Sunday 16 May 2010

Movie 136: Star Wars: The Clone Wars

Set between episodes 2 and 3, the Galactic Civil War is raging on. To secure routes in the Outer Rim the Jedi need a treaty with Jabba the Hutt. Jabba’s son has been kidnapped, so Obi Wan, Anakin and his new Padawan Ahsoka set out to rescue the baby Hutt while the Seperatists try to stop them.

If you don’t know your Star Wars that’s a big load of bollocks I just typed there. I do know my Star Wars though. I used to be one of the worlds biggest Star Wars nerds. Not so much anymore, but the knowledge stays with you. And I really like the expanded universe stuff. A lot of it is really well written, better than Lucas churned out anyway.

I’ve actually watched quite a lot of the TV cartoon that this movie sets up and personally I think its really good. It’s well written for the most part and surprisingly grown up. I’d avoided the movie as I’d heard its ass.

It’s not.

Well not if you like the cartoon. There are issues with it. I don’t like that Ahsoka calls R2 “Artooey”. Artoo is a knickname already dammit. And Zero the Hutt is annoying as hell. I don’t like the Hutt version of Truman Capote.

This isn’t quite up there with the best episodes of the show, but its up there with the second best ones. The little Hutt is kind of cute and you don’t have a thousand fart gags like I dreaded going in. The action is very very well done, there’s great lightsaber battles and the dialogue isn’t too clunky.

The safest thing to do if you’re a Star Wars fan who’s not too hot on the idea would be to check out one of the cartoon episodes as this is basically like mainlining 4 or 5 of them. Avoid the ones with Jar Jar in though, there’s not many. If you like that, you’ll like this.

I do recommend it, but probably only for fans of a galaxy far, far away. Who aren’t “Original Trilogy and nothing else” purists.

Next up: Be Kind Rewind

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