indefinite articles

There was a time when the first few notes of the Star Wars theme song would get me high. My heart would beat faster, my eyes would dilate, and my mind would go completely blank in preparation for nirvana. I was a junkie, and George Lucas was my dealer. So what happened? Prequels, that’s what happened.

As if Episodes I-III weren’t already the crack to the original trilogy’s cocaine, we now have meth in the form of the CGI film Star Wars: The Clone Wars, which is not to be confused with Star Wars: Clone Wars. Well, I guess it’s only appropriate that The Clone Wars is the Star Wars death rattle for me, considering that the introduction of computer graphics was the beginning of the end.

“Wait, wait, wait. You want me to do another fucking movie?

However, I can’t fully blame The Clone Wars for ruining my childhood memories. This film is just the latest in a long string of blunders. With The Empire Strikes Back, Lucas hands off the sequel to the record-breaking and, at the time, revolutionary, Star Wars: A New Hope, to his former film professor, Irvin Kershner to direct, and Leigh Brackett and Lawrence Kasdan to write. The result: the best film in the entire franchise. I mean, come on, Empire brought the world Boba Fett. So it’s almost mind boggling to think why Lucas didn’t keep the team together for Return of the Jedi.

Fast forward to 1999, when Lucas reinvents the series as a family franchise with The Phantom Menace. Simultaneously, I take my first step in the grieving process: denial. I convinced myself that Phantom wasn’t that bad, that the film was focused on character building, that it was protected from judgment now, and that the two films that would follow it and history would decide whether it was good. In short, I became a Republican.

A group of Boba Fett cosplayers gather before the emminent releases of The Clone Wars sequels: Clone Skirmishes, The Clone Skirmishes, and Clone Battle at Cloneburger Hill.

There was one good thing that came out of the prequels though, namely Star Wars: Clone Wars (without the “the”), an animated series on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim. Clone Wars was directed by Genndy Tartakovsky (creator of Samurai Jack), who was able to do something that only one other person (Irvin Kershner) has been able to do: make Star Wars compelling. So as the popularity of the “microseries” grew, and Tartakovsky stamped his own angular cartoon style to the Star Wars series, what did Lucas decide to do? Take it over and make it a Tatooine Finding Nemo, with Jabba the Hutt contracting the Jedi to find his abducted son. As for Tartakovsky and his two-dimensional genius, Lucas replaced him with Dave Filoni to add a third dimension, but even that won’t save this film from falling flat.

Genndy Tartakovsky brought style back to the Star Wars empire, however briefly.