Over the years, ‘Star Wars’ has come quite a long way from
its original film roots, allowing the franchise to expand upon its universe in
ways that the films couldn’t really do in around two and a half hours a piece.
However, with the development of the new film trilogy and its spin-offs (or, to
be more precise, ‘anthology’ films), it was announced that nearly all of the
Expanded Universe material that had been released over the past few decades is basically
now considered to be non-canon. Despite that, the amount of non-film ‘Star
Wars’ content that fans have enjoyed over the years still remains. You have
your video games (more on some of those next week), numerous book series, and
of course, a whole bunch of TV series. Now today I’m not going to be looking at
every single ‘Star Wars’ TV series because otherwise this could take me a while,
way past this month of May. Instead I’m just going to focus on two series, the two
of which that I grew up with in the early 2000’s. Ironically, both share the
same name, ‘Clone Wars’, but in terms of execution both are very different from
each other. I won’t be reviewing the two ‘Star Wars’ series, both animated,
that ran before I was born; ‘Star Wars: Ewoks’ and ‘Star Wars: Droids’, both of
which ran from 1985 to 1986 and were developed by Nelvana. Also I’m not covering
the current series on Disney XD, ‘Star Wars: Rebels’, because I haven’t had
much time to watch it. However, I may consider doing a bonus post for these
three series sometime after Star Wars Month is over. But for now, let’s look
back on the last two major ‘Star Wars’ animated series; 2003’s ‘Clone Wars’ and
2008’s ‘The Clone Wars’.
STAR WARS: CLONE WARS (2003-2005)
First up we have 2003’s ‘Clone Wars’, a traditionally
animated TV series (or mini-series to be more precise) created by Genndy
Tartakovsky, the legendary animation director behind classic series such as
‘Dexter’s Laboratory’ and ‘Samurai Jack’. That high quality body of work
translates well for this top-notch animated take on the ‘Star Wars’ universe.
The animation in the show is excellent, perfectly capturing the overall
creative style of the franchise. There’s a bit of 3-D animation utilized from
time to time but for the most part the 2-D style is maintained throughout the
entire series. As I noted earlier, this series is more like a mini-series. The
first 20 episodes are only 3 minutes each and, similar to Tartakovsky’s
‘Samurai Jack’, some contain little to no dialogue. But one of the best aspects
of this series is that not all of these episodes are focused around the main
characters of the series (e.g. Anakin, Obi-Wan, etc…). We also see many of the
other members of the Jedi Council in action on different worlds, like Mace
Windu, Kit Fisto, and Yoda. This really helps in letting us truly get a sense
of how large this universe really is instead of just being limited to wherever
the series’ main characters visit. That’s nothing against the films, it’s just
that it’s really cool to see new sides to the ‘Star Wars’ universe that we
haven’t seen before. Basically, it’s like watching a series of ‘Star Wars’
vignettes.
I only have one little complaint with this series and that
is regarding Season 3, which basically was the primary set-up for ‘Revenge of
the Sith’ as it ended with the kidnapping of the Chancellor by General
Grievous, which led of course to the opening sequence of Episode III where
Anakin and Obi-Wan head off to rescue him. Instead of three-minute episodes, Season
3 consisted of only 5 episodes that were 12 minutes each. But that’s not the
issue I have with this stretch of the show. Instead, my issue with Season 3 is
that I feel that it kind of veered a bit too much into comedic territory. Now
for the record, that’s not really a bad thing because really that’s basically
what ‘Star Wars’ should be; a fun but also light-hearted space adventure. But
the thing about this ‘Clone Wars’ series is that there wasn’t really a lot of ‘comedic’
moments in the first two seasons of the show and if there was, they were fairly
subtle in their execution. In Season 3, these moments are much prevalent and I
feel that this kind of doesn’t gel too well with the overall tone of the first
two seasons. But that’s only a minor complaint as the 2-D ‘Clone Wars’ series
is truly one of the finest animated series of its time, as its great animation
and writing do a phenomenal job at capturing the same atmosphere as the films
they are based around.
Overall Series
Rating: 4.5/5
STAR WARS: THE CLONE WARS (2008-2014)
(Disclaimer:
Unfortunately due to a lack of time, this ‘review’ will not be covering the
entire series. But like what I said in the intro in regards to the other major ‘Star
Wars’ series, I promise that I’ll try to get around to finishing this series in
the future. But for now I can only cover the first two seasons of the show.)
Three years after ‘Clone Wars’ ended, a new ‘Clone Wars’
series made its debut in the form of ‘The Clone Wars’, this series created by
George Lucas himself and supervised by animation director Dave Filoni. This
time, it was a 3-D animated series instead of the traditional 2-D animation but
overall the same general idea of the ’03 series still remains. Namely, the fact
that it maintains a generally broad focus on the ‘Star Wars’ universe by
showcasing various events and battles that took place in the three years
between ‘Attack of the Clones’ and ‘Revenge of the Sith’. And of course, like
with the previous show, not all of them primarily revolve around the series’
main characters (e.g. Anakin and Obi-Wan). Like the ’03 series, this series
does a great job at expanding upon the ‘Star Wars’ universe and is not limited
to just being set on just a few planets and focusing only on characters like
Anakin and Obi-Wan. Now technically speaking, Anakin and Obi-Wan are still the
main characters but there are literally some episodes where they don’t appear
at all or at the very least only make a small cameo. This allows for some
characters that didn’t really play that big a role in the films, namely most of
the members of the Jedi Council, to have more substantial roles in the series,
even if most of the time it’s just for a few episodes at a time.
Now the series actually first got started with a theatrical
release in 2008, simply titled ‘Star Wars: The Clone Wars’, in which Anakin and
his new Padawan Ahsoka Tano set out on a mission to rescue the kidnapped son of
Jabba the Hutt. Originally meant to be the first four episodes of the series,
these four episodes were then merged into a feature film after George Lucas had
suggested that it’d be good enough for a theatrical release. However, when the
film was released, it got heavily bashed by critics, getting even worse reviews
than the prequels. And to be perfectly frank, they’re pretty right in that
regard. This is basically just a TV movie; heck, the first 20 minutes or so of
the film has nothing to do with the overall ‘plot’ of the film. It’s just that
this is where Anakin is introduced to Ahsoka so obviously it needed to be in
there just because it was necessary. The animation during the action sequences
is fine enough but when the film shifts to non-action sequences, it does kind
of drop a bit in quality. Overall, I’m not really as critical on the film
compared to most but at the same time, it really shouldn’t have been a feature
film as it’s much more in line with a TV movie in regards to its execution.
Even Filoni has admitted that he wasn’t happy with the final product. As is,
this film is perfectly fine for kids as it is technically geared towards them.
Adults, on the other hand, are more than likely not to get a lot out of this
film.
(Rating: 2/5)
Thankfully the series has turned out much better based on
the first two seasons of the show that I’ve watched so far. The series may
still be geared towards kids but there’s much more for adults to enjoy here,
namely stronger writing and well-developed characters. That and I’ve been told
that it does get a little darker in later seasons, which sounds interesting. Most
of the episodes are generally stand-alone stories but there are some instances
where there are a few small story arcs like the ‘Malevolence’ and ‘Ryloth’ ‘trilogies’.
There wasn’t really much of an overarching theme in Season 1 but Season 2 is
based more around the bounty hunters of the universe, even including an appearance
by the perennial fan-favorite, Boba Fett. Overall, this may seem like the series
is rather unfocused in regards to story but like I said before, I do like that
this series isn’t just focused on only a few characters when you have a
universe as big as ‘Star Wars’. Though with that said, it’s kind of annoying
that the episodes aren’t actually in chronological order in regards to the
order in which they originally aired. One episode in Season 1 literally takes
place before the events of the film and yet it was like the 16th
episode that aired on TV. Overall, the animation is much better here than it is
in the film. I mean technically speaking it’s the same style of animation that
a lot of critics of the film found to be ‘wooden’ but I feel that it’s much
more fitting for a TV series instead of a feature film.
One of the great advantages of this series is that it does
improve on some of the shortcomings of the prequels. For example, the overall ‘brotherly’
relationship between Anakin and Obi-Wan is much more defined. Not only that,
but arguably the series’ greatest advantage is that it has the best Anakin to
date in regards to film and TV appearances. As I stated last week, I’m not as critical
on Hayden Christensen’s performance as Anakin in the prequels as most people are.
But with that said, Matt Lanter deserves a lot of credit for giving the ‘Clone
Wars’ version of Anakin much more personality, something the character was
sorely lacking in the prequels. The ‘Master-Student’ relationship between Anakin
and Ahsoka is also pretty solid, especially due to the fact that Ahsoka
generally has the same ‘brash’ nature of her master (note: I’m aware that some
of her best moments occur in the later seasons, particularly Season 5). One of
the other things I really like about this show is that it actually takes time
to give some personality to the Clone Troopers. Of course, because these are ‘Clones’
that are easily mass-produced on the planet Kamino, they’re generally meant to
be a rather expendable group of characters. But in ‘The Clone Wars’, there are
some episodes, like ‘Rookies’, ‘The Hidden Enemy’, ‘Innocents of Ryloth’, and ‘The
Deserter’, that are directly focused on certain Clone squadrons/characters. And
quite frankly those are some of my favorite episodes of the series as they
really did manage to give humanity to these generally dispensable characters.
Even more impressive is the fact that they’re all voiced by the same actor, Dee
Bradley Baker, who somehow manages to differentiate between them all.
So like I mentioned earlier, I haven’t able to watch the
entire series in time for this review. And from what I’ve read online, some of
the series’ best episodes are from the later seasons. But as is, the first two
seasons of ‘The Clone Wars’ are still pretty damn good. I actually did watch
the first season when it first aired on TV in 2008 but then I kind of lost
interest and didn’t watch it after that. But after re-watching the first season
again, as well as watching the second season for the first time, ultimately I
must say that ‘The Clone Wars’ is a really nice addition to the ‘Star Wars’
franchise, even if the series’ feature film adaptation didn’t really help it
get off on the right foot. The animation may not be the absolute best when it
comes to animated series, but it works pretty well as is, especially in regards
to the series’ action sequences. Like its 2-D animated predecessor, it does a
really nice job of expanding upon the ‘Star Wars’ universe while also improving
on some of the shortcomings of the prequel trilogy, namely featuring a much
stronger Anakin and for giving personality to the typically expandable Clone
characters. I’m not going to compare either of these two ‘Clone Wars’ series
because they’re both pretty damn good. And if you want to check them out for
yourselves, the ’03 series is on YouTube and the ’08 series is on Netflix,
including a special 6th season that was released exclusively to
Netflix after the series was, in the minds of many fans, prematurely canceled
following the acquisition of Lucasfilm by Disney.
Overall Rating based
on First Two Seasons: 4.5/5
So those are my reviews of both of the ‘Clone Wars’ series.
Again I apologize for this post being rather incomplete due to me not having
watched the entirety of the ’08 series, but I promise that I’ll try to get
around to finishing this series (as well as looking at the other major ‘Star Wars’
animated series) in the future. As for now, check back next week for the final
post of ‘Star Wars Month’ in which I list my Top 10 personal favorite ‘Star
Wars’ video games.
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