Clone Wars . . . Lacks the Force

After seeing Star Wars: The Clone Wars, there’s only one conclusion to be drawn: someone needs to take away George Lucas’ allowance. It’s not that the latest Star Wars’ animated saga is bad. The force simply is not with it. The film, which is a compilation of the first three episodes of the impending animated television series, will make a highly entertaining Saturday morning cartoon, possibly the best action cartoon on television, but as a feature-length film the movie suffers from a lack of cohesiveness and dreadful dialogue.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars succeeds in what George Lucas does best: creating worlds. The lush, almost painted, alien landscapes and visually appealing bots and weaponry set a beautiful background for the story. The animation definitely works for the Star Wars’ tale. While the jarring and obvious mesh of CGI and live action shots made the uneven Star Wars prequels seem like special effects craft projects, the complete animation of the story in Clone Wars feels natural. The characters are also lovingly drawn to look like their living movie counterparts (with the exception of Anakin, who looked nothing like Hayden Christensen, and instead looked like an angry Roger Federer). But the animation really shines in the film’s continual action sequences. It turns out light sabers and exploding clone armies are just as exciting in animation as they were in live action, maybe even more so.

Where The Clone Wars falls short is the human quality. George Lucas can create vivid worlds and funny, clumsy, neurotic robots – one of the truly charming aspects of the film – but he fails to make his human characters believable as human beings. This isn’t new for Georgie. His dialogue somehow managed to suck all the chemistry out of Natalie Portman and Christensen in the prequels – which is quite a feat considering what pretty, young things they are and that they were, at one point, an actual couple. Lucas’ stiff dialogue has the same effect in The Clone Wars. Line after line, each character notes Anakin’s recklessness while reminding others of his great skill. Blah, blah, blah. There’s also something wrong with the speaking quality of the human characters. Their words and mouths just don’t seem to match up, and in these days of Dreamworks and Pixar, that’s simply not acceptable. But the disastrous dialogue could almost be excused if it wasn’t for the odd presence of new character Ahsoka Tano, Anakin’s padawan learner.

The female Jedi-in-training, Ahsoka, feels like one of those annoying kid sisters that gets introduced to a TV series in a desperate ploy for young viewers. She’s much too cutesy for Star Wars. Her giggling one-liners in the midst of battle and her semi-flirty banter with Anakin – whom she calls “Sky guy” – are baffling. And her presence alone troubles the continuity of the film. For starters, we’ve never heard of this girl. The Clone Wars fills in the gap between Episodes II and III of the movie series and tells the story of how Anakin and the Jedi’s rescue the kidnapped son of Jabba the Hut. Meanwhile, the Clone Wars between the Galactic Federation and the Separatists, led by Count Dooku and Asajj Ventress, an assassin who looks something like a sexy Voldemort, wages on. Plot-wise this works well within the Star Wars’ continuity universe. However, what is Ahsoka doing here? If you’ve seen Episode II (and if you haven’t, why are you watching The Clone Wars?), you know that Anakin has already taken a turn toward the dark side, slaughtering a village, including all the children, and secretly disobeying the Jedi Order by marrying Padmé Amidala. So why is he flirting with a little padawan? Furthermore, in Episode III Anakin dispatches a slew of younglings in the Jedi Temple. Shouldn’t his relationship with his young padawan have discouraged him from such an action? Guess not.

When Padmé finally appears in the last third of the movie (looking flawlessly like a super smoking Portman), the Ahsoka factor feels even more out of place. There’s a dark undertone to Padmé and Anakin’s interaction (as there should be!) and after an hour of Ahsoka’s sass, it starts to feel like we’re watching two different movies: one dark, unfolding drama and one Saturday morning cartoon.

All in all, The Clone Wars suffers from being pulled by both sides and ending up in an uneven middle. Is it a cartoon for the kids who will care little for the emotional drama of the story? Or is it part of the complicated Star Wars movie universe with its dark, political, and psychological undercurrents?

I don’t think even George Lucas knows.