Hope Starting to Fade

I was pretty excited to see this movie, and I probably still will, but thanks to Film Drunk and Valley Wag I've read AICN's (gawd I hate that site) a.k.a Harry Knowle's review of the new Star Wars The Clone Wars Movie. Usually I don't put much stock into this site and it's opinions, but this guy is a die hard SW lover, so if even he hates it, I'm starting to think twice about it. Lucasfilm made them take the negative review down.

Here it is. Careful, I'm not sure all of it is English.

Hi, Guys…
by TheRealMoriarty Aug 11th, 2008
04:25:38 AM
… to those asking, I’ll try a new tact in this thread. Harry took his CLONE WARS review down at the request of Lucasfilm, who have chosen to enforce an embargo on reviews on our site. There may, in fact, be other outlets who have reviews up currently. That is not something we can control. Harry will repost his same review when he is able to. I hope that explains it, but if you have further questions, I’ll try answer them. I’d really rather this talkback were about the great Bernie Brillstein, though.”

Here’s the original review:

“Harry hated THE CLONE WARS!

I’ve never hated a STAR WARS film before. I have weathered Jar Jar and any number of Ewoks. I survived Hayden and a wooden Portman. I even accepted Jake Lloyd. I handled all that because it felt like STAR WARS.

I can accept all of Lucas’ flaws, so long as at its heart it felt like Star Wars. I can deal with politics in Star Wars. I can deal with trade skirmishes in Star Wars. I can deal with musical numbers, breathing in the vacuum of space. Basically – so long as it feels like STAR WARS – I can watch any of it.

Was I looking forward to STAR WARS: THE CLONE WARS (2008)?

******** A!

I was dying. After Genndy’s CLONE WARS – I felt that perhaps Lucas “got it” – and that this new animated series was taking a lead from Tartakovsky’s brilliant assembly of pieces. Genndy’s CLONE WARS got STAR WARS better than anyone has got it since Lawrence Kasdan and Irvin Kershner. Genndy took designs and characters that folks were dissatisfied with and made them cool. He did this by using and adapting the themes created by John Williams, the wholly perfect entity involved with Star Wars along with… the sound effects of Ben Burtt. He understood speed and motion – not just with action, but in editing. He understood classic film composition and iconography. And he knows what BADASS is.

The folks behind this STAR WARS: THE CLONE WARS movie… you could tell, they looked at what Genndy did – but they didn’t understand any of it. There’s a ****load of battles and ***** going boom. There’s noise everywhere – fury everywhere… but none of it is directed. The music by Kevin Kiner is criminally bad. Why they didn’t employ Paul Dinletir and James Venable is beyond me. No, no – let’s hire the composer of WALKER, TEXAS RANGER. Ahem.

Now – I made excuses for this film as I was watching it. I don’t think you understand how much I love STAR WARS. Maybe you do, maybe you do too.

Before the movie started I was firing myself up to go out after the film and buy that new $200 Hasbro Millenium Falcon. I really wanted to go buy it, and I wanted this movie to empower my brain to go through with that. Instead, I found myself at home – putting on Genndy’s THE CLONE WARS – to try and rebuild my passion – so I can go get that new Falcon.

Instead – I’m thinking I’ll just be here at home enjoying this and that’ll be all I need.

Anyway – as I was watching the film, I was excusing the sloppy shots, the sloppy use of the Clone Troopers and Droids – undoing all the awesome work that Genndy had done – and the droids are silly again. The Clone Troopers are limp. And the Jedi – they’re at 25% power from the mind of Genndy. But I was accepting that. I figured that was Lucas dialing back so that the animated series wouldn’t overpower his features.

Then they introduced Baby Jabba aka Rotta the Huttlet aka Stinky. At the point of this character’s introduction – it officially became, the worst character in the history of STAR WARS. If you hate George Lucas cutsiepoo bull**** – oooooooh boy. You’re gonna have a field day of venting and hatred directed at this unbelievably ****ing awful little ****.

Oh – but wait… Little Stinky the Hutt isn’t the worst character in the history of STAR WARS… because Stinky got introduced earlier in the film. As much as I hated lil Stinky… I was weathering Stinky. I seriously was. But later there was a character of such immense **** – offensively bad. The character was so bad, so incredibly awful – that it was a slap to the face. It woke me out of my ****-accepting stupor and made me angry. SUDDENLY my “inner fanboy rage” was awoken.

As I watched this terrifyingly awful character named Ziro the Hutt. A seemingly female Hutt – with tattoos and make-up that sounds like a racist take on a Black New Orleans Crack-Dealing Whore. Because this Hutt speaks ENGLISH – and it is many times worse than I’m actually describing. This character was actually too much for me. So bad that every flaw I was looking past, was now a road sign to inadequacy and mediocrity. All of a sudden my brain realized that Asajj Ventress’ voice no longer was acceptable – and sure enough – the amazing Grey DeLisle, who originally voiced the character back in 2003 – had been replaced by a Nika Futterman – and that voice was missed. The character didn’t have that snarling menace anymore.

I realized that nothing in this animated film felt right. I felt time expanding. It seemed that the film was dragging – nevermind that lots of **** was firing all over the place – and stuff was going boom and things were being revealed. I just didn’t care because this wasn’t what I wanted.

I hated the score, the animation, the shots, the characters and most of all the retarded ******** idiot story.

I hated the film. HATED IT. REALLY HATED IT.

Does this mean the whole Star Wars Animated Series is doomed? No – but it isn’t a good sign. So much of this is awful because of the Hutt plotlines and character. I also feel that Dave Filoni must be a hack. His work here is sloppy – and depending on writers and directing talent – individual episodes may be better. This film was several episodes all strung together – my prayer is that the individual episodes will be both great and awful – and we’ll discover which talents are responsible for each.

That said – the audience did have light applause. My father liked it. My sister felt too much was going on. Me nephew really liked it. That said – Yoko was complaining right along with me. She thought it was **** too. I know Moriarty liked it. Wonder what Quint and Massawyrm thought.

****. I hated a STAR WARS. That ****ing sucks.”

Robot Chicken: Star Wars

Yesterday, Robot Chicken had a special episode where they "spoof" (that sounds dirtier than it should....maybe we should start using it that way) Star Wars. They even had the help from George Lucas and ILM, so that means it's official and shit.

They've done Star Wars on the show before, pretty damn well I might add. Check this out.



Here's the same scene, embedded from Adult Swim. I just wanna compare quality.

Hilarious. "What the hell is an aluminum falcon?"

Anyway. Here's the link to the Adult Swim site where you can watch the entire special, along with interviews of the creators (Seth Green and some other guy) talking about each skit. Highly recommended.

Another great clip involves Admiral Ackbar

Hilarious. "It's a trap!"...."Your taste buds can't repel flavor of this magnitude!"

Another skit that I Can't stop laughing at involves Jar Jar.

If you like Star Wars, it's well worth your time. If you don't like Star Wars, then we can't be friends.

Happy 30th Birthday Star Wars!

(Cool pic eh? Shamelessy stolen from somewhere on the internet)

In honor of the anniversary, I thought I would throw up this little article I found on how the Prequel Trilogy changes the Original Trilogy. Nerdy? Sure, but at least I'm not talking about prime numbers or some shit. Now that would just be rediculous.

A New Sith, or Revenge of the Hope. Reconsidering Star Wars IV in the light of I-III

Well it seems that somebody put some thought into that article. This is something that I had read about earlier in the year (1.23.07....yea, why didn't I put that up earlier? Or did I? Time to check the archives...). Guess now would be as good as any time to share. Better late than never...or some other cliche you feel would be appropriate.

Some of my personal highlights from the article that made me laugh.

Then, on the verge of escape, Vader himself turns up only yards from both of his children, one of whom is leaking Force all over the place.

Chewie's first problem is what is happening between Luke and Leia. With a psychic link they can feel but don't understand, thrown together in a life-or-death escape, they are looking at each other with a sparky intensity that Chewie gradually recognises as Romantic Tension. He's no expert on human relationships but Chewie is fairly sure that that's Wrong, so he does the only thing he can under the circumstances - he throws Han at her. Han is at first not interested but after a while starts to warm to the idea with an intensity that gives Chewie new worries.

Now check out the sneak peak for the Clone Wars series that is in CG this time, although it keeps the same art style that they previously had. Looks promising. I've read that it's going to be a full 30 minute (err...22 point whatever ...you know what I mean) episodes. Not sure where the story is going to pick up because when we last left the cartoon series, it lead right into Revenge (yea, I'm down to 1 word names with the series).

Some shots from the teaser

I dig the art style although the "human" characters do look a little weird. Yoda seems to resemble the Clone War Cartoons the most.

Now the YouTube embed for the lazy (although I recommend going through the link posted above, for quality reasons).