Set between Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones and Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, the animated Star Wars: The Clone Wars follows Obi-Wan Kenobi (voiced by James Arnold Taylor) and Anakin Skywalker (Matt Lanter) as they try to keep the Republic together while Count Dooku’s (Christopher Lee) Separatists chip away at their forces. Palpatine (Ian Abercrombie), as always, plays both sides against the middle for his own gain.

I lay out the basic summary up front because if you’re over the age of 12 and you care about this movie, you already know this much. If you’re over 12 and you don’t care about this movie, you now care even less. Star Wars, that most accessible of major science-fiction franchises, is becoming a closed circuit.

A bit more: Anakin and his new padawan, the young Ahsoka (Ashley Eckstein) are hunting for Jabba the Hutt’s son, apparently kidnapped by rival pirates. Dooku’s apprentice Ventress (Nika Futterman) wants the child, too, as whoever brings the child back to Jabba gets peaceful access to Jabba’s trade routes. Ahsoka is cocky and eager to prove herself, Anakin doesn’t want to teach anyone, and Palpatine is lying his ass off.

It’s all decently told in the manner of a movie aimed at tweeners, though the jokes are so broad they’re flat and writer Henry Gilroy doesn’t seem to know that laying on action scene after action scene diminishes, rather than enhances, the thrill of that action. It’s hard to feel any real tension here, as the story’s stakes are relatively unimportant to the parts of the Star Wars story we already know—those parts already laid out in Episodes II and III. These are prequels, after all.

Which points to a larger problem with the whole Star Wars prequel concept. The original Star Wars trilogy was a morally uncomplicated fable whose “rebels good, Empire bad” logline was only briefly complicated by the notion that maybe not all the Imperials were always bad. They end with the collapse of the Galactic Empire, thankfully leaving the messy business of a collapsing empire to the Expanded Universe writers.

The prequels are a different beast. While they also chronicle the fall of a grand regime, this is a regime that seems to be going from bad to worse—from an ineffective bureaucracy to a proto-dictatorship gripped by fear. The heroic Jedi are outflanked and outmaneuvered; the systems of the bureaucracy are turned against itself. Our only “heroes” are the ones Palpatine maneuvers into the position for his own gain. The prequels put us in the uncomfortable position of rooting for individuals and armies who will soon turn to genocide.

The prequels are a tragedy, in other words. George Lucas was an older and wiser man when he put them into motion, and while he lacks the storytelling chops necessary to sell his own ideas, he nonetheless had ambitions that I can’t help but admire. The story of a society undone by fear and manipulation is one worth telling. I’m just not convinced Star Wars is the place to do it.

This may sound like a lot to lay on what is essentially a teenager’s SF/fantasy yarn, but setting that yarn in the context of a Star Wars trilogy meant to be more mature and nuanced begs the question of appropriateness. Anyone aware enough to get anything out of this movie’s story will by necessity connect the dots to where it’s going: heroic and charming Anakin turning to the Dark Side and taking on a life’s mission of slaughtering Jedi, starting with a ward full of children. You can’t help but look at spunky little Ahsoka and wonder about her fate.