I'm one of those who thinks that, with regards to the Star Wars saga, it's all been mostly downhill since The Empire Strikes Back, except, of course, Carrie Fisher in slave gear for Return of the Jedi.
You may go ahead and hate me now, people under 30, you for whom Anakin Skywalker constitutes an interesting character, or simply take it as evidence that I am old and do not know what I am saying.
Although there are plans to enlist living, breathing humans in a Star Wars TV series that might appear as early as next year, George Lucas for the moment has ceded to cartoons the task of continuing his story of the Empire and Republic in a galaxy far, far away.
From where I sit, in my analog rocking-chair, the switch to animation is a natural outcome of Lucas' increasing reliance on digital effects across the three prequel films; it was almost a logical next step, taking the real people out, in last year's seventh Star Wars theatrical instalment, the CGI-animated The Clone Wars, and the TV series of the same name that begins on Friday night on Cartoon Network.
Adverted to in the very first Star Wars film, the Clone Wars take place in the narrative gap between Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith, when Anakin Skywalker is still on the not-dark side of the force.
Lucas could spend the rest of his life filling that hiatus with adventures whose outcomes are basically irrelevant to the larger story he already has finished telling.
Many battles make up a war, after all, and each is an episode waiting to be animated.
The two I've seen are bagatelles - brief and insubstantial but colourful and fluid.
This is actually the Cartoon Network's second Clone Wars series, after the 2003 bite-sized serial directed by Genndy Tartakovsky, creator of Dexter's Laboratory and Samurai Jack. (How many Clone Wars can the Clone Wars clone, I wonder?)That version was, for the most part, a conventional cartoon, made up of thick outlines and blocks of colour, and it worked because it was as much a reinterpretation as a continuation: although he didn't invent the universe, the vision and the hand were recognisably the animator's.
While the new Clone Wars is rendered in 3-D like its theatrical predecessor, supervising director Dave Filoni and character designer Kilian Plunkett have referred back to Tartakovsky's designs with good results.
There might come a day when reality is perfectly counterfeited by computers, but here in the early 21st century, animators have yet to conquer the human problem: digitally rendered people look creepy. (You may go ahead and hate me now, Final Fantasy fans.) The new TV Clone Wars benefits from exaggeration: it's meant to look like a cartoon, or in any case, it's not meant to not look like a cartoon.
But a creature such as Yoda, who was halfway to a cartoon to begin with, is a different story.
Being animated does him a favour.
Although to me Yoda always will be a puppet at the end of Frank Oz's arm, I have to admit he's set free here: watching him take apart a squad of tanks with his little lightsaber is just as much fun as it's meant to be.
