The Clone Wars
I wasn’t intending to go see Star Wars: The Clone Wars, but as a ticket was bought for me, I gave in.
It was okay. It was actually better than I was expecting (although I was expecting two hours of complete and utter fail, so...) It was obviously geared towards a younger audience and certain things suffered for it: the opening crawl is replaced by a cheesy voice-over, the Sepratists droids are difficult to take seriously as an enemy because their stupidity is the comic relief (even worse than it was in the prequels.) Ahsoka is more bratty and annoying than plucky. She is given no real motivation, other than she wants to prove she’s not ‘too young.’ Although that in itself was a bit of a problem for me - it’s never stated how old she is, but she is first referred to by Obi-Wan as a ‘youngling’, and her actions seem to indicate she’s early teens at the very most. Yet she wears a short skirt, leggings and tube top the entire movie (I know gabri_jade made a point about this a while ago, and I agree) for no particular reason. The ‘cuteness’ of her relationship with Anakin is a little grating (he refers to him as ‘Sky-Guy’ *cringe* and he calls her ‘Skip’.) Princess Leia, she aint. And she holds her lightsaber strangely (wrist facing outwards I think it the best was to describe it.) That shouldn’t have bugged me, but it did.
I admit I wasn’t in love with the animation. While the locations, ships, droids, creatures etc look amazing, the human characters look...off. Honestly, they looked like cartoon Thunderbirds - they’re too static, and their movements (especially walking) aren’t fluid enough. I know they made a stylistic choice, but I wasn’t a huge fan, although I got used to it by about halfway.
I think it suffered from a distinct lack of Ewan McGregor, as well - while the guy who did the voice for Obi-Wan was rather good, he still sounded like someone trying to do Ewan doing Obi-Wan. Anakin didn’t bother me, though - I suppose his voice is less distinctive.
I actually did like some things about it - the Obi-Wan/Ventress fight was great, there was a good Clone character called Rex (Kiwi accents, FTW), the action scenes were visually stunning. Padme shows up about two-thirds of the way through and, wait for it, actually does something! She was great actually - first using her political prowess (remember that?) to try and smooth things over with the Hutts, then kicks some ass and pretty much ends up saving the day with help from Threepio (!!) Win.
While it was enjoyable, I couldn’t help but come out wondering what the point of it all was. It didn’t add much to the mythology as a whole - Ahsoka lives, presumably remaining Anakin’s Padawan which makes her lack of mention on ROTS a bit WTF (but perhaps to be explored in the tv series?) I actually think it would have worked much better as a tv movie or direct-to-dvd, where it could be just a rollicking Clone Wars adventure - whereas when people are paying out to see a film in a cinema, they expect a bit more - they expect it to be part of the Saga.
So, yeah. Average.
Off topic, but one of the trailers before the film was for some random fantasy flick - BUT - it has Ioan Gruffard AND Tim Curry! I am so there.
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