Star Wars Month: Mini Review - Star Wars: The Clone Wars (film)

It's another entry of Star Wars Month

And today we start looking at 'in-continuity' material

So, let's take a look at the film the preceded the animated series. Star Wars: The Clone Wars

When the series Star Wars: The Clone Wars was produced, George Lucas liked it enough to take the first arc of the series and covert it into movie format. The movie was met with negative criticism (worse than any of the prequels) and despite the fact it was profitable, it's the least successful Star Wars movie.

Synopsis: When Jabba the Hutt's son is kidnapped, Jabba hires both Jedi and Seperatist forces to find him, Obi-Wan Kenobe, Anakin Skywalker and his padawan Ashoka Tano are in a deadly race against Count Dooku's assassin Assaj Ventress to bring the Huttlet back unharmed. But is the conspiracy deeper than it seems?

And, for the record, I very much enjoyed it. The story seems a little separated from the actual clone wars (minus a battle at the beginning really only there to establish our main characters.) It has a decent balance of humour and drama. People complained it felt like a Saturday morning cartoon, and in effect, it was.

That's not to say there aren't issues with it. The fact the Jabba the Hutt's son is sick is resolved by plot convenience, Ashoka Tano needed more time to develop as a character before she becomes not annoying, we don't feel any sympathy for the waves of clones that die (same as attack of the Clones really, but I'll get to that later) the animation is fluid, but lacking here and there, also character designs take a little getting used to (the hair does not look fluid at all), the plot involving Padme Amidala is introduced at last second for a plot-convenient resolution

Some voice actors do return from the films, we see Samuel L. Jackson return for a pay-check as Mace Windu, and Christopher Lee returns as Count Dooku. Neither of these actors return for the animated series, probably down to time constraints. (We also see Anthony Daniels voice C3-PO, but he does return)

James Arnold Taylor does an excellent Obi-Wan Kenobe. A good mix of humour, charm and intelligence when it comes to it. We don't see that much from him after the first fight (doing the Looney Tunes version of time stalling - god is the droid commander there really that stupid?) as this is really Anakin and Ashoka's story 

The Clone Wars Series transformed Anakin from an unlikeable character to a likeable one, perhaps a little too much but I'll get back to that next week. He was portrayed well here (I like that he didn't want to talk about his past on Tatooine) but Matt Lanter's voice will take some getting used to, seeing as he sounds nothing like his counterpart from the movies

Ian Abercrombie is excellently cast as Darth Siddeous/Chancellor Palpetine. It's a pity really that he passed away prior to the completion of the series (again, I'll bring this up next week) his voice is a perfect match for the character(s)

Catherine Taber is another excellent casting choice as Padme Amidala. It's a pity her role in this was providing a convenient plot resolution.

Coming back into it's problems, it is very invested in Star Wars Lore, coming into this without knowledge of the Star Wars Franchise (Particularly the first two) is not a good idea. It's also relies a little too heavily on the action. The first battle serves no purpose than the re-enforce the narration that opened the movie. Parents might well be turned away by the sheer amount of action/violence in this film.

Asajj ventress is a character who is not from the prequel films, rather from the earlier animated clone wars mini-series. I've got to admit, I do like the character, and her portrayal here is good, it's just there are much better stories with her to follow. I do like her fight with Obi-Wan Kenobe, even if in the end, it's just a fight to stall for time

Dooku has a boring role in this, he talks a lot, only really doing any fighting until the very end of the movie, and even then it was a fight he'd go on to lose.

Overall I don't believe this is as bad a movie as people claimed it was, but I do acknowledge this film probably probably should've aired as part of the show, rather than as a standalone film

Rating 6.5/10

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Images used in this review are from Star Wars: The Clone Wars and belong to their respective owners. All images in this review are subject to fair use.