TV #30 of 2020:
Star Wars: The Clone Wars, season 1
This first season of the CGI show is a definite improvement over the 2008 feature film, and I appreciate the travelogue aspect of showing off different Star Wars settings. Still, it seems pretty nonessential to the canon so far, beyond the rare glimpses of Anakin and Padmé’s secret love affair. I realize this program is aimed at a younger audience than the live-action movies, and that the continuity is somewhat boxed in by Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith, yet the narrative stakes just aren’t doing much to grab my attention. If anything, I feel like I’m more on the side of the Separatist droids, since the writing seldom bothers to articulate why their leaving the Republic would be such a bad thing.
Heck, I’m not even sure where my sympathies are intended to lie here. The prequel trilogy is clearly pitched around the downfall of Anakin Skywalker so that viewers will perceive him as a tragic figure rather than a typical protagonist, but I don’t really get the same feeling from his cartoon version. For now, at least, he seems flattened into a standard hero role by the series, and that’s boring and weird even if probably more kid-friendly. Much as I can’t tell the difference between all the clone soldiers, I’m having trouble investing in the doomed Jedi without a clearer sense to this part of his arc.
[Content warning for a fictional slur that’s uncomfortably close to a real one.]
★★★☆☆
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