The Clone Wars. It’s almost upon us (Aug. 15). And I find myself not really caring anymore.
The poster is cool, right? And a new trailer debuted this week on all the Turner networks. It’s shiny! You can watch it right now at StarWars.com.
But it’s just not what I consider Star Wars.
Now, I’m not a prequel-hater. I enjoyed all three of them, and thought Revenge of the Sith was the high point in the new trilogy. And I’ll watch The Clone Wars. But don’t expect me to camp out for this movie, or even to catch it in theaters (a breakthrough! I hear my wife shouting).
I see the prequels as almost a campfire story – like Artoo, Threepio and Chewie pulled Luke and Leia away from the Ewok party and told them The Whole Story. What Really Happened. Why their father became Darth Vader and screwed up the galaxy. Why they don’t have a mother. And why they had to be split up as infants.
For me, the prequels have a glossy, blurry quality, as if I was watching a worn-out highlights reel while some guy who sounds kind of like George Lucas used to sound narrates, but he forgot a lot of stuff. Think prologue, not prequels.
In The Phantom Menace, arguably the worst of the bunch, everything’s almost too bright, faded, washed out — too distinct to be “real” — so it must be a dream! A flashback sequence! It’s imperfect because memory is imperfect.
I suppose this just means that when the prequels were announced, that little voice in my head was right: It was too good to be true.
Now, I’m not talking about dumping my copies of Episodes I-III. But how’s this for irony: My teenager thinks the “classic” trilogy is boring and “looks fake.” It’s hard explaining to him why I feel the same about the prequel trilogy … without sounding argumentative and childish.
I’ve just come to the realization that Han will always shoot first, the good guys must win in the end, and a bad guy as bad as Darth Vader never, ever shouted “Yippee!” — not even as a snot-nosed kid.
And as for the Clone Wars trailer, the Jedi I know don’t help Hutts — they kill them. (Don’t believe me about that? Check out the trailer. Yoda sends Anakin Skywalker, a former Tatooine slave with obvious anger issues about it, to save Jabba the Hutt’s son. Give me a break!)
What do you think?
