Hi, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab...
It’s moments like this that remind me why I live in Los Angeles.
Saturday afternoon, the Egyptian Theater played host to the second half of a two-part tribute to the work of Genndy Tartakovsky, creator of shows like DEXTER’S LABORATORY, POWERPUFF GIRLS, and SAMURAI JACK. Lately, he’s been under the geek microscope because he’s been playing in someone else’s sandbox. George Lucas’s, to be precise. Out of all the ancillary spin-offs in the STAR WARS universe so far, Cartoon Network’s CLONE WARS series is probably the single best received, and for good reason. It’s an action show, pure and simple, convering the period of STAR WARS mythology that has most intrigued fans since that first cryptic mention back in 1977.
When the first batch of episodes aired last year, fan reaction was strong. When the biggest complaint people have is “too short,” you know you’ve done something right. The last episode from that batch ended with General Grievous laying down a severe-beating on a whole group of Jedi. Just as Ki-Adi Mundi and Grievous were about to clash, the scene cut back to Coruscant where Yoda stood staring at the gathering storm outside.
This time around, more time was allotted for each episode. 12 minutes is a lot more storytelling time than it sounds like, especially when you’re dealing with something that’s paced this relentlessly. There are five new episodes that will air starting tonight, and there’s a not a wasted second in the hour of total running time. General Grievous just keeps getting cooler and cooler in these new episodes, and we learn a bit more about his fetish for collecting the lightsabers of Jedi he has killed. We also see him dueling with his master, Count Dooku, in the sort of aside that there’s no room for in the actual films. It fleshes out the corners of the STAR WARS universe just that little bit more, and it gives us more of some fun characters that may just flash by in the actual movie.
More importantly, though, we get a lot of new material here about Anakin’s final few steps toward the Dark Side before his actual fall. There’s one particular moment during Anakin’s final trial where he has a vision of the future that is genuinely unsettling, probably the emotional high point of the series. We get to see the actual transition from Padawan to Jedi for Anakin, and this is one of those things I can’t believe they did here instead of in the movies: Anakin gets made.
The most important storyline handled here, at least as far as the feature films are concerned, is the plot to abduct Chancellor Palpatine and the attack on Coruscant. These are the events that lead us directly into EPISODE III. As Genndy said, “We got to animate the opening crawl.” I’m just glad there’s not a lot of time left between now and May 19th, because a tease like this might be too hard to handle otherwise. That last trailer was already so good that I’m tempted to try and disguise myself as Kevin Smith so I can sneak into that mid-April friends and family screening at Skywalker Ranch. People have mistaken me for him before. Maybe that and a well-timed Jedi Mind Trick might just do the trick... but I digress.
Genndy Tartakovsky and his creative team are obviously big STAR WARS fans, and they seem to have been able to indulge every geek impulse they’ve ever had as fans. There’s nothing cooler than watching Jedi fighting at full-strength, using all of their powers. Yoda and Mace Windu get to lay waste to whole legions of droids, and there’s a great scene of Yoda actually fighting spaceships before they can land. As badass as the Jedi are, we also get to see the Clone Troopers at their best, and they’re impressive. All of this is brought to vivid life through the designs of Paul Rudish and the story work by Bryan Andrews, Mark Andrews, and Tartakovsky himself. Everything, from the backgrounds to the score to the sound effects... it’s all STAR WARS, instantly recognizable.
Oh, yeah. There are Wookies. Did I mention the Wookies? ‘Cause there are. Wookies, I mean.
Right now, as we count down to the end of the saga, it’s great to get something extra, and when it’s executed with this much skill, it’s a nice reminder of exactly what made me fall in love with STAR WARS in the first place.
"Moriarty" out.
