Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) **½

Star Wars: The Clone War heralds a new age for the Star Wars franchise as it signals its shift in focus towards television production. This film is essentially the pilot for a weekly animated series, The Clone Wars, which begins airing in October and will later be joined by a live action series that will tentatively air sometime in 2009. This film, and it's accompanying series, will explore the time period between Episodes II and III of the Star Wars saga, an area already briefly seen in a previous animated series, Star Wars: Clone Wars. Continuing with the animation motif, this new film uses state of the art computer generated animation to bring about a more life-like feel than the previous series. Most of the main characters have been replaced with other voice actors, although some of the supporting players have returned with the voices of those who portrayed them in the live action films. This new film continues the penchant of the prequels which places style over substance but ironically works better than those films with its stripped down running time. While the impressive action set pieces remain, the wooden character moments which usually double the running time have been removed and our heroes simply jump from one frantic battle to the next.

The first half hour, where Obi-Wan Kenobi (James Arnold Taylor) and Anakin Skywalker (Matt Lanter) lead a small contingent of clones to defend a besieged city is actually completely superfluous to the overall plot of the film. In fact it's almost as if this was to be a stand-alone episode with some tenuous plot connections into the next hour. The entire film could simply have been the first three episodes of the new series strung together but the final hour doesn't feel as disjointed as the first third, which seems tacked on to increase the running time to feature length status. A new character is introduced, Anakin's new padawan, Ahsoka Tano (Ashley Eckstein), who may be a bit young to be out in the field of battle, but the Jedi need as many warriors as possible to defeat the increasing number of Separatist systems and their inexhaustible supply of drone soldiers. Ahsoka is often considered to be a youngling and not experienced enough to be on the front lines. Practically everything she says and does throughout the film only reinforces this sentiment.

Instead of the austere admiration Obi-Wan had for Qui-Gon Jinn or even the unruly Anakin who had to be reined in occasionally by Obi-Wan, the Anakin/Ahsoka dynamic continues the devolution and the two constantly bicker as siblings forced to work together would do. She is proficient enough with her Jedi powers and prowess with a lightsaber to come through in a clinch but her constant whining and fighting with Anakin becomes tiresome after a while and I hope that in the end where they find some measure of understanding creates a more stable mentor relationship in the series. Her and Anakin do bond through the course of their experiences, enough so that he is genuinely concerned for her when Count Dooku (a returning Christopher Lee) reveals that she is walking into a lethal trap. Hopefully now we can move forward and see her grow beyond the immature behavior we have seen thus far as I'm sure their relationship will take a dark turn as Anakin begins to further slip towards the evil side of the Force. It should make for an interesting exploration in the series and it was good to get all this getting to know you stuff out of the way now.

The majority of the film concerns itself with the newest plot of Darth Sidious (Ian Abercrombie) to turn the tide of the war against the Republic by kidnapping the son of Jabba the Hutt (Kevin Michael Richardson) in order to frame the Jedi. Every possible obstacle in thrown into the path of Anakin and Ahsoka as they try to return Jabba's son safely to his father. Once the main plot of the film is in full swing, it moves along at a brisk pace punctuated with imaginative and dazzling battle scenes. It's one thing that Star Wars has done well is utilize cutting edge effects in new and interesting ways. In this new animated format even more is possible than with live action actors on a set, or even in front of a green screen. The flip side to that coin is that the focus on the action tends to overshadow the human elements which have been continually minimized since the franchise rebooted in 1999 with the prequels. It's not as noticeable here since the film is only long enough for the battle scenes with few quiet moments in between. It is worrying for the state of the series as a whole however since it looks like each episode will be a prolonged battle, but if this film had originally been three episodes, it's serialized enough to keep audiences intrigued from week to week. Star Wars will always be worthy of a look with me, and I truly hope that maybe the extended periods of a television series will allow it to develop the human element which has been sorely missing for far too long.

Favorite moment: The vertical assault on the monastery where Jabba's son is being held hostage is an extraordinary and unique sequence which could never been as effectively done in one of the live-action films. It promises such new and extravagant battles in the series to come in the uninhibited medium of animation and continues to prove that the creative minds behind Star Wars will always be leading visionaries in the visual and special effects arenas in the science fiction genre.