Regarding Clone Wars

(Originally Written for Jedi News with sadly more typos than I'd have liked.)

I really like the Clone Wars.

 

When the pilot film was coming out, my reaction was less than thrilled. We needed a real Star Wars on the big screen, I thought. I was going to skip it, but my wife won free tickets to the sneak preview, so I decided to check it out.

It was a lot better than I expected it to be, but I was turned off by the animation. Plus, it was the pilot to a kid’s show I had no intention of following. Oh, how I regret that decision now. Fast forward a few years of rave reviews, and I decided to catch the Season 4 recap last May, and I got hooked. I still haven’t been able to see any previous seasons (except for Bombad Jedi).

The animation still bothers me, but that’s just my preference. The character designs seem much better suited for traditional animation and look weird to me in CG. That being said, what they do with atmosphere and sets is just breathtaking.

It’s also jarring when some of the character we know from the movie don’t sound like themselves, but that’s a casualty of a show like this and, for the most part, it’s not too bad.

Those are really the only nitpicks I have about the show in general. Seriously, aside from that, it’s good old-fashioned Star Wars fun.

It has funny episodes for the younger and sillier fans, dark and gritty tales for the older EU people, and stuff in-between for the rest of us. It introduced us to some great new characters such as Hondo Ohnaka, the Jack Sparrow of space; Cad Bane, the Lee-Marvin-meets-Peter-Lorre gunslinger and bounty hunter extraordinaire; And, of course, the padawan of Skywalker herself, Ahsoka Tano, who has really come into her own from her humble beginnings in the pilot.

This show is just…a perfect Star Wars show.

This column mostly focuses on the films, but I wanted to just take this time as Season 5 ends to gush a little bit on one of the few shows today that I actually still make it a point to watch each week. The reason? Well, Season 6’s fate is still uncertain, and there’s been rumors flying around the net that Disney isn’t too fond of it. Well, I’m not one for rumor milling, but after the “postponement” of the Clones and Sith 3D releases, it doesn’t hurt to take precautions.

I love Clone Wars. If you do too, I urge you to let the people in charge of its future know. There are several web petitions out there, but there’s something to be said for writing an old-fashioned letter to Disney and Bob Iger (and perhaps Lucasfilm as well, but they’re not the main focus).

We may be approaching the canonical end of the Clone Wars, but there are still stories to tell.