Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008)

As the Clone Wars sweep through the galaxy, the heroic Jedi Knights struggle to maintain order and restore peace. More and more systems are falling prey to the forces of the dark side as ... See full summary »

Director:

Dave Filoni

Writers:

Henry Gilroy, Steven Melching,

Stars:

Matt Lanter, Ashley Eckstein, Tom Kane

1 nomination.

Cast

Complete credited 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 / Fox (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)

Storyline

As the Clone Wars sweep through the galaxy, the heroic Jedi Knights struggle to maintain order and restore peace. More and more systems are falling prey to the forces of the dark side as the Galactic Republic slips further and further under the sway of the Separatists and their never-ending droid army. Anakin Skywalker and his Padawan learner Ahsoka Tano find themselves on a mission with far-reaching consequences, one that brings them face-to-face with crime lord Jabba the Hutt. But Count Dooku and his sinister agents, including the nefarious Asajj Ventress, will stop at nothing to ensure that Anakin and Ahsoka fail at their quest. Meanwhile, on the front lines of the Clone Wars, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Master Yoda lead the massive clone army in a valiant effort to resist the forces of the dark side ...

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Plot Keywords:

clone | the force | army | separatist | droid | 

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Genres:

Animation | Action | Adventure | Fantasy | Sci-Fi | Thriller

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Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

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

Details

Official Sites:

Lucasfilm [us] Official site [jp]

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

15 August 2008 (USA)

Also Known As:

La guerra de los clones

Box Office

Budget:

$8,500,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend:

£895,300 (UK) (15 August 2008)

Gross:

$35,154,336 (USA) (7 November 2008)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Lucasfilm Animation, Lucasfilm

Technical Specs

Runtime:

98 min

Sound Mix:

SDDS DTS Dolby Digital

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

Captain Rex is based on Dark Horse comics ARC Trooper Alpha. But on realizing there were already three other characters who's name started with A (Anakin, Artoo and Ahsoka), George Lucas opted for the name 'Rex' instead.

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Quotes

Darth Sidious: Soon the Jedi will not only be at war with you, Count, but the Hutt clan as well.

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Connections

Follows Star Wars (1977)

User Reviews

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.