Sorry about the delay in getting something new up here; I actually had the beginnings of something written that would have sufficed well, if only I hadn’t tried to drag it out into another topic, and gotten irretrievably bogged down. Live and learn, as they say. Sometimes there’s nothing wrong with short and to the point, a lesson I mean to put into action immediately.
Tonight, I finally made good on my threat, and saw The Clone Wars, some two weeks after opening night. For a “real” Star Wars movie, this would be unforgivable foot-dragging, but given what this film is, I’m happy to have managed the enthusiasm to have seen it in the theater at all.
What I am about to say is not colored by any opinions other than my own. I saw the film alone (my wife wanted to see Babylon A.D., I wanted to see Clone Wars, so we decided to have an anti-date), and have scrupulously avoided reading any film reviews since coming out of the theater.
I liked it. I did not love it, but I liked it.
For me Clone Wars fulfilled the First Commandment of all Star Wars films, and yea, all action movies: Thou Shalt Be Fun. For those of you who were expecting it to be a key part of The Saga, capital T, capital S, you will be disappointed. If you want great character development and background to the Prequel characters, look elsewhere. If you want a great lightsaber duel, don’t bother — computer animated characters just don’t have the oomph that real people do in a saber duel. And if you want an intricate plot, you should definitely stay home.
But, if you just want to buy another hour and a half in that world, if you want to get a glimpse at some pretty impressive 3d animation — at least from a texturing standpoint — and if you want to watch some pretty nifty action sequences, particularly in the realm of Star Wars land battles, then by all means saddle up and go forth.
Let me elaborate on the good points briefly, in a spoiler-free kind of way. For one thing, many of the environments felt like Star Wars. There was a great attention to detail in things like lighting and texture. The environments were fairly realistic looking, and that gave it the feel of a real place. That’s one thing that I loved about Star Wars. I can practically smell the dawn air when the Falcon lands on Bespin, and a few of the landing pad sequences in the prequels were similarly evocative — not bad for something done with a blue screen set and a room full of computers, in the case of the latter, or with a masterfully-done matte painting, in the former case. Clone Wars also has that sort of attention to detail, on more than one occassion.
The animation wasn’t just evocative; it was almost artistic in a few places. Granted, what they’ve shown us in the trailers hasn’t seemed that impressive. Despite that, I found there to be an incredible attention to detail when it comes to texturing. I was counting facial pores in some of the close-ups, which I wasn’t expecting. The starships and backgrounds were spot-on; so much so they would have passed muster as live-action visuals if they’d been rendered photo-realistically. In fact, we may find out one day that much of it was taken from the database of CGI animation prepared for the Prequels, and “dumbed down” visually for this film.
In contrast to this were the characters themselves. As realistic as the ships and skylines were, the characters looked as if they were carved wooden marionettes. It’s okay once you get used to it, and I know they were going with that style largely because they wanted to tie-in stylistically with the earlier Clone Wars cartoons. But I couldn’t get over the exquisite irony that these crudely-formed characitures were interacting with these incredibly detailed starships, backgrounds and props. In short, it was the sort of thing George is usually guilty of, times ten: give a quick once-over to the characters and story, then spend two years trying to get the backgrounds just so.
I won’t waste words on the plot, particularly since it exists in this film merely as a device to hang action sequences on. That’s okay, though, because a few of the action sequences are really cool. There’s one land battle that has a very innovative and visually exciting twist. And as someone drawn to the hardware and engineering in the Star Wars films, it’s really cool to see all of those tanks and weapons that were designed for the Prequels that we only saw for a few seconds finally getting a good workout.
At the end of the day, nobody should expect Clone Wars to win any fan favorite polls. But it is new Star Wars — a topic I have preached on before. And it is moderately fun to watch, yea, even enjoyable. It’s purpose was to whet our appetites for the 100-episode animated series that will follow from it.
Guess what? The bait worked. When the series finally debuts, I’ll be watching.
