Star Wars in HD
Entry posted by Nathan Strum
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So yesterday finally brought the long-awaited return of Star Wars... in HD!
Yep, that's right! Season 4 of The Clone Wars debuted on Cartoon Network!
What?
You were expecting a write-up on some other "Star Wars in HD" event that took place Friday?
I can't imagine what that would be... 
Anyway, season 4 started off with a two-parter, Water War and Gungan Attack. In the first episode, there was a war under water, and in the second one... well, I don't want to spoil it, but something attacked. 
The episode takes place on the homeworld of the Mon Calamari. You know, the fish-like aliens of which Admiral "It's a Trap!" Ackbar is one of? He's there, but he's a Captain in this episode. So it takes him what... 25 years to make Admiral? Maybe it would have been better to be a big fish in a small pond, than a small fish in a big pond.
Anyway, they're fighting against their squid-faced neighbors, who are supported by the Separatists, and are being led by a guy with a shark for a head. So after 35 years, Jaws finally goes head-to-head with Star Wars! And the fish are a-flyin'! Not flying fish, that is, but rather sushi. There's seafood everywhere. The shark guy is on a seafood diet - he sees food, and eats it. (Don't worry, I'm bound to run out of fish references sooner or later. ) The usual Jedi are here - Anakin, Ahsoka, Squid-head (I forget his name at the moment), and Padme is along to get into trouble. The king of the Mon Calamari gets knifed (probably with one of these), and so his young son has to take up the mantle of leadership. Now this is a common theme in The Clone Wars, and I'm guessing the reason is to appeal to their target demographic. Letting the young viewers at home wonder what it would be like to enter the excitement of battle, fight alongside Jedi, and have your parents killed right in front of your eyes. Now that's television. (As an interesting aside, some Mon Calamari are floaters when they die, and some are sinkers. All of my goldfish were floaters when I was a little kid. But then they all became flushers. I wonder if that's how the Mon Calamari bury their dead?)
So, after the attack of the giant cyborg jellyfish (now if that doesn't get you watching the series, nothing will), the battle turns against the Mon Calamari (Ackbar never even gets to say his "it's a trap" line, which was disappointing), and so the Jedi call for some help.
Now then... whosa can they think of that has an army of beings that live under the water?
Yep. Gungans.
That's right baby, Jar-Jar's back. So, another battle ensues, and I've gotta tell ya', they are impressive battles. First, they're underwater, so I'm sure that brings some challenges with it, since you have the added dimension of height, rather than armies just fighting on the ground, plus there's all that swimming animation they have to deal with. Then, there's the sheer number of characters involved in the battle. The scope is pretty massive, especially when you consider this is a made-for-TV cartoon show. The animation, production, effects, modeling, rendering, staging, acting... all of it continues to improve. There are some pretty cool shots in these episodes: the shark-guy attacking the prince by trying to break through a plexiglass tunnel, shark-guy attacking Mon Calamari warriors with his teeth, the Gungans deploying by jumping off of moving ships into the water (yes... for a brief instant, Gungans were cool), Anakin knocking over an entire building using The Force, Squid-head swimming around like a Jedi Mark Spitz, the Jedi's ship getting nuked and sinking to the bottom of the ocean... there's just a lot of cool stuff there, and it's a really good start to the season.
The battle wasn't resolved, and at the end our heroes were on the ropes, so this story line will continue into at least next week. They've also shown a trailer previewing this season, and it looks like Anakin is going to be taking some more steps towards the Dark Side™. If only they'd been able to do some more of this stuff with his character in the movies, then maybe the prequels wouldn't have been so completely awful. Maybe we would've cared about the characters more, and seen Anakin as a tragic, fallen hero, rather than some whiny punk.
All I know about that, is that if they ever put out the whole saga on Blu-ray, I'll probably just skip the prequels.
They did what?
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