Monday, August 18, 2008

Star Wars: The Clone Wars - God does it again.

The Clone Wars is a period in Star Wars canonical history that lasted 3 whole years. Some of it's battles, conflicts and stories have been outlined in various forms such as comic-books, games and novels since Star Wars, Episode II: Attack Of The Clones but chief among them, a 25-episode award-winning animated micro-series directed by Genndy Tartakovsky.

As it is now understood that the time of the Clone Wars was a time of major upheaval in the galaxy and a pivotal step in the machinations of what would soon become the Galactic Empire, it's only fitting that Lucas would want to explore this exciting time a lot more and what better way than to produce another animated series, this time done entirely with CGI and spanning 100 episodes.

The first few of these episodes were grafted together and have formed the seventh outing for Star Wars on the big screen. Simply put, it surpasses all expectations and it's the most magnificent example of CGI animation on the planet. God has once again struck gold. What a great visionary, who came under fire for over-use of CGI in his other franchise this year, to create a part of his greatest artistic achievements entirely in the format.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars is filled with both action and humour, with some of the most magnificent set pieces and use of characters ever seen in modern animation. The voice talent is outstanding, Christopher Lee, Samuel L. Jackson and Anthony Daniels voice the characters they played in live action, James Arnold Taylor reprises his role as Obi-Wan from the micro-series as does Tim Kane who in addition to the micro-series has several video game appearances as Yoda (and the Yoda-like Vandar in KOTOR) and has now voiced Yoda for longer on screen than Frank Oz!

Final Verdict: If the remainder of The Clone Wars TV series is half as good as this movie, then the future of Star Wars will be ensured for another 30 years.

Colonel Creedon Rating: One cannot rate pure religion.

4 comments:

Bruce Russell said...

So you should have no trouble defending it to Mark, then? Is it just me or has he become as bitter as a sack of mutant lemons recently.

And you're watching Voyager now? Really? DS9 is still my favorite of the Treks. I'm planning to read the relaunch books from that series soon.

I'll have to send you my treatment for a proposed sixth Trek series, "Star Trek: V'ger." It would have spun directly out of the end of Voyager, and wrapped back into the first big-screen adventure for Kirk and company. Like a snake eating it's own tail! Kazaa!

Anonymous said...

Speaking of KOTOR,Catherine Taber also provided a voice for that (Mission)
Ahsoka Tano was likeable in an annoying kind of way - unfortunately, I'm guessing the Clone Wars don't end well for her...

@ Bruce:
DS9 was good; better than Voyager for the most part (insanely tigt cat-suits aside), but not without flaws. How come every Captain apart from Sisko seemed to not even bother raising shields in large fleet engagements? Or maybe I just missed seeing attacks coruscate off shields due to them being viewed on dodgy videos? ;-)
Also; at the aforementioned fleet engagements ... where the hell was the flagship of the fleet? Newest class of ship and all that. Watching the neutral zone, no doubt?

Major General Creedon said...

@ Bruce: I never have trouble defending stuff to Mark... ...once he listens.

I'm watching VOY now as it's last on my Trek watch list. Over the past 18 months I've watched every show again, along with most of ENT.

You're not joking about that treatment are you?

@ Sithy: Well spotted. Now go and see if any other of the voice talent has previously appeared in Star Wars projects.

Using my Jedi powers, I predict that Ahsoka will meet with a terrible end and be another reason for driving Anakin to darkness.

As for the Enterprise during the Dominion War are featured in some novels: Behind Enemy Lines, Tunnel Through the Stars and Tales of the Dominion War.

Rains said...

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