Star Wars: The Clone Wars

This film is gonna have two sets of detractors. One set will be of people dying to see George Lucas crash and burn because they didn't like the prequels. The other will be people who, regardless of their feelings about the previous movies will enter with an ill conceived expectation for a great story. The rest of you, like me will have a blast watching this thing.

This movie is basically an extended pilot for a soon to premiere animated series and it plays as such. We are introduced to our characters, some new and some old and watch them set out on missions that take them through hair raising battle after hair raising battle. There is no conclusion, yet no cliff hanger, just a solitary mission, another day in the lives of Anakin Skywalker and Obi Wan Kenobi. In other words, no attempt at any great earth shattering plot, just a lot of good solid action and fun. Whether or not the TV series will develop more complicated story arcs and sub plots is only known by its creators right now, but its the simplicity that works here. I went into this movie expecting nothing but big action, cool characters and a slick look, and that's exactly what I got. The heart of the Star Wars franchise has always been its fun, and this is a cartoon...they're taking advantage of the opportunity to take the explosive larger than life elements of the films and skew them to an altered animated reality...which is what makes cartoons worth watching.

I loved the design of the whole thing too. It is very graphic and unique and I can understand that it may not be everyone's cup of tea but for me it's a great look. In a time when movie theaters are saturated with CG animated fair, many of which are so concerned with out doing one another with their increasingly real skin textures and bump mapping, it's refreshing to see a film that wants to be different. If you want something to look real, you might as well get a camera. For those of you who thought this graphic simplistic look was some kinda time/money saver, give yourself a shake, they wanted it to look this way. And if you're an animator like myself...take note.

Bottom line, you're not gonna walk out of this movie a different person, and its not gonna win any awards...but it's a hell of a lot of fun.

The action in this animated film takes place sometime after that depicted in 'Attack of the Clones'. The war between The Republic and Count Dooku's droid army is still raging and both sides want access to the space controlled by Jabba the Hutt. When Jabba's young son is kidnapped the Jedi decide their cause will be helped if they are the ones to rescue him. Obi-Wan and Anakin are to lead the mission; they will be accompanied by Ahsoka Tano, a Padawan apprentice who Yoda has entrusted to Anakin.

This may not be the greatest addition to the 'Star Wars' franchise but I thought it was rather fun. The action is solid from start to finish meaning one can easily overlook some of the film's flaws. With the exception of Ahsoka Tano there aren't many new characters. No time is wasted reintroducing old characters; it is clear that the makers expect the viewers to have seen the preceding films. Ahsoka is a fun addition to the cast; I liked how her relationship with Anakin developed throughout the film. There are some weak points; the character designs took a little getting used to and I could have done without the 'amusingly' incompetent droid army... of course it is easy to forget that a key part of the 'Star Wars' audience has always been the fairly young. The voice acting is impressive; some characters kept their voice actors from the live action prequels but most didn't and the new cast sound like the originals. Overall I thought this was a decent addition to the franchise although I suspect it will appeal most to younger fans.

I had a feeling this would be a major letdown (as a Star Wars fan the trailer did not impress me), but it wasn't. It is no great movie by all means, but It does not try to be. It could however be the beginning of something very good indeed.

Good things first.

The movie looked good and had some good CGI effects. It had a nice pace, lots of action-scenes and some are actually OK, without ever being incredible though. The movie had nice voice work also, even though Yoda is not voiced by Frank OZ (but you need the ear of a true Star Wars nerd to notice that). The chemistry between Anakin and Asoka was nice and worked well (it will be interesting to watch that evolve).

Not so good things. Well first of all the story is not too exiting (youre never really at the edge of you seat), but then again this is hopefully just the beginning to something far greater. The movie lacks that one extremely cool action scene or character (you never really get surprised or shocked). The droid humor is really not needed, because it's just not funny. It feels too forced from the lack of other comical characters (Star Wars will do just fine without the tacky humor George). Then there is the facial animation. Sometimes it's OK, but at other times you wish the faces would be a little more lively (they are at times too stiff, especially around the mouthes). I still liked the overall design of the movie and characters though.

Overall the movie wasn't a bad a start, and I will definitely watch the coming episodes with great interest.

Fan buzz has been very negative for this movie. Myself, I have tried to remain positive. But even I, as a very lenient movie watcher has to admit that this really wasn't great. It's not on par with any of the other six movies of the franchise. It wasn't all bad though, and I will tell you what was good and bad about it now.

The animation was a real mixed bag. It had great backgrounds that looked almost like they were taken right out of the movies, then you have these very poorly designed characters. As much as I liked most of the designs on everything but the characters themselves, I couldn't help looking at the animation like a beautiful painting with poo smeared in some spots. You can look at the painting, but it's hard to enjoy it when you can't take your eyes off the poo. It takes away from the potentially awesome animation. They look plastic and stiff, and the facial expressions and lip syncing look like something from a Playstation game from 1999. The voice acting was pretty bad as well, although Christopher Lee did and alright job, and Matt Lanter had a lot more emotion in his voice acting than Hayden had in the entire role.

The dialogue was about as bad as can be. The exchanges between Anakin and his apprentice were all cliché and boring. Not to mention almost all the droids were like copies of Jar Jar Binks. A main problem was that I thought this would focus more on action than it did. That's why I felt all that lame childish stuff wouldn't matter. But it was mostly discussing the problems and treaties and stuff, which was the last thing this movie needed. There was a fair bit of action, but even when they were having awesome lightsaber duals, they felt the need to stop every 4 seconds and talk about stuff that I didn't need to hear, such as why they were having the battle. I wanted to see lightsaber duals on a level that they couldn't manage in a live action movie, and they did not deliver in this way. A lot of the other action was pretty good though, some being very fast moving and intense.

The storyline really didn't consist of much.... just people trying to get Jabba the Hutt on their side, basically. This is not a movie that I think many old Star Wars fans will enjoy, but it may be a movie that helps introduce new people to the franchise, which is always a good thing. This is definitely a movie for the younger audiences, not older people and film critics. It basically just felt like a long TV Show episode, which is basically all it was. It was good for a TV episode, but not for a movie. If the action is as good in the series as it was in the movie (and hopefully there will be more), then I will be looking forward to it. But if they release another movie that looks to be at this level, I will have to wait until DVD.

I went to see "The Clone Wars" with carefully measured expectations, given the very, very mixed critical reaction. Although I say "critical", it's always best to remember that angry nerds with broadband are not film critics. But even the venerable and generally even-handed Roger Ebert didn't have much good to say about it.

After the strange feeling of seeing the "Warner Bros" logo and hearing "As Time Goes By" in place of the Fox logo and fanfare, the film gets off to an inauspicious start - a rendition of John Williams' Star Wars Main Theme played by The London Philharmonic's cheapest non-union Mexican equivalent. And instead of the opening crawl, we get a montage and voice-over in a 1930s serial style. This will probably work well in the TV series, and there's nothing wrong with it, but seems strangely out of place in the cinema. This may be just because the traditional Star Wars crawl is so ingrained in film-goers minds, but it was an undeniable jolt. But from that point forward it gets better.

Visually it's like nothing I've ever seen - instead of the style of CGI animation that we're now used to, the characters are made to look something like hand-painted wooden puppets. In a close-up shot you can actually see the brush strokes where the clone troopers have been "painted." It's a brave creative decision, given that Pixar, Dreamworks and others have had such great success with the more traditional style of CG animation, to take such a different direction. After I became accustomed to it, I really liked it. The animation has good "weight" to it - nothing ever suffers from the disconnected CGI unreality that often plagues the digital effects in live-action films (including 2002's "Attack of the Clones"). The environments are amazingly well realised, including a hand-painted sky which conjures up a nice balance between traditional and CG animation.

Sonically, it's Star Wars all the way. All the classic sounds are there (lightsabers, blasters, walkers and so on) and are well orchestrated to the action. Musically, they've gone some way to doing what I had hoped they might - using John Williams' themes, but taken in a new direction. There's a much more pronounced world music feel, and I really enjoyed that. When the score moves to a full orchestral piece, it sometimes falls a little flat. But it certainly serves its purpose, with only the main theme pulling me out of the moment.

Plot-wise... well, it's Star Wars. There's a MacGuffin that must be found and returned to gain a tactical advantage in the war. Any further discussion of the plot would probably be wasted... and not just to avoid spoilers - it's all about the action. So... is there action? Oh, yes. Quite a lot of it. Too much, in fact. As a TV series in 30 minute installments, it should be amazing. But welded into one feature-length adventure, it's a bit overpowering. The visual inventiveness helps hold interest as yet another battle unfolds, but the fact that it's essentially 3 or 4 episodes joined together does show. Not enough to make it a bad film... but when the end comes it *seems* to be an anti-climax purely because there's been no let-up for the previous 30 minutes. As such, the end seems to arrive very suddenly. Had it been structured a little more like a feature, it might have managed a better finale. But, taken on its own merits, the action is very well realised.

The new, kid-oriented character of Ahsoka is not particularly annoying - and that's about as much as you can ask from the this sort of character. Aged above 15, I'm not the target audience for Ahsoka's rite of passage story. Jabba's son is virtually inanimate... barely a character at all. Jabba the Hutt's uncle Ziro is bizarre - a sort of tattooed, New Orleans drag queen in huge slug form - but neither particularly annoying nor offensive as some reviewers have claimed. A kind of Vivien Leigh-as-Blanch DuBois (or maybe Truman Capote) to the Sydney Greenstreet-inspired Jabba.

Overall, this is a good, fun animated adventure with excellent action sequences, that works well despite some pacing issues. It deserves credit for developing its own unique visual style, and daring to take liberties with a well-established franchise. In the end, its this willingness to challenge that much-loved formula that will provoke the ire of many a middle-aged Star Wars fan, as they clutch their Millennium Falcon scale replicas to their portly man-bosoms. But it may find more favour with the newer generation of fan who have less attachment to the memory of what they think they saw in a cinema, and a childhood, a long, long time ago.