Star Wars: The Clone Wars (DVD)

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After much trumpeting and fanfare, the 2008 animated chapter in George Lucas's ongoing "Star Wars" saga reached theaters, and it did so to a disappointing box office. Did Lucas's audience find some of the luster taken off the series by the previous three live-action installments, plus a prior animated TV show on the subject? Did audiences find the idea of an animated theatrical release of their favorite sci-fi movie series somehow demeaning? Or did they just find "The Clone Wars" boring?

Maybe a little of each.

Ironically, any number of folks, myself included, thought that Lucas's prequels already seemed cartoonish enough and that his two lead actors for Anakin Skywalker and Padme Amidala were as wooden as any animated characters. I've also heard people say that Lucas seems to prefer working with CGI creations to working with real actors. Perhaps "The Clone Wars" was a natural extension of the man's filmmaking preferences.

In the case of "The Clone Wars," however, Lucas was the executive producer, not the writer or director. Dave Filoni directed the movie; Henry Gilroy, Steve Melching, and Scot Murphy wrote it; and Catherine Winder produced it. These people have worked mainly in TV, and for most of them "The Clone Wars" was their first big-screen experience. I also understand the movie was an introduction to the 2008 animated "Star Wars" television series, so I suppose it all works out.

The story takes place somewhere in the middle of the "Star Wars" prequels, and what little plot the movie has revolves around General Anakin Skywalker and General Obi-Wan Kenobi attempting to rescue the kidnapped son of Jabba the Hutt. Jabba asks the Jedis for help in getting his son back, and the Jedis need Jabba's help against the rebellious Count Dooku and his droid army. So it's a tit-for-tat situation. And there is very little more to it than that. Everything else involves running, shooting, chasing, flying, and fighting. The action never lets up. Yet it's such repetitious and unnecessary action, much of it there only for the very sake of action itself, that it quickly becomes wearisome. What's more, Anakin is a pure-hearted hero, the quintessential good guy. There is no indication anywhere in the story that he will shortly turn to the Dark Side and become one of the most evil people in the galaxy.

The characters, the spaceships, the buildings, the costumes are so familiar that it looks like we've seen it all before; and, of course, we have seen it all done before in live action and in the older 2003-2005 animated TV show. Still, the filmmakers go out of their way to make the CGI animation appear as different as possible from anything we might have expected. The look of the characters, for example, is blocky and chiseled instead of particularized. There are no individual strands of hair on heads or in beards but a solid mass that a sculptor might have carved from stone. The result is that the animation comes off looking strangely square and a lot cheaper than, say, a DreamWorks or Pixar animation would look. Maybe that's the point. This movie introduces us to the television series, on which, understandably, the filmmakers must cut costs. Nevertheless, this is a major motion picture, and I should think audiences paying big bucks for tickets deserve better.

Moreover, the voice characterizations fail to individualize the participants very much. Matt Lanter as Anakin, James Arnold Taylor as Obi-Wan, Tom Kane as Yoda, Ian Abercrombie as Chancellor Palpatine, Catherine Taber as Padme, Kevin Michael Richardson as Jabba all sound interchangeable. The filmmakers did manage to get a few old names back--Samuel L. Jackson as Mace Windu, Anthony Daniels as C-3PO, and Christopher Lee as Dooku--but they show up only for a few minutes.

So, is there anything new here? Well, yes. We get Ashley Eckstein voicing a young woman, Ahsoka Tano, a Jedi in training assigned to Skywalker. She is his padawan, by which I assume she is his student. I assume, too, that the filmmakers intended her solely to attract a younger audience because she's constantly wisecracking and breaking rules, the kind of rebel that filmmakers suppose kids enjoy. She calls Anakin "Sky Guy," and he calls her "Snips." Cute. There is also a new villain, Asajj Ventress, voiced by Nika Futterman, who has little to do but look and sound menacing. About the only new voice with any individuality is that of Jabba's uncle, Ziro the Hutt, voiced by Corey Burton in a Truman Capote-like drawl. At least it's different.