| Movie Review: Star Wars: Clone Wars: The Movie [message #170935] |
Sun, 11 January 2009 01:11  |
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Originally posted by: JMShearer
I saw this one back in November, I think it was, but never quite got
around to posting the review anywhere. I suppose this is as much for
my friends at GlitterRock's Cap-Page Board as anything.
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Star Wars: Clone Wars: The Movie
A 2008 Interim 2 Movie Review by Jesse Shearer, AKA JMShearer
I don’t get it. Maybe it’s that Batman fans are better at handling
paradigm shifts than Star Wars fans are. Maybe it’s that Star Wars
changed more than I can know when the prequels came out. Maybe it’s
something that I’m just not thinking of. But somehow I expected there
to be more people in the theater than just me when I went to see Star
Wars: Clone Wars.
At any rate, when the second and third live action Star Wars prequils
were out in theaters, there was an animated tie-in series called Clone
Wars that aired exclusively, if I recall, on Cartoon Network,
supposedly chronicling the titular Clone War or Wars that took place
between the most recent two live movies. Where exactly this movie
falls in the whole chronology of Star Wars is a little beyond me, but
that’s because I’ve never really followed the cannon too closely. Of
course, it doesn’t really help that with the advent of the prequels,
said Star Wars cannon went off kilter anyway, from what I understand.
Clone Wars: The Movie sees Anakin Skywalker taking on his own padawan
after he and Obi-Wan Kenobi are ordered to rescue Jabba the Hutt’s
infant son from the Seperatists, who are receiving help from the
Sith. The Sith, as always, are about their ways of taking over the
Galaxy. The Republic, meanwhile, is trying to hold itself together
and maintain order. Whichever side manages to pull off the task of
returning Jabba’s boy alive will receive the blessings of Jabba and
the Hutt Clan, allowing for movement through Hutt space.
On the one hand, there’s plenty to like about Clone Wars if it’s
simply something to kill a couple hours with. There’s a good mix of
action and story to keep things interesting. There are funny moments
throughout, and the pacing was decent.
On the other hand, I know why Star Wars fans will take issue with this
one. The movie started off well enough, I think, but as it went on,
it seemed to rely more and more on Deus Ex Machina and, if you’ll
pardon the pun, forced humor, usually slapstick or sight gags of some
sort, to move the plot along. Take the battle droids, for example.
Sure, it was OK to give them a funny line here and there in the
prequels, but even there it really started to get overdone by the end
of Episode 3. I can only assume that this continued to nosedive
through the first Clone Wars TV series (because yes, according to
IMDb, there’s going to be another one based on the movie) to the point
where here they don’t seem like they were ever meant to be taken
seriously at all.
And then there’s the matter of Jabba the Hutt as a father. OK, sure,
yeah, I know the Hutts have to reproduce somehow in order to keep the
species and the family alive, but especially considering Jabba’s
portrayal in the original trilogy, I just can’t picture this beast as
the happy and apparently smiling parent they showed him as at the end
of the movie.
Also on the matter of the Hutts is Jabba’s uncle Ziro. Not only are
there a few creepily familiar things about this guy, but he seems to
be speaking Galactic Standard, or whatever the in-universe name for
(American) English is. Not only was I unaware that it was possible
for such a thing as a Hutt speaking Standard to happen, why does a
supposedly male entity sound so… feminine while doing it?
I gotta give the folks who made Clone Wars credit, though. Everything
seemed to work alright in this movie, although maybe not always well.
Granted, this was meant to be sort of a cartoony thing, and CGI
technology has come along ways since the last “serious” movie done
this way I saw. Of course, Final Fantasy: the Spirits Within was a
kick in the crotch to Final Fantasy fans for reasons beyond its
technical shortcomings, but that’s another matter entirely. The
graphics and animation were really well done, in my opinion. It still
showed that this was all computer generated, but as previously
mentioned, that may have been the point, and the technology has come a
long way lately.
Probably my favorite part in this whole movie was Obi-Wan’s duel with
Ventriss. Sure, the point of that whole scene was a little
fanservice, but that’s fine with me. Being able to see one female
character strip down to her skin-tight gym clothes made it worth
sitting through the rest of the movie for me. Too bad they couldn’t
have done something like that with Padme, too, but they had her
“damsel in distress” scene come to an end almost before it really had
a chance to start.
In the end, Star Wars: Clone Wars: The Movie is an OK movie if you’re
just going to sit there and watch it, accepting that the whole cannon
is now irreversibly borked beyond any hope of repair. It might also
be pretty good if you’re a Star Wars fan looking for something to rip
apart. There’s plenty of material there for you and three friends.
Maybe my experience with The Dark Knight would have been a little more
positive if I’d gone in with a similar mindset, just to enjoy it as
part of a new, “rebooted” Batman mythos instead of giving in to the
small, quiet part of me that was comparing it to those Batman movies I
saw in the late 80s and 90s. Hopefully, it’s something I can also
keep in mind when the new Star Trek movie comes out later this year.
Tecnicals:
Starring:
Matt Lanter
Ashley Eckstein
Anthony Daniels
Samuel L. Jackson
Rating: PG
Runtime: 98 Mins.
No lastingly memorable scenes, music, or dialog.
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| Re: Movie Review: Star Wars: Clone Wars: The Movie [message #170938 is a reply to message #170935] |
Wed, 14 January 2009 09:53  |
nebusj-
Messages: 623
Registered: September 2012
Karma: 0
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Senior Member |
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JMShearer <ambasosor_lardo@hotmail.com> writes:
> I saw this one back in November, I think it was, but never quite got
> around to posting the review anywhere. I suppose this is as much for
> my friends at GlitterRock's Cap-Page Board as anything.
Oh, that's all right. I never got around to seeing the movie at
all, much less in November, so you're still ahead of me.
> =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=
> =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=
> =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D =3D
> Star Wars: Clone Wars: The Movie
> A 2008 Interim 2 Movie Review by Jesse Shearer, AKA JMShearer
> I don=92t get it. Maybe it=92s that Batman fans are better at handling
> paradigm shifts than Star Wars fans are. Maybe it=92s that Star Wars
> changed more than I can know when the prequels came out. Maybe it=92s
> something that I=92m just not thinking of. But somehow I expected there
> to be more people in the theater than just me when I went to see Star
> Wars: Clone Wars.
I'm a touch surprised by this expectation, actually. While
I didn't know anything about Clone Wars: The Movie before seeing the
trailer ahead of Wall-E, the trailer did make it look ... well, like
a thoroughly nonessential bit of fluff animated by people who didn't
know they were going to have to show the rough drafts. The cardboard
stand out front, by the video games in the theater, didn't help that
impression any, and the whole production seemed to just be covered in
a hope-dampening field. Maybe the cool parts of Return Of The Sith
just weren't good enough to overcome the vague sadness all the post-
1997 Star Wars stuff has provided.
(I know there are people who were wildly excited by the Clone
Wars Little Cartoons from the Samurai Jack guy, but when I did see them
circumstances called for them to be run all together at length and that
just exacerbated how these things seemed to be produced by a Markov
Chain generator inspired by actual Star Wars stuff. How The Movie
worked out I don't know, although it does seem to have been less of an
algorithmic routine.)
--
Joseph Nebus
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| Re: Movie Review: Star Wars: Clone Wars: The Movie [message #170939 is a reply to message #170938] |
Wed, 14 January 2009 16:14 |
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Originally posted by: Derek Janssen
Joseph Nebus wrote:
> JMShearer <ambasosor_lardo@hotmail.com> writes:
>
>
>> Also on the matter of the Hutts is Jabba’s uncle Ziro. Not only are
> there a few creepily familiar things about this guy, but he seems to
> be speaking Galactic Standard, or whatever the in-universe name for
> (American) English is. Not only was I unaware that it was possible
> for such a thing as a Hutt speaking Standard to happen, why does a
> supposedly male entity sound so… feminine while doing it?
It's reported that George Lucas, in one of his few artistic inputs to
the movie, WANTED Ziro to be an imitation of Truman Capote. (Since he's
a decadent socialite, you see.)
Yes, as Yahoo!Movies summarized (in their "Top Ten OTHER Nuke-the-Fridge
Moments of 2008)....Capote the Hutt. Breakfast at Tatooine.
> (I know there are people who were wildly excited by the Clone
> Wars Little Cartoons from the Samurai Jack guy, but when I did see them
> circumstances called for them to be run all together at length and that
> just exacerbated how these things seemed to be produced by a Markov
> Chain generator inspired by actual Star Wars stuff.
And even given that George Lucas in 2002 was one of that small group of
deluded execs who thought The Samurai Jack Guy was the "wave of the
future"...
It was still hard to tell whether the Version 1.0 cartoons were supposed
to be taken seriously, when we have actual attempts at spinoff canon,
mixed with a Yoda drawn in "funny-CN" style who moves like Mojo Jojo. -_-
Derek Janssen
ejanss1@verizon.net
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