I’m not sure why, but I really am not that enthused about the upcoming Star Wars: The Clone Wars animated feature debuting in August. Is it because, as a Warner Brothers release it won’t open with the 20th Century Fox Fanfare, that short piece of music that has become inseparable from the Star Wars experience for so many people? Is it the fact that I found the recent prequel trilogy to be lacking on so many levels, that I’m not all that interested in what happens between Episode II and Episode III? Am I too cynical to believe that because they are taking the first three episodes of a cartoon series and plastering it up on the big screen, that it isn’t just a cash grab and marketing ploy?
For those of you who are excited by the upcoming film, here’s something to whet your appetite, the film’s poster. (Click for a bigger version.)
(By the way, the girl peeking out from behind Obi-Wan is Anakin’s Padawan, Ahsoka. What’s that you say? You don’t remember seeing her in Revenge Of The Sith? Well, that doesn’t bode too well for her, now does it?)
Lucasfilm’s official Star Wars site has also announced that the film’s trailer will debut tomorrow night at 7:58 simultaneously on Cartoon Network, TNT, TBS, CNN, and Boomerang. It will also be attached to the front of Warner Brothers’ Speed Racer, which opens on Friday.
If it is the same trailer that was screened at the New York Comic Con last month, than fans are sure to eat it up. As I’ve said before, I found the design work to be fairly inconsistent. For some elements, it looks as if the animators are striving for at least a certain degree of photorealism, where for elements they are not. The flesh and blood characters have a certain cartoon-ish quality, which is fine in itself. But viewed next to the more realistic looking clone troopers, the overall effect distracted and disconnected me from what I was watching.
Star Wars: The Clone Wars will be in theaters on August 15. The cartoon series will begin running on Cartoon Network later in the fall.
