Thursday, January 22, 2009

First Review ever- Star Wars, the Clone Wars

Okay.
Most of the people who actually know anything about Star Wars and actually will honestly say they are a fan rather than pretending that they just feel it's "average" so that they won't be shunned by the "POPULAR" kids or the superficial whiners who control the social status in their school or workplace will maybe agree with this review. Maybe.
Anyways.
Everybody knows that the majority of real fans will always favour the old star wars movies over those prequels which are packed with excessive amounts of un-nessecary CG and bad dialogue.
Don't get me wrong, I have never hated a Star Wars movie in my life. I grew up with them and have always been proud as a Star Wars nerd as seen by anybody who knows me. UNTIL this brand new CG abonimation of Hollywood BULLSHIT appeared. To be completely honest, I don't consider this a Star Wars movie. While the plot is bland and uninteresting, not really affecting anything to do with the clone wars on a large scale, the title "The Clone Wars" doesn't really do it justice. It's plot is pretty much based around the gangster Jabba the Hutt (the hutts pretty much the intergalactic mafia) and his son being kidnapped by Count Dooku. The Jedi are asked to rescue his son and in doing that, gain a treaty from them so that they will be able to help with the war effort against the seperatists (which is pretty wierd seeing as if the republic knew about the government turning to mafia gangsters, they would denounce the move, and the republic in the third movie completely trusts the chancellor). So this doesn't really show much of the actual battles of the clone wars, it's more just a small event that happened to take place in the time. OKAY enough about that.

Exhibit B. Characters. Let me start with Anakin. While everyone generally hates this character because of his annoying puberty, he is kind of likeable in this film, besides that fact that he looks incredibly old and has an overly american accent. The worst thing, however, is an event that occurs- He gets a padawan, and gets referred to as "Master Anakin", who if anyone ever pays attention would know that he gets pissy as hell because he gets put on the Jedi council without being made a master. And since his padawan doesn't die in this film, it brings to question WTF happened to his abomination of an apprentice? Another loose end is Jabba's son...what happened to him? Another mystery.
This brings us to our second character screw up. The padawan herself. To be honest I was so busy trying to find the good in this movie that I didn't catch her name. But it's not really important. From the look of her, she is meant to be a twi'liek (I hope I spelt that right, otherwise I just lost soooo much Star Wars reviewer cred). These are creatures with wierd tentacle type things coming out of the back of their head. Which is alright. But this one happens to be orange. I know this isn't a huge messup for most people, but the twi'liek are almost always blue. I think there are a couple of red ones thoughout the prequels in the background. This one has 3 square-shaped tentacles white with zebra-like stripes (the twi'liek have 2 in every other situation). The squareness along with her wierd nose and orange skin make her look like some sort of wierd egyptian wall heiroglyph. Okay, that's her appearance sorted. NOW for her lightsabre technique. While no characters have any lightsabre style at all in this film, she is by far the worst. She holds it pretty much the whole time like a gangster holds a knife to stab somebody. Never have I seen such a butchery of the art of lightsabre fighting. This brings me to Count Dooku (and his Sith apprentice...but she shouldn't be there, as there are always only two sith lords as stated by both the emperor in the book the rise of Darth Vader and Yoda in episode 1. This little anomaly was from that god awful cartoon series). His character is still quite well done, although he has no style at all, even though he is known to be the most styley lightsabre fighter of all freakin time, along with Qui Gon Jinn (who was based around the same style). In this film he just hits at whoever he's attacking as though he's an angry kid with a baseball bat. I was very dissappointed. I think the only good thing about his character was that Christopher Lee did his voice, which gives it some sort of authenticity(while his dialogue sucks, but that's not his fault. Most of the dialogue sucks in this movie). BUT I have to say, one character who sucks beyond measure in this movie is the great YODA. He looks like a little kiddie's plush toy with big beady eyes and is a a bit too small, but thats just me thinking too hard. His dialogue is terrible. I know people say that "it's just the way he talks" when I say he flips his sentences around too much, but seriously, watch the old movies and you will notice he only does it at random times. The new movies he flipped everything around at every possible moment. In all his CG anti-glory in attack of the clones and revenge of the sith you can hear this horrible talk aswell. People might think he looks "more real" because he's not a puppet anymore, but he was better as a puppet because he was ACTUALLY A REAL THING being filmed, not some CG image, and his facial expressions while having some seriousness also brought in his oh so famous comic relief element. In all of the prequels (while he has some kick ass fight scenes) he is nothing but an abomination. The only main CGI character I have ever seen that actually does a film justice is Gollum/Smeagle of Lord of the Rings.
Okay, to end my rant about characters I want to bring in the fact about the clones. Whoever voiced them over was not Temuera Morrison. The voice sounds Australian for the entire movie, which is easily noticable, and it's a shame that they didn't just get him in to do the voice. Another voice fuckup is with the language. Everybody knows Jabba's tendency to say "poodoo" which means fodder. At a point when he is angry at the jedi he says "JEDI POODOO!" to Count Dooku to express his anger. If anybody was smart they would have heard him say "Bantha Poodoo" which means Bantha Fodder (fodder meaning food). So saying JEDI FOOD to show anger was a thing that pissed me off immensly. Language was one of the fibres that made Star Wars a classic.

Overall, This movie should never have been made. The only good thing I can say is that John Williams made the music great, besides the fact that they destroyed the tradition of having the Star Wars closing theme playing in the credits, something that made me want to go to George Lucas and ask him why he must milk something that was so great for all it's worth and turn it into something that is going to be ridiculed by future generations of children. The beginning doesn't even have the traditional scene setting writing flying through space in the intro which has been so well known.

Overall, as a reviewer I will rate this film out of 10 (though I don't really want to dignify it with that honour). Essentially, this is a kids movie, and I give it a 2/10. It is a disgrace to Star Wars and anybody who is a true fan will agree with me or just not see the movie. It destroys all of the politics, action, and amazing plot that has been held up through Star Wars for so long (although only just held up in the prequels). This film is not worthy to be called "Star Wars".

GEORGE PLEASE STOP MILKING THE STAR WARS COW BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE! YOU'RE DESTROYING YOUR REPUTATION AMONG YOUR FANS!

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