George Lucas must be feeling the burn after this movie. Even the most forgiving movie goers are wishing they would have waited for this to premier 3 years down the road on a public TV station like ABC. *sigh*

Plot: SW: TCW takes place in between Episodes 2 and 3, and chronicles the adventures of Anakin Skywalker (now called Sky Guy) and his padawan Ahsoka Tano as they race to save Jabba the Hut’s son from Count Dooku and company. Doing so will prevent Jabba the Hut from joining the Separatists side of Dooku and allowing the Republic to safely travel through Jabba’s controlled territory, which gives them an advantage in battling the Separatist.

The Good: For all the bad things that I am about to mention below, there are a few good points that stand out for the film. Such as the unique visuals that were adapted from the Clone Wars cartoon. The visuals were breathe of fresh air from the typical CG visuals that you see coming out of the cookie cutter animal based cartoons.

And of course it is a SW movie, so the light saber battles and star ships are enough to keep anyone entertained and is the only thing that saves this movie from failure of epic proportions.

The Bad: So yeah, SW: The Clone Wars, what happened. I will tell you what happened. George and company are trying to get these young kids attached to the SW universe. The only problem is that they forgot their loyal legion of fans who salivated over the films and traded their dignity to dress up as their favorite Jedi and swing around plastic light sabers. They forgot all those fans were still alive, and would be coming to see this movie.

I get that Star Wars is a huuugggeee franchise that will keep on making money as long as there are lasers, space ships, and light sabers (and yoda), and I understand marketing it to a younger generation to keep the cash cow pumping gold. But you can’t expect to transform an epic universe like star wars from a mature franchise to a kid’s saturday morning cartoon and have to fly with the fan base. It is like they learned nothing from the thousands of voices crying out over Jar Jar Binks and kid Anakin.

My personal grudges against the film are the characters. Particularly  Anakin and his padawan Ahsoka. The chemistry between the two is like watching an episode of Gilmore Girls. It’s nothing but the two trading insults and insecurities. It got to be to much for me. I got really annoyed after the first half hour of hearing Ahsoka cry about not getting respected they way she thought she should due to her young age. Probably the worst part was Ahsoka calling Anakin “Sky Guy”. If I was Anakin, I would have back handed her with the force. A FORCE SLAP!

Who ever came up with “sky guy” needs to commit sepuku with a light saber.

I can rant on forever about this film, but the overall problem is that the characters suck. Plain and simple. To dramatic, to negative, there is nothing worth hearing out of any of the main character’s mouths. The Droids had better dialogue.

Overall: If you have to see SW: TCW, make sure it is by rental only. It is not worth seeing in theaters, and it is not worth a buy outside of trying to complete your SW DVD collection. I actually went to see it twice in theaters.

The problems will probably bother the hell out of you, but if you can manage to sit through it, you might be able to enjoy the action.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars scores a Rusted Cylon