Monday, August 18, 2008

But George Lucas Didn't Direct The Clone Wars

Or write it.
Or produce it.
So what the hell happened there?
I dragged my family to see it, as I said I would.
I'm really sorry about that, because there are 100 episodes of the series on Cartoon Network I have to make them watch with me and that is going to be really, really hard now.
My baseline score for the film is "when it comes on TV, watch it if Firefly isn't on".
Since it came out on Friday, everyone not scared off by the very idea of Anakin's spunky Padawan sidekick Ahsoka has already seen it.
Nonetheless, spoilers ahead:

Wash dies.

I can deal with Star Wars as a cartoon. That's fine.
And there were moments which were very Star Wars, like the space combat sequences.
There were other moments which made me cringe, and when repeated the moments caused the cringes to become at first apologetic towards my family and later filled with genuine shame that I wore a Star Wars shirt to the theatre since it made pretending to have been there to see Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 less believable to the total strangers in the lobby.
The battle droids were dumb. They were dumb in Episode 1, but not this dumb.
If the droids were as dumb (like slapstick Jar Jar dumb, or drunken high school football player dumb, or hit in the head with a brick after a long career of professional boxing and helmet testing dumb) as they were in The Clone Wars, it is difficult to believe anyone cared about the war or believed the Separatists were anything to be at all upset about. It was an attempt at comedy which totally destroyed the experience, but not as much as having Anakin and Ahsoka refer to Jabba's son as "Stinky" often enough that I had to wonder if it was the most common word in the whole film.
There were all kinds of Hutt-related issues in The Clone Wars.
Jabba was fine. While he is a lot smaller than the was in Return of the Jedi, maybe he lost weight since Episode 1 or something and has time to gain it all back. Also, he vocally sounds about right.
His uncle Ziro, however. . .
What's up with that?
Jabba grew up on the mean streets of Nal Hutta before forging his own criminal empire out on the Outer Rim.
Ziro grew up in the Deep South and probably lived at his mother's house in Savannah too long.
Not only does he speak Basic like a native, he does it like someone who has spent a good deal of time trying to figure out how to add "flash" to the traditional mint julep.
"Ah do declayah, those Jedah are gonna mess up ah playuns, Count Doooo-Koooo".
This had me looking around the theatre for someone, anyone, involved in the production of The Clone Wars so that I could physically harm them in some way.
Our consolation should be that Cartoon Network has 100 episodes to make this right again. That just might cover it if all of them are completely kick-ass amazing.
There needs to be more death in the series. The clones are people, and they die in The Clone Wars, but death seems to be pretty much brushed off. This makes the whole war seem like it doesn't matter to the Jedi.
There needs to be more exploration of the galaxy, since the movie gave us some generic city with no residents, a monastery on a plateau just like Jabba's, and . . . Tatooine.
I wasn't even raised there and I've seen enough of that place.
I want to see more awesome Force powers. Asajj Ventriss was in the movie, but largely wasted just hopping around with her lightsabers. Someone needs to do something cool with the Force or they should just rename the series to the Ewok Power-Hour and have the Ewoks running around the tree houses in sitcom format, trying to recover from some wacky misunderstanding every week.
Overall, graded on a scale of how many limbs I'd hack off the Director with a sputtering lightsaber, I'd give it a 3 out of 4.
I do, however, recommend Dr. Horrible. It has Nathan Fillion (Dreamy!), Neil Patrick Harris (Doogie!), and Felicia Day (Guildie!) doing stuff written by Joss Whedon.
The entire series seems to be comprised entirely of liquid Win fused into a Top Secret polymer of Awesome.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Thank you for saving me a trip to the movies!
And Thank You, for the mention of the status not being quo!
Dr. Horrible Ftw!
btwwtf mate Fire le missles, boo clone wars