Clone Wars Review

Howdy Folks,

This week I went and saw Clone Wars. Why you ask? I really don't know actually. I think that because I saw the original trilogy in my youth and it made such an impression on my development as a person, that I now have some obscene blood pact with George Lucas, despite wanting to kick his fat head and tumor neck with spiked boots. Yet I continue to consume each piece of garbage he peddles off as further additions to "his vision". This latest installment angers me not because it was completely unwatchable, because it wasn't...but more because it could have been the saving grace of this franchise instead of its death rattle.

Conceptually it seemed like a good idea. Why not make a CGI Star Wars movie, since 80% of the last one was CGI anyway? Seemed like a sound plan to me, and you can suspend my disbelief longer because the CGI is supposed to look animated and not just half-assed realism pawned off by Lucas and "his visions". However Lucas's visions have been reduced to simple dollar signs hovering over the heads of children like some perverted expansion pack of "The Sims", and Clone Wars is nothing more than a platform for more merchandise and product tie ins aimed at over privileged brats. The part that makes me guffaw the most is the fact that this plan could still work and Lucas doesn't even see the potential! These brats that are buying these crappy new toys just so happen to be the sons and daughters of geeky fan boys that are desperately wishing for a HALFWAY decent installment into the Star Wars universe. These are the folks buying the toys anyway, so if we actually loved the movie too, we'd be buying even more of this mass produced garbage. Hell, these same people still pay hefty sums for the ancient junk from the first series.

Toys and product tie ins aside, the movie was pretty bland over all. The voice acting was terrible (save for Christopher Lee, Anthony Daniels, and Sam Jackson) and I almost left the theater two minutes in when the narrator came on and sounded like a commercial for a new Buzz Lightyear doll. Don't even get me started on Ashley Eckstein "performance" as Ahsoka Tano, whose character was nothing more than an excuse to have a popular pre-teen celeb spout on about baby poop jokes for the young Hutt and giving cutesy nick names to sacred things such as "Skyguy (aka Skywalker)" and "R-Twoie (aka R-2D2)". Her character alone is enough to make you want to shove a lightsaber where the sun don't shine and hope you live through it to get radiation cancer from the whole experience. That would still be more pleasant.

This movie should have been great. Art direction was spot on, some of the visuals were just fantastic...but the execution was poor and it was as if they hadn't referred to any of the other movies before making this one. If you like lasers going "BEW BEW BEW" and baby CGI creatures coo'ing and burping, then this is going to blow your mind.