Jedi Knight Obi-Wan Kenobi readies his light saber for action in Star Wars: The Clone Wars.

Star Wars mastermind George Lucas clearly isn’t planning to be done with his cash-cow series any time soon. You may have thought at the end of Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith, in 2005, that the epic series had come to a close, what with Anakin Skywalker going over to the Dark Side as Darth Vader.

But Lucas knew that there was lots more gold to be mined in that galaxy far, far away, so he came up with the story idea that grew into Star Wars: The Clone Wars, an action-filled animated feature that opens in theaters today, in anticipation of a coming-this-fall animated TV series on the Cartoon Network and TNT.

Clone Wars roars along with nearly nonstop, very noisy, very explosive adventures. It brings back not only Anakin in his pre-Darth days, but also Jedi master Obi-Wan Kenobi, the sage green-tinged Yoda and his backward way of speaking, the lovely and thoughtful Padme Amidala, blubbery Jabba the Hutt, beeping R2D2, fuss-budget C3PO, insightful Mace Windu and the sinister Count Dooku. There are new characters, too: Ahsoka Tano, who is the Padawan apprentice to Anakin, and Rotta the Huttlet, Jabba’s son. Who knew?

It’s the kidnapping of Jabba’s son that sets the plot in motion and the race between good-guy Annakin’s Jedi Knights and bad-guy Count Dooku’s Lords of the Sith Separatists to get the big-eyed, slug-like baby back to papa … or not. Count Dooku would just as soon kill Rotta and blame it on the Jedi Knights so he can gain Jabba’s trust and lucrative trade routes for the Separatists.

All this takes some time to sort out in what looks to be a complex, very dense plot, but eventually pulls together and seems quite simple. So simple, in fact, that much of it appears designed for a video game.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars seems to sit somewhere in the middle of the script for 2002’s Star Wars: Episode II — Attack of the Clones, when the Clone army has come to the fore and Padme Amidala is already a senator, but has not yet become an “item” with Anakin.

While Anakin (voice by Matt Lanter) and Obi-Wan (James Arnold Taylor) are in the middle of battling the Separatist rebels, help arrives in the form of Ahsoka Tano (Ashley Eckstein), a cat-like young woman in an Egyptian-style headdress who becomes an apprentice to Anakin. She’s sort of like the pesky kid sister who is there to learn the ropes of becoming a Jedi, but along the way she teaches Anakin a thing or two about survival. And there are a lot of dangers, what with imposing armor-covered androids and scorpion-like killers who can roll themselves into spinning wheels.

From a distance, Yoda (Tom Kane) offers advice and Mace Windu (Samuel L. Jackson) gives counsel while Anakin, Obi-Wan and Ahsoka frantically try to locate the kidnapped Rotta and safely return him to Jabba before the assassins can get at him. They get to say things like, “If we can’t turn off the shield generator before they reach the cannons, there will be no hope for any of us” as they try to escape yet again.

A subplot pulls in Jabba’s uncle, Zero the Hutt, who sounds a lot like the late Truman Capote. (Besides Jackson, the only other familiar voices are Anthony Daniels as C3PO and Christopher Lee as Count Dooku.)

The animation is impressive, especially the imposing futuristic war machinery. Director Dave Filoni, a veteran of TV sci-fi animation, knows how to keep things moving.

The characters are well crafted, too, although some have elongated faces and limbs. Yet because they are involved in so many action-packed moments and are animated rather than real, one watches from somewhat of a distance. They don’t have the emotional bite of the real thing. That may not matter to young fans of Star Wars, however, who’ve come to see outer space mayhem. They will find plenty of it here.

***Star Wars: The Clone Wars

Voices: Matt Lanter, Ashley Eckstein, James Arnold Taylor, Tom Kane, Catherine Taber, Kevin Michael Richardson, David Acord, Samuel L. Jackson, Anthony Daniels, Christopher Lee.

Rated: PG, contains sci-fi action violence, brief profanity.

mjanuson@projo.com