Star Wars: The Clone Wars – Ambush/Rising Malevolence

Cartoon Network

(Season 1, Episodes 1 & 2 – Series Premiere)

There I was, butt firmly placed in a section of my sectional, watching commercials on Cartoon Network featuring SimCity Creator, Sim Kingdom, and the movie City of Ember. A movie, by the way, that I never heard of until Friday night, despite the fact it’s being produced by Tom Hanks and stars Tim Robbins and Bill Murray. I guess I’m a bit out of touch.

So, watching commercials. Right. I’m sitting there, enjoying these commercials, when suddenly Star Wars begins running. Well, I thought it was Star Wars. Yoda was there, and so was R2D2. There were clones, and light sabers, and that effect where all of the stars become straight lines as a ship jumps into hyperspace. Yet, there was something different about it all. The characters were a bit stiff and their mouths were big but they didn’t really move that much. Plus, Yoda had some long, thick strands of grey hair. Perhaps I was watching Star Wars from an alternate universe.

Turns out, I was watching the new animated series Star Wars: The Clone Wars. Huh. Who knew?

All right, all right, it wasn’t that bad. It just took some time getting used to. Like Yoda’s luscious white locks. To be honest, when there was action the scenes were fluid and explosive and showed much imagination. It’s when they were talking to each other did the characters seem like a shade over Clutch Cargo. Truth be told, the characters featured on this current incarnation of Clone Wars had a more realistic feel on the previous animated Clone Wars Adventures series that aired on Cartoon Network from 2003-2005. Then again, I really shouldn’t be commenting on this because ST:TCW really isn’t for me.

And, by me I mean a 39-year-old who remembers waiting in line at a Paramus, New Jersey movie theatre to see the original run of the first movie. The actual audience for this new animated series would be my 2 1/2-year-old son, if he were four or five years older. This is Star Wars for the new generation; the ones who think the last three movies are rote; the ones who have played the video games; the ones who scrunch up their noses and ask ‘Han Solo who?’. In other words, The Clone Wars is for the kiddies.

Why say this? For two reasons: the battle droids and Ahsoka Tano. In the last series of Star Wars movies the battle droids were deemed the mindless infantry for the Separatists. They were also the comic relief as they said and did things that would make a Three Stooges fan proud. In Clone Wars they have a more prominent role and sometimes outnumber the humanoids of the Star Wars universe. Their antics are definitely played up for kid laughs and not for those who thought that Jar Jar Binks should have been put in immediate cryo-freeze.

Ahsoka Tano is also there to entice the younger audience. Anakin Skywalker’s Padawan, Ahsoka is the young, overly-eager Jedi student who plays by the book yet is willing to speak up if she feels her convictions are on the mark. In Clone Wars, Ahsoka seems very young; perhaps a teenager, even. It’s her that the producers of the series want to focus their attention on. It certainly seems that way because Anakin, who probably isn’t that much older than Ahsoka, looks aged beyond what he looked like in the movies.

There is another reason why this show looks to be focusing more on the younger set than us old(er) folks — the clones. First, let me say that the best part of The Clone Wars was when the troopers took their helmets off. We knew that they all looked the same underneath, but each of them is unique in their own way. From those differences comes the moral and understanding of each story. In both episodes that aired this past week, the Jedi Masters connected with the troopers expressed their beliefs that, despite their outside similarities, they were all different inside, which made them a part of the Republic like anyone else. A little something for the kids to think about while the Jedi Masters are tearing apart battle driods with a combination of light sabers and the Force.

There were two episodes to start this series (hereafter, only one 30-minute episode will air each Friday night). Out of those two the first episode was better than the second. In the first, Master Yoda, with only three clone troopers, battle a platoon of battle droids in order to make a deal with the king of Toydaria. This show was full of action, mostly by Yoda, and established the format of the program: focusing on known and unknown Jedi Knights as the battle the Separatists across the stars.

The second episode featured Anakin and Ahsoka as they disregarded Jedi Council rules in order to find survivors from a Separatist attack. The Anakin in Clone wars is slightly less rigid than the one in the movies, which makes him somewhat more interesting. Unfortunately, their part of the story wasn’t as interesting as the plight of Jedi Master Pol, members of his crew, and their struggles to survive a Separatist seek-and-destroy mission. Within all of this action there was a nod towards the original series of movies as Count Dooku’s mystery weapon, which destroyed Master Pol’s ship, turned out to be an ion cannon that had a familiar way of expending its energies. Think Death Star on a smaller scale.

From the scenes of upcoming episodes that were previewed at the end of the second episode, the first two installments of Star Wars: The Clone Wars may not have done the series justice. Once you get past the animation and the focus it has towards the younger audience, it looks like the stories will merge into one another as the show progresses. if you can look past those issues, The Clone Wars may be a show to watch … with your kids, that is.

Clacked by Richard Keller
on Oct 03, 2008 @ 21:01 EST5EDT