Star Wars: The Clone Wars - A Galaxy Divided collects four episodes from the current Cartoon Network’s animated series. Only four episodes, you ask? Out of the entire first season. Why, yes, my young padawan, you only get the four episodes.
You might hold on to your money and wait for the entire first season to be released. However, if you are a die-hard Star Wars fan (which I am not), you could go ahead to spend your money to get this collection.
The four episodes bring us pretty good animation, and good story lines. Anakin is still our hero and flies in to save the day (he gets a few of his pilots killed, but hey, all in a day’s work for a Jedi). Teaming up with Obi-Wan Kenobi and his young padawan Ahsoka Tano, he must defeat General Grievous’ droid robots.
The droid robots are quite funny and have some really good lines. However, they are expendable and there are plenty to go around - their body parts fly and they get blown up at an alarming rate.
In the first episode, Anakin and his padawan rescue three clones (who had no disguisable features except their hair). Ahsoka speaks out and demands that Anakin go to rescue her old master, and we see the relationship building between the two, master and padawan. Anakin is quite the daredevil and willing to take a risk, but he cautions her to be sneaky about it and not ask in the way that she did.
In the second and third episodes, the fight between the Jedi and The Separatists builds as the Jedi track the warship Malevolence. There is a really good battle between Yoda and Asaji Ventress’s army, in which the little green guy almost takes out the entire army single-handily. Can we say that that little guy kicks some butt?
In the fourth episode, the Jedi fighters must take to flying thru space and try to take out the warship Malevolence, which has a super-fired powered ion blasted that is just too powerful and has to go. General Grievous is a great character - I love his chunky, clunky, slouched robotic self. And why does he wear that cape? Doe he really need it?
Enter Anakin’s love interest, Senator Padme Amidala, who ends up in the middle of the Jedi battle. Anakin has to rescue her as she gets pulled into the warship’s tractor beam in a plot conceived by Count Dooku to kidnap her and stop the assault on his warship.
Anakin rescues her and C3-PO with the help of Obi-Wan, but she is no princess to simper behind her hands or whine. She takes out a few enemy fighters with their ship’s guns as they are speeding away.
I liked the episodes, as they were entertaining, and my boys, who watched them with me, loved them. Target audience: 5 to 10 year old boys. However, my husband, who is a die-hard Star Wars fan (but didn’t want to write this review), told me to say something about the fact this DVD had only four freaking episodes. Personally, I didn’t care, I was glad it was short (a mere 90 minutes, the length of any children’s animated film).
I suppose you can look at it as the glass is half empty or half full: the DVD is only four episodes or it’s a regular 90-minute feature length animated film.
The DVD comes with no special features whatsoever. True die-hard Star Wars fans that have kept their Boba Fett surround in plastic for decades (yes, dear husband o’ mine!) will be disappointed.
In conclusion, remember the target audience here - five to ten year old boys. This four episode collection is great for the kids, but diehard Star Wars fans might want to wait for the complete first season to make its way to DVD. Regardless, the series features good animation, some good humor, good stories, good family entertainment.
Star Wars: The Clone Wars - A Galaxy Divided is now available at Amazon and AmazonUK . Visit the DVD database for more information.
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