IT'S rare for one man to act as a Death Star to his own successful creations, but George Lucas seems intent on exploiting the affectionate nostalgia generated by his original corny space series by slowly squeezing the Force right out of it.
After
the three tedious prequels, Jar Jar Binks and umpteen re-released original versions, Star Wars is more machine than man now – and yet Lucas continues to tinker with his unending wars.
This time his stilted space mythology has been spun off into a new animated cable TV series. There is nothing terribly new about this – you may even be venerable enough to recall an animated version of Star Trek in the Seventies. Yet Clone Wars has been granted the full fanfare of a theatrical release, despite being nothing more than a bumper edition of the kind of early morning cartoonery that usually runs before Saturday Kitchen.
This may not be as shocking to the faithful as Greedo shooting first, but you do wonder why such small stuff has been put out on the big screen? Surely it can't be to advertise the availability of George Lucas's Industrial Light and Magic animators? Or flog more toys?
Based around one line delivered by Luke Skywalker back in 1977 ("You fought in the Clone Wars?"), the animated series is set between Star Wars: Episode II and III, with the Jedi knights trying to rebuild a shattered galactic empire while fighting off the ever-present Dark Side.
Old and new Star Wars characters show up – including Yoda, a pre-Vader Anakin and the young Obi-Wan Kenobi – but the only recognisable voices in the cast are Samuel L Jackson (Mace Windu), Anthony Daniels (C-3PO) and Christopher Lee (Count Dooku). If you recall Ewan McGregor detailing his Herculean efforts to imitate a young Alec Guinness around the time of The Phantom Menace, there's some amusement to be had in the effortless way Californian James Arnold Taylor manages to mimic McGregor's bored RADA student performance.
Judging by this opener, The Clone Wars has set its target coordinates on a lighter, younger approach than the movies, although it's debatable how many eight to 10-year-olds will be gripped by this film's insistence on running through the tensions caused by intergalactic taxation.
One of the film's early surprises is that the morbidly obese villain Jabba the Hutt has an entire family of Hutts, and Obi-Wan and Anakin must rescue his son in order to broker an alliance between the Jedi and Jabba. Off they go, at a pace that allows you to notice animation so poor that even flesh and blood Jedi knights now totter like C-3PO with rickets.
Joining them for no reason other than so that little girls can buy Star Wars toys too, is an apprentice Padawan called Ahsoka Tano (Ashley Eckstein), who seems to have wandered in from Josie And The Pussycats, and favours halter tops, short skirts and much strained sassing of her seniors.
What follows is non-stop noisy action, pitched at a level where having your head jammed in a jarful of angry bees seems comparatively peaceful, and preferable.
If WALL-E represents the four-star cuisine of computer-generated family entertainment and even DreamWorks' Kung Fu Panda offers a hip fusion meal, then Star Wars: The Clone Wars is a Vesta curry; artificial, unsatisfying and with artistry absent from the menu.
On general release from Friday
