Star Wars : Clone Wars Review

"You are so blind! You so do not understand! You weren't there at the beginning. You don't know how good it was! How important! This is it for you! This jumped-up firework display of a toy advert!" When Mr. Pegg first spewed this little rant against the menacing phantom I was bouncing round my Sixth Form common room playing lightsabers, having a whale of a time. Nearly 10 years on (and even accounting for the, at times, wonderful Revenge of The Sith) Simon couldn't have been more spot on. This time, however, there is no need for Lucas to come running out and scream "But its meant for kids!" as less than ten seconds into the Seventh Star Wars film its abundantly clear how 'for kids' this latest offering is.

Picking up after the second/fifth film but before the third/sixth film and after and before the Clone Wars TV series (if this is not baffling to you I suspect you spent your formative years staring at intergalatic senators in metallic gold beachwear), Clone Wars deals with, well, The Clone Wars. The Republic is still at war with The Droid Army, Obi Wan is still trying to mentor Anakin while he in turn is mentoring a jailbait padawan. The main story deals with the kidnapping of Jabba the Hutts son and Yoda falling into yet another trap by sending Jedis to rescue him. The most gullible Jedi Master in the galaxy I am hmmmmm.

So difference and similarities between this and the 'real' films. First up no 20th Century Fox logo, no opening scrawl (because kids can't read) and a soundtrack that sounds more new worldy than the celebration scenes at the end of the remastered Return of the Jedi. Oh and its animated. I don't think I mentioned that before. Then we have the terrible dialogue, the annoying emoting robots, bad jokes, literally two dimensional characters and R2D2 flying. In other words it is just another 'new' Star Wars movie.

But its almost so under the radar, and kinda pointless, that there will be no fanboy furore this time. There are some pretty spectacular fight scenes, some inventive new characters (while new padawan Soka may be almost as annoying as Jar Jar, as its in cartoon form she will survive the internet bashing) and enough lightsaber duels to keep you entertained for the brief running. Alas though Lucas, as we now know exactly how it all unfolds its just a bunch of deleted scenes (albeit drawn all lovely) bridging the gap between two films that didn't have a huge gap to begin with. On the essential geek scale its somewhere between the Ewoks series and Bill Murray sings Star Wars. Thats low then.