DVD REVIEW: STAR WARS: THE CLONE WARS – A GALAXY DIVIDED

posted on
04.17.2009

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STUDIO: Warner Home Video
MSRP: $19.98
RATED: Not Rated
RUNNING TIME: 90 min
SPECIAL FEATURES:

Nothing

The Pitch

Stuff happened between Episode II and Episode III.

The Humans

Dee Bradley Baker, Tom Kane, Matthew Wood, Matt Lanter and Ashley Eckstein

The Nutshell

Lucasfilm has had a fair amount of success with The Clone Wars animated series on Cartoon Network. Instead of releasing the collected first season on DVD, Warner Home Video saw fit to bestow upon us the first four episodes. Sure, these are the first four episodes aired. But, they don’t give you a broader sense of what went down in the show’s first year. All you get is a tale of the opening days of the Wars.

Michael Bay in Zero-G, bitch.

The Lowdown

Yoda opens the series, as he’s pinned down by enemy forces. The evil Sith assassin Asajj Ventress is closing in on him, while he tries to make peace with the locals. This leads into the main action of this storyarc involving a new super destroyer called The Malevolence. It’s a precursor to Vader’s Executor and it works as a massive force that lays waste to the Republic’s bigger cruisers. That’s where series heroes Anakin Skywalker and Ahsoka enter the fray.

The second through fourth episodes contain most of the action, as we watch Jedi and Clone Trooper flee for their lives. Jedi Master Plo Koon gets a ton of screen time that allows the creative staff to develop the character. Most filmgoers will remember him as weird-masked guy that sat next to a muppet in the Jedi Temple bits during the Prequel Trilogy. That’s where this show succeeds. It’s the perfect platform to expand upon the vast universe of characters introduced in the Prequels.

Holo-Yoda

Sure, the sheer amount of new species and slightly familiar faces make this a difficult trek for some. Watching these different characters and personalities come together on the battlefield equals exciting television. Kicking it up a notch from the lackluster feature film, The Clone Wars television series never disappoints. That means more action, more planets and no homosexual Hutts. Focus on the Family can breathe a sigh of relief over that.

The Star Wars saga has spent the last decade taking a ton of bruises. Some might say that the bruises indicate the rather paper-thin nature of the story at large. Those people can eat a fat veiny one. What The Clone Wars manages to do right is to recapture the pulpy space opera adventure that made the original trilogy so successful. You come to be excited and encouraged when the characters take the screen. There’s no push to throw in subtext or political allegory. It’s people with laser swords causing mass destruction.

The Clone Wars – A Galaxy Divided is a disc full of missed opportunities. You could’ve had the full season, but we get treated to an overpriced sampler disc. They could’ve waited to get Lucas Animation to conspire in the creation of supplementals. They crapped out on that. The worse is the horrible transfer. Sure, the show is shot in widescreen, but broadcasted cropped. But, that’s television. The results when translated to television are god-awful.