While Joe is plugging along with his N64 reviews, I’ll be providing a change of pace with some movie reviews. I’m doing this to prove that I can contribute to this site by doing more than just slapping people/getting slapped by people (crossing fingers to hope “The Four Seasons” sees the light of day). There’s no rhyme or reason to what I’m choosing; I just pick random movies.
Fun Fact: I’m a fan of the Star Wars movies, video games and other assorted stuff. The 1977-1983 films are ageless and while the prequels don’t live up to their predecessors, they at the least were fun to look at. I totally forgot there was an animated Star Wars film (Star Wars: The Clone Wars) that came out in theaters last year. This is probably because it was bad, but because of my fandom of the Star Wars pathos, I felt compelled to see The Clone Wars.
Well I put the movie on and it took about 5 seconds for me to cringe. Instead of opening with the iconic scrolling text set to the music of John Williams, I get some Phil Collins-esque bongo drum remix of the original theme while some corny narrator establishes what is going on this movie: war between Jedi/Clones and Sith/Droids, Samuel L. Jackson is in this movie (Note to self: I should write a post about how Samuel L. Jackson is the biggest movie whore ever), and infant Jabba the Hutt has been kidnapped. The last point apparently is the plot of this movie, although it never really is established why this is important, it has something to do with territory, but whatever.
Before I go on about the movie, lets talk about the animation. George Lucas is a billionaire; there is no excuse for this animation to be this bad. He should have enough money to bankroll a half-decent animation studio or to at least bribe a few Pixar guys to help out. My main issue is with the character’s faces, the lips do not match the voices and they look as if it is forbidden for any humanoid character to have a rounded face in this movie. Forget the lightsabers, it looks like Obi-Wan can stab fools with his pointy face.
So back to the plot, basically this is the format of scenes: fighting/action followed by dialogue/sassing which ends with forced humor and then the cycle starts over again. I’m amazed at how consistent this cycle is, I can almost exactly predict what is going to happen next in every scene. That’s just sad.
What “The Clone Wars” does that separates it from the other movies (besides by being animated) is introduce new characters and force humor on the viewer. Let’s start with infant Jabba the Hutt, since apparently it’s central to the movie and it’s existence opens up a variety of questions: How was it born? How do Jabbas procreate? Is it like watching two snails go at it?
Samuel L. Jackson’s only contribution to this movie was the decision to have David Eckstein’s wife aka Asoka (Pictured below and I probably didn’t spell the name right) be Anakin Skywalker’s apprentice. She is annoying as hell. I’d like to poke her giant bug eyes out every time she opens her mouth. Her whole repertoire of acting consists of complaining and “I going prove myself!” type speeches. One word sums her up: Unnecessary.
There’s also a bunch of other random stuff going on: a female R2-D2, a medical droid that sounds high, they show two aliens making out for a few seconds (Yeah, they go there) and this running gag about droids being sassy that never is funny. The evil battle droids from the prequels now speak in this movie, spouting stuff like “Oh no!” and “Let’s get out of here!” This makes no sense at all because they say this and then march face first in cannon fire. If it looks like they value their lives, why are they walking towards their doom? The clones are dumb as hell as well, they run right into the droids that are shooting at them and then they act surprised that they’re getting slaughtered. Most of the action scenes involving the clones and droids just running headfirst into each other, it’s not that exciting, especially because none of the main characters are involved, which makes these scenes irrelevant. The Phil Collins music isn’t helping either.
I recall exactly one scene that made me chuckle, after a dialogue scene (Note the cycle), the movie cuts to a random shot of R2-D2 in a desert, a Jawa walks up to R2-D2 and gets tasered by R2-D2. Cut, end of scene. It had no purpose whatsoever, but I liked it because it was the only unpredictable scene in this whole movie.
Yeah, the movie plays out predictably, Anakin, Obi-Wan and David Eckstein’s wife rescue mini-Jabba and all is right in the universe. There’s a few forgettable action scenes, some signature bad Star Wars dialogue, and there’s a few lightsaber battles for good measure. The movie just kind of ends with the characters just kind of staring at the camera, wondering what the hell to do next; cut to black.
Final Score: 5/10
Make no mistake; I think this movie was bad. I’m not that offended though, I look at this movie in the same light as the live action Super Mario Brothers movie, it has very little to do with the original material, but that doesn’t make it stab-your-eyes out bad. I’ve seen worse CG movies (Final Fantasy: Spirits Within comes to mind). I’m also cutting this movie a break for not having Jar Jar Binks in it, if it did, I would be a lot harsher. Hell, rent it if you’re one of those people who likes to laugh at shitty movies.
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