Editorial: Why No One Cares About Animated Star Wars

By Rafe Telsch: 2008-08-12 23:36:47

Editorial: Why No One Cares About Animated Star Wars

We’re just a few days away from the next chapter of Star Wars, but, you’d barely know it based on the lack of hype surrounding Star Wars: The Clone Wars. In fact, based on most of the Clone Wars buzz I've seen and read out there, you wouldn’t know this movie was the continuation of a franchise that has been around for almost thirty years. And yet, this animated story is supposed to portray one of the most desired eras in the history of Lucas’s playground, while setting up an animated series to follow. So, what gives? Why the missing excitement for Clone Wars?

Maybe some attention has been lost because this is a new approach to the universe that Lucas built, bringing animation to it in a way besides creating computer generated characters to interact with real people. Despite adult themes in movies like Wall-E, animation is still written off by a lot of people as something for kids. And, let’s be honest, even at its best Star Wars isn’t Wall-E, either in quality of animation or story. But, when asked whether there was a concern that an animated movie would be mostly for kids, both director Dave Filoni and producer Catherine Winder dismissed the idea, feeling long-time fans will continue to enjoy the story of Star Wars. Meanwhile, this summer has seen some of the best animated movies to hit theaters in years, and Clone Wars is going to have to compete with them. They'll need fans to do it, but the fans aren’t there.

So where are those fans? Well, many of them have been jaded by the prequels, which set the stage for Clone Wars. If the prequel framework wasn’t enjoyed by the fans, they certainly aren’t going to show up for more stories told in that same era. Yeah, Lucas gave a smash ending to his second trilogy (although some still hate Vader’s “Frankenstein” moment that closes his story), but a lot of Jedi geeks now remember Star Wars for its stilted dialogue, slow pacing, and those darn midichlorians, which explained away the mysticism of the Jedi order. One killer battle between Obi-Wan and Anakin Skywalker wasn’t enough to heal the damage that had been done.

Fans who weren’t run off by the doldrums of Star Wars I-III still have to deal with what’s been done to chapters IV-VI. With his revisionist tendencies, many feel Lucas has drained the original trilogy of a lot of what made the story enjoyable for them. Now Greedo is an incredibly bad shot, Luke screams like a little girl when he falls, and Vader transforms to his young, hunkier self once he’s reclaimed by good. It’s not even the meddling with the story that fans take issue with as much as Lucas’s attitude that the movies are his to deal with, disregarding their pleas for the original stories in a palatable format.

Interest could also be diminished because Lucasfilm isn’t peddling Clone Wars wares the same way we saw with the live action movies. With Episode I-III there were midnight toy release parties and promotions that included Star Wars branded soda, snacks, and I’m convinced there were even R2D2 themed Diaper Genies out there. Hell, we had Darth Vader, the Dark Lord of the Sith peddling for Burger King. For Star Wars: The Clone Wars… nothing. Admittedly, I haven’t gone into my local Toys ‘R’ Us in a few weeks, but the only promotion I’m seeing are the commercials for the movie itself. Nothing else. Sort of makes you wonder if Lucas’s cross-promotion golfing buddies don’t have much faith in Clone Wars either.

And, of course, there’s the embargoes surrounding reviews of Clone Wars that could be affecting public interest as well. We’ve already written about these elsewhere, as have other sites, so they aren’t exactly a secret - Warner Brothers has asked critics to keep their reviews under wraps until the day the movie is released. No reviews means no advanced discussions are going on. Even a review that bashes Jabba’s uncle for being an homosexual stereotype as overplayed as many of the figures in The Phantom Menace like MTV has leads to some form of discussion among fans. Instead, all fans have to get excited about are the weak trailers that have been out for months. Guess what, those didn’t work.

Whether its one or all of these things which are responsible, it's hard to deny that there's just no excitement surrounding this movie. Clone Wars may be headed for an extremely disappointing box office. . Whether fans have grown disenfranchised because of the failures of previous movies, think Clone Wars is just another Jar-Jar/Ewok move from Lucas to appeal to children, or just don’t know much about it due to embargoes and a lack of cross promotion, Star Wars is about to hit an all-time low. What a sad state of affairs for something which was once the Cadillac of great, blockbuster franchises. In a summer where The Dark Knight has dominated the box office for a month and Wall-E and Kung Fu Panda have won both critical and commercial acclaim, the idea that there’s no place for revelations about Star Wars’s most lusted after era is proof that Lucasfilm needs to hang up its galaxy far, far away, at least until the travesties that have fans so disinterested are left behind a long time ago.

Are you excited about Clone Wars?

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