Star Wars: The Clone Wars

by Mike Tarifa

Many will love, and many will hate the latest disturbance in the Force. The latest installment to the lengthy Star Wars franchise was released on August 15th as Star Wars: The Clone Wars. It was an admirable attempt to bridge the widely popular live action film series to the CGI world. The film produced by Warner Bros. was the first of the films made outside of Fox Studios and showed visible proof of the switch in team. Right off the bat, I was missing the 21st Century Fox drum beat and fanfare. It almost made the Lucasfilms Ltd. logo look and feel naked? The movie didn't open with a spaceship sequence like the original films but rather a news reel reminiscent of WWII propaganda films made by RKO Productions. With the helm of the ship taken by director Dave Filoni, stylistic changes were made all over the film. What Filoni and his team brought to the table was almost a clone of the original Clone Wars animated series cartoons from Cartoon Network in 2005. The film's aim was to tell the untold stories of the heroic battles fought throughout the galaxy far, far away in between Star Wars Episode II and III. With that aim alone, the series will have an infinite amount of chances to redeem itself for its misfires in dynamic character development and "cheesy" dialogue. Then again, when did Star Wars ever possess the prose of a Shakespearean Play?



My biggest complaint in the character department was Anikan Skywalker's new padawan, Ashoka Tano. Even she made Skywalker himself a little less whiny. Tano's character was thrown into the fire rather quickly and made you question the ability of a padawan learner in such a short amount of time. She must have taken the abridged/boot camp version Luke Skywalker took in Summer School Jedi training camp because she was making big time plays throughout the film. To the films credit, it is hard to fully develop that character in 100 minutes in a galaxy that big. Only original players Samuel L. Jackson and Christopher Lee reprise their voice characters as Jedi Master Mace Windu and Count Dooku respectively. In a nutshell, the film covers one of the very first missions in the daring Clone Wars and provides a back story on how the Republic gained a foot hole in the outer rim territories of the Galaxy. They encounter hostile attacks from Seperatist Groups and the learning relationship between Skywalker the Master and Tano the padawan....somewhat blossom. A plot point involving a muppet baby Jabba the Hutt kinda makes the audience scratch their heads but was bearable at times. Another nuisance is another Hutt by the name of Ziro that kinda sounds like Eric Cartman using the restroom after sucking on helium. Besides that it's pretty consistent with the Star Wars world.


This film is neither a flop nor a triumph. I had to be down the middle on this one but I am a devout Star Wars fan and I must support the cause. Star Wars: The Clone Wars was obviously made for television and it is almost obvious that the studio was going to do an hour premiere on Cartoon Network but one of the producers probably insisted on adding 30 more minutes and giving it a theatrical release. With little advertising and the lack of fan support on opening night, it was obvious the Star Wars film release was not to the magnitude of the previous 6 films. Kudos to them for bringing more money to the Lucas Ranch and expanding the Star Wars Galaxy. I highly recommend this flick to die hard Star Wars fans and the younglings between 7 and 14 years of age. Everybody else will enjoy this one on their own time and hopefully grow to enjoy it more as the television series is slated to release later this year or early 2009.



See a trailer for Star Wars: The Clone Wars below: