Movie Club News: “Star Wars Episode III” Article Delayed to Sunday

Facing a tremendous amount of things to do and an inability to find the time to watch through the movie again, I have decided to preemptively delay the essay for Revenge of the Sith to Sunday instead of the normal day, Friday, in the likely chance that I will be unable to watch and write the essay until the weekend. This is probably not a problem to anyone but me, who likes to keep consistent schedules, but I wanted to warn you in advance.

In its stead, I’ll be posting a short story I wrote recently that some people besides me might find humorous, though I have my doubts about that.

[Movie Club] “Star Wars: Clone Wars”: The Missing Link

Star Wars: Clone Wars

The Star Wars: Clone Wars microseries is one that I will always hold very dear in my heart. Released in 20 three-to-five-minute episodes across 2003 and 2004, and then with 5 more twelve-minute episodes in 2005, this series essentially acts as a true Star Wars: Episode II.V. It runs at just over two hours, and its plot runs the course of the entire Clone Wars from the beginning all the way to the Battle of Coruscant, the end of which we see in the opening to Revenge of the Sith.

Every single Star Wars marathon I do with my family and friends, we watch Clone Wars in between Episodes II and III (except for when we did Machete Order once, though I don’t recommend it for marathons after having done it). It’s extremely fun, more fast-paced than any of the other prequels, and it fills in a crucial gap in Anakin’s story arc that isn’t directly shown in the other movies– his growth from a reckless Padawan to a reckless, but beloved, hero.

But it’s also a somewhat obscure entry in the franchise, at this point. Especially considering the massive success of the 2008 CGI series The Clone Wars (the word “The” makes all the difference), this series has been completely neglected by Lucasfilm, and somewhat forgotten by the fandom. It never even got more than a two-volume DVD set that quickly went out of print, and has never been re-released on Blu-Ray, or officially online (though you can easily watch it on Youtube here, and it doesn’t seem like Lucasfilm cares enough to take it down). Why is this? I don’t know. It could be a rights issue with Cartoon Network or director Genndy Tartakovsky, or it could be worries that it would confuse people trying to watch the 2008 series. There isn’t any official word that I can find on it.

Star Wars: Clone Wars is no longer canon, apparently, and is put in the Legends timeline (despite contradicting with the 2008 series almost not at all and in fact introducing or developing characters that would become major ones in that series). But I will still watch it every time that I do a Star Wars marathon, and I will continue to consider it canon, for me, until something comes along that unambiguously negates it.

In this article, I will discuss the reasons why Star Wars: Clone Wars deserves to be the seventh Star Wars film (which is why I will be referring to it as a movie not a series), while also going through the story loosely in chronological order, as much of this essay will cover Anakin Skywalker’s character growth over the course of the microseries. Once again, if you haven’t seen it already, I highly recommend that you watch it, because it’s one of my favorite movies of all time (despite being divided into two separate DVDs….).

[Movie Club] Star Wars Episode I: The Binks Awakens

Hey, you like Star Wars, right? You probably do, as you are reading this shitty Star Wars essay also are more than likely a human. But as much as you love Star Wars, there are probably some things about it that you don’t like. For many people, they don’t like the prequel trilogy, in particular Episode I, in even more particular Jar Jar Binks. Jar Jar was a bumbling buffoon, arguably a racist caricature, and created for the sole purpose of appealing to young children. But, like it or not, Jar Jar Binks is the most important character in the entirety of the Star Wars canon.

[Movie Club] Crimson Peak and Visuals

Hey. There are some spoilers over here.

[Movie Club] Sicario: Misleading?

Okay, change of plan. I WAS going to write about Bong Joon-ho’s The Host, but I didn’t get around to watching that. Instead, I went and saw Dennis Villeneuve’s Sicario. I’ll start out by saying that it was an excellent film and you should go see it while it is still in theaters, but I noticed that there was something very misleading about the film’s marketing in comparison to the finished product.

Movie Club Decision – Sunday = The Martian

With all the dumb Movie Club stuff to happen, I have decided I’m just going to write an article on The Martian and publish it on Sunday. It’ll be mostly a review, though it will also try to cover a specific topic in the movie. You’ll see!

[Movie Club] Why Audiences Hated “Noah”

This is the first post in a series we’re going to call “Movie Club”. We watch a movie that neither of us have seen (which will usually one on Netflix or Hulu), write a short piece pertaining to the film, and then say if we recommend it or not. This week I’ll be the only one writing an essay, as thedude has a con to go to/is a terrible person. Anyway, yeah, here is the thing!

If you’ve heard anything about Darren Aronofsky’s film Noah, it was probably something about rock monsters. Many people, primarily those who went to the theaters expecting a one for one retelling of the flood story from the Bible, were disappointed and upset by some of the artistic liberties that were taken, with the rock monsters being the most often cited example. While you could say that gaps have to be filled when adapting such sparse source material, that the rock monsters are nephilim or golems, or any number of arguments that are either pro or anti rock monster, I feel like the source of much of the film’s negative reception comes from elsewhere.