Here is the latest trailer for the Clone Wars television series: http://www.cartoonnetwork.com/clonewars/
Even though I didn't like the Clone Wars movie, I'm still looking forward to the series. It's probably the new show I'm anticipating most for this fall.
Star Wars: The Clone Wars
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Clone Wars CGI series -- an opinion
There's no doubt in my mind that Clone Wars is the biggest show on Cartoon Network right now. It's a Star Wars spin-off, good or bad, and it's going to attract the attention of the original fans and kids barely old enough to have seen the original films on DVD.
That said, is it actually good?
I haven't seen the premiere movie which debuted in August mainly because I was driven off by the reviews and figured I'd rent the thing in private. The TV show, on the other hand, I watched on DVR since I was away from home when it aired.
It's at best a mixed bag.
Here's what I didn't like offhand --
A) The Star Wars theme music has been horribly re-arranged and now prominently features banging drums for no reason at all. The disco version of the Star Wars theme would have been better!
B) The speaking style of the narrator is awful. It's the cheesy sort of narration that works with PowerPuff Girls but doesn't fit stylistically with Star Wars. Why narration at the beginning of each episode is even necessary is beyond me.
C) Each episode features a Confucionistic saying at the beginning. (Gotta have explicitly stated morals for the kids, right?) I guess scrawls laying out the basic plotline take too long. It just doesn't "feel" right.
The basic writing problems and characterizations that have plagued the Star Wars prequels continue in this TV series. Anakin Skywalker is saddled with an apprentice to ground him and make him more responsible. Too bad she was never seen in any of the films or previous Clone Wars series! This also doesn't make sense since we saw him reckless as ever in Revenge of the Sith.
Understandably, there is an attempt to make the Skywalker character more palatable, but again, it just doesn't fit what's been seen before.
The apprentice herself sort of comes off whiny and basically too much like mini-Anakin. If anything it's like Anakin's personality has been grafted onto her and they're trying to paint Anakin more like Obi-Wan in the series.
There are far too many jokes with the Battle Droids and their stupidity is played well beyond the hilt. Another demonstration of a basic Lucas problem -- he doesn't know how to set up jokes well, and, when he attempts them, they generally don't pay off well. Fart jokes to follow, I'm sure.
The animation in the show is fairly crisp and well-done with few of the instances of creakiness and stiffness that plague most CGI-productions. It's about the typical level of motion picture CGI from ten years ago and still well above the average level of most video games today. This said, the human characters still look creepy with their glass eyes and plastic hair. Stylistically, I'm not sure I appreciate the character designs any more than the last 2-D Clone Wars series. Star Wars just hasn't captured a definitive animated look, IMHO.
The voice acting is excellent with a notable improvement in the casting of Count Dooku. The new actor (Corey Burton) definitely sounds more like Christopher Lee and emotes better than his 2-D Clone Wars counterpart.
We're only two episodes in so it's hard to say whether this newer series is worse than its predecessor or improves on it. The Tartakovsky Clone Wars series tended to be action-focused and less character-oriented. The newer series, based on the first two episodes, appears to have more character development. At any rate, both can be considered side stories or addendums to the gap between Episodes II and III.
Both Clone Wars series, IMHO, demonstrate a certain emotional hollowness and almost fan-fic style of writing that certainly doesn't help the Star Wars universe in general. The Jedi, in general, are almost too superhuman and one wonders how, after seeing all their stuntwork in the Clone Wars series, they were caught off guard by Order 66 and killed by regular troopers and one singular knight. Star Wars, at times, is a victim of its own fantasy and lacks a certain logical consistency depending on the whims and designs of its creators...
That said, is it actually good?
I haven't seen the premiere movie which debuted in August mainly because I was driven off by the reviews and figured I'd rent the thing in private. The TV show, on the other hand, I watched on DVR since I was away from home when it aired.
It's at best a mixed bag.
Here's what I didn't like offhand --
A) The Star Wars theme music has been horribly re-arranged and now prominently features banging drums for no reason at all. The disco version of the Star Wars theme would have been better!
B) The speaking style of the narrator is awful. It's the cheesy sort of narration that works with PowerPuff Girls but doesn't fit stylistically with Star Wars. Why narration at the beginning of each episode is even necessary is beyond me.
C) Each episode features a Confucionistic saying at the beginning. (Gotta have explicitly stated morals for the kids, right?) I guess scrawls laying out the basic plotline take too long. It just doesn't "feel" right.
The basic writing problems and characterizations that have plagued the Star Wars prequels continue in this TV series. Anakin Skywalker is saddled with an apprentice to ground him and make him more responsible. Too bad she was never seen in any of the films or previous Clone Wars series! This also doesn't make sense since we saw him reckless as ever in Revenge of the Sith.
Understandably, there is an attempt to make the Skywalker character more palatable, but again, it just doesn't fit what's been seen before.
The apprentice herself sort of comes off whiny and basically too much like mini-Anakin. If anything it's like Anakin's personality has been grafted onto her and they're trying to paint Anakin more like Obi-Wan in the series.
There are far too many jokes with the Battle Droids and their stupidity is played well beyond the hilt. Another demonstration of a basic Lucas problem -- he doesn't know how to set up jokes well, and, when he attempts them, they generally don't pay off well. Fart jokes to follow, I'm sure.
The animation in the show is fairly crisp and well-done with few of the instances of creakiness and stiffness that plague most CGI-productions. It's about the typical level of motion picture CGI from ten years ago and still well above the average level of most video games today. This said, the human characters still look creepy with their glass eyes and plastic hair. Stylistically, I'm not sure I appreciate the character designs any more than the last 2-D Clone Wars series. Star Wars just hasn't captured a definitive animated look, IMHO.
The voice acting is excellent with a notable improvement in the casting of Count Dooku. The new actor (Corey Burton) definitely sounds more like Christopher Lee and emotes better than his 2-D Clone Wars counterpart.
We're only two episodes in so it's hard to say whether this newer series is worse than its predecessor or improves on it. The Tartakovsky Clone Wars series tended to be action-focused and less character-oriented. The newer series, based on the first two episodes, appears to have more character development. At any rate, both can be considered side stories or addendums to the gap between Episodes II and III.
Both Clone Wars series, IMHO, demonstrate a certain emotional hollowness and almost fan-fic style of writing that certainly doesn't help the Star Wars universe in general. The Jedi, in general, are almost too superhuman and one wonders how, after seeing all their stuntwork in the Clone Wars series, they were caught off guard by Order 66 and killed by regular troopers and one singular knight. Star Wars, at times, is a victim of its own fantasy and lacks a certain logical consistency depending on the whims and designs of its creators...
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Not like those cartoon drawings of Indiana Jones, which are note <I>perfect</I>. If <I>only</I> that was an animated series waiting to happen...GeorgeC wrote:Star Wars just hasn't captured a definitive animated look, IMHO
I understood Lee provided his character's voice in the pilot feature, which perhaps gave them a better place to start from in matching a voice.GeorgeC wrote:The voice acting is excellent with a notable improvement in the casting of Count Dooku. The new actor (Corey Burton) definitely sounds more like Christopher Lee and emotes better than his 2-D Clone Wars counterpart.
Certainly, but there's no plural on that "creators", George.GeorgeC wrote:Star Wars, at times, is a victim of its own fantasy and lacks a certain logical consistency depending on the whims and designs of its creators...
There have been multiple hands on Star Wars like anything else. It's a myth that it's all Lucas even if he is the singularly most powerful voice in the franchise. If anything, Lucas has too much of a stranglehold on the visual projects and doesn't let people add new things to the canon without his absolute say-so. We all know that Indy IV was delayed for years because Lucas didn't agree on scripts that all the other principals were happy with.
Frankly, though, the best thing that happened to Star Wars was The Empire Strikes Back. Lucas was less involved with the film and the director and cast on Empire hit the highest notes in the series. Jedi was the exact opposite and a number of Star Wars researchers and writers have commented that Jedi Director Marquand felt intimidated by Lucas and didn't do anything on set without Lucas' input.
Nothing's been the same since...
P.S. -- Yes, Christopher Lee also did voiceover for the Clone Wars theatrical film. Burton is a much better match for him than the last Dooku cast.
(Last sentence sounds vaguely dirty...
)
Frankly, though, the best thing that happened to Star Wars was The Empire Strikes Back. Lucas was less involved with the film and the director and cast on Empire hit the highest notes in the series. Jedi was the exact opposite and a number of Star Wars researchers and writers have commented that Jedi Director Marquand felt intimidated by Lucas and didn't do anything on set without Lucas' input.
Nothing's been the same since...
P.S. -- Yes, Christopher Lee also did voiceover for the Clone Wars theatrical film. Burton is a much better match for him than the last Dooku cast.
(Last sentence sounds vaguely dirty...
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How can you say "It's a myth that it's all Lucas even if he is the singularly most powerful voice in the franchise" and add that "If anything, Lucas has too much of a stranglehold on the visual projects and doesn't let people add new things to the canon without his absolute say-so"...?
That's the same thing, innit?
That's the same thing, innit?
Not really...
It's just that he's a control freak of a different sort.
Gene Roddenberry was different. Roddenberry let other people do things with Star Trek but claimed to have created practically every thing on the show!
Roddenberry said wild things at various cons but was very humble in front of cameras. It was the things he said at the cons that got him in trouble with many of the people that worked with him in the past including a few Desilu executives and writers like Harlan Ellison.
With Lucas, you hear things in private from people that have worked at LucasFilm. A lot of people (writers, artists, special FX artists, producers) have left frustrated with LFL because of the fact he micro-managed and shot down a lot of sensible ideas in favor of some pretty idiotic or dull solutions.
Maybe I got my sentences screwed up in the previous posts but I definitely wanted to get across the point that Lucas is a different kind of control freak than what you usually hear about. It's not that he's claiming credit for everything it's just that nothing gets done without clearing it with him. He's a micro-manager of the worst degree.
It's just that he's a control freak of a different sort.
Gene Roddenberry was different. Roddenberry let other people do things with Star Trek but claimed to have created practically every thing on the show!
Roddenberry said wild things at various cons but was very humble in front of cameras. It was the things he said at the cons that got him in trouble with many of the people that worked with him in the past including a few Desilu executives and writers like Harlan Ellison.
With Lucas, you hear things in private from people that have worked at LucasFilm. A lot of people (writers, artists, special FX artists, producers) have left frustrated with LFL because of the fact he micro-managed and shot down a lot of sensible ideas in favor of some pretty idiotic or dull solutions.
Maybe I got my sentences screwed up in the previous posts but I definitely wanted to get across the point that Lucas is a different kind of control freak than what you usually hear about. It's not that he's claiming credit for everything it's just that nothing gets done without clearing it with him. He's a micro-manager of the worst degree.
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I watched the feature-film-length pilot in the cinema 
.
I've got to say, I entered the cinema with such low expectations that they were actually met. I expected it to be really bad, so I wasn't really disappointed.
I will say this though - the first half of the film really looked a LOT better on the big screen than I had expected.
The characters were indeed very dull and the delivery of the lines were so flat. I literally laughed out loud when Count Dooku went: "ha ha ha" near the end when Anakin STOLE HIS HOVERBIKE thing!
Christopher Lee was awesome, though - he made everything better <3. For the most part, it's a pretty darn forgettable film, though. The most memorable part was that vertical battle up that sheer cliff. That was a fun set piece.
I haven't watched the series yet, but I plan to. I'll get back to you guys then.
.I've got to say, I entered the cinema with such low expectations that they were actually met
. I expected it to be really bad, so I wasn't really disappointed.I will say this though - the first half of the film really looked a LOT better on the big screen than I had expected.
The characters were indeed very dull and the delivery of the lines were so flat. I literally laughed out loud when Count Dooku went: "ha ha ha" near the end when Anakin STOLE HIS HOVERBIKE thing!
Christopher Lee was awesome, though - he made everything better <3. For the most part, it's a pretty darn forgettable film, though. The most memorable part was that vertical battle up that sheer cliff. That was a fun set piece.
I haven't watched the series yet, but I plan to. I'll get back to you guys then
.