It’s not exactly going out on a limb by saying that the Star Wars franchise has been caught in a downslide following the first three films (AKA Episodes 4-6), but The Clone Wars may have found a way to sink even further yet.
The Clone Wars can be summed up as follows: Anakin Skywalker, his Padawan Ahsoka Tano, and Obi-Wan Kenobi go on a rescue mission from within the raging battles between the Jedi Knights and the Republic vs. the Separatist forces. Both sides fight to succeed in saving Jabba the Hutt’s kidnapped son in order to gain access to the parts of the galaxy that Jabba has power over.
If this story seems simple enough, it is because there is little depth to it. Instead, repeating the errors of the prior films, The Clone Wars does little more than to try to awe the audience with the fight scenes in hopes that no one will realize how empty the story actually is. However, the flaw with this formula is that the audience’s attention is directed to something that is very weak in it’s own right, the animation. Though the style is interesting to look at for a while and creates some great locales, the characters look horrible. Clearly most of the time was spent animating the combat and lightsaber duels because every other aspect of the characters is poorly executed. Sure, it’s understandable that lip movement does not always match up with the audio in animation, but it came to the point where it seemed like a poorly dubbed foreign film. But worse still is the body animation, which is no better because there is no weight to their movement. For example, Obi-Wan Kenobi appears to be gliding when he should have at least a slight bounce to his step. And to make matters worse, this awkwardness is made further obvious by how stiff their robotic movements are.
Star Wars: The Clone Wars makes no attempt to hide the fact that it is simply milking a tired franchise. There aren’t even the scrolling words to start the film that the Star Wars movies are known for, for crying out loud! Because of this, I really fear for the series that this film was supposed to launch.
Final Grade: D
PS – Does anyone else think that Mace Windu looks like ET?
BOOO, Clone Wars Rocks, the TV show is even better, and the prequels are great too!
ReplyDeleteBOOO