STUDIO: Warner Brothers
RELEASE DATE: November 11, 2008
WRITTEN BY: Henry Gilroy, Steve Melching, & Scott Murphy
DIRECTED BY: Dave Filoni
FEATURES: Exclusive To Blu-ray: A Creative Conversation Video Commentary
The Clone Wars: The Untold Stories
The Voices Of The Clone Wars
A New Score
Gallery Of Concept And Production Art
Webisodes
Deleted Scenes
Take the Hologram Memory Challenge
Trailers

Star Wars: The Clone Wars the movie is an undeniable mess. The show has turned out a bit better, but the movie is awful. Just awful. It's telling that there was enough uproar about the recent Indiana Jones movie that it caused near-riots and Trey Parker and Matt Stone to make an entire South Park episode about George Lucas raping Indy but we've come to accept second-rate product from the Star Wars universe that this failure didn't even register on the national consciousness. Despite my antipathy for Clone Wars in theatres, I was optimistic about the Blu-Ray release. The movie looks like a video game cut scene. What better place to watch it than on Blu-Ray on a Playstation 3? I just wish I could actually use my controller as more than a BD remote for the game, I mean, movie.

The prequels had their flaws. They too awkwardly painted in the numbers of what happened before Luke, Han, and Leia made movie history, but Star Wars: The Clone Wars is a different kind of pillaging of childhood dreams. I may be jaded about what Lucasfilm has done to a franchise that I once adored, but even I didn't expect this kind of creatively corrupt product. The fanboy mind used to reel at what happened during the mythological Clone Wars. Who on Earth pictured that the legendary battle would be a predictable story that isn't really about Obi-Wan, Anakin, or great lightsaber action, but a kidnapping plot featuring Jabba the Hutt's son, his creepy uncle, and a new female Padwan tween named Ahsoka Tano? The biggest problem with Clone Wars is that the storytelling, which was so great in the original trilogy, has become so predictable and weak.

The Star Wars: The Clone Wars takes place between Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith, opening right in the middle of the important battle between the Galactic Republic led by Mace Windu and Yoda and the Separatists led by Count Dooku. (Only Christopher Lee as Dooku, Samuel L. Jackson as Windu, and Anthony Daniels return to the franchise in animated form.) The son of Jabba the Hutt is blobnapped and he comes to the Republic for help. But it's a trap that involves Jabba's uncle Ziro (the most ridiculously-voiced character in the history of animated cinema) and the dangerous and movie-stealing Asajj Ventress. Her lightsaber battle with Obi-Wan is the main reason to watch Clone Wars. She's physically engaging and the large battle sequences are well-done, but the storytelling and dialogue are insanely weak. Nearly every line of dialogue is straight up lot discussion about where to go and what to do next. When you know that every single major character is going to survive to Sith than the storytelling becomes essentially important. And the film looks more like a video game cut scene than any that I've ever seen. In fact, the design of some recent PS3 games is more impressive. What's funny is that the traditionally animated Clone Wars series that played on Cartoon Network from 2003 to 2005 (actually, the best Star Wars material since the original trilogy) looked significantly better than the higher-budget CGI version, which just looks flat and boring.

Of course, a movie that looks like a video game will never look better than it does on Blu-Ray. The clarity of the 1080p High Definition 16x9 2.40:1 transfer is flawless. The audio track in Dolby TrueHD 5.1 EX is equally amazing. The flaws of the movie are easier to dismiss when it looks and sounds this good. The special features are predictably extensive. Exclusive to Blu-Ray is a visual commentary that features people massively in love with their project picture-in-picture while the movie plays. I'm so sick and tired of people pointing out things they like about their own work. Talk about inspiration, tell us stories about production, offer some sort of insight beyond how much you adore your film. The most interesting thing about the visual commentary is the asides like "George always likes that" that makes it clear that Lucas bears as much blame for the failure of Clone Wars as anybody. Don't think he didn't approve this mess and that his fingerprint wasn't on every single frame. The extensive featurettes offer enough behind-the-scenes information for any Clone Wars fan without becoming too overwhelming. And most of them are in high definition. Clone Wars fell apart when it was stretched to the size of a big screen but the transfer and solid collection of featurettes on Blu-Ray go a long way in putting it back together.