Good, this Clone War is
I just finished watching the Star Wars prequels with my son, and I have come to the conclusion that watching the Star Wars: Clone Wars animated series (both volumes) between Episodes II and III is pretty much required. In short, it makes both movies better.
First, if you haven't heard of Clone Wars, the simplest way to describe it is this: It's Star Wars, from the creator of Samurai Jack. I sold somebody on the series last weekend with just that description, no more. It is animated, and the animation style can be a bit off-putting if you're not used to it, but I suggest that you can learn to look past it pretty quickly. The important thing the animation does is let you see armies fighting on a much larger scale than you see in the movies, closer to Return of the King scale. Further, the animation allows the creators to have Jedi do things that would cost Lucas an extra $50 million of computer time and six months of post-production.
And, for the most part, that's what the series is about: Jedi bad-assery. The first series was originally shown as five-minute segments on Cartoon Network, so they're short, they're fast, and they're full of action, as befits a series about a war. They're edited together on the DVD, but the cross-cutting is quite frequent, so it keeps the fast pace. And yet, although the first series adds up to about an hour of content total, it tells us more about Anakin's character than an entire movie's worth of "I hate sand" speeches. He gets in a fight with a Sith that starts out as a kick-ass space fighter battle (and the Sith fan-blade fighter is probably the coolest ship in all the prequels), and ends up as a lightsaber duel in the jungle of Yavin IV that turns positively Crouching Tiger, Hidden Jedi. I will just say this: whoever thought of lightsabers in the rain deserves an award. But we get insight into Anakin's character too -- you get to actually see him as a skilled pilot and capable warrior, and instead of getting smacked down for un-Jedi-like behavior, Obi-Wan and his troops value those instincts, since they save lives. And you get to see the price of that, as fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, and hate leads to a Dark Side Moment much more subtle than what we see in Episodes II or III.
But mostly, as I said, it's about the bad-assery. Mace Windu gets a whole segment devoted to proving that an army of droids against a single Jedi Master isn't a fair fight...it's the droids who are in trouble. Sam Jackson wishes he got to look this cool in the movies. And, of course, even Mace Windu can't out-bad-ass Yoda. Count Dooku gets to throw down pretty effectively, too. And General Grievous, of all people, makes his debut at the very end, looking more bad-ass than a whole box full of Jedi. (Also, watch out for Jedi Shaggy in that scene...he's the Padawan who loses it in "Game over, man!" style.)
After the huge positive response to the first series, Lucas approved a second series, one that related more closely to the events of the movie -- in fact, it's a direct lead-in to Episode III. If you saw Episode III and got the impression that you missed the first 20 minutes, this is where they are. You get to see the attack on Coruscant (with more bad-assery from Mace Windu and Yoda), Grievious's kidnapping of Palpatine (with even still more bad-assery), and you even get a reasonable explanation for why Grievous has that stupid cough in Episode III. For character moments, you get to see Anakin become a Knight, you see his relationship with Obi-Wan go from master-student to friends, and you get to see him being truly heroic and selfless. This is the series that actually made me like Anakin as a character, instead of as a whiny, selfish brat on a power trip.
In short, both series together go a long way toward redeeming Episodes II and III, and I highly recommend that if you own the prequel trilogy, you give these two disks a spot on the shelf right next to them. Naturally, Lucas has announced plans to continue the series. As you can probably guess, they'll be dumping Genndy Tartakovsky, and abandoning the 2-D animation in favor of 3-D, computer-generated, "anime-influenced" animation. I fully expect this to suck, but I'm willing to be pleasantly surprised.
First, if you haven't heard of Clone Wars, the simplest way to describe it is this: It's Star Wars, from the creator of Samurai Jack. I sold somebody on the series last weekend with just that description, no more. It is animated, and the animation style can be a bit off-putting if you're not used to it, but I suggest that you can learn to look past it pretty quickly. The important thing the animation does is let you see armies fighting on a much larger scale than you see in the movies, closer to Return of the King scale. Further, the animation allows the creators to have Jedi do things that would cost Lucas an extra $50 million of computer time and six months of post-production.
And, for the most part, that's what the series is about: Jedi bad-assery. The first series was originally shown as five-minute segments on Cartoon Network, so they're short, they're fast, and they're full of action, as befits a series about a war. They're edited together on the DVD, but the cross-cutting is quite frequent, so it keeps the fast pace. And yet, although the first series adds up to about an hour of content total, it tells us more about Anakin's character than an entire movie's worth of "I hate sand" speeches. He gets in a fight with a Sith that starts out as a kick-ass space fighter battle (and the Sith fan-blade fighter is probably the coolest ship in all the prequels), and ends up as a lightsaber duel in the jungle of Yavin IV that turns positively Crouching Tiger, Hidden Jedi. I will just say this: whoever thought of lightsabers in the rain deserves an award. But we get insight into Anakin's character too -- you get to actually see him as a skilled pilot and capable warrior, and instead of getting smacked down for un-Jedi-like behavior, Obi-Wan and his troops value those instincts, since they save lives. And you get to see the price of that, as fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, and hate leads to a Dark Side Moment much more subtle than what we see in Episodes II or III.
But mostly, as I said, it's about the bad-assery. Mace Windu gets a whole segment devoted to proving that an army of droids against a single Jedi Master isn't a fair fight...it's the droids who are in trouble. Sam Jackson wishes he got to look this cool in the movies. And, of course, even Mace Windu can't out-bad-ass Yoda. Count Dooku gets to throw down pretty effectively, too. And General Grievous, of all people, makes his debut at the very end, looking more bad-ass than a whole box full of Jedi. (Also, watch out for Jedi Shaggy in that scene...he's the Padawan who loses it in "Game over, man!" style.)
After the huge positive response to the first series, Lucas approved a second series, one that related more closely to the events of the movie -- in fact, it's a direct lead-in to Episode III. If you saw Episode III and got the impression that you missed the first 20 minutes, this is where they are. You get to see the attack on Coruscant (with more bad-assery from Mace Windu and Yoda), Grievious's kidnapping of Palpatine (with even still more bad-assery), and you even get a reasonable explanation for why Grievous has that stupid cough in Episode III. For character moments, you get to see Anakin become a Knight, you see his relationship with Obi-Wan go from master-student to friends, and you get to see him being truly heroic and selfless. This is the series that actually made me like Anakin as a character, instead of as a whiny, selfish brat on a power trip.
In short, both series together go a long way toward redeeming Episodes II and III, and I highly recommend that if you own the prequel trilogy, you give these two disks a spot on the shelf right next to them. Naturally, Lucas has announced plans to continue the series. As you can probably guess, they'll be dumping Genndy Tartakovsky, and abandoning the 2-D animation in favor of 3-D, computer-generated, "anime-influenced" animation. I fully expect this to suck, but I'm willing to be pleasantly surprised.