A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, an interstellar epic winked into life, taking a hold on the imaginations of generations of children, and the pursestrings of their parents. Three decades, two trilogies and legions of plastic action figures later, the Star Wars machine finally ground to a halt. Or did it?

“Fast not so!” as Yoda might say – there’s life in the old franchise yet. Three years after Revenge of the Sith apparently drew a line under the saga, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Anakin Skywalker and the wrinkly green midget are back.

Only this time, they are rendered in state-of-the-art CGI, in a feature-length animated film that leaves behind the Skywalker family soap opera to explore the conflicts that take place between the second and third episodes of the live-action films. Star Wars: The Clone Wars will act as an introduction to a 22-episode animated television series, which will be shown on Cartoon Network later this year, with further seasons in the pipeline.

It is tempting, of course, to see the film and TV series as a cynical way of sustaining the cash cow that made their executive producer George Lucas a billionaire. “Well, people seem to want to keep on going back to that galaxy,” says Dave Filoni, the director of Clone Wars. “Every day I see people walking round with lightsabres.” He is speaking, admittedly, from San Diego’s ComicCon, the annual jamboree of geek culture, where interest in Clone Wars has been predictably rabid. But there are other signs that the spin-off is a serious proposition, and in some ways an improvement on the stilted, and often humourless, prequel trilogy.

“George wanted the animated version to feel more like the original trilogy, to deal more with the characters and the banter between them,” says Filoni. To that end, Ahsoka, a wisecracking female Jedi apprentice, has been added, and the tone is appreciably more breezy.

Some may bridle at the point when the dastardly Count Dooku – voiced by Christopher Lee who, like Anthony Daniels and Samuel L. Jackson, reprises his role from the previous films – throws back his head and cackles. But Star Wars was always rooted in the classic adventure serials, so having your villain laugh, as Filoni puts it, “like Ming the Merciless in Flash Gordon”, isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

The visuals, meanwhile, are ravishing. Clone Wars was originally planned as a television series only, but when Lucas saw a rough cut he told Filoni: “We need to see this on a big screen.” You can see why. With its shadowy environments lit by shimmering lightsabres, and hyperkinetic duels between angular warriors, Clone Wars has a breathtaking graphical élan.

“We knew from early on that it would be stylised, not photo- realistic,” says Filoni, who drew on Japanese anime and the acclaimed Clones Wars cartoon microseries of 2003 for his inspiration.

The prequels were criticised for their reliance on CGI effects. Liberated from the fetters of live action, Star Wars, perversely, feels more natural. Perhaps Lucas should have handed the baton on to the new generation a bit earlier?

Not that Filoni, 34, a zealous fan of the franchise since childhood, is getting too big for his boots. Lucas was hands-on throughout, he insists. “George would show me some of his tricks, then we’d go off and work real hard and he’d see if we were actually learning,” he says, speaking with the reverence a Jedi might accord to a certain wrinkly green midget.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars is released on Aug 15 2008

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