More Proof That Cloning Is Wrong

This looks very familiar: C-3PO (Anthony Daniels) in The Clone Wars

Please: I want someone to tell me, and I want you to be honest:

Am I a bad person because, after looking at the trailer for Lucasfilm Animation’s upcoming CGI series, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, I feel almost nothing, except, perhaps, the loss of animation director Genndy Tartakovsky?

Tartakovsky (b. 1970) helmed the similarly-titled, Emmy Award-winning Star Wars: Clone Wars. The microseries aired on Cartoon Network from 2003 to 2005, much as the new Star Wars: The Clone Wars will run there this fall. (Tartakovsky first became known for the long-running Samurai Jack and Dexter’s Laboratory on that animation channel.)

I saw Clone Wars when it was released on DVD in 2005.

I’m still reeling from it.

You should understand: Most of the Star Wars faithful were completely done with Lucas after his three prequels—The Phantom Menace (1999), Attack of the Clones (2002), and Revenge of the Sith (2005)—having found them bloated, operatic, and talky, despite their impossibly shiny digital effects. Indeed, if you ask most hardcore fans, they’ll say the sexpartite narrative reached its zenith with the second film, 1980’s The Empire Strikes Back, directed by Irvin Kershner.

So, it was with some anticipation, but also a certain amount of trepidation, that fans sat out the wait for Tartakovsky’s Clone Wars, a cluster of 20 three-minute, 2D, animated shorts.

Would the director, right, get his arms around the Star Wars mythos? Would he bring it back to the fun and excitement of the first film, Star Wars: A New Hope? Or would he deepen the lingering malaise and distaste for the first two prequels, a stench deepened by the third one?

As it turned out, you wouldn’t need to be a fan of, or even know much about, the Star Wars universe to appreciate the searing energy and startling crackle that the talented, Moscow-born stylist brought to stories of the Jedi, the Force, and the evil Empire. Not only did Tartakovsky deliver abundantly, but, from the opening frame, he proved what fanboys had long known, but Lucas, with his new films’ ponderous, labyrinthine backstories and subplots, had seemingly forgotten: Star Wars isn’t I, Claudius. It’s The Magnificent Seven.

Tartakovsky kept the camera moving and the action blazing, utilizing just enough exposition to move the story towards the next hookup. For me, the high point may have been Mace Windu’s fight against Separatist droids on Dantooine, right. The story, for the most part, is rendered wordlessly. It’s just shot after shot of the Black Jedi Master using his off-the-scale lightsaber and Force skills to turn his deadly robotic opponents into hamster wheel parts.

For many, then, Tartakovsky’s infusion of life into Star Wars was proof positive that the canon had many more stories to tell, and that there were many other directors to tell them. In other words, that Lucas was, by hogging his creation, stifling it.

So, when word got out in early 2006 that Tartakovsky would no longer be involved with the franchise, the question, from some corners, was a dramatic and tear-filled why?

Some rumored that Tartakovsky was a 2D animation guy, and was uncomfortable with the new series’s 3D visuals and workflow.

That sounds like nonsense to me. I can only guess that money was the issue, because cash is always part of these renegotiations. I’m kind of imagining that when Tartakovsky said what he thought he was worth to the ongoing development of Star Wars, Lucas balked and warmly told him to take a hike.

Too bad. Without this young talent, and others, ensconced comfortably within the Lucasfilm illuminati, all we have to expect, it seems, is the execrable; e.g., Indiana Jones and the Temple of the Crystal Skull. That is, if the The Clone Wars trailer is a sample of that future. Let’s hope that Lucas’s latest doesn’t multiply.