Click to viewHarry Knowles, the founder of fan-driven movie site Ain't It Cool News, published an unabashedly negative review ("hated the score, the animation, the shots, the characters and most of all the retarded ******** idiot story") of the upcoming animated film Star Wars: The Clone Wars a few days ago. Over the weekend, Knowles's post was unpublished, as we now say. Hollywood Newsroom cited an Ain't It Cool regular who claimed Lucasfilm got Knowles to yank the review — most likely by threatening to bar him from all future advance viewings — and reposted the review:

Hi, Guys…
by TheRealMoriarty Aug 11th, 2008
04:25:38 AM
… to those asking, I'll try a new tact in this thread. Harry took his CLONE WARS review down at the request of Lucasfilm, who have chosen to enforce an embargo on reviews on our site. There may, in fact, be other outlets who have reviews up currently. That is not something we can control. Harry will repost his same review when he is able to. I hope that explains it, but if you have further questions, I'll try answer them. I'd really rather this talkback were about the great Bernie Brillstein, though."

Here's the original review:

"Harry hated THE CLONE WARS!

I've never hated a STAR WARS film before. I have weathered Jar Jar and any number of Ewoks. I survived Hayden and a wooden Portman. I even accepted Jake Lloyd. I handled all that because it felt like STAR WARS.

I can accept all of Lucas' flaws, so long as at its heart it felt like Star Wars. I can deal with politics in Star Wars. I can deal with trade skirmishes in Star Wars. I can deal with musical numbers, breathing in the vacuum of space. Basically – so long as it feels like STAR WARS – I can watch any of it.

Was I looking forward to STAR WARS: THE CLONE WARS (2008)?

******** A!

I was dying. After Genndy's CLONE WARS – I felt that perhaps Lucas "got it" – and that this new animated series was taking a lead from Tartakovsky's brilliant assembly of pieces. Genndy's CLONE WARS got STAR WARS better than anyone has got it since Lawrence Kasdan and Irvin Kershner. Genndy took designs and characters that folks were dissatisfied with and made them cool. He did this by using and adapting the themes created by John Williams, the wholly perfect entity involved with Star Wars along with… the sound effects of Ben Burtt. He understood speed and motion – not just with action, but in editing. He understood classic film composition and iconography. And he knows what BADASS is.

The folks behind this STAR WARS: THE CLONE WARS movie… you could tell, they looked at what Genndy did – but they didn't understand any of it. There's a ****load of battles and ***** going boom. There's noise everywhere – fury everywhere… but none of it is directed. The music by Kevin Kiner is criminally bad. Why they didn't employ Paul Dinletir and James Venable is beyond me. No, no – let's hire the composer of WALKER, TEXAS RANGER. Ahem.

Now – I made excuses for this film as I was watching it. I don't think you understand how much I love STAR WARS. Maybe you do, maybe you do too.

Before the movie started I was firing myself up to go out after the film and buy that new $200 Hasbro Millenium Falcon. I really wanted to go buy it, and I wanted this movie to empower my brain to go through with that. Instead, I found myself at home – putting on Genndy's THE CLONE WARS – to try and rebuild my passion – so I can go get that new Falcon.

Instead – I'm thinking I'll just be here at home enjoying this and that'll be all I need.

Anyway – as I was watching the film, I was excusing the sloppy shots, the sloppy use of the Clone Troopers and Droids – undoing all the awesome work that Genndy had done – and the droids are silly again. The Clone Troopers are limp. And the Jedi – they're at 25% power from the mind of Genndy. But I was accepting that. I figured that was Lucas dialing back so that the animated series wouldn't overpower his features.

Then they introduced Baby Jabba aka Rotta the Huttlet aka Stinky. At the point of this character's introduction – it officially became, the worst character in the history of STAR WARS. If you hate George Lucas cutsiepoo bull**** – oooooooh boy. You're gonna have a field day of venting and hatred directed at this unbelievably ****ing awful little ****.

Oh – but wait… Little Stinky the Hutt isn't the worst character in the history of STAR WARS… because Stinky got introduced earlier in the film. As much as I hated lil Stinky… I was weathering Stinky. I seriously was. But later there was a character of such immense **** – offensively bad. The character was so bad, so incredibly awful – that it was a slap to the face. It woke me out of my ****-accepting stupor and made me angry. SUDDENLY my "inner fanboy rage" was awoken.

As I watched this terrifyingly awful character named Ziro the Hutt. A seemingly female Hutt – with tattoos and make-up that sounds like a racist take on a Black New Orleans Crack-Dealing Whore. Because this Hutt speaks ENGLISH – and it is many times worse than I'm actually describing. This character was actually too much for me. So bad that every flaw I was looking past, was now a road sign to inadequacy and mediocrity. All of a sudden my brain realized that Asajj Ventress' voice no longer was acceptable – and sure enough – the amazing Grey DeLisle, who originally voiced the character back in 2003 – had been replaced by a Nika Futterman – and that voice was missed. The character didn't have that snarling menace anymore.

I realized that nothing in this animated film felt right. I felt time expanding. It seemed that the film was dragging – nevermind that lots of **** was firing all over the place – and stuff was going boom and things were being revealed. I just didn't care because this wasn't what I wanted.

I hated the score, the animation, the shots, the characters and most of all the retarded ******** idiot story.

I hated the film. HATED IT. REALLY HATED IT.

Does this mean the whole Star Wars Animated Series is doomed? No – but it isn't a good sign. So much of this is awful because of the Hutt plotlines and character. I also feel that Dave Filoni must be a hack. His work here is sloppy – and depending on writers and directing talent – individual episodes may be better. This film was several episodes all strung together – my prayer is that the individual episodes will be both great and awful – and we'll discover which talents are responsible for each.

That said – the audience did have light applause. My father liked it. My sister felt too much was going on. Me nephew really liked it. That said – Yoko was complaining right along with me. She thought it was **** too. I know Moriarty liked it. Wonder what Quint and Massawyrm thought.

****. I hated a STAR WARS. That ****ing sucks."