‘Star Wars’ gets animated

What happened

George Lucas announced recently that his latest Star Wars movie, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, will be completely animated and will open in theaters Aug. 15. A TV series of the same name will air on the Cartoon Network and TNT this fall. “I felt there were a lot more Star Wars stories left to tell,” said Lucas in a statement. “I was eager to start telling some of them through animation and, at the same time, push the animation forward.” (AP)

What the commentators said

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“This is incredible news for any Star Wars fan,” said Michael Prince in Blogcritics Magazine. Not only do we get a new movie, but we’re blessed with “an actual Lucas-produced CG series on television,” too. And “to top it off, it looks amazing”—it’s “unique” and really “seems to fit the series.”

Are you kidding? said ActressArchives.com. “George Lucas doesn’t know when to quit adding on to the lore and universe that is Star Wars.” As far as the look goes, the characters have a “stylized marionette-like appearance.” And what’s Lucas thinking releasing a new Star Wars movie the same year that Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull hits theaters?

Well, at least “Lucas is neither directing nor writing the episodes,” said Vic Holtrman in the blog Screen Rant. His strength is as “a tech-geek in charge of the visual/CGI effects.” It’s too bad that Genndy Tartakovsky won’t be involved, though—he did a good job directing some of the episodes of the first Clone Wars TV series.

“In the grand scheme of things,” said the blog Supernaut, an animated Star Wars series is “not that big of a deal.” Lucas “didn’t rape my childhood” or “ruin the series for all time,” and “I don’t need therapy to get through this.” The “Star Wars I know and love is still there and—re-mastered or not—so are my memories.”