‘Star Wars: The Clone Wars’ reviews
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Michael Ordoña came back from ‘Star Wars: The Clone Wars’ feeling like the film was more about Legos than ethos.
Ordoña is a frequent contributor to the Los Angeles Times and he’s written the ‘Clone Wars’ review, which will go up online tomorrow and appear Friday in the print edition. (It may be somewhat telling that the top staff critics took a pass on reviewing the film.) In it he bemoans the fact that the George Lucas space opera is still getting better with alien imagery and still getting worse with human emotion. Here’s a section of his review. I will post a link to the full review on Thursday:
It’s all but given that the wonder of actual humans inhabiting the ‘Star Wars’ galaxy would be lost in any animated feature. Still, these characters are so beautifully rendered and meticulously crafted, they resemble hand-painted wooden puppets — they’re works of art. Textures and inanimate objects look fantastic, often as convincing as in the live-action features. But where new characters, plot threads and better dialogue might have made up for much, ‘Clone Wars’ simply doesn’t aim high enough. For those who had expected improved writing from the last four films, your hopes will be dashed on the ornately realized rocks of Tatooine. The off-putting narration replacing the characteristic opening crawl is the first omen that this movie is not aiming much above the new-reader level. You know it’s not your good old ‘Star Wars’ when you hear electric guitars, a tween character call Anakin ‘Sky Guy’ and the future Mr. Vader make a ‘Poltergeist’ reference before a fight (‘They’re ba-aack!’). All that’s missing is a skateboarding dog with sunglasses.
UPDATE: The full review is now up and you can read it here.
On the other hand: The very upbeat David Germain of the Associated Press feels strongly that the film ‘harks back to the fun, swashbuckling times of the original ‘Star Wars’ trilogy.’
Germain wrote a sort of quasi-review and reported story (there are quotes from Dave Filoni and George Lucas) that might have been a maneuver to get past a review embargo (the studio powers behind the film have pushed to keep reviews held back until Friday). Anyway, he writes:
Lucasfilm Animation, which screened the movie Tuesday for The Associated Press in advance of its Aug. 15 theatrical release, has crafted a movie nicely tucked in to Anakin’s early heroic days, before his transformation into the evil Darth Vader. Along for the ride are noble-hearted clone soldiers with the camaraderie of Marine grunts, inept android warriors as idiotic as the Three Stooges and a young protege who rivals Anakin for cockiness and affectionately calls him ‘Sky Guy.’
Over at Ain’t it Cool News, it’s been a grim and ugly week as Jedi-loving site founder Harry Knowles first came out and slagged the film (he sounded tearful as he wrote that it was the first ‘Star Wars’ film he ever hated). Then Knowles yanked down the review in an embargo dispute with Warner Bros. and the Lucasfilm people. There’s a posting now by Moriarty that explains it and also delivers another slap: ‘The review is off the site until Friday. That’s an editorial decision, and frankly, Lucas’s little cartoon movie isn’t worth all this sound and fury.’
UPDATE: For one more point of view here’s a snippet from the review by SFX Magazine in the U.K.:
But make no mistake, as soon as you’re plunged into the heart of a Jedi vs battledroids confrontation on a distant world, this is pure, unadulterated ‘Star Wars.’ The characters may beheavily stylised CG caricatures of the saga’s heroes and villains, but theessence of George Lucas’s creation remains in a movie that bests at leasttwo of the prequels. Indeed, ‘The Clone Wars’ brand of simplistic, action-heavy storytelling is a fantastic breath of fresh air after the complex political machinations that bogged down much of Episodes I and II.The film’s biggest strength is that it’s clearly been made by fans for fans. It’seasy to picture planning meetings dissolving into sessions of “Wouldn’t itbe cool if...”
And, if you’re still with us, there’s Empire Online, which takes the middle road and gives the film a three-star review (out of possible five) but drop a in a caveat at the end of their review.
The biggest grumble for fans will be that Clone Wars skews towards a younger audience than the live-action films. Despite the occasional hint of darkness (Ahsoka’s omission from Episode III bodes ill), this is a more frivolous affair than we’re accustomed to. However, Lucas has oft said that while the fans have grown up, Star Wars never has, and in many ways The Clone Wars accomplishes exactly what he set out to do 30 years ago: take people out of themselves to a galaxy far, far away. It may not be what the (now older) fans are hoping for, but this is entirely in keeping with Lucas’ original vision - whether you like it or not.
Well, clearly, when it comes this divisive new ‘Star Wars,’ film there is a great disturbance in the Force. (Sorry, I just had to do it.)
-- Geoff Boucher
Images courtesy of Warner Bros and Lucasfilm.