by Benton Sartore
Star Wars The Clone Wars
Cartoon Network
I’m a little ashamed to say how much I’m enjoying the new Star Wars: Clone Wars cartoon series.
My expectations for it were the lowest of the low; I had forced myself to sit through the abomination of a movie when it was released in theaters and found myself staring at my cell phone clock 10 minutes in. The plot was nonsensical and the action continued in one long, hour-and-a-half stream, as though George Lucas had said, “Make sure there’s an explosion every three minutes, so people keep paying attention!” I went in as a Star Wars fan saying, “Please, please, let me find one thing that makes this whole thing worthwhile,” and found nothing. The entire experience was demoralizing, a gaudy toy commercial with no redeeming value, a filler story between Episodes 2 and 3 that didn’t need to be told.
I couldn’t tell you what made me plop down a few dollars into iTunes to watch the first two episodes of Clone Wars. (On a side note, it is very mean to charge people to download an episode through iTunes, then post streaming episodes for free on your own Web site a few days later.) Hope? Optimism? Naivete?
If you’re looking for a thought-provoking story, deep rumination on the Force, or political intrigue, this is not the show for you, but I must confess I find the show has something of an innocent charm. I found the character of Anakin Skywalker to be as gritty and irritating as sand, but I must confess he is handled with some level of maturity in the new series. It helps that the writers are not overdoing the Darth Vader foreshadowing, as some of the novel writers have done. Indeed, it’s a strange day when I can find myself identifying with Anakin and the choices he makes.
Perhaps the biggest change from the movies is that Anakin now has an apprentice, a wise-cracking teenage girl Togruta alien named Ahsoka Tano. Ahsoka is more or less an audience surrogate, and because she is a young girl who usually makes headstrong and rash decisions, she occasionally grates on my nerves. I must confess that what I like about Ahsoka is that she forces Anakin to play the straight man, which is a dramatic change from his whiny persona in the movies.
What I also appreciate about the show is its willingness to go beyond the Obi-Wan/Anakin/Ahsoka triangle. One episode features an all-clone cast, and another episode heavily features Jedi Master Plo Koon, an orange-skinned Kel Dor who had no lines in the prequels. There are also a few little touches that will appeal to diehard fans. A lot of the planets used as settings are firmly established in the Expanded Universe; Bothan homeworld Bothawui is the site of a large space battle, for example, and one episode takes place on the surface of heretofore unseen Rodia. In the same vein, one episode features Yoda negotiating with the king of Toydaria, and a droid scavenger who nabs R2-D2 is a fat, slobby Trandoshan.
The show still has some flaws, and there are a few things the writers clearly don’t know what to do with. If I had to pick two big problems the show has, the first would be Obi-Wan. He’s constantly written as a wet blanket character for Anakin, and in nearly every scene he appears in, he’s telling Anakin not to do what we all know he’s going to do anyway. He’s nothing like the kind-of fun Obi-Wan portrayed by Ewan McGregor; this Obi-Wan is a scold, which is complicated by the fact that he’s offputtingly perfect. We never see Obi-Wan mess up the way that he does in the movies, and it makes him seem more like a Jedi cipher than an actual realized character.
In the same vein, the show doesn’t really know what to do with an ensemble cast. When an episode focuses on one or two characters, it’s pretty strong; with 22 minutes to fill, keeping a tight focus allows for some snappy writing and well-executed action scenes. When the cast balloons, though, to be about Obi-Wan, Anakin, Padme and R2-D2 all on their own separate adventures (as in the episode “Destroy Malevolence”), it quickly becomes a paint-by-numbers adventure in which you can predict everything in the first five minutes. Obi-Wan faces the bad guys, check. Anakin and Padme have a romance scene, check. Anakin does something unexpected to save the day, check. R2-D2 and C-3PO have some comic slapstick, check.
Overall, though, the show is a light, breezy adventure that I am enjoying and will continue to watch for the foreseeable future. Which will be a long time, as apparently George Lucas wants to do a lot of these cartoons.
Oh yeah, and please, no more Jar Jar Binks. One episode with him was enough.
Official Site – http://www.starwars.com/theclonewars/
Benton Sartore has been reading comic books off and on for 17 years, and playing RPGs for 6. His bookshelf is now full of 1960s Marvel Comics, Batman trades, and Star Wars comics. He is an avid pursuer of webcomics and Star Wars comic books, and plans to spend much of his blogging proselytizing both media, advocating for some of the newest RPG releases, as well as acting as an apologist for the new Clone Wars cartoon (though he does not defend the atrocious movie).
Benton is also an acting editor at In Genre. 
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