Star Wars: The Clone Wars Reviewed!

Let's get something out of the way right off the bat. The Clone Wars is hardly anything more than a commercial for a new series of action figures flooding your local stores.

That said, I can't deny that I enjoyed it.

That said, I feel guilty for doing so.

The Clone Wars were touched upon in the prequels and in the brilliant cartoon network series which makes me wonder why instead of utilizing people who did such a great job with this subject matter previously, Lucas decided to use a whole new group of people.

I'll say that this is a hard review to write only because I'm a huge Star Wars fan who truly loves the universe George Lucas created. I enjoyed the first two prequels when I saw them in the theaters. I loathed Episode III and have since come to loathe Episode II as well. The only watchable entry in the prequels is Episode I. It is sad to see how someone I had held in such regard crumble and take this most beloved of franchises and turn it to garbage.

So here we are with another entry into the Star Wars world, this one an apparent launching pad for a animated television series. This time a computer-animated tale set during The Clone Wars about a struggle for free passage through Hutt territory and the search for a kidnapped Hutt baby.


I said before that I enjoyed the movie while I was watching it. Much like Episode II. It's a 90-minute (give or take) distraction with some well-done action scenes and some good laughs.

Now that the lights have come up and I have had a couple days to think about it, I feel guilty for enjoying it because it really is a bad movie. It's not prequel-bad but compared to the top-notch cartoon from a couple years ago, it really doesn't stand up.

The film opens not with the scrolling text of films past, but instead with a newsreel like voice over reminiscent of Starship Troopers. I actually thought that was pretty clever.

The animation at times seems a bit stilted. This is most evident when the characters are walking. They don't seem very fluid.

Some of the characters are down-right annoying, case in point being Ahsoka Tano, Anakin's Padawan, who went from being irritating to cool numerous times. Basically, she was cool when she wasn't talking.

The rest of the characters are mostly carryovers from the film but there is a new character that I feel I must comment on. I'm surprised it hasn't hit the news or had any kind of controversy yet. The character is Jabba The Hutt's uncle, Ziro The Hutt. A make-up wearing, borderline drag queen who comes off like a cross between Truman Capote and Leslie Jordan. I can't imagine why GLAAD hasn't spoken up about this. It's skirting the offensive line pretty closely.

Another item of interest is the music. It's terrible. The familiar Star Wars score shows up exactly twice. At the beginning and at the end. The rest of the score is downright awful. It does nothing to enhance the movie and the times I could hear it over the explosions just made me think it belongs in some epic credit card commercial about someone lost in the desert desperate for an ATM.


Why did I enjoy it while I watched it then? It was fun and entertaining at the time. Maybe I was distracted from its flaws by the explosions or the few actually inspired action scenes? It's not a disaster by any means. It is much better than the three prequels thankfully but again it is not near as good as the previous Clone Wars cartoon we've seen. Maybe things will be different when the series begins. The movie does leave some unanswered questions that intrigued me enough to want to see further stories. I just hope things get better as they go along.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars is in theaters today.