Rewatching Clone Wars
Oct. 17th, 2006 05:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerThe last time I watched through the Star Wars saga, I managed to see all six movies in one weekend. It was entertaining and might have amplified my emotional responses, but I wound up deciding not to use the extra time to add the two Clone Wars animated "micro-series" in to the sort-of-marathon. That might have let some ambiguous thoughts about them germinate in my mind, thoughts that I was still contemplating when I finally managed to fit Clone Wars into this latest rewatching effort... and for once, I was reassured that I'm not thinking of everything I post before I actually see what I'm posting about.
There are links between Star Wars and animation that I wonder if some people don't quite seem to realise. A little while ago, I found a book in the "Virgin Film" series about animated movies, which intriguingly covered The Phantom Menace in its section on movies combining live action and computer animation. (The entry didn't seem quite as effusive as Jim Smith's book in the same series, but wasn't downright negative.) It added to my thoughts on some of the "behind the scenes" documentaries to leave me wondering if further emphasizing that teams of people worked in a computer animation department that's not utterly dissimilar from studios like Pixar would counter the usual sneers about "CGI" being somehow artificial and unworthy, at least in ILM's hands when working on Star Wars movies... probably not, of course, but I can still contemplate the idea.
With the previous, perhaps more obviously "animated" attempts to add to Star Wars through drawn animation, though, "Droids" and "Ewoks," the shows wound up competing for my attention against such mid-1980s works as "Transformers," "Voltron," and "Robotech"... and the giant robots won. On that foundation, though, grew an awareness that animation could be used to give a special imitation of life to anything that could be drawn over and over again. While I've definitely seen more than enough animation since those days to realise that it can have its own limitations, I was still very interested to hear that the people who had made "Samurai Jack" would now be working on a series of short pieces expanding on the Clone Wars. Even some predictable attempts to use the work as a stick against George Lucas and Attack of the Clones in the last days of my nervous yet miserable seperation from the movies didn't quite manage to blunt my positive reaction to Clone Wars. The two series even managed to leave me uncertain at first if the Grievous in Revenge of the Sith seemed like a pushover compared to his cartoon version (before I finally decided that Matthew Wood's voice performance has its own special appeal)... and then, I started wondering about the animation portrayal of another character. I could remember from the first series Anakin seeming to be grim and seething most of the time and winning his final duel against Asajj Ventress by attacking in a somehow obvious frenzy. Even comparing his more cheerful moments in the second series (before he again managed to lose his temper near the end) to that left me with dark contemplations of how the most many people seemed to have taken from Attack of the Clones was to be convinced that the best thing Anakin Skywalker ever did was becoming Darth Vader, which was pretty much inevitable anyway. I started thinking, "He didn't fly out of control facing Zam Wessel, did he? He didn't fly out of control in the arena battle, did he?" In being aware of that, though... I was surprised this time around by how grim and determined Obi-Wan also seemed most of the time in the first series. That seemed in some strange way to improve my mood, and I continued to appreciate the dialogue-light action and the elaboration of some of the Jedi from Attack of the Clones, elevating them from the crowded pantheon of "lightly developed Star Wars characters who look cool" to the somewhat more exalted level of "lightly developed Star Wars characters who do cool stuff." It may even account for why I hold a light interest in the female Jedi Luminara Undull, Bariss Ofee, and Shaak Ti, but find Aayla Secura a bit obvious and uninteresting; she didn't get quite as much emphasis in the series. In the end, beyond the series themselves, the Revenge of the Sith trailers on both discs also point ahead to next week...
There are links between Star Wars and animation that I wonder if some people don't quite seem to realise. A little while ago, I found a book in the "Virgin Film" series about animated movies, which intriguingly covered The Phantom Menace in its section on movies combining live action and computer animation. (The entry didn't seem quite as effusive as Jim Smith's book in the same series, but wasn't downright negative.) It added to my thoughts on some of the "behind the scenes" documentaries to leave me wondering if further emphasizing that teams of people worked in a computer animation department that's not utterly dissimilar from studios like Pixar would counter the usual sneers about "CGI" being somehow artificial and unworthy, at least in ILM's hands when working on Star Wars movies... probably not, of course, but I can still contemplate the idea.
With the previous, perhaps more obviously "animated" attempts to add to Star Wars through drawn animation, though, "Droids" and "Ewoks," the shows wound up competing for my attention against such mid-1980s works as "Transformers," "Voltron," and "Robotech"... and the giant robots won. On that foundation, though, grew an awareness that animation could be used to give a special imitation of life to anything that could be drawn over and over again. While I've definitely seen more than enough animation since those days to realise that it can have its own limitations, I was still very interested to hear that the people who had made "Samurai Jack" would now be working on a series of short pieces expanding on the Clone Wars. Even some predictable attempts to use the work as a stick against George Lucas and Attack of the Clones in the last days of my nervous yet miserable seperation from the movies didn't quite manage to blunt my positive reaction to Clone Wars. The two series even managed to leave me uncertain at first if the Grievous in Revenge of the Sith seemed like a pushover compared to his cartoon version (before I finally decided that Matthew Wood's voice performance has its own special appeal)... and then, I started wondering about the animation portrayal of another character. I could remember from the first series Anakin seeming to be grim and seething most of the time and winning his final duel against Asajj Ventress by attacking in a somehow obvious frenzy. Even comparing his more cheerful moments in the second series (before he again managed to lose his temper near the end) to that left me with dark contemplations of how the most many people seemed to have taken from Attack of the Clones was to be convinced that the best thing Anakin Skywalker ever did was becoming Darth Vader, which was pretty much inevitable anyway. I started thinking, "He didn't fly out of control facing Zam Wessel, did he? He didn't fly out of control in the arena battle, did he?" In being aware of that, though... I was surprised this time around by how grim and determined Obi-Wan also seemed most of the time in the first series. That seemed in some strange way to improve my mood, and I continued to appreciate the dialogue-light action and the elaboration of some of the Jedi from Attack of the Clones, elevating them from the crowded pantheon of "lightly developed Star Wars characters who look cool" to the somewhat more exalted level of "lightly developed Star Wars characters who do cool stuff." It may even account for why I hold a light interest in the female Jedi Luminara Undull, Bariss Ofee, and Shaak Ti, but find Aayla Secura a bit obvious and uninteresting; she didn't get quite as much emphasis in the series. In the end, beyond the series themselves, the Revenge of the Sith trailers on both discs also point ahead to next week...
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Date: 2006-10-18 02:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-18 10:02 pm (UTC)Still, I could at least take an academic interest in the animated series just perhaps taking a page from anime and offering "fanservice..." but for the ladies.