A Review of Star Wars: Clone Wars - Season 1

When Episode I came out, like many people, I realized that George Lucas had kinda lost the magic of the original trilogy. I thought it was still pretty good as a sci-fi movie, but would never meet up to the originals. Episode II was even worse. George seemed to want to piss off as many of his die-hard fans as possible or something, abandoning plots that we had all accepted, left and right. The fate of Episode III seemed fairly simple to foresee - George simply left himself with way too much to have to accomplish in one movie. Think about it - you have to go from the shiny, Jedi-run prestige of Episode II to the general “the universe is falling apart” state at the beginning of “A New Hope.” If he could pull it off, it will be the best movie of all time - but that seems unlikely if you look at his recent track record. THX was a long time ago, George - get over it. No way you can do it. My faith is dwindling.

Of late, however, it seems that George has gotten his senses back (at least a bit). He realized, “Shit! I gotta accomplish a LOT in the next movie.... I mean I have to go from the shiny, Jedi- run prestige of Episode II to the general ‘the universe is falling apart’ state at the beginning of ‘A New Hope.’” Thus, Star Wars: Clone Wars was born.

Yes, this animated series takes off where Episode II left off, with the ominous sounds of the Empire starting to roll on in. The best part of the series is so simple, it’s brilliant: they cut out the bullshit. I mean, that’s what you gotta do when you make every “chapter” only 3-4 minutes long. It’s just some great battles and much needed character development that was lacking in the last movie. The bullshit is cut out to the point that some of the chapters don’t even have dialogue - just people doing things, and things getting whomped/blowed-up. In other words, not only does this Clone Wars cartoon mini-series saver George the trouble of having to make Episode III a 16-hour-long movie, it has restored my faith in this pre-quel trilogy. Now that the faith thing has been re-established, let’s get to the cool things getting blowed-up!

While all the action was really cool, there were 2 instances of battling that stood out to me as being particularly awesome, and on their own give reasons to watch this thing. The first being a war fought on Mon Calamari (see: Squid-heads and Admiral Ackbar) underwater! Not only that, but a Jedi Knight fought in it! His name’s Fisto or something...


The overly awesome part of this is not only did he use the lightsaber underwater (which I had never before seen, and therefore looked very cool), he used a wide array of Force powers, all of which were very different looking because of the water effects. Actually, in pretty much all the fights with Jedi/Sith they’re letting themselves use a whole lotta powers we’ve only ever read about. It’s a very awesome time to be a Jedi, I guess. Also making that particular battle awesome is the Mon Calamari fighting the Squid-heads on the backs of giant killer-eels. Go Ackbar!

Highlight #2 comes in the form of something I never thought I would see in anything Star Wars related. There were always references to the full story of SW being an epic, similar to medieval tales and whatnot. Now that circle is complete. There’s a HUGE battle that is decided by nothing less than a gigantic joust!


Seen here is the Clone army in joust position riding the always classic speeder bikes towards their foes (their foes being black robots resembling IG-88 on black speeder bikes... it’s a very neat image). Dude in the front there with the brown cape is none other than General Obi-Wan Kenobi himself. This sequence is really, really fast (I mean, they ARE on speeder bikes! Remember them from ROTJ? They’re fast.), and full of non-stop action - people getting run through, helmets getting torn off, lightsabers coming out, etc. All in all, a very, VERY good battle that could only really be done in this series, as it would look really hokey in live- action.

As for the character building, we see lots of it in this series. For one, as mentioned, we finally get to see Obi-Wan as a general, out there commanding the troops and kicking lots of ass. He blows a lot of crap up himself. Dooku is around, and he’s making more of a name for himself, being the very likable, swarthy, being-nice-to-you-but-kill-you-with-a-glance type. Anakin is more gun-ho, becoming less of a whiney douchebag and more the Anakin that could become Darth Vader (and he’s not played by Hayden Christenson... coincidence? I think not!). I think he’s actually played by George’s son, but I’m not sure... his last name is Lucas anyways, so that seems like an indicator.

Speaking of the voice actors, most of them aren’t too shabby. The guy doing Obi-Wan’s voice sounds quite a bit like Ewen McGregor doing his Alec Guinness impression, so it works. Same with the guy doing Dooku’s voice. I actually thought it was the 2 actual actors doing both those voices, but alas it is not. Oh well - it still works. The only actor who stuck around for the cartoon? Thus far the only man to stay involved in everything with the name “Star Wars” attached to it: Anthony Daniels returns to play C3P0. It MIGHT be Kenny Baker doing the whistles and clicks of R2, but I doubt it. They probably replaced the little guy with a machine. It’s just nature’s way, I suppose. The only real problem I had in the line of voices was that of Palpatine. He just sounds too grizzled and kookie. I dunno what it is, but it’s really not right. The same guy does the voice of Sidious (which makes sense... if you don’t understand that, just wait for the next movie) and he does a good job for that, but his Palpatine is lacking. Criticism!

All in all, I really liked this series. It filled in a lot of the holes that would be quite hard to fill in when the movie comes out. And it’s only the first season! It ended on a cliffhanger and everything. Yeah, I’m at least PRETTY sure that Anakin wins, but there’s a possibility that he might not. That would be a twist standard of modern George. Yes, there’s another season coming out very soon. Look for it on Teletoon or something, or just download it like I did. It helps fill that Star Wars fix, so you don’t wear out yer copies of the original trilogy watching them over and over again (I’m speaking from experience here). You saved yerself with this one Georgey-boy. Now don’t blow it with Episode III, or you’ll have to answer to the mighty and awesome power of a scathing article on here!

Yes, I’m fairly certain that George Lucas reads this site. Thoroughly. At least once a day.

***UPDATE!!!***

Okay, so it turns out the file I received with all the Clone Wars episodes was improperly titled! Yes! It had indicated that it was the whole first season - but it turns out it was only half! It goes to 20, not 10! And the last 10 are quite good indeed! Way more characters get into the mix, there's some really great battles (including some wicked lightsabre battles). However, so as to not clutter an already an already "finished" article, I'll just mention 2 more highlights I found in the last 10 chapters.



Cartoon Samuel L. kicks loads of ass in this series. Quite literally. LOADS! See all that black stuff surrounding him in that picture up there? That's thousands of quite mean and ill-tempered droids (the blueish ones from Episode II). Basically in that picture, he's blowing them all away with a gesture. The force is strong with this one. He goes hand to hand with the droids, literally beating them to death with his own two hands. There's also a weird little kid in this chapter who seems to have befriended Mace Windu randomly... I have no idea why he's there... It'd be neat if it was Boba Fett! Man... Only time will tell though, as that's all we get from it. Dang.



Perhaps one of the coolest lightsabre battles in the series is this one with "General Grievence" - a droid. Huh? A Droid using lightsabres?? How can this be?!? I dunno either, but it's really neat - and he can use up to 3 (at least that we've seen) at a time, and he uses them quite savagely against the Jedi - he took out at least 5 or 6... he kicks a load of ass too... he should team up with Sam L. Anyways, the weird thing about this is: a) how can a droid use lightsabres effectively? b) where'd he get those lightsabres? and c) they are clearly JEDI lightsabres (ie, not the red ones the Sith use) - so whaddup with dat?! However, that IS the season finale (i'm certain of it this time!) and that's all we're allowed to know. We have to guess until we see the new ones... or until I tell you, you lazy, lazy nerf-herder.