Thing of the Week: Star Wars: Clone Wars
The best of the prequels
Thing of the week is a weekly thing where I talk about a thing I enjoyed that week. This week’s thing of the week is this thing: Star Wars: Clone Wars.
The Star Wars prequels suck. This is known. The Phantom Menace is probably the best of the three movies and, well, that’s not really a great position to be in. But there exists another property, released during those dark years, that manages to bring some balance to the Force. Enter Star Wars: Clone Wars. Not to be confused with the later Star Wars: The Clone Wars (which, I know, is supposed to get pretty good as it goes on. I’ll push through the crappy start one day), Clone Wars is a micro-series of 2D animation from legendary animator Genndy Tartakovsky (Dexter’s Lab, Samurai Jack). The year is 2003 and George Lucas feels that people aren’t buying enough Attack of the Clones toys, which is surprising because nothing screams action figures like angst-ridden romance, creepy leering and sand. In an effort to solve this problem, Lucas decides Star Wars needs to be in front of children more. And thus, Star Wars: Clone Wars is born. The show ran for three seasons on Cartoon Network, the first two seasons comprising of 10 three minute episodes and the final season, 5 fifteen minute episodes. Don’t let the show’s dubious motivations deter you, though. It’s good. Great, even.
Over the course of the three seasons (a little over two hours in total), Clone Wars depicts the events between episodes I and II. This means it has a lot of action. As the name clearly implies, this was the period when the Jedi, along with their clone army, waged war with the droid army of the separatists. George clearly felt this was far too compelling to make it into cinemas and so relegated the whole story to a Cartoon Network micro-series. Interestingly, and perhaps tellingly, George Lucas’s name isn’t found anywhere on Clone Wars. IMDb has him listed as an uncredited writer on every episode, but the credits in the show itself don’t see his name appearing once. This is Tartakovsky’s baby, and thank God that it is. Most of the episodes play out with little to no dialogue, relying simply on the strength of its wonderful animation. This, coupled with the show’s clear focus on action, means there are few complex storylines explored over the two and a quarter hour runtime. On the plus side, this means no politics, no mention of trade disputes and absolutely no complaining about sand. This being said, the series does manage some good story beats. We get a stronger understanding of how the characters relate to each other, how the Sith operate, where they get their strength and why they hate the Jedi the way they do. Given the short length of the episodes, there’s an economy of storytelling on display here that far exceeds anything seen in the movies.
The cast is entirely new, except for Anthony Daniels reprising the role of C-3PO, and on the whole do a better job with these characters than their movie counterparts. Line delivery is actually emotive here, rather than seeming like the first time they’d actually read the script being the cut that made it in. Anakin’s still a whiny A-hole, although I think that’s more to do with the character Lucas created than the voice actor and the lack of dialogue really helps here. Also, there is actually some focus put on Anakin’s development from Padawan to Jedi Knight as well as his place within the Jedi council which is welcome. When there is dialogue, in true Star Wars fashion, it’s fairly stilted and overly expository (although there is nothing as laughably bad as “only a Sith deals in absolutes”, thankfully) but given Tartakovsky’s restraint this is more easily forgivable than in the movies. He really only turns to dialogue when something can’t be clearly explained with visual storytelling, so to have the necessary information given quickly and directly feels in tone with the show. The good news is that outside of the dialogue is where things start to get really good. The fight scenes feel epic. The animation is simply beautiful and the somehow the choreography is much better than anything we see in the films. Despite the limitations of 2D, space, perspective and light and dark are used to staggering effect here.
Of course, the show is far from perfect, as almost everything is. The third season is the definite low point. The shift to longer, fifteen minute episodes, places more of an emphasis on plot rather than the lean, visual storytelling that served the first two seasons so well. There is also a jarring tonal shift here, with more forced humour making its way in. There are many moments that would surely have been handled wordlessly in the first two seasons, that in the third season are given unnecessary dialogue in the final season. Supposedly the show was only ever meant to run for two seasons, but George Lucas wanted the show to run in with the films more closely (season 3 ends right where Episode III picks up) and so the third season was commissioned. If you told me that Lucas had a larger role in creating the third season, I wouldn’t find it hard to believe. This is the season that feels most like the films and it suffers for it. Also, throughout all the seasons, the Jedi are too strong. Mace Windu handily dispatches an entire army of battle droids with his fists. Because Force punches, I guess. Obviously this makes the action scenes more fun to watch, but it does create a narrative disconnect from the source material.
There is one more element to this cartoon that deserves a mention. There features a character you are likely familiar with, but you haven’t seen him like this. That character is General Grievous. Introduced in the final episode of season 2, Grievous becomes the primary antagonist for season 3. And he’s a total badass. In stark contrast to the cowards, spluttering, Transylvanian clown that we see in episode III, this Grievous is terrifying. Trained to fight with a lightsaber by Count Dooku (which we actually see — imagine that, delivering character traits visually rather than an espousing of boring dialogue) Grievous looms, skeletal and imposing, over the Jedi. Voiced for once by John DiMaggio and thereafter by Richard McGonagle, General Grievous sounds like a droid leader. No ludicrous, Dracula accent, no coughing (although the show does try to explain this), just a decent bad-guy voice. I can only the imagine the disappointment someone might feel going into see Revenge of the Sith having watched Clone Wars in the run-up when they were presented with the abomination that was General Grievous in that film.
So, there you have it. Star Wars: Clone Wars. Go watch it (you can find it all on YouTube). You might even find it makes Revenge of the Sith a little bit better. Revenge of the Sith still sucks, of course, even Genndy Tartakovsky can’t right that wrong, but the fact that he managed to improve it even slightly is commendable.
