Tuesday, 19 August 2008
“After very careful consideration, sir, I've come to the conclusion that your new system sucks..” - General Beringer, Wargames
Make no mistake about it, “The Clone Wars” is a TV movie.
It’s the “Galactica 1980” of the Star Wars universe.
If this thing was live action, it’d be an episode from the Jan Michel Vincent free Season 4 of “Airwolf”. You know, the season with Dick Van Dyke’s son that they made after they’d sold off Airwolf to a German GlobalMegaUberCorp and had to rely on recycled footage and out-takes with hastily improvised chatting between boring, generic action sequences.
“That’s not dog. That’s imitation." - The Thing, 1982.
So, where does “Clone Wars” fit in the scheme of things?
Well, it’s slightly better than the 1978 Holiday Special. Then again, so is being punched in the face.
And what “The Clone Wars” does, is make me appreciate how good “The Phantom Menace” actually was. Remember the drubbing “Phantom Menace” got when it came out? Well, that’s what this production - I hesitate to call it a ’film’ - actually is. When people denigrated “The Phantom Menace”, they hadn’t seen this.
Honestly, until you come out of this after 98 minutes of boredom, you don’t know what it’s like to watch a “Star Wars” film for the first time and be… numb. Bored. Feel utterly indifferent to it.
“The Clone Wars” is a kids film. If you’re between 6 and 12, this is a bloody great film. If you’re expecting anything with characterisation, with talent, with style - forget it. In the other films, the action scenes, the dialogue, was so involving - and enjoyable - because underpinning it all was a drama. You cared. And you didn’t know - in most instances - who would live or die. Here, it’s a safe bet that any new characters are disposable, and thus, at some point disposed of. This film is a cipher, a mistake, a meaningless imitation.
So why is Clone Wars an abject failure?
Oh, there’s a million reasons, from the opening frame, to the uncertain and forgettable ending. There’s a flimsy plot - something about Trade Routes, again - which is so utterly forgettable as to be barely explained. It is, at best, a flimsy McGuffin, a cipher, an excuse to move the plot along. The plot, such as it is, revolves around Jabba The Hutt’s son being kidnapped and the mission of the Jedi to return him to guarantee trade routes around the backwater nowhere that is Tattooine which is also, inexplicably, absolutely vital to Trade Routes. Maybe Tattooine is the interstellar equivalent of Watford Gap Services. Nobody wants to live there, but everyone has to go through it if you want to go anywhere.
In fact, I haven’t even started why this film is so fucking shit. At the time I was watching it, I felt I was watching Lucas approved subpar fan fiction. For all I know, the scene with a gay Obi-Wan/Anakin kiss is in the deleted scenes can. Bluntly put, this film is like watching a deaf man trying furiously to play guitar. All the notes are there, if only the creators are able to put the fingers in the right place. And no matter how hard they try, the director of this seems simply incapable. Given the right talent, this series could be brilliant : something that would please both the 6 year old toy buyers with Pester Power, and the 36 year old person who first saw Star Wars as a 5 year old - and grew up on this mythology. Instead, it appears that they threw all the ingredients up in the air, let them fall randomly, shoehorned a pisspoor plot in, and let it stew. They clearly read the texts, but failed to grasp what it actually fucking means.
What else is wrong? Oh, everything.
The opening crawl is replaced with a generic voiceover that wouldn’t be out of place in an A-Team episode preceded by a “The story so far!” moment. It makes the male voiceover on the TV version of David Lynch / Judas Booth’s “Dune” seem acceptable. Oh, and I forgot to tell you, ….. There’s no crawl. Instead the mind is trying to absorb generic voiceover crud whilst watching stuff blow up. There’s not even the time taken to simply enjoy the visuals.
The music? Oh god. This is awful. It’s generic, cheap, crap. Until I saw this, I never realised how important to “Star Wars” John Williams is - his work is as much a character as anything else in the mythology - and this film replaces John Williams with a selection of cheap, forgettable variants. The score here is forgettable, utterly utterly bland, and lacking all the talent and subtlety of Williams. Still, that’s what you get when you poach talent from “Walker - Texas Ranger.”
What else? Oh, where to start. The Robots appear to have forgotten how to count, how to think, how to be. These Robots are dumb. And they backchat, and they argue amongst themselves. These are the robot armies of the prequels : these are their retarded inbred stepchildren hidden under the stairs.
And then there’s Anakin’s Palawan - Ashoksa Something. Within minutes, her and Anakin are bitching at each other. “Hey, Skyguy”. “Very funny, Snips.” He calls her. This level of dialogue is banal. You can write this shit George, but you can’t really say it - and you certainly shouldn‘t immortalise it on film. And this is the worst Star Wars dialogue ever written. Even worse than Lucas’ ignorant love drivel of “When I’m with you, I can’t breathe”. Anakin should cut the punkass in half, or give her an impossible task to learn some fucking humility. But no, Darth Vader takes it like a bitch. Maybe - if I’m being generous - you can see Anakin experiencing a fraction of the arrogant backchat he used to give Obi-Wan and learning not to be such a pain in the cunt to Obi-Wan. But don’t count on it.
But wait! There’s more! There’s Jabba’s son. A punky muffin whose name is quickly replaced by the nickname Stinky from A Shocker. I thought Jedi were taught to respect all life forms, but this punkass numbskull padawan is just a jerk. Stinky The Hutt meanwhile farts, belches, and generally acts up like a one-Hutt walking Jar Jar Pick’n’Mix of obsessed body humour. Stinky The Hutt is a McGuffin of child sized proportions. It’s almosta s bad as Chewbacca’s family being called Lumpy and Itchy and Scratchy.
Make no mistake, if Lucas had an ounce of talent, he’d disown this like the Holiday Special. This film doesn’t have Jefferson Starship or someone serenading a gigantic rat… but it’s almost as bad.
And I haven’t even got to the worst part yet.
The final, repulsive part of the jigsaw is Ziro The Hutt. Ziro is a washed up nobody of a Hutt, managing a half-derelict, barely open nightclub in Coroscant. Ziro is a lipstick wearing, made up, lisping, camping one Hutt walking Insult Buffet. Gay? Black? Well, welcome to George Lucas endless insultathon. This character is like Ru Paul from The Fifth Element, writ 100 foot high in golden flaming letters of piss on the side of the Death Star. This character is a walkin’ talkin’ cliche of ignorant, offensive bullshit. Bluntly put, this character can’t be evil enough to carry out the plan attributed to She/Him/It. True evil doesn’t cackle evily at the end of each scene. True Evil ain’t a failed, ill-formed emotionally crippled gay pimp. True Evil wants power because of what they can do with it : not simply because they want power.
I deliberately haven’t detailed the flimsy plot, or the impressive (but ill thought out) battle scenes. If the Jedi are so clever, why don’t they just shell the bridges so the advancing armies cannot attack? If the weapons can’t turn around… why don’t the Jedi simply turn the ship around and fly in reverse? It’s not like reversing a car - in space there is no one ramped up your tailgate. In this movie, The Jedi are poor strategists.
Other characters are shoehorned in cheaply and easily, with no narrative purpose or structure : except to make people think “ooh, cool, here’s Padme/Palpatine/Dooku/Mace Windu/R2/C3P0/Yoda, etc.”. These characters are shoehorned in without purpose and cheapen the film.
Above all things, “Clone Wars” is a film without a soul : it’s a cheap and exploitative attempt to milk money from the fan base, a crass, Lucas-approved (and that’s what really hurts) Jaws:The Revenge of a sequel. It is a film without a soul, a zombie designed to suck your life and dollars from you. It is the worst thing Lucas has attached his name to. Even worse than, no, nothing is as bad as Howard The Duck, but bloody fuck, this film tries very hard to steal that particular, worthless crown.
The thing with truly awful things in life : the nuclear bomb, animal porn, and ‘Blues Brothers 2000‘, is no matter how hard you try you cannot pretend it never happened, you cannot turn the clock back, you cannot wipe the images from your mind. You can’t go back from this, no matter how much you want to. You cannot stop watching because you want to know sometimes, just how bad it can get. But believe me, you don’t want to know. Star Wars was always a place we loved because it was a fantastical, beautiful place, beyond the confines of the imagination of almost everyone in the world. And no matter how crap you imagine this visual abortion can be, nothing can prepare you for exactly how far beyond your imagination this film is. It is, without doubt, utter fucking crap.Only registered users can write comments.
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