The Clone Wars – Memphis Flyer

The Star Wars prequels have been getting something of a re-evaluation lately. Maybe it’s a case of first-wave Millennial nostalgia, as the grown-up children of the ’90s reconnect with the media they remember, like the Boomers watching Happy Days. There is certainly that element, but I think the prequels are aging well because George Lucas’ overarching story of the fall of the Old Republic looks increasingly prescient.

The latest Disney+ animated series, Star Wars: The Bad Batch, begins as the prequel trilogy is reaching its climax. Like its live-action cousin The Mandalorian, The Bad Batch spins stories outside of the suffocating shadow of the Skywalker family melodrama. World-building has always been the franchise’s strong suit, so there are plenty of implied side stories in the galaxy far, far away to mine for material.

To me, one of the most profound questions the universe poses is raised in one of its filmic low points. Attack of the Clones is emblematic of the prequels, in both its strengths and weaknesses. The visuals are ahead of their time — no one else in the special effects game could touch turn-of-the-century Industrial Light & Magic, and Lucas retained his sharp eye for design until he retired. But he also seemingly forgot how to delegate, and he badly needed a writer. But success is an insidious poison, and so we got one of the worst on-screen romances ever, and a jumbled presentation of what is actually a compelling story of politics and manipulation. In the early days of the War on Terror, the story was a reminder of the dangers of an out-of-control security state.

**Omega (above), voiced by Michelle Ang, is a deviant clone in Dave Filoni’s *Star Wars: The Bad Batch*, a spin-off of the *Clone Wars* series.**

Senator Palpatine, who is secretly the evil space wizard Darth Sidious, engineers a separatist threat to the Galactic Republic and uses the crisis to have himself declared chancellor, and as an excuse to build an army of clones. As the Clone Wars grind on, Palpatine grooms his vainglorious apprentice Anakin Skywalker into Darth Vader, then orders his clone armies to ambush and kill their Jedi commanders.

That moment — known as “Order 66” — is the heart-rending climax of Revenge of the Sith; Obi Wan and Anakin’s fateful lightsaber duel pales in comparison. The clones, bred for the sole purpose of combat and forced by implanted chips to betray their comrades, become tragic figures in The Clone Wars animated series, which was finally given the ending it deserved by Disney+ last year. The Bad Batch is a group of elite clone commandos introduced in the final season. They are defective units rescued from disposal by Kamino’s clone master Nala Se (Gwendoline Yeo) for experimental upgrades. Their names are their purpose: Hunter, Wrecker, Tech, Crosshair, and Echo are all voiced by Dee Bradley Baker. The Bad Batch’s defects are their strengths, and when Order 66 comes in as they are backing Jedi master Depa Billaba (Archie Panjabi), they find that their controlling chips don’t work. Hunter, experiencing his first taste of free will in the midst of a galaxy-wide political upheaval, secretly lets Depa’s padawan escape.

The Order 66 sequence in the 70-minute pilot episode takes on unexpected relevance in the wake of the January 6th insurrection at the Capitol. As the assembled clones on Kamino listen to Palpatine announce the creation of the Empire, the Bad Batch realize it’s wrong but don’t quite know what to do about it. When Admiral Tarkin (Stephen Stanton, doing an uncanny Peter Cushing imitation) arrives to take command of the clones, he orders the commandos on a mission to mop up a group of separatist insurgents. When you’re a clone, nothing stops the Forever War. As they leave, a deviant female clone named Omega (Michelle Ang) begs them to take her. But the Separatists turn out to be a group of refugees from the Republic led by Saw Gerrera (Andrew Kishino), and the Bad Batch decide to desert, but not before returning to Kamino to retrieve Omega.

Led by Clone Wars and The Mandalorian writer/producer Dave Filoni, The Bad Batch expertly zeroes in on the questions of free will raised by the creation of semi-disposable, sentient clones. But more than an A.I. cautionary tale, the show’s themes could not be more relevant, such as, how much loyalty does an oppressed class owe a flawed democracy? The second episode reverts to a more conventional sci-fi escape story, but the background of a society losing its freedom and self-determination serves as a stark warning in these perilous times.

Star Wars: The Bad Batch is streaming on Disney+.

It’s been 15 years since George Lucas’ Star Wars: The Phantom Menace brought back the beloved franchise that changed the face of film, both for good and bad. The three prequels, including Attack of the Clones (2002) and Revenge of the Sith (2005) continued the Star Wars tradition of impeccable production design, layered references to classic films, and groundbreaking special effects. They also continued the traditions of wooden acting, and introduced twisty, incomprehensible plots to a franchise that even its detractors would admit had been models of clear storytelling. Lucas, the man with the golden touch in the 1970s and ’80s, had seemingly lost it, and was producing films only a slavering fanboy could love. They kept showing up, but they vented their increasing frustration and derision online.

The nadir of the franchise (not counting the 1978 Holiday Special) was the 2008 animated movie Star Wars: The Clone Wars, which was then spun off into a weekly TV series that appeared to be set up to be just as dismal. But a funny thing happened over the show’s six year run. As Lucas slowly lost interest and turned the show over to show runner Dave Filoni, it got better. Perhaps this should not have been a surprise, because Lucas has always been a better producer and world builder than director. The best film in the franchise, The Empire Strikes Back, was written by Leigh Brackett and Lawrence Kasdan and directed by Irvin Kershner, a journeyman director whom Lucas met in film school. Lucas’ original intent had been to turn over the universe he created for other directors and writers to play with, something he had forgotten when he was filming his first drafts at the turn of the century. Star Wars‘ DNA is rooted in Flash Gordon serials, 30-minute long cliffhangers that played to preteens in the movie theaters of the 1930s and 1940s. So the serialized format of The Clone Wars, complete with Tom Kane’s booming “In our last episode…” voiceover, turned out to be a perfect fit for Star Wars.

Star Wars Rebels

The voice work of Matt Lanter turned out to make for a more compelling characterization of Anakin Skywalker than either Jake Lloyd or Hayden Christensen had managed in the prequels. And most importantly, Anakin’s apprentice Ahsoka Tano (voiced by Ashley Eckstein), a character who had started as a badly written audience surrogate, evolved into Star Wars‘ best female character since Princess Leia. The prequel’s Padmé Amidala was just a damsel in distress, wasting Natalie Portman’s talent. But Ahsoka was a capable, intelligent, rounded character who became the only one to see through Palpatine’s deceptions and walk away from the corrupt Republic before the Jedi Purge.

But then, in 2012, Disney bought Lucasfilm for $4 billion, and the first thing they did was cancel The Clone Wars. Fans were torn. On the one hand, they had lost confidence in Lucas. On the other, it’s Disney. Boba Fett is not Bambi. But now, with the news filtering out of the ongoing,
J. J. Abrams-helmed Episode VII taking on a generally positive slant, we have the first concrete evidence of how the future of Star Wars‘ universe will unfold: The premiere of the new Star Wars animated series Rebels.

Set 15 years after the Jedi Purge, Rebels‘ pilot is centered around Ezra Bridger, a 14-year-old street urchin from the Outer Rim planet Lothol. Trying to rip off the Stormtroopers who are occupying his planet, he inadvertently ends up in the middle of another, bigger heist by a pirate named Kanan Jarrus and his crew of misfits. Eventually, Ezra realizes that the crew of the starship Ghost are not mere criminals, but nascent guerillas. In a climactic fight, Jarrus is revealed to be a surviving Jedi. He recognizes Ezra’s wild Force talents and offers him an opportunity to become something greater.

Rebels borrows heavily from Joss Whedon’s series Firefly, which is kind of fitting since it borrowed heavily from the Han Solo mythology. Under the direction of Filoni, the characters, who include two prominent female roles, are encouragingly Jar Jar free. The animation is evolved from The Clone Wars‘ 3D computer rendering, which is frequently gorgeous, even as it works to stay out of the uncanny valley. And best of all, future episodes promise a return of Billy Dee Williams as Lando Calrissian. Count me among the cautiously optimistic.