Action, not live ... Star Wars: The Clone Wars
The last three years has seen a huge rise in the number of films not screened in advance to critics, presumably with the aim of ensuring that poor movies are not further hindered at the box office by tepid reviews. However, even worse, to my mind, is the practice of screening a film to the critics - and then telling them they can't publish their review until the thing is already in cinemas.
I'm still utterly confounded at this modern habit of film studios and PR companies, and was amazed to see that said embargo had apparently been placed on the new Star Wars animated film, The Clone Wars.
Aintitcool.com reported earlier this week that it had pulled its review following requests from Warner Bros, in the process berating Empire (who give it a pretty decent write-up) and the Hollywood Reporter (not so good) for continuing to break the embargo. But I spoke to a PR on this side of the pond today, and they weren't aware of any ban on reviews.
Embargoes simply suggest to the clued-up reader that a particular film is rubbish, so I hope that Warner Bros and LucasFilm haven't gone down this route with regard to Clone Wars. Perhaps the thinking behind it is that the general public don't read sites like Aintitcool.com, or even this one. But by that logic it would stand to reason that many people considering a trip to see the film might not be the type to read reviews of the film beforehand in any case.
What's going on here? Is the new film really so bad?
