On November 11, 2014 the final chapters of Star Wars: The Clone Wars comes to home video in 2-disc Blu-ray and 3-disc DVD collections. Star Wars: The Clone Wars: The Lost Missions premiered on the streaming service Netflix on March 7, 2014.
This is the first The Clone Wars home video release from Disney’s Buena Vista Home Entertainment. This is both a good thing and a bad thing. On the bright side gone are the audio sync issues that plagued WB’s release of The Clone Wars Season 5 Blu-ray set. The bad news is that despite that relative modest content of the sets the MSRP of $45.99 has the typical Disney premium sticker price.
This review will cover the Blu-ray set.
Set Details:
- The 13 Lost Missions episodes (287 minutes)
- The Clone Wars Declassified documentary (16 minutes)
- The Crystal Crisis on Utapau Story Reels (@91 minutes)
- Trailers (Rebels/Big Hero 6)
Technical Details:
- 1080p High Definintion video
- 2.35:1 Aspect Ration (Widescreen)
- English, French and Spanish 5.1 Dolby Digital autio
- English SDH, French, and Spanish subtitles
The set also includes a redemption code for Disney Movie Rewards points. It does not however include any digital download of the episodes.
Disc 1 of the set includes episodes 1-9, while disc 2 includes episodes 10-13 and the bonus features.
As with most of the recent TCW Blu-ray sets, “The Lost Missions” looks terrific and the menu screens will be pretty familiar to those who have purchased previous sets.
It is striking to me just how bare bones this set feels. We already have the episodes on Netflix and the story reels on StarWars.com. So the only real new content in the 16-minute documentary. I love the documentary and I wish they had expanded it to 30 or 45 minutes. It is great because they interview TCW crew members that we have not previously heard from regarding the creation of the show.
In previous TCW sets we have seen extensive liner notes as well as bonus features and easter eggs. In this set I have not been able to find any hidden easter eggs.
I can’t help but think we will be getting a complete TCW box set including “The Lost Missions” sometime down the road, which is the reason that I didn’t buy the Season 1-5 set. I just hope they include more content from the unfinished episodes past “The Lost Missions.” I would kill for those scripts as in a hardbound volume as part of a deluxe set, or even better audio dramas edited together from recorded dialogue for the unfinished episodes.
All in all this is a fine set to buy if you can find it on sale or are a Star Wars home video completest, but at the MSRP it is a steep price to pay for content that is already almost all readily available for either $7.99 per month or free.
Editor’s Note: An advanced review copy of the Blu-ray set was provided for the purposes of this review.