Review: Lego Star Wars: The Yoda Chronicles “The Phantom Clone”

 

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It should go without saying that this review should, and will, contain multiple spoilers. So if you don’t want to know how this all went down, kindly scroll to the last paragraph for my review. Or please, feel free to check out any of our other quality articles on this site!

SPOILERS BELOW! 

 

Yoda Chronicles opens to the usual John Williams fanfare and scrolling yellow text.  General Grievous is flying through a field of starships on his way to Coruscant. He easily dispatches two X-Wings and is on his way. Yoda, R2D2 and C3PO are in the Holocron Vault showing holographic fight sequences of a young Anakin Skywalker to the padawans for inspiration. Suddenly Yoda feels a disturbance in the force and runs away, summoning all available Jedi to meet with him and leaving C3PO in charge of the padawans. After a quick cut scene that had Palpatine/Darth Sidious confusing his switchable faces while trying to figure out call waiting between Grievous and Yoda, we see Grievous entering the Holocron Vault, disabling C3PO and stealing the padawan’s lightsabers but more importantly the Kaiburr crystals contained within them.

During the call with Yoda, Sidious tells of Obi-Wan being in trouble on Alderaan, so the ship containing R2, Mace Windu, Yoda and Admiral Ackbar take the express route towards the planet. But as with most things that involve Admiral Ackbar, it’s a trap! They try to jump out of there and back to Coruscant, but their ship is destroyed and they land in the swamps of Dagobah. Meanwhile, the padawans have concocted a plan to retrieve their stole lightsabers. They have used the Force and discovered that the lightsabers are now on Tatooine.  While this is happening, Mace and Yoda try to use the Force to discover who has betrayed them. R2 uses come classic comedic shtick to reveal that it was Palpatine who betrayed them, but the Jedi read it more as that they show go to Palpatine for advice on the matter. Classic mix up.

Back on Tatooine, the padawans have discovered that Jabba himself is in control of their lightsabers so the padawans decide to go to Jabba’s palace to retrieve them. While this is happening, a bright light shines on Mace and Yoda from a large ship. It’s Lando Calrissian and his father Lindo in the Millennium Falcon. Except it has been re-purposed to be a traveling nightclub. Yoda and the gang are gracious for the ride and they fly away. Transition over to C3PO and the padawans, who have devised a plan to finally enter the palace and obtain what is rightfully theirs. They convince C3PO to go to the front door and insult the gatekeepers. As hotheaded as the gatekeepers are, they open the gate wide and release the Rancor to destroy C3PO. While the keepers watch the Rancor chase C3PO, the padawans enter not only the palace, but Jabba’s sleeping quarters as well. They use the Force to gain back their sabers but inadvertently wake up Jabba in the process. They try to engage their sabers, discovering that the crystals are missing and they have been rendered useless. With a little quick thinking, they are able to flee, thawing Ian from carbonite in the process.

We come back from the commercial break to see the padawans finally exiting Jabba’s palace. They encounter the gatekeepers and after a few beats, the Rancor itself. But oddly enough, the Rancor reacts much like a puppy would to kids and he whisks them away to their bus. On Kamino, Grievous and Count Dooku combine the Kaiburr crystals and place the newly formed crystals in a giant weapon that will be used to create clone soldiers.  While all of this evil is being perpetrated, Yoda and the gang are partying on the Falcon when C3PO contacts Yoda and informs him that Grievous has stolen the Kaiburr crystals. Yoda informs them to return to Coruscant and the Jedi School. While C3PO takes the padawans back, Yoda and cast head to Kamino to regain the crystals. But by the time they arrive, the weapon has just become operational and begins powering up. This leaves enough time for a pretty sweet lightsaber battle between Grievous, Dooku, Yoda and Windu. Yoda, who cuts the floor out from underneath him, quickly fells Grievous. Windu and Yoda are able to overtake Dooku and destroy the weapon. But the crystal rolls out of the machine and leans up against one of the clone’s holding tanks, activating Clone 14 from his slumber. He is able to take out Mace and Yoda with relative ease and rebuilds the weapon. Grievous is able to make his way back into the fracas and tries to attack Windu outside in the rain, but begins to freeze up and rust due to the inclement conditions. Windu slices one of Grievous’ arms off with a blaster attached and tosses the blaster to Yoda. Yoda takes a few shots that are easily deflected as the super weapon becomes operational again. Clone 14 sets his sights on Yoda and begins to Force choke him out the door. All hope seems lost until the padawans show up with C3PO and the bus, which is now modified with multiple cannons. The cannons destroy the weapon and R2 snags the crystal just in the nick of time. Grievous is left to sink with the ship as Dooku and Clone 14 jettison him and the padawans head back to Coruscant to receive medals for their bravery and valor. The show closes with Sidious, Dooku and 14 laughing when Grievous shows up with an floatation device around his waste.

I’ll admit my nervousness about writing this review as I’m not known for viewing the most “TV-G” of content for the site. But this show was a really fun step out of my comfort zone. The laughs transcended what I’m sure was a huge age barrier in viewership. A perfect example is when Ackbar, Yoda and Mace are in the ship orbiting Alderaan. When it becomes apparent that the situation is amiss, Yoda says, “A trap this is.” To which Ackbar responds with “DUHHH!!” I literally lol’d at this moment because of the irony of the line placement between characters, but I’m sure most kids laughed because a giant squid yelled an insult. It’s in that sense that most of the humor in this show felt a bit like Spongebob to me. Parents and children laughing at the same jokes for completely different reasons is a humor that not many shows can pull off. The animation was beautifully done by Denmark’s WilFilm and the voice acting is right on par with the art and as a matter of fact the voices fit the characters well, if not better than the original cast. For going into this show and being frightened by its rating, I was thoroughly impressed at the entire effort that this show put forth. If you love Star Wars but think this might be too child like for your tastes, you are dead wrong. Watch this show then catch up on all of the other Lego Star Wars specials that you can find. I can guarantee that you’ll like them just as much as I liked this one.

Review Score – (9/10)

(@chefrichBB) had a blast writing this article and would love to talk Star Wars with you on his Twitter. Or we can talk #WebsDay. Or you can just watch me retweet stuff i like. Any way you look at it, I’m worth the follow.