Full Series Is there a good film within the Clone Wars feature?

So as you may know, TCW feature film was a few pilot episodes of the show smashed together on a very small budget ($8.5 million) and in very little time, just because Lucas wanted it to be theatrically released. Do you think that through one way or another, possibly better editing or scripting, TCW feature could have been good, or even great?

 

I still don't really get why it's considered bad. Sure it got bad reviews, but really the actual show had a cold reception for a few years too. And given how the show didn't really pick up until Season 3 for a lot of people, I'd say TCW movie is on par with Seasons 1 and 2. It's a light-hearted serial romp like the first few seasons of the show.

I think maybe it could have had a more interesting plot for a theatrical release, but it's pretty much fine. I don't see why it's considered such a unwanted child of TCW show.

 

This probably belongs in TV more then it does here, but we will let the mods decide

 

Yesh, pretty much

Movin' there

 

Oddly enough, that also answers the question of movie viability within TCW episodes. They belong on TV. That's it. The movie was more of a way to advertise the TV show.

Now can there be a Star Wars animation film that is on par with the Star Wars movies? Absolutely. They just have to treat the script like it is a movie and not a kids' TV show.

 

I only ever watched it once and have never felt the need to do so again - in fact, I almost didn't keep going and watch the show afterwards - so my memory is a little fuzzy, but mostly what I remember is that it didn't work as a movie at all. It felt like several mediocre, barely related stories stapled together. Maybe not that much worse than some of the show's other weaker one-shots, but you can't cobble together a movie out of that.

I think it would have to be so heavily rewritten both in terms of plot structure and in terms of jokes that just didn't work as to be unrecognizable. (I don't know a single person that thought "Skyguy" was as hilarious as the movie expected you to find it, and it got dropped so quickly in the main series that I expect the writers figured that out too.)

The Malevolence arc that almost begins the series feels like a better movie than the movie. It flows from one story thread to the next pretty smoothly and stays focused on a main storyline throughout, with some appropriately wild action scenes and big space battles featuring lots of characters. I've never understood what Lucas was thinking not using that instead. If Ahsoka still needed to be introduced to the audience within the movie itself, assigning her to Anakin could be worked in easily somewhere in the beginning.

Alternately, the Ryloth arc could work too with a little adaptation. I consider that the other most solid storyline of season one.

 

I had always hoped the "Clone Wars" would be a journey into the loss of Anakin's humanity. At the beginning of the conflict, he views every loss on both sides a moral conflict, but he slowly stops seeing those on the battlefield as people. The droids could help in making that transition.

But it wouldn't go with the beginning of RotS where we see a smiling "this is where the fun begins" Anakin. I really wish we had more of a dramatic personality change of Anakin at the end of AotC to the beginning of RotS. The Clone Wars series would then be the window into what happened. And the most dramatic change could be The Clone Wars movie.

Instead we got Skyguy and baby Jabba.

 

It's a perfectly fine pilot for the series. It only got bad reviews because it was released in theaters. The expectations are simply different than on TV. Had it aired on TV as originally intended, it would have been praised. How many TV cartoons would have held up to the cinematic expectations had they bundled some episodes together and aired in theaters? Hardly any.

There was literally nothing of that quality on TV, and I'd argue that there still isn't. 'Ambush' and 'Rising Malevolence' were rightfully praised because of that. And wether people prefer the story of those episodes or not in comparison to the movie, the overall quality of those episodes is not that different from those that are part of the movie.

Even after all these years, this is still one of my favourite sequences of the whole series:

 

I think the movie is fine. It's pretty on par with Seasons 1 and 2 of the show. But considering how good the show got at the back end of two and onwards, I can't help but look at it unfavorably.

 

From a strictly fan boy point of view I greatly enjoyed it as it gave me a theatre introduction to SW to one of my sons based upon its timing.

WTH happened to baby Rota in the continuity?

 

They should have just kept it on TV and not put it in theaters

 

He was in the episodes “Sphere of Influence” and “Hunt for Ziro”. He was only mentioned in the second one, however.

 

He never appears outside of TCW

 

Maybe the idea of Rotta was scrapped because there was little to no use for him, unlike there was for Jabba or Ziro.

 

I'd love I'd he crawled out of the woodwork in a Post-RotJ comic to takeover Jabba's former criminal empire.

 

I would like if they used him at all in anything.

 

Rotta for Solo anyone?

 

Rotta probably inherited Jabba's power and part in the Hutt Clan (or fought for it).

 

I know, but I just wish we could see him in something.

 

I don't look at it that way. As you said, the movie was really intended to be separate episodes of the show, and they just clumped them together as a movie-length feature. It wasn't written that way, so it works well as episodes within the context of the show, but not so well, in my opinion, as a stand-alone movie.

As an aside, I find the best way to watch TCW to be in chronological order, not the order or airing. If you watch AOTC, then all of TCW, then ROTS, it actually makes Anakin's fall make more sense. His distrust of the council, how they ignored issues due to the war, Obi-Wan probably knowing about Padme and his relationship, but turning a blind eye, etc.

 

I have yet to watch it in Chrono Order, but I might this year.

 

The movie was just too much like a glorified premiere or pilot and not truly cinematic.

 

I mean it was always meant to be on TV but George made it theaters at the last moment.

 

TCW "film" could never be good, or even great, bcs there wasn't enough Ventress. You don't drop the most compelling character in all of Star Wars 3/4 of the way.