Star Wars: The Clone Wars

You know, that 2008 "movie" which was just four episodes of the show slapped together to get more money out of the people who somehow enjoyed the prequels. I've never seen the series, nor do I really plan to, so this is gonna be all kinds of not fun for fans of the show. And the "movie". And the prequels. And maybe anything Star Wars related that isn't Empire Strikes Back, because that was the only film I actually really liked. But now I'm way off topic...

I'll be honest, back in A New Hope when I heard about the Clone Wars I thought it was going to be something awesome like the Republic being invaded by clone hordes, not what it became; clones against robots in a war for which side could make me care the least because they're both made of disposable things. This "movie" tries to give personality to the clones, but it fails to get any reaction out of me... because, well, the prequel films don't mesh with this. If you jump from this to Episode 3, you don't get any of that; they're back to just being disposable. Also that one bit where Anakin goes back to help some, in what I can only assume, was an attempt to make us think he's not such a bad guy, a bit which moot because of EVERYTHING ELSE we see of him in the prequel films that isn't him as a kid.

There's also a special place in my colon for the people who still thought having the droids talk amongst themselves and try to have some kind of personality was a good idea. I don't know why they decided to keep the droids talking to one another in there when having a personality is so against the point of war droids. They're meant to just take orders and shoot, not converse about deflector shields. But hey, I guess they need something to do between being useless and even more useless because Jedi can just deflect their shots and cut them down faster than I'm sure somebody who likes the prequels will type a response trying to defend the savior, Lord Lucas, the one true messiah while also threatening me with The Force because Jedi is their religion.


Which is actually a thing, sadly enough.

So I have to ask; what exactly is the point of Ahsoka? I mean, other than being a fanservice character that gives people who do fan art and fanfics new fodder for their various uses, most of which I'm sure are focused on her over use of the term master. Is she there to try and make Anakin more likable by taking his place as the brash, overly confident, always rushing into things by not thinking character who you just want to punch? Is she an attempt to humanize Anakin, and make him seem less like a jackass by giving him something to care about? That's kind of too late and pointless, since he was written so poorly and came off so horrible in the actual films that there's simply no way to salvage his character. I mean, if you jump from this film to Episode 3, he's back to being the worst in the film.

Is she there just to make me angry by being a snippy little brat who I have a hard time believing made it in the Jedi Order to this point with her attitude? But then again, Anakin made it and his response to everything was to whine, cry and lament that if only he were more power while still thinking Obi-Wan is jealous of his ability. Maybe that's the key; show us that he's more mature now by hitting us with a character who may as well have been Anakin in the other prequel films, only with a tube top. And breasts. And is orange. Actually, that just sounds like a modified version of second question, yet it may be the best answer. It would be a reason why he's so quick to accept her; makes him look better in front of the others... when he's not treating the war as a game.

As I said before, the Clone Wars were basically fought by two groups of disposable things. The prequels didn't give any sense of them having any real effect on the galaxy at large and this "film" follows suit. Anakin treats an assault on a monetary that will give them a supposed advantage as a game with the new Mary Sue character. The droids are idiots when talking to one another and cannot ever hope to be competent despite being machines built for large scale military conflicts. They're simply a vague threat to everything not a Jedi, and even when taking part in something serious like battle they break into comic relief for no real reason. It's nowhere near as bad as in the opening minutes of Episode 3 in terms of tone whiplash, but then I don't think anything could equal that.

But back to Anakin, this "film" tries its hardest to keep away from the brooding, dark tool that he was in Episodes 2 and 3, to the point where he's actually out of character with them. Perhaps if this were his character all along I, and so many others might have liked him more. He almost sort of feels like what he should have been from the start, and his interactions with Obi-Wan are nowhere near as painful and forced as they were in the other films. Perhaps the people who wrote this actually paid attention to what Obi-Wan said in Episode 4 and tried to write them properly, unlike Lucas who only took stuff from the original trilogy as a means to sell merchandise through nostalgia and thinly connect things through cosmetic ties and references that only NERDS would get.

Nerds like me.

There's also a Sith that seems to have a thing against Anakin, but for what reason I haven't a clue. Obi-Wan seems to know her as well and makes it sound like they've had numerous run ins, yet there was never any mention of her at all in the prequels proper, nor in this "film". At least with the orange girl they bothered to introduce her, rather than simply throw her in there and then act as though she always was there. But then again, the same could be said for clones like Rex and this other one named Oddball for some reason. Maybe she, like them, were characters from that other Clone Wars cartoon that I also never watched.

But instead of trying to give some kind of proper back story, or at least mention what her problem is, they just push in yet another lightsaber duel for the people who can only reach sexual release by watching people slap shiny energy beams together in highly choreographed dances. Then they have another one with no tension or impact because we know both characters are going to be fine. That's the major problem with this "film", there is no tension. We know Obi-Wan, Anakin and Dooku are going to survive to go on to Episode 3. We know that no matter what happens, things will end the way they do in Episode 3... and we know that as the new character, the Mary Sue in a tube top is going to live. No named character is really in danger of anything at all. It's nearly 100 minutes of pointless filler in a story that has been torn apart and riffed on by people far more qualified and funny than me. It's fleshing out a story that, at the end of the day, will have no major impact on anything because we know how poorly it ends, and given that nothing of this is ever mentioned in Episode 3, has a canon status that is equal to the expanded universe. A status which has been destroyed by Disney to make way for their own trilogy.

At the end of the day, I cannot say I outright hated this film like I can the prequel trilogy. They seemed to try and make Anakin and Obi-Wan right, which is something that Lucas gave up on and wrote them so out of character that it seemed like even he didn't bother watching the original trilogy at all, or at the very least since their original release. Every other time he released new versions, I'm sure he fast forwarded over the parts where the characters talked to get to where he could shove more CGI nonsense in. At least when characters talked, it wasn't done in shot, reverse shot while Lucas sat in a chair with his coffee, it was more dynamic, characters seemed to have some emotion on their faces, there was action, movement. Things happened beyond sitting on couches or walking against a green screen talking instead of taking action. But it was also just like the prequels in that it was dumbed down, dumb action in a war between things nobody cared about, needless comic relief and so much use of a lightsaber that the whole awesomeness behind it has been utterly ruined.

I'm not sure if I should laugh or cry that they managed to make Anakin more in character to what he originally should have been, had more dynamic everything and had more emotional range with full CGI and not being the original creators than Lucas ever could with real actors and being the man who penned six films of full, proper canon.

Maybe I'll laugh while I cry.