Latest Updates: Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Review by Andrew Liptak.
Star Wars has officially broken into television with the Clone Wars animated series that started on Friday. The end result is an enjoyable, if very mixed.
In this episode, Jedi Master Yoda arrives to the planet Toydaria in order to negotiate a treaty with the local government. Arriving under fire, Yoda lands on the planet with a trio of Clone Troopers. Once on the planet, they must run from a Seperatist battle group, before reaching the planet's King, and negotiating a treaty.
I found this first episode to be very mixed, and aimed primarily towards a much younger demographic. A 7 or 8 year old will approach this much differently than someone who was the original in 1977. Political negotiations are reduced to a contest, and the Battle Droids have taken on their own personalities, which is nothing short of irritating for anyone over the age of 8.
From my viewing of the movie and the first episode, I have a couple concerns about the continuity of each episode - thus far, there doesn't seem to be any lasting connection between each episode, and there doesn't really seem to be any overall storyline that'll overarc the episodes and fit better with the rest of the Clone Wars series, which includes the older cartoons, short stories, novels and comic books.
The episode does have some of its good parts, which make this slightly better than expected. As someone who pays attention to armor, the creators have a very good eye towards the clone troopers, given them unique personalities and appearances, which is to be expected with a cloned military. The production team should be credited for this attention to detail, because it's what is going to make or break the show in my eyes.
I found the first half of the episode to be much more annoying than good. Once the action in the episode picked up, it became much better - the Clones did what they were supposed to do, and the episode progressed with much more logical sense than. Several moments were paticularly well done, such as when Yoda and the three Clones huddled in the cave and spoke.
Additionally, the visuals are nothing short of stunning. There are a number of fairly complicated scenes, which are all extremely well done - space, battle scenes, faces - if there's anything that George Lucas is very good at, it's giving their productions a very, very good look, whether it's animation or CGI.
If the screenwriters could match the animators, this could be a very promising start. As it is, I suspect that this will be very appealing and popular for the younger generations, but so far, it's a far cry from what the franchise should be.
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