Star Wars: The Clone Wars

Okay I’m sitting down to watch this film with the lowest of expectations. I fervently hope I’m wrong, but if George Lucas stays true to form he will rape my childlike obsession with all things star wars related. Fair enough that shit should have happened with The Phantom Menace, I should have gone all Tim Bisley and burned all my star wars stuff on a funeral pyre back then but I was a kid and it was Star Wars.
And Jar Jar Binks excluded, I don’t hate the second trilogy, it had action, the Clone army and Jango Fett. Three things I love.

So anyway, on to the film at hand, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, an animated version of what happened between Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith and much like The Force Unleashed, this is Lucas trying to staple things together and make them work.
I have never even thought about this film before so I have no idea what it will be like.

Okay just the trailer is making me feel uneasy. My unease brought on by the words: Jabba, Son, Kidnapped and Anakin. A great plot does not seem likely. But the tagline ‘Star wars as you’ve never seen it before’, yeah and I don’t particularly want to see it…. How did Marla from Fight Club put it? ‘Like a sex crime victim. Underwear inside out. Bound with electrical tape.’

Now the hatred begins.

Okay, I can understand it, they changed it slightly, made it a little more upbeat and stuff, fair enough I can live with that. But then they move on from that and launch straight into a 50s news reader style recap of events, reminiscent of Starship Troopers.


Would you like to know more?

Okay, for a little while I thought that something was wrong with my tv’s speakers but then I had a quick check on IMDB and realised that the characters aren’t even voiced by the actors from the films. But I’ll give them credit, Anakin was just as whiny and pathetic as ever.

But then I forgot that when a clone trooper got shot out of his helmet, I mean he got hit in the chest, and he dropped, leaving his helmet behind. For fucks sakes, they have laser rifles, lightsabers and faster than light travel but chin straps are beyond them?

Other than the blocky cartoonish animation style, which in anything else I’d probably love, but in this coupled with the weird physics, bad voice acting and stunted, jittery lines. Yeah in this they haven’t animated it well to go along with the lines so they seem to either pause too long or not pause at all. And the delivery would be punchy if it was more passionate, but as it is it seems as though the voice actors were being prodded every now and then with a cattle prod so they were jumping to read their lines and get the fuck out.

This film is so bad, the writing is atrocious and I can’t blame George Lucas for that, I could try but I won’t, there is a line in it where they’re discussing Anakins new padawan learner and Obi-wan says “Just teach her everything I taught you and she’ll turn out fine.”, I can’t tell if the writer was making a little joke there or if they just know sod all about the series. The latter is more believable.

And there is a weirdly flirtatious nature to the relationship of Anakin and his padawan. She calls him ‘Sky Guy’ and he calls her ‘Snips’. I was fairly creeped out by this at first but then I realised that the writers are morons, the story is shit and the general execution of said story is shocking to say the least.

The story is pretty good, but it’s not worthy of a whole film, they drag it out with long periods of pointless fighting which would go so much quicker if Obi-wan or Anakin actually did anything interesting. Such as a part when they’re storming the monastery where the kidnapped hutt is being kept and the clones have to scale a cliff in order to get there. It could have been awesome but an entire army of clones had trouble subduing around two dozen droids, who with their slapstick antics keep slipping off the edge and falling to their doom and then Anakin makes it onto the platform they’re storming and they don’t even show the fight, just smoke clouds and the occasional droid part flying off the edge.

And back to the animation. As I said, in anything else I’d probably love it but in this is just looks bad, claymation looks better and every now and then on longshots of ships and vehicles they seem to just roughly animate then sit back and think ‘Eh, only kids’ll watch it.’ Before they get fucked up on meth.

Saying that the entire film just seems like they were sat in a board room kicking around the idea of this film and one guy who had spent the rest of the meeting sucking heartily on a glass pipe suddenly sat bolt upright and shouted ‘I’VE GOT IT!!!!’ and the guy sat opposite him with an unconvincing white moustache grinned moronically and agreed.

So here it is, if you enjoyed the Star Wars franchise then give this film a miss, if you’re a kid then you shouldn’t be reading this and if you’re an idiot this film is chock full of shit comedy and explosions.

I’m going to give it a 4 out of 10, because however bad it is, it’s a kids film.