The Queue: Star Wars: Clone Wars
Sometimes a terrible movie can be really fun to watch — Street Fighter, the Bill & Ted’s Movies, Ice Pirates (which I need to do a “Queue” about). And sometimes, you get Star Wars: Clone Wars. Clone Wars isn’t as obnoxious as Dragon Wars, but it isn’t fun like Street Fighter either. It’s a middle-of-the-road bad movie where you get bored watching it, but it’s not stupid enough to watch again later with a group to heckle it. Nothing happens in the movie that sticks with you, in a good or bad way. Somehow they’ve managed to incorporate every bad thing that George Lucas did with the “Prequels” and go even further by making Clone Wars just flat-out boring.
Clone Wars is exactly what you would expect from a “new” Star Wars movie: pointless story, drivel for dialog, too many battles, annoying sidekick character (Ahsoka), out of place discussions on politics/war, an awesome bad guy that doesn’t deliver (Ventress), etc. First of all, you can tell that the movie was just an hour-and-a-half-long first episode of the television show that’s now playing. Secondly, did I mention that it’s boring?
The plot follows Anakin Skywalker and his new Padawan, Ahsoka Tano, as they try to keep the peace with the Hutt clan that has found Jabba’s son kidnapped. The Jedi want to form an alliance with the Hutts so they can use their shipping lanes during the war with the Separatists. Meanwhile, Anakin and Ahsoka end up having to cart the sick Hutt-ling across the galaxy to stop the Hutts from turning on the Jedi. If you can stand the prequels and really like Star Wars, this one may be okay, but if you’re an old-school Star Wars fan, this is not the film you’re looking for.
What To Add It For: The Character Designs.
I like most of the Clone Wars style character designs (though the cartoon versions look better).
What To Remove It For: The Animation.
Pixar this isn’t. Hell, it’s not even Dreamworks. I’ve seen better animation in Resident Evil video games.
Rating: 2/5
In a room very, very nearby…
I’m very excited about the release of The Force Unleashed video game if for no other reason than I hear that the story is excellent. The demo of the game was enjoyable, and I can see myself playing this quite a bit when I get my hands on a copy. Because I’m excited to play the game, have been reading a couple of Star Wars extended universe novels, and gleaming Wookiepedia at work, I’ve been on a big Star Wars kick. So, because he is so bad-ass and completely absent from the kid-friendly Clone Wars movie, I give you a sketch of General Grievous.
I started storyboarding the Zabka comic this week, and I hope to get a lot more of it done over the weekend. I’ve never actually created a comic before, so getting the ideas and scenes from my brain to paper are quite a challenge. The storyboards are helpful, but even after that, I have to somehow divide dialogue amongst panels with action, characters and movement. I’m very excited to be working on something this ambitious. Maybe I’ll scan a couple of my better boards here when I’m done with that step.
Art should pick up now that the Summer is winding down and I’m planning on getting some new equipment — drawingboard, paints, etc — to do more things. Plus, I should be finishing Half Life 2 completely this weekend, which I’ve been addicted to for the last three weeks. Here’s to the fall, my favorite time of year.