Clone Wars Season Four Halftime Report
Dec. 20th, 2011 07:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lazypadawanDare I say that Season Four is shaping up to be the best of the series so far?
The animation just gets better and better, with cinematic quality work. An expensive live action show like “Terra Nova” doesn’t even look as good as many CW S4 episodes do. Whatever Lucasfilm Animation does, it cannot let Joel Aron leave ever. Shackle him to the floor if necessary. Just a couple of years ago, water was a serious challenge and now they’re able to do three episodes underwater. The lighting and camera work are top-notch. Who knows what visual wonders we’ll see before the end of the season?
If it seems like the first half of the season just whizzed by, that’s probably because there were only a handful of stories being told in a series of arcs that went 2-4 weeks apiece. There may be a one-shot in there before the end of the season but it appears that the show is settling into doing its stories over a series of episodes instead of trying to get it all done in 22 minutes. I suspect this may be because they need to slow down the story, since they are only moving forward toward the events of ROTS and no longer jumping around on a timeline. I also suspect it’s because they’ve brought on writers more accustomed to working on hour-long dramas.
The season’s subtitle is “Battle Lines” and well, we got lots of that, with just the whimsical droid two-parter kind of breaking that up. But even those episodes were about the war. Is it a sign that the battles are now intensifying? I guess so. And the war’s stresses are becoming more apparent, especially in the Umbaran arc. Unsurprisingly, it’s a fan favorite with quite possibly the most despicable character to grace the small screen in a long time and amazing voice work from Dee Bradley Baker. It was also quite a treat to see an old Lucas buddy, Walter Murch, direct an episode. Here we’re seeing the corruption of the Jedi and a group of clones learning the hard way that not all Jedi see them the way Anakin, Ahsoka, or Obi-Wan does.
“Slaves of the Republic” focuses on another corrupting agent, slavery, and the hard choices the characters are forced to make on this mission. More of Anakin’s issues are explored, with Ahsoka learning for the first time he had been a slave in the past.
The season opener's three part underwater adventure showed the Separatists taking advantage of planetary divisions to seize control and enslave the local population, as well as the Republic's weaknesses on both the military and diplomatic fronts.
Looking forward, we have the conclusion of "Slaves of the Republic," the returns of Ahsoka's "boyfriend" Lux and Nightwatch as well as the much-hyped comeback of Darth Maul in one form or another. How can that not be awesome? I can't wait!
The animation just gets better and better, with cinematic quality work. An expensive live action show like “Terra Nova” doesn’t even look as good as many CW S4 episodes do. Whatever Lucasfilm Animation does, it cannot let Joel Aron leave ever. Shackle him to the floor if necessary. Just a couple of years ago, water was a serious challenge and now they’re able to do three episodes underwater. The lighting and camera work are top-notch. Who knows what visual wonders we’ll see before the end of the season?
If it seems like the first half of the season just whizzed by, that’s probably because there were only a handful of stories being told in a series of arcs that went 2-4 weeks apiece. There may be a one-shot in there before the end of the season but it appears that the show is settling into doing its stories over a series of episodes instead of trying to get it all done in 22 minutes. I suspect this may be because they need to slow down the story, since they are only moving forward toward the events of ROTS and no longer jumping around on a timeline. I also suspect it’s because they’ve brought on writers more accustomed to working on hour-long dramas.
The season’s subtitle is “Battle Lines” and well, we got lots of that, with just the whimsical droid two-parter kind of breaking that up. But even those episodes were about the war. Is it a sign that the battles are now intensifying? I guess so. And the war’s stresses are becoming more apparent, especially in the Umbaran arc. Unsurprisingly, it’s a fan favorite with quite possibly the most despicable character to grace the small screen in a long time and amazing voice work from Dee Bradley Baker. It was also quite a treat to see an old Lucas buddy, Walter Murch, direct an episode. Here we’re seeing the corruption of the Jedi and a group of clones learning the hard way that not all Jedi see them the way Anakin, Ahsoka, or Obi-Wan does.
“Slaves of the Republic” focuses on another corrupting agent, slavery, and the hard choices the characters are forced to make on this mission. More of Anakin’s issues are explored, with Ahsoka learning for the first time he had been a slave in the past.
The season opener's three part underwater adventure showed the Separatists taking advantage of planetary divisions to seize control and enslave the local population, as well as the Republic's weaknesses on both the military and diplomatic fronts.
Looking forward, we have the conclusion of "Slaves of the Republic," the returns of Ahsoka's "boyfriend" Lux and Nightwatch as well as the much-hyped comeback of Darth Maul in one form or another. How can that not be awesome? I can't wait!
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Date: 2011-12-21 10:56 pm (UTC)With that aside, I suppose I did have a sort of "moving fast" impression as well. Where even the plot arcs of previous seasons seemed to me to be composed of somehow "self-contained" episodes, now things seem to be getting a lot closer to genuine "cliff-hangers." Perhaps, though, the "pan and scan" treatment Teletoon gives to the episodes up here makes me look forward to the season set release...
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Date: 2011-12-22 01:49 am (UTC)