Star Bores: Five Reasons to Skip “The Clone Wars”

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 13:00:00 GMT

If there’s one thing that baffles me about 99% of my generation (which used to be called “Gen X,” but you never really hear that anymore, so let’s say “children of the ’80s”), it’s the unending fascination with Star Wars. Now, I’m not gonna pretend I never had any use for Star Wars (although I was always more of a Trekkist), but for me it’s a movie I liked as a kid, sorta like (as I’ve already confessed hereabouts) Herbie Rides Again or The Return of the Pink Panther. After Return of the Jedi (most of which had been spoiled for me by my asshole biology teacher, whose untimely demise I plotted for weeks afterward), Star Wars and I went our separate ways. I never even saw The Phantom Menace until three years after it was released, when I was assigned to review Attack of the Clones and figured I should get up to speed on all the important trade route issues.

I mention this not to paint myself as being somehow above movie geekdom – I certainly have my own obsessions that are probably much more embarrassing than Star Wars in the grand scheme of things – but merely as a warning to those of you who may not want to read anything negative about your beloved Lucasverse. For I have seen The Clone Wars and it is what the Greeks call “not so good.” To wit:

1. The animation sucks. This shouldn’t surprise, since the feature film version of The Clone Wars is basically an afterthought cobbled together in advance of a new cartoon series debuting this fall. Yet it did surprise me a little, since the last couple of Star Wars movies were 95% CGI anyway – you’d think they would have perfected it by now. It’s not like I was expecting Pixar here, but the human-types onscreen are so stiff, expressionless and generally carved-looking, they appear to be posing for their own action figures. The robots and other critters fare somewhat better, but the Lucasfolk could do the big battles and dogfights in their sleep by now, and it appears that they did. Which brings us to…

2. The Playstation factor. I enjoy playing videogames. What I don’t particularly enjoy is watching somebody else play a videogame. For nearly two hours. That’s the experience of watching The Clone Wars, however. It’s an endless series of suspense-free space battles, light saber duels, shootouts and narrow escapes connected by plot interludes that look and play like cut scenes from a Grand Theft Auto game, minus the wit and character development.

3. The “tween” Jedi. “Y’know, the Star Wars audience just isn’t big enough,” George Lucas muses, scratching his big blobby neck-thing. “I’ve gotta put something in there that appeals to the Hannah Montana crowd.” Enter Ahsoka Tano, the orange-hued tween introduced as Anakin Skywalker’s “padawan.” She’s spunky and sassy! And is there something just a little creepy about her following “Skyguy” around and calling him “Master”? I think there is.

4. “Stinky the Hutt.” The mission assigned to Anakin, Ahsoka and Obi-Wan Kenobi is to rescue the kidnapped son of Jabba the Hutt. (There are strategic reasons for this, but I won’t bore us all to death attempting to explain them.) The offspring in question – called “Rotta the Huttlet” in the credits, but referred to onscreen as “Stinky” – is such a cute widdle critter, I’m sure the dolls are already flying off the shelves at Toys R Us. Attention, geeks: Lucas didn’t care that you hated Jar Jar Binks and he won’t care if you hate Stinky the Hutt. He’s a toymaker and he’s just doing his job.

5. The Clone Wars. This epic intergalactic battle is so integral to the Star Wars mythos that most of it took place offscreen between Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith. That’s the setting for this movie, and the upcoming cartoon series as well. So hooray, we get more of Anakin Skywalker before he turns into Darth Vader! I mean, seriously, you’re George Lucas, you’re making an animated Star Wars movie, you can do whatever the fuck you want. So why do you pick the least interesting part of the story imaginable? Wouldn’t it be more fun to pick up the adventures of Luke Skywalker and crew after Return of the Jedi? You know, like that third trilogy Lucas used to talk about before he decided he really only meant to do two all along? Mark Hamill has been making a living doing cartoon voices for years now – I’m sure he could spare a few hours lending his pipes to that.

Just to let you know that I’m not a complete curmudgeon, there is one part of The Clone Wars I sort of enjoyed. It was a brief interlude in the seedy side of the Star Wars universe (which we haven’t seen much since the cantina sequence from the original movie) involving Jabba’s uncle, Ziro the Hutt. For whatever inexplicable reason, Ziro is a hookah-smoking drag queen who sounds like Truman Capote on a Bourbon Street bender. If Lucas came up with this, I can only imagine he’s gotten so bored with his own creation that he finally snapped. If that’s the case, maybe I’ll check out the cartoon series after all.

Related:
George Lucas and the License to Print Money
Tarkin 'n' Friends

Summer of '78: "Revenge of the Pink Panther"

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 18:30:00 GMT

Each Thursday this summer we’ll hop in the Screengrab time machine and jump back thirty years to see what was new and exciting at the neighborhood moviehouse this week in…The Summer of ’78! I’ve been on vacation, so this week we’re catching up on the past few Thursdays.

Revenge of the Pink Panther

Release Date: July 19, 1978

Cast: Peter Sellers, Herbert Lom, Dyan Cannon, Burt Kwouk, Robert Loggia

The Buzz: Peter Sellers returns for the final time (sort of) as the bumbling Inspector Clouseau.

Keywords: Sequel, Clouseau, Farce, Transvestite, Clothes Blown Off, Farting Scene, Dominatrix

The Plot: In an effort to prove he has not lost his killer instinct, the head of the French Connection orders the assassination of France’s greatest detective, Chief Inspector Jacques Clouseau. The “beum” fails to kill Clouseau, although the world believes he is dead. Former Chief Inspector Dreyfus (Herbert Lom) is released from the insane asylum and is reinstated to head the investigation into Clouseau’s death. (This is a minor continuity error, as Dreyfus had been disintegrated by his own doomsday machine in The Pink Panther Strikes Again, but let’s not split hairs.) With the assistance of his faithful man-servant Cato (Burt Kwouk), Clouseau goes undercover in a variety of disguises in order to solve the mystery himself. In the course of his investigation, Clouseau stumbles upon French Connection boss Douvier's former mistress Simone Legree (Dyan Cannon), who informs the great detective that her ex-lover is the would-be assassin. Together they pursue Douvier to Hong Kong (with Sellers in an offensive buck-teeth-and-coolie-hat combo), with Dreyfus – now convinced Clouseau is still alive – hot on their heels. A tour-de-farce chase ensues, or at least that’s the plan.

The Test of Time: In the pre-Jaws portion of my movie-going life, my favorite movies included Snoopy Come Home, Herbie Rides Again and The Return of the Pink Panther. For this I do not apologize. The fact that I was still eagerly anticipating new Pink Panther movies as late as 1978 may be a bit more shameful, but at the time I didn’t realize Peter Sellers was a comic genius wasting his little remaining precious time on slapdash Blake Edwards slapstick. (He did waste time on even worse things, of course.) The series had grown increasingly cartoonish over time and was virtually a live-action version of the Road Runner by this point, which would be fine except that I can’t help but notice this one isn’t very funny. It’s painfully clear that Sellers was on the sidelines when most of his pratfalls were performed, and he’s scraping the bottom of his barrel of humorous disguises and hilarious voices. (OK, the inflatable parrot on his shoulder during his “sea captain” routine made me chuckle.) When Clouseau ends up in drag being whipped by a dominatrix, it’s not nearly the outrageous spectacle Edwards seems to think, and that pretty much sets the tone for this subpar outing. Naming a character Balls is not really a sign that you have any. No, Edwards only proved he had enormous, senseless balls after Peter Sellers’ death, when he kept cranking out Pink Panther movies. The ones starring Roberto Benigni and the immortal Ted Wass were bad enough, but there was nothing sadder than Trail of the Pink Panther, made up of Sellers outtakes and ending with a Sellers stand-in being shit on by a seagull. By contrast, Revenge is a comic masterpiece.

Quotable Quote: “When you have been killed as many times as I have, you get used to it, believe me.”

2008 Equivalent: Tragically, it’s Steve Martin as Inspector Clouseau in Pink Panther 2.

Previously on Summer of '78: The Swarm

The Screengrab : herbie rides again

Star Bores: Five Reasons to Skip “The Clone Wars”

Summer of '78: "Revenge of the Pink Panther"