In honor of the coming The Clone Wars(which I will see at the premiere, see my previous blog: http://blogs.starwars.com/cc-421/17), I decided to rewatch the original Clone Wars microseries. Although George has his name on it, a lot of the credit to this series goes to Genndy Tartakovsky( the dude who brought you Samurai Jack) and Henry Gilroy (who is working on The Clone Wars). For the sake of this review, I will treat the whole series as one movie.

To start off, Clone Wars is heavily action-based. That does not mean it is bad. The imagination conjured up in these battles are astounding. Tartakovsky and his team, large fans of Star Wars, sat around and had these discussions of "Wouldn't it be cool if...?". So we get, lots of exposure to minor characters or stuff, we as fans would like to see, like Mace Windu literally take on a whole army with no lightsaber (no joke) or a battle underwater with Kit Fisto (who still only gets one line of dialogue in the series). There are also many references to the original trilogy such as Anakin having a vision much like Luke did in The Empire Strikes Back. Or simple lines such as "I have you now" or "Impressive. Most impressive."

New characters are also introduced such as Asajj Ventress, a cold hearted wannabe Sith, who eventually gets killed(?) by Anakin, but she shows up for The Clone Wars, so I'm confused? Nevermind. We also see Durge, some thing that's covered in veins (who apparently is also showing up in The Clone Wars). And most notable, General Grevious, in his first appearance, who kicks major tail in this series (apparently not in Revenge of the Sith though...) and we also learn how he gets his cough (Mace Windu crushes him; I can totally imagine Sam Jackson doing that. Awesome.)

Really, this series, in a short amount of time (the whole series tops over two hours), manages to strike a balance between action, canny references (too much is never good), and to some extent, plot development, as Volume 1 sort of dwindles after Attack of the Clones, and Volume 2 leads up right to Revenge of the Sith. The producers were given liberty to make up their own story by George to set up for Revenge of the Sith, as this is an engrossing aspect of the series. Of course the big things, like the plot and where the characters are, are big, but the little things are awesome too, notably Grevious' cough, or why Anakin is wearing that glove or even why Palpatine sent Anakin and Obi-Wan to Nelvaan (so they could come rescue him and kill Count Dooku and yadda yadda yadda).

There are some detractions though, owing mostly to the fact that most of the episodes were only three minutes long. Although the no dialogue thing is OK with me, the clones were really faceless except for the commanders. While on Munillist, when the ARC troopers get shot down, the troopers are just standing there, not even moving around and the pilot is simply going about as usual business. But, that hardly means anything as they are clones, but as ARC troopers, weren't they supposed to be better in some way, like personality? Hopefully, The Clone Wars will improve on that. Another problem I have is the mediocre music playing. Some of the music is John Williams' but some of it is the same music from the films but replayed like some crappy .midi file. You would think that as a Lucasfilm production, they would be able to secure the real music.

But, I'm whining right now. The only problem with this series is its limited run ( as a microseries). The Clone Wars was mainly produced to expand on Clone Wars and provide more stories to tell during the Clone Wars (the actual war). It will be interesting to see how this series meshes with the new one. However, in the media and such, and sometimes even in the fanbase, when discussion comes up of the new The Clone Wars movie, talk rarely comes up of the original Clone Wars series. This series does deserve more recognition, even from George. It helped build the base for all this excitement right now. When The Clone Wars movie and series eventually end, and I want to watch it all over again, I will always definitely start with this series.

Score: .5
(I can't give fives forever.)