The never-ending continuation of the Star Wars universe rolls on with this unnecessary animated spin-off series. The original Star Wars trilogy was an undeniable game-changing legacy of films which created the concept of the blockbuster and formed a legion of geeks in waiting. Lucas always (allegedly) envisioned six films, though the title adoption of Episode IV to Star Wars only occurred following the success of the first film.
The much derided Episodes I-III introduced us to repellant leading characters and dreadfully conceived supporting clowns (yes Jar-Jar, “yousapeoplegonnadie” indeed) and did little to fill in the gaps to spurious throwaway lines from the original. Instead we were treated to fascinating insights into spice trades and increasingly dour sub-plots.
So the fact that Lucas has decided to milk the franchise further with the springboard of the latter trio of films for this series rather than the former is as distressing to read as it is to watch. Unable to tempt any of the original cast back to their leading roles, with the exception of Anthony Daniels as space’s first fey robot, we have a series of impressions of Mssrs MacGregor, Christensen et al., as the back story no-one cared about is spun out through a threatened 100 episodes.
Episodes 9-15 of the show’s second season are included on this release and amount to over two and a half hours of bland space-opera. These mid-season episodes will be nigh on unintelligible to anything more than the casual viewer, as the wheezing General Grievous is once again wreaking havoc and those infernal “roger, roger” robots return. For the initiated fan, these releases are no doubt indispensable, but for the rest of us, a berth the size of a nerf herder is required.
Released on Blu-ray and DVD on Monday 21st March 2011 by Warner Home Video.