Star Wars: The Clone Wars

As my wife and I walked out of the theater after seeing Clone Wars, we were behind several young boys. They were in the midst of a massive lightsaber battle, fully intent on declaring themselves the victor and the others the champions of the dark side. The battle made its way along the hall, until the parents made sure it didn’t make its way to the middle of the concessions. Of course, we both were cracking up through this experience. The curmudgeons have been in full force with this latest Star Wars effort, but the kids didn’t seem to notice.

Clone Wars offers an interesting, if odd, position in the Star Wars universe. At one level, you could say it doesn’t count as a movie, since at some level it’s simply a compendium of the pilot episodes of a coming TV show, albeit with a single story line. It takes us to the 5-year period between Episodes 2 and 3 (that’s Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith for the amateurs), when the Clone Wars is raging throughout the galaxy. This is the heyday of the partnership of Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi, when Anakin emerges as an uber-talented Jedi and earns his reputation as “the best star-pilot in the galaxy,” even while the darkness that ultimately consumes him peeks out now and then. It is the last great breath of the Jedi, whose multi-millennial defense of the galaxy culminates in their command of the clone army. It is the culmination of the decades-long machinations of Emperor Palpatine, who is in the midst of orchestrating the most complicated political seizure in the history of politics.

In other words, this is a fascinating time in the story, and a season that’s ripe for some rich storytelling. Fanboys across the globe have been thrilled to follow the development of this show, and with the fan’s expectations in mind, Clone Wars succeeds on a lot of fronts. Whereas Episode 2 gave us a few fleeting glimpses of the opening salvo of the Clone Wars, here we get an extended battle sequence that keeps its pace going long past the point where a traditional film would have had to cut it off. It’s a setting that plays to so many of the strengths of Star Wars’ prequel era, and avoids so many of its weaknesses.

Imagine a prequel movie with no Hayden Christiansen (Anakin in the prequel trilogy), with only the barest glimpse of the romance that was the source of so much of the trilogy’s wooden dialogue. In his place, his “sound-alike” actor, as with the bulk of the cast, does a fine job of echoing the original actor while still investing some real personality in the role. We get a few nods to the films with returns from several actors, but the quality of voice acting from the unknowns gives some real hope for the coming series.

For this round, the opening act of the film finds Skywalker and Kenobi leading Clones in a heated defense against an overpowering Droid army. In the midst of this attack, they receive a visit from Ahsoka Tano, a Padawan learner (Jedi-in-training) who comes to begin training under her master. While Kenobi had requested and was expecting a new Padawan, it turns out that she was assigned to Anakin by Yoda. This relationship provides an interesting a new outlet to see Anakin’s character emerge. They develop a sharp repartee, but slowly we start to see Anakin assume the role of Jedi and willingly teach her.

While this battle is going on, both the Jedi and the Separatists, led by Count Dooku, find themselves competing for the affections of Jabba the Hutt, the Hutt leader who controls vital trade lanes that would prove valuable to both sides. In the course of their collective efforts to woo the Hutts, Jabba’s child is kidnapped, and both commit to finding the child. Without digging into the plot, suffice it to say that the story becomes a leap-frog effort to outmaneuver the other, as Anakin and Dooku race to the finish line, all the while with Palpatine lingering in the shadows, working towards an end that none of the others can fully see.

The TV show is positioning itself to appeal to long-time fans and to young audiences, and with that latter in mind, my hope is that it fulfills its potential in exploring the slow fall of Anakin Skywalker. From what we see in the film, it gets Anakin right in a lot of ways. We have to deal with a character that is enormously talented, and whose flaws, while apparent, don’t overwhelm the fact that some of wisest and most insightful people in the galaxy found themselves trusting him with immense responsibility. We get glimpses of his greatness and his likability, both of which are necessary to see fully to experience the tragedy that is the rise of Darth Vader.

There are probably too many laser blasts and lightsabers flying around this film to spend too much time exploring deep themes, but as I delighted in the experience of this film, I concluded that this was exactly the point. The strength of Star Wars, a strength that has fanboys like me still coming back to it 30 years later, is in the sheer experience of joy that we are drawn to in the midst of a rich and rewarding mythology of the nature of evil and the power of good. Certainly the kids in front of me in that hallway seemed to capture the magic. But even in the midst of that fun battle, it is a sobering reality that the tragic rise of the evil Sith Lord came out of a life that seemed to thrive most in the midst of a great battle against evil. This is that battle.