Star Wars The Clone Wars (2008)

The debut movie for the new GCI series that chronicles the battles fought during the 3 year time span between Attack of the Clones & Revenge of the Sith is basically the first 3 episodes of the TV show edited together and released theatrically.

The story finds Jabba the Hutt’s son being kidnapped and whoever can recover the Huttlet will gain the favor of the Hutts along with their strategically important hyperspace routes. You will be reminded of this every 8 minutes or so. But what’s the real story is the addition of a character that never existed before. One whose presence could very well completely change the way Episode III would have played out if she had been made before the final film! Or just end up as a quick grab at the audience of 5-12 year old girls and be ungraciously discarded by series end.

She’s the “kid” character that children are meant to see themselves in and while she is kinda annoying at times she’s not as bad as she could have been. Thing is the exchanges with her for the most part aren’t all that engaging either.  Another new character to keep an eye on is the clone leader of the 501^st Legion of Stormtroopers, Captain Rex.

While Genndy Tartakovsky had nothing to do with this Iteration sadly, they did keep his style and while it looks good on some things like Yoda and the droids the actual human characters look rather awkward in the simplistic cubist style of Gendy when rendered in 3-D. In fact it does the unthinkable and makes Anakin even more wooden then Hayden Christensen. The hardware on the other hand is all taken from the movie’s CG models so they’re spot on and the environments are alright if not somewhat run of the mill and vacant. Though there were 2 different places that looked so much the same that knowing who was where when got a tad confusing.

Audio wise the sound effects are all genuine Star Wars with Ben Burtt’s iconic noises but the music department is extremely lacking. While there are several remixes and re-recordings of John Williams masterful scores there’s also a bunch of shitty world music along with other vexing arrangements peppered throughout that wouldn’t cut the mustard even if it wasn’t in a Star Wars program.

The voice talent brings back a few of the original Clone Wars actors while replacing others and has Samuel L. Jackson & Christopher Lee reprise their roles along with the ever present Anthony Daniels.

All in all not a bad way to kick off a show; simple straight forward plot, reintroducing old faces while bringing in new ones, ok sword fights, ok gun battles, the dialogue isn’t as terrible as hayden & Natile’s yet is still bland much of the time, and the production is all uniform yet in the end it’s missing something. It doesn’t quite have that “right feel” and instead comes off like one of those cartoons based off of a pre-existing movie that just copies all the memorable stuff and goes on auto pilot instead of adding to the world and exploring it. It says Star Wars but it just doesn’t feel very much like Star Wars or anything else I’d like for it to feel.

Buyer’s Guide:

It’s available on DVD and shouldn’t be too hard to find or too pricy.

3 Jabba’s gay uncle; Capote the Hutt out of 5