Star Wars The Clone Wars The Lost Missions Blu-Ray Review

The sixth and final season of the Clone Wars animated series was made available exclusively on Netflix back in March. Those thirteen episodes have now been released on BluRay. For whatever reason, the disc isn’t being marketed as “Season 6” but as “The Lost Missions”. Not sure what the reasoning was, but they are indeed the season six episodes. If you’re thinking about picking this disc up, and you want to read my thoughts on all the episodes, you can check out my detailed review here. For that reason, I won’t repeat my thoughts on the individual episodes. I’ll just say that having just watched all 13 episodes again, my opinion hasn’t changed. 10 of the 13 episodes are highly entertaining, I still found myself bored to tears with those 3 Rush Clovis episodes. Considering there were 4 additional, and in my opinion far more entertaining, episodes pretty far along in production that could have replaced that Rush Clovis story arc is a little annoying. But I’ll talk more about that shortly.

As you would expect from a Lucasfilm release, the picture and sound quality are top notch. This of course now being a Disney release, you can expect to find some of those Disney Movie Rewards points tucked inside the case. One of these days I’m going to cash those in!

Okay, lets talk bonus features. Personally, I’m a sucker for bonus material. I wish more studios would go the way of Peter Jackson and give me two and three hour behind the scenes documentaries. I get excited when I see “Over 12 hours of bonus material!” plastered on the back of a case, only to discover that what I’ve got is a 10 minute behind the scenes featurette, and 12 hours of audio commentary. Maybe I’m alone here…I don’t know. With this release, I was very pleased with the bonus material. There is a 16 minute documentary that looks at the entire series. They really don’t dive into the production of episodes. This is a look at the folks behind the series. This is a, dare I say, charming look at the people that made the Clone Wars. Now, I’m one of those people that sits through the credits of a film. Not in the hopes that there will be a bonus scene after the credits have rolled, but because the credits are a part of the film. These are the people that poured their hearts and souls into it’s productions, and I owe them the respect of letting their names scroll by. Again, perhaps I’m alone here. Not to get to far off track here, but speaking of “after credits bonus scenes” I can’t possibly express how insane it makes me when people get up and start to walk out of a Marvel movie right as the credits start to roll. Do you not KNOW that a bonus scene is coming? They’ve only done it EVERY TIME!!! But I digress. Also included are “four unfinished story reels”. Here’s the deal, George Lucas doesn’t like story boards, he never has. Back when Return of the Jedi was in it’s early stages, many of the films action scenes were planned out, not with story boards, but with live action shots of dolls, action figures, and toys on miniature sets. This allowed George and the guys at ILM to better plan out shots, and get an idea of what they’d look like in motion. With the Clone Wars, they would skip the story board process and jump right to rough animation. The production team would sit through viewings and change this or that, cut here or there, until they felt the episode was perfect. It would then go to the animators. So that’s what the four story reels are, four rough animated episodes. So, as I mentioned earlier, these are the four episodes I would have rather seen included with season 6. This is a four episode arc dealing with the bad guys trying to get their hands on a giant crystal. The same type of crystal used to power a Lightsaber, only huge. Now what would Darth Sidious want with a gigantic Lightsaber crystal? The Death Stars planet destroying laser is certainly a possibility. These unfinished episodes include performances from the voice over cast, which is nice considering this type of thing usually includes a temporary voice track. That detail alone makes these four episodes worth watching. Had they completed this story arc instead of that Rush Clovis sleeper I would have been far happier. But, at least we still get to see what could have been.

Pick this BluRay up...it’s worth your money! Until next time, may the Force be with you!