For better or worse, Star Wars: Tales of the Jedi is for the fans. This is clear from the very first episode, in which a one-year-old Ahoska Tano faces an unexpected crisis during a hunting trip with her mother (Janina Gavankar). If you know much about the fan-favorite character already, I presume it offers a sweet little taste of the fearlessness that defines her, along with clarifying insights into the loving, tight-knit, nature-loving community that birthed her.
If you don’t, though — and here I will confess that I did not, having never gotten into The Clone Wars or Star Wars Rebels — the vignette feels like a detailed answer to a question never even imagined, much less asked. That doesn’t make it a bad time, necessarily. But it does make it a less than ideal entry point into the animated corner of the ever-expanding Star Wars galaxy.
Star Wars: Tales of the Jedi
The Bottom Line For the fans.
Created by Dave Filoni — producer of many, many things Star Wars including Rebels, Clone Wars, The Bad Batch, The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett — Tales of the Jedi is comprised of six animated shorts sketching out pivotal moments from two divergent lives. Three of the episodes check in with Ahsoka (Ashley Eckstein) at different ages, from infancy to post-Order 66 exile, while the other three follow Count Dooku (Corey Burton) on his journey from upstanding Jedi Master to evil Sith Lord.
Naturally, both also cross paths with several other familiar characters, including Anakin Skywalker (Matt Lanter), Qui-Gon Jinn (voiced by Liam Neeson as a middle-aged man and by Neeson’s son Micheál Richardson as a younger man), Mace Windu (TC Carson) and Captain Rex (Dee Bradley Baker). For those who’ve ever wondered how Yaddle (Bryce Dallas Howard) might fare in a fight, Tales of the Jedi is more than happy to show you.
Unlike last year’s animated shorts anthology Star Wars: Visions, which delivered one-off yarns far removed from the franchise’s core storylines, Tales of the Jedi depends on prior knowledge of specific events, characters and relationships from other Star Wars properties to fully comprehend; unlike full-length shows like The Mandalorian, Tales of the Jedi doesn’t have enough time to build out an intricate world and cast of its own. It’s left in an in-between state, simultaneously too light on narrative content and too laden with lore to stand by itself.
It’s not that any of the individual installments are especially difficult to follow on a plot level. Running just 10 to 17 minutes each, they don’t have time for complicated twists and turns anyway. But the emotional impact of an episode about Anakin’s mentorship of Ahsoka, for instance, will be severely blunted for those who have little understanding of their relationship to begin with. The bigger picture of Dooku’s turn toward villainy will seem to be missing significant chunks for viewers who struggle to remember what Qui-Gon Jinn or Palpatine got up to in the prequels.
That said, Star Wars fans of any level can find something to appreciate. In combination, the six episodes trace the fall of the Galactic Republic as it descends into greed, corruption and eventually violent autocracy, often through the voices of the ordinary citizens getting screwed over.
It’s a cliché at this point to compare the events of Star Wars‘ prequel era to our current political climate. But the obvious parallels do lend Tales of the Jedi a sheen of relevance as characters complain that the Jedi “mostly keep law and order for the rich and powerful,” or that their politicians are selling off natural resources for personal enrichment. They also point to an understanding of in-universe morality that goes far beyond the “Jedi good, Sith bad” dichotomy that has largely defined the movies.
As with any Star Wars adventure, the stories offer ample opportunity to explore different planets with their own flora, fauna and architectural habits; I was especially taken by the pretty bulbs spewing dandelion-like puffs on Ahsoka’s home planet of Shili. Meanwhile, as in The Bad Batch, the subtly textured style of the animation works to give the worlds and their inhabitants a warm, tactile sense, almost as if they’ve been carved from wood and painted by hand instead of cooked up on a computer; in that light, the slight stiffness of their movements appears more like a feature than a bug.
If neither Ahsoka nor Dooku feel fully fleshed out in Tales of the Jedi, both are interesting enough to capture the 40-ish minutes of our time they each demand here — and what do you know, Ahsoka’s already scheduled to return next year in a live-action spinoff starring Rosario Dawson and created by Filoni, just in case you’d like to get to know her better. (Star Wars didn’t get to be the juggernaut franchise it is by not cross-promoting its titles.)
Perhaps Tales of the Jedi is best understood as a collection of sketches: pretty in certain lights and interesting as an exercise, but missing the rich colors and shading that make it a complete work in its own right.
Source: Hollywood
