Star Wars - Clone Wars - Film Review

Star Wars Official Movie Website Shop for Star Wars Costumes and Gifts Adult Star Wars Costumes including Darth Vader, Princess Leai, Jedi, Chewbacca and more Kid's Star Wars Costumes Children love Star Wars, especially on Halloween Star Wars Masks and Helmets Stormtrooper, Boba Fett, classic Darth Vader Star Wars Costume Accessories light sabers, gloves Star Wars Gifts unique collectibles

It’s been thirty one years since the original Star Wars movie came out. We’ve seen two completed trilogies. We’ve seen a handful of spin-off movies along with endless amounts of novels, video games, and comic books. It’s no secret; Star Wars has evolved into a household brand name. The endless assault of related product has ranged in quality from top notch entertainment to, “How could you?” territory (see 1978’s famed Star Wars Holiday Special). The most recent addition to the Star Wars catalog is Star Wars: Clone Wars a computer animated movie chronicling some of the activity set between 2002’s Attack of the Clones and 2005’s Revenge of the Sith. In creating a massive, interstellar war and leaving most of it off screen in the major movies, George Lucas left his minions fertile ground to “fill in the blanks” through various forms of media, most notably through the Cartoon Network hand-drawn Clone Wars series, which this film owes a heavy debt to. Simply put, Cartoon Network’s 2003 Clone Wars series was a sequence of vignettes that aired between scheduled programming, and served as a brief glimpse into the vague Clone Wars as opposed to a full-length feature. When viewed consecutively, these vignettes become a thrilling, artistically stylized gauntlet of imaginative, uncompromising action. Borrowing some of the character models and voice talent from Cartoon Network’s surprise hit, Lucasfilm has unofficially transposed the series to computer generated form.  This fall, they are set to launch a high budget television series intended to expand on some of the territory touched on by Cartoon Network. This summer’s theatrical release of the computer generated Clone Wars represents an unveiling of the animation and style of the impending series. Unfortunately for Lucasfilm, and viewers, this new, computer animated Clone Wars is completely miserable and fails on almost every level, coming off as a shameless, hollow imitation of Cartoon Network’s efforts in a ploy to drudge up publicity for the new series. They have taken the idea of frequent, diverse action sets and attempted to string them together with a painfully bad story involving Anakin Skywalker and his new, surprise Padawan tracking down Jabba the Hutt’s kidnapped son. It seems pointless to say, “This movie was intended for kids,” because that excuses none of the horrid dialogue or aggressively irritating characters. If you thought the recent trilogy was full of bad dialogue and suspect plotting, Clone Wars makes it look like The Godfather by comparison. Even so, the movie could have succeeded if the abundant action had any clout. Most of the battle scenes in Clone Wars look like a subpar video game taking place. I don’t mean to say the animation was “bad”; it’s the overall design motif that’s bad. They openly said they didn’t want it to look like anything audiences had already seen. They succeeded: I’ve never seen anything this awkwardly and heartlessly styled. There’s no weight in any of the endless amounts of exploding or falling robots. No artistry to admire. No compelling imagery. Without any semblance of story or emotion, the visuals must be breathtaking and enthralling. Cartoon Network’s Clone Wars were just that. 2008’s Clone Wars aren’t. The superficial action drags on for forty minutes too long, and the film still manages to end abruptly, leaving the viewer feeling worn down but still bored. It will be interesting to see how the failure of this film affects the upcoming television series. Ironically, by unveiling it to so publicly with such a poor theatrical effort, they may have actually damaged excitement for the show. In shorter, more forgiving television format, Clone Wars might find some redemption, but it remains to be seen whether the series will be able to claw its way out of the Death Star sized crater this film has planted it in. C. Patton - ShopForHalloween