addition, the extra personality given to the clones is a nice touch on the screen, although fans of the Star Wars expanded universe will be less impressed as it’s already been done better in half a dozen novels. Even the battle droids have been given some sort of personality, although for the most part it’s a stooge role for comic relief. It’s done well, though, and occasionally very funny. One of the best moments is when a large group of droids reacts to being told “we have you outnumbered!” by a couple of clone troopers.

The exception to the bland characters is one Ziro the Hutt, to whom fan reaction has been mixed at best. Ziro is one of the film’s villains, a co-conspirator with the villainous Count Dooku in the plot against the Jedi and the Republic. It is difficult to explain this character in words, but essentially he is Jabba’s gay uncle. If you imagine a purple Hutt who speaks English with a southern accent and sounds like he’s straight out of an episode of South Park, then you may have the gist of the character but you might be better off seeing for yourself. He’s not offensive, he’s not intriguing, he’s not even particularly funny. He is simply bizarre. There are few things weirder than Ziro in any Star Wars story and it’s refreshing to see something completely out of the ordinary in a movie that seems otherwise somewhat stale. Watching Ziro on screen is truly a surreal experience and worth the price of admission alone.

Speaking of Ziro and Dooku’s plot, it’s pretty bare-bones and exists only to move the characters from one action sequence to another. The objective is to recover Jabba the Hutt’s kidnapped son, and this is stated clearly within the first two minutes of the movie. Although Jabba is a vile gangster, his control of Outer Rim space lanes makes him a valuable ally and so the Jedi Council send Anakin and Ahsoka to recover the Huttlet, with Obi-Wan playing a supporting role. The plot proceeds in a purely linear and logical fashion: Anakin and Ahsoka always know exactly what they need to do: Disable this shield, defeat those droids, bring that Huttlet to the appointed place, and they always do it and then move on to the next task. There’s never any ambiguity, or even any real sense of peril. Even suspending our disbelief with regard to the likelihood of anyone dying in what is essentially the pilot episode, we never see anyone in any real danger.

Perhaps that’s the real problem with this movie: The stakes are so low. The film never once allows us the illusion that these characters are putting their lives on the line. That’s what the Clone Troopers are for, after all. There are no emotional stakes of any description. There is barely a hint of romance. Padmé appears in this film in a minor role, but my home newspaper’s reviewer explains that this movie takes place in a time before she and Anakin were an item. This just goes to show how easy it is to forget while watching this film that the two are already married to one another and have been since the beginning of the war! But they show relatively little concern for one another, contributing to the sense of low stakes. Even Lucasfilm’s stakes are low. While this film didn’t rake in the big dough, it more than made back its television-budget production cost. What they may not have banked on, however, is the damage this film has done to their reputation.

Because ultimately, Lucasfilm shot themselves in the foot by releasing this in theaters. This would have played well on television but fails in theaters because it’s at the top of the television animation spectrum, which, unfortunately, is the bottom of the film animation spectrum. To some Star Wars fans, like me, this distinction matters little and the film is just as good wherever you see it. But the average moviegoer who doesn’t know Shaak Ti from IG-88 from Ponda Baba isn’t going to take into account that this movie was not originally intended for theaters. In deference to them, I concede that The Clone Wars is not a rousing success, but as a fan I loved the movie and cannot wait to see more of the animated series this October.