Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008)

Director:

Dave Filoni

Writers:

Henry Gilroy (written by) &
Steven Melching (written by) ...

Release Date:

15 August 2008 (USA)

Genre:

Animation | Action | Adventure | Sci-Fi | Thriller

Plot:

As the Clone Wars sweep through the galaxy, the heroic Jedi Knights struggle to maintain order and restore peace...

Plot Keywords:

Jedi | Star Wars | Apprentice | Sequel | Good Versus Evil

Awards:

1 nomination

Cast

Matt Lanter	...	Anakin Skywalker (voice)
Ashley Eckstein	...	Ahsoka Tano (voice)
James Arnold Taylor	...	Obi-Wan Kenobi / 4-A7 / Medical Droid (voice)
Dee Bradley Baker	...	Clone Troopers / Captain Rex / Cody (voice)
Tom Kane	...	Yoda / Narrator / Admiral Yularen (voice)
Nika Futterman	...	Asajj Ventress / Tee-C-Seventy (voice)
Ian Abercrombie	...	Chancellor Palpatine / Darth Sidious (voice)
Corey Burton	...	General Loathsom / Ziro the Hutt / Kronos-327 (voice)
Catherine Taber	...	Padmé Amidala (voice)
Matthew Wood	...	Battle Droids (voice)
Kevin Michael Richardson	...	Jabba the Hutt (voice)
David Acord	...	Rotta the Huttlet (voice)
Samuel L. Jackson	...	Mace Windu (voice)
Anthony Daniels	...	C-3PO (voice)
Christopher Lee	...	Count Dooku (voice)

MPAA:

Rated PG for sci-fi action violence throughout, brief language and momentary smoking.

Runtime:

98 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

SDDS | DTS | Dolby Digital

Certification:

USA:PG (certificate #44445) | Finland:K-7 | UK:PG | Ireland:PG | Australia:PG | Netherlands:6 | Singapore:PG | South Korea:All | Brazil:Livre | Portugal:M/6 | Hong Kong:I | Switzerland:7 (canton of Geneva) | Switzerland:7 (canton of Vaud) | Malaysia:U | Sweden:7 | Philippines:G (MTRCB) | New Zealand:PG | Spain:7 | Peru:PT | Argentina:Atp | Germany:12 | Mexico:A

Company:

CGCG

Trivia:

The white headdress and traveling cloak Padme wears while visiting Ziro the Hutt was originally designed for Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (2002) but never used on screen. Several behind the scenes pictures from the production in which Natalie Portman is seen wearing the headgear were released at the time.

Quotes:

Ahsoka Tano: You've got that 'we're in trouble' look.
Anakin Skywalker: There's a look?
Ahsoka Tano: You can't miss it.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in "The Big Bang Theory: The Lizard-Spock Expansion (#2.8)" (2008)

It's as if they've intentionally made it bad.

I tried to open minded about this film when I first went to the cinema, determining that "I'm a star wars fan, and no matter how bad it is, it's still Star Wars."

That feeling lasted about um... a second and a half from the start of the film. It started off fine with the, "A long time ago in a galaxy far far away." I smiled, prepared myself for the classic theme and it... never came. I had been told it was 'remixed' beforehand, but I was expecting something not too different, the new composer didn't even keep the first 4 notes.

Then we move onto the 'Opening Crawl' - which didn't exist. Another staple of Star Wars, even found in the games, gone, poofed completely. It was replaced with a narrator speaking over a kind of WW2 'news reel'. A few minutes into it and already the film has lost all its feel of being Star Wars, by no doubt intentional design decisions. In my book, if the writers/directors/producers etcetera intentionally changed something, and it turned out badly, it's still bad.

It got worse, the opening battle could have potentially been something good and enjoyable to watch, instead it was as if it had been played in fast forward, I could almost imagine the 'Benny Hill' theme being played in the background.

Admittedly, I was a bit biased towards the 'art style' before hand so I thought, if I'm going to write a review on it, I'll avoid mentioning it as it would be rather unfair and not truly neutral. So I will avoid commenting on it except to say, that it gets worse. When Supreme Chancellor Palpatine walked into a scene, his style was seemed to be entirely based on a... bobble-head toy. There is 'stylised' drawing (which I would define by the early 1990's Batman cartoons) and then there's 'caricature' - Star Wars: The Clone Wars, I felt was the latter. Additionally, the animation was jerky, possibly as a reference to the 'Thunderbirds' puppets. In my opinion, it didn't work, it just made it look even worse.

The film is a children's oriented film, and I'm perfectly happy to accept that. In honesty, this was the strongest part of the film. The new Padawan was someone that children could enjoy watching and identify with. There was even some humour involving her and "Stinky the Hutt" that could be enjoyed by the little 'uns. However, I think in trying to appeal to children, they actually managed to make the dialogue even worse than Attack of The Clones and going on to insult the intelligence of the kids in the audience to boot. A typical conversation, which was repeated several times in the films follows.

Character A: "Jabba the Hutts son has been kidnapped." Character B: "The Jedi Order must go and rescue Jabba the Hutts son." Character A: "If the Seperatists rescue Jabba the Hutts son first we'll lose the war." Character A: "Then it's agreed, we must rescue Jabba the Hutts son from being kidnapped."

While this conversation was on-going (and going, and going), the characters tones would randomly change from low to high to low again. I believe, when Obi-wan was speaking, this was an attempt to copy his voice from episode III, it didn't work. The only character that avoided this was the Padawan, Ashkoja, which, truth be told, made her scenes are more watchable than any others.

Finally, a good word about it, scenes that didn't have any characters in them, for example space and 'landscape' scenes did look particularly good and demonstrate the potential for how enjoyable the film COULD have been. However, due to several strange, strange design decisions that seemed only to have been changed for the sake of being changed, I would recommend against even renting this film. If you must see it, wait for it to come on television.