The Star Wars Thread

[jensaltmann]

Let me start this off with a few words about Clone Wars, of which I have just seen the first episode.

OMG how awful!!

The Star Wars theme is the worst rendition I've ever heard. Replacing the opening scrawl with the voice over works nicely, it very much evokes the VO summaries of those old Republic serials.

The animation is reminiscent of a fifth-rate videogame. Considering that the animation of the average Lucasarts computer game is much better... No. Just no.

The writing is sub-standard. Even children (although I don't have any at hand to confirm or deny this) will probably agree that the writing kills brain cells. The Separatist droids were never the brightest bulbs in the chandelier, but here they are even more stupid than in the movies. (Yes, I too had not thought that possible.) The reason for that is, apparently, that they are supposed to serve as comic relief. Uhm, no. Sorry, stupid does not automatically equal funny, funny is all about the timing. Which, here, fails completely. Yoda, the main character of this episode, gets to edumacate and philosopherize and pontiusificate a lot, but on a level that will seem deep only to pre-schoolers.

Okay, so maybe that works, since this is clearly a kids show. Maybe the thoughts Yoda parrots in this episode are new to kids.

Sadly, the explodo factor that might have made this bearable for anyone over 6 does not suffice. The action sequences are stiff, they look as if some first or second level player is trying out their new console.

Verdict: fail.

[Anders]

I heard a review on the radio that said it wasn't a movie, it was a trailer for a video game.

[jessebaker]

The big thing about the new SW cartoon, for me at least, is the insanity that is Lucas deciding to set in during the Prequel years.

I know Lucas is filthy rich and shit, but if he wanted to branch the Star Wars cash cow out into animation why the hell not set it during the original trilogy?

Enough leyway exists between Star Wars and Empire Strikes Back for Lucas to do an OG trilogy themed cartoon and hell, Lucas could have even based the pilot movie on "Splinter of the Mind's Eye" to set up the series.

I'm sure they could have gotten James Earl Jones and Mark Hamil to come back to voice Vader and Luke Skywalker, as well as found suitable replacements for Carrie Fischer and Harrison Ford.

[jensaltmann]

Anders: I haven't gotten around to seeing the movie yet, but from what I've seen so far I feel I can consider that radio review a fair description.

Jesse: It makes total sense to set it during the clone wars period. The franchise's name is, after all, Star Wars. That means it has to be about, well, precisely that. I'd watch Clone Wars voluntarily (instead of having to watch it for work) if it were a halfway decently executed show. Which it isn't, but that has nothing to do with it being retelling the story of the clone wars.

The live-action show is supposed to bridge the gab between the two trilogies, and for everything else you can refer to the comics and the novels. Every SW period is covered.

[K-Box]

Jens, the problems with the Clone Wars period is that a) the movies have already given us all of the most important battles of that period, so b) the only thing left that could drive interest in such a period would be the appeal of the characters themselves, and given Anakin's necessarily tragic arc, making him the hero of an explicitly dumbed-down-for-kids cartoon in which he's meant to be the sympathetic one is, to invoke Godwin's Law, kind of like basing an ongoing teen drama around the emo adventures of young Hitler as a tortured artist over whom young girls in the viewing audience are meant to swoon. The prequel trilogy's value was in giving us answers to how Anakin Skywalker became Darth Vader - beyond that, given the depths of evil to which we all know his character will sink, it simply doesn't work to center a continuing narrative around him, especially if you're pitching it as an upbeat all-ages action-adventure serial full of wacky hijinks. At best, it's like doing a G-rated comedy series about Charles Foster Kane's schoolboy mischief with Jed Leland.

There are about eleventy baskrillion obscure characters in the Star Wars universe whose life stories - unlike those of Anakin/Darth - remain largely untold, so why don't we devote an ongoing anthology series to THEM? YOUNG BOBA FETT'S PATH TO MANHOOD could play on countless different dramatic levels, just as an example, since aside from his earliest origins and his later capture of, and inadvertent death at the hands of, Han Solo, there are still countless fascinating stories left to tell about such a character.

[jensaltmann]

So the only important battles of the clone wars were the first and the last? Those were the only ones shown in the movies.

What a well-done clone wars series could accomplish wouldn't be to set Anakin up as a tragic and sympathetic figure. It could set up all those Jedi whose only purpose it is to eventually get killed as sympathetic figures.

In slam-bang action.

Kirk, we're essentially agreeing here. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with the clone wars period as the setting for a TV show. Just relegate Obi-Wan and Anakin to the sidelines and focus on all the other characters, against the backdrop of a major intragalactic war.

Where Lucasfilm is going wrong is in
a) making it about Anakin
b) that godawful videogame animation
c) dumbing it down to the nth degree.

A little aside: Several years ago, there was a German movie which was incredibly popular (by the standards of German movies). I caught it on TV, and switched off after a while, commenting, "This movie is something a five year old would enjoy." Fast forward a few months. I was babysitting a five year old, and that movie happened to be in re-run. I turned it on. After a while, the five year old begged me to turn it off, because it was silly and dumb. I'd been proven wrong -- even five year olds were too sophisticated for that movie.

I'm getting the same impression from the Clone Wars TV show.

(Regarding your idea of a Boba Fett show -- he's rumored to be one of the regulars in that live-action show I mentioned earlier. And I know I'm a minority, but I never found Fett cool or interesting. He was just an extra in an armor.)

[paulpogue]

Oct 8, 2008 0:59:23 GMT -8 jensaltmann said:

So the only important battles of the clone wars were the first and the last? Those were the only ones shown in the movies.

What a well-done clone wars series could accomplish wouldn't be to set Anakin up as a tragic and sympathetic figure.

The funny thing is, the Tartatovsky Clone Wars series a few years back did more in five minutes to set up the tragedy of Anakin than the entire prequel trilogy. (The bit where he has a vision of his robot hand consuming him and leaving only a screaming Vader mask is absolutely chilling.)

[jensaltmann]

I just watched episode 2 of the new show, and it was slightly (very slightly) better written. Anakin and Ahsoka were co-central to the plot, and they wrote Anakin very much like Han Solo.