Star Wars: The Clone Wars Review.

So, The Clone Wars. I'll say this: it didn't suck, but it wasn't the greatest thing I've ever seen either. So, it was just kind of meh. I will still Tivo the series this Fall when they start showing episodes on the Cartoon Network. So I guess I should do a review. Ok, just to get this out of the way,

:::::SPOILER WARNING:::::

DO NOT READ THIS IF YOU STILL PLAN TO SEE THE MOVIE

All right. Now here's the good and the bad. And there's PLENTY of both, so strap yourself in, we're in for a long ride.

The Good:
1. The frantic pace. You could kind of tell that it was four half hour episodes and then someone came along and said, "Hey, what if we put this together into a movie?" It got a lot accomplished, so I can't fault it for that when most of the time I'm sitting there in the theater bored out of my skull at certain times.

2. The music. Most of the music had a tribal take on the John Williams classic score. And they kept that up for most of the movie, so it was a nice twist.

3. The character design. I've gotta admit, all of the characters were really well designed, and they all had one cool feature about them. Anakin's hair was pretty cool, Obi-Wan's mustache moved independent of his beard when he talked, Dooku was pretty awesome, it's just stunning to see these characters in a new kind of form. It was really executed nicely, and it's kind of exciting to look forward to the series.

The Bad:
1. The beginning. They did a weird voiceover/montage thing instead of the word crawl. It was kind of annoying and didn't really fit with the rest of the movie. I think some executive at Warner Brothers must have told them to do it.

2. Ahsoka Tano. She is Anakin's Padawan that no one ever knew about before this series, and she was far and away the most annoying character in the movie. I watched some interviews with the director and he explained that she is supposed to be the audience's "touchstone", but they made her way too young. It really started to feel like they specifically targeted it for children. She has an annoying habit of nicknaming people and she doesn't realize when those nicknames are annoying. She calls Anakin, "Skyguy" and Jabba's son "Stinky". But the thing that almost made me walk out of the theater was she kept calling Artoo, "Artooie". OVER THE LINE! There is also NO WAY the Jedi Order would have allowed her to become a Padawan. She is so impetuous and hard-headed, she would have gotten thrown out long before a Master chose her. Anakin also calls her "Snipes" and every time he said it, I wanted to punch CGI Anakin in the face.

One interesting side-note: Anakin was not a Master, even when he was on the Jedi Council. So, logically, something happened to Ahsoka. I'm praying she gets eaten by a Starlacc, but I'm assuming she gets reassigned to another Jedi or is untrainable and is sent to the Jedi Service Corps to become a melon farmer or something.

3. Artoo flying. Seriously, they need to knock this off. This time he flew a very long ways from a very high altitude. Quit it, Lucasfilm.

4. If this was indeed a movie intended for kids (what I'm reading online now is that it was), it was pretty violent. I know killing droids and clones someone skirts the issue, but there was one scene where Jabba is shown the severed heads of the bounty hunters that he sent after Ventress. I didn't mind it, but parent with small children might want to watch out.

5. Kids. There were a ton of kids in the theater. Not cool. One kid in front of me insisted on reading anything that could be read on the screen. Highly annoying.