Star Wars: The Clone Wars

Abby and I saw Star Wars: The Clone Wars (the movie) last night. I would not recommend this movie even as a rental. I was pretty excited about the movie when I first heard about it because we both loved Star Wars: Clone Wars (the series). The reason the latter was so good was that the animation and styling were excellent, the writing was good, and the story was strong, but, most of all, it seemed like the crazy George Lucas had restrained himself and gone back to the original trilogy feel of things. Either that or he really wasn't involved much even though he's listed as a writer and executive producer for the series.

When I initially heard about the movie, I heard it was supposed to be a 3D version of the series with a new story leading into the upcoming animated series. In retrospect, I wish I had compared the writers from the series to the writers from the movie. It seems that Lucas had his writers run the script past his children every step of the way. I understand many people were upset at the Ewoks in Return of the Jedi as pandering to kids. I loved them 'cause I was a kid then, but, watching as an adult now, the story itself was very strong and the Ewoks didn't speak some weird Rasta-style language like He Who Shall Not Be Named.

The problem isn't that there are kid-friendly characters in the Clone Wars Movie, it's that the writers seem intent on beating you over the head with themes and ideas obviously pandering to kids. For example, Anakin gets a very young Padawan, Ahsoka, who is constantly trying to prove herself to the adults who, in a stereotypical way, underestimate her because she's young. Everyone gets cute nicknames too, Anakin is "Sky Guy", R2 is "Artooie", and the baby Hutt they're trying to rescue is "Stinky" (Get it? He's a Hutt and we all know they smell bad!). According to her wikipedia entry she's supposed to be 14, but she acts more like an 8-10 year old.

My biggest gripe though, is that the story is weak and predicatable. It's a decent enough plot idea, but, in execution, it never drew me in. The plot was at times transparent and I never cared enough about the characters to be excited to see what would happen next. The neat thing about the Clone Wars Series was that, even though you knew certain characters would survive, they introduced other, interesting characters you weren't sure about. The story in the series also fleshed out the already established characters. In the movie, the only character really developed beyond what you already know is Anakin, and that's just his stereotypical adult-looks-down-on-child-but-learns-to-respect-child-after-she-proves-herself interaction with Ahsoka. Jabba is thrown in, but he's the same slimeball gangster except he loves his son. My! what intricate and novel character development! Ahsoka is really the only new character that's developed, and I've already covered her unoriginal role. We do get to meet Jabba's uncle. He's probably the most interesting character, but they kind of overshot the wrong way on him. He is, and I am not making this up, a cross-dressing, Cajun-accented Hutt with glow-in-the-dark tattoos. I have nothing more to say than to put my complaints in a summarizing list.

Reasons you should not see Star Wars: The Clone Wars (movie)

1. Writing geared towards kids with no attempt to include adults
   
2. Poor, almost non-existent character development
3. Mediocre story
4. Ziro, the cross-dressing, Cajun-accented Hutt with glow-in-the-dark tattoos