Tyler Robertson

Star Wars animation has never looked or sounded better, but it just doesn’t live up to the storytelling highs of Lucasfilm Animation’s other projects.

James Gunn’s classic recipe of lovable weirdos, great music, and lots of jokes and violence is on full display, but in a new, fresh way that’s presented well in animation. Its intentional immaturity doesn’t always pay off, but it’s not nearly enough to weigh the series down.

Many of the more character-focused elements of its story are thrilling, and Jessica Barden, Emily Watson, Emma Canning, and Olivia Williams are superb as ancestors of House Harkonnen. But with a lack of cohesive vision, the prequel series fails to live up to the expectation of quality set by the books and films that preceded it.

The first half of Tales of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles never reaches the heights of Mutant Mayhem. But it still plants a unique flag in the ground by beautifully reimagining the film’s animation style, retaining most of the key elements that made Mutant Mayhem amazing, and telling a story that delves into the psyches of the individual Turtles.

Tales of the Empire succeeds in many ways at telling more intimate stories than Morgan Elsbeth and Barriss Offee would ever get on The Mandalorian, The Clone Wars, or Ahsoka. But these six episodes get bogged down by exposition, losing some of what makes them so special. Morgan and Barriss deserve their time in the limelight, but their mostly surface-level journeys to and from the Dark Side might not be enough to serve a wider audience.

Percy Jackson and the Olympians uses its first four episodes wisely, adapting Rick Riordan's The Lightning Thief as accurately as possible. At times it feels like an overcorrection, cramming in as many details from the book as it can to the detriment of the series’ pacing. But at it's best, it reimagines the story for a modern audience – and looking good while doing so.