Spoilers and nerdular nerdence ahead!!!!
In case you avoid everything Star Wars, the Clone Wars go like this: Stuff happened between episodes 2 and 3. The Clone Wars was a throw away line in the original movie that was suppose to give texture to the world without having to show it. Now it's a storyline with weird-face cartoon characters! The wars are about the Jedi leading the cloned storm troopers into battle against the planets who are breaking away from the corrupt, lazy, stupid republic. Cartoon Network showed it in small intervals but the dvds edits it into two movies.
I didn't watch these cartoons when they first aired, partly because I don't watch that much tv, but partly because I didn't really cared. The character models looked too anime for me. Also, I thought the second episode was worse then the first. I wasn't looking forward to seeing those characters again. Another problem was that my love of the original trilogy has diminished.
I could blame the lameness of the newer episodes, but it actually started after that stupid "Jedi" as a religion thing. I know there will always be rabid fans that become so obsessed that they try to take over a franchise or something for themselves, but this was one of the earliest mainstream examples. And a lot of rabid fans just make websites or blogs that nobody ever reads, so Star Wars is just too popular for it's own good.
Anyway, the story picks up when some storm troopers go around blowing stuff up. The whole first episode of this series must have been really boring, because it's nothing but storm troopers doing not interesting stuff. I don't even remember why, but they were probably fighting the seperatists. At some poin, Count Dooku shows up and fights a female robot(ish?) sith-wannabe. Who is she? Who cares! Star Wars is not really a movie franchise, but a video game franchise. The canon movies are just long cut scenes. Female robotish sith-wannabe is just the big boss of the first Clone War DVD. She actually has more back story then Darth Maul, even though he had the cooler lightsabre fight.
Obi and Annakin fight in the wars. Obi leads some of the storm troopers, but he doesn't get a lot of screen time early on. He would have gotten in the way of the explosions with his, pffft!, character. Annakin says good bye to his secret wife (Padme looks hilarious, by the way) and goes to a boring space battle. Oh, and he still has a robot hand. I wasn't really paying attention so I thought the robot hand was the female sith-wannabe because they kept showing the hand alone pushing buttons. Annakin disobeys Obi at some poin because he's a one-dimensional character. When story boarding episodes 2 and 3, I bet the "Annakin disobeys Obi Won" card got used a lot.
Padme at some poin gets to go to a planet and blow up stuff, for some reason I forget. I think they just wanted to have her wearing her skin tight suit so cartoon nerds can... She at one poin gets C3PO to walk right into an ambush so she can find out where some invisible robots are. Maybe Lucas should make a sitcom called, "Everybody Hates C3PO."
Mace Windu also does stuff, and the notable thing about him is that he looks like he's 80 years old. Nice wrinkles, mutha!
By the end of the first DVD, Annakin defeats the boss and we get to see the new one. General Grievous is the white robot thing that showed up halfway through the third episode. Here he's portrayed as the one thing that turns the war in favor of the separtists. Grievous is supposedly such a great lightsabre warrior that he can beat 5 Jedis at one time. Why? Because he's a boss that comes after the female sith-wannabe, duh. He's got to be a harder boss, even if he lacks The Force.
His backstory? Bosses don't need no stinkin' backstories!
The lame part of the whole Grievus thing is that he's so unstoppable in The Clone Wars yet Obi Won cuts him down so quickly in Episode 3 that I don't know why he was even necessary. Oh right. He was necessary for Legos Star Wars, duh.
The second dvd ends with the eeevil Palpatine being kidnapped by Grievous. By the way, why does Obi defeat Grievous so easily while the female whatever and some other Jedis have such problems with him? Was his Dragonball Z power level just higher then most? Did Lucas intend for the human male to be the only one capable of stopping a character who's simply an apprentice of Count Dooku? Anyway, Palpatine is really annoying throughout the two dvds. He acts as calm as the Discwold's Vetinari, which should tip the dumb Jedi off at some poin.
Oh, and at some poin Annakin does something with a bunch of mutantized blue people that is suppose to be similar to the Jedi trials. And there's something about the secret Jedi temple being almost destroyed. And Padme has the biggest eyes in the world. But none of that is really interesting.
The thing that stands out about this series is how unimportant it is. Since there is very little character scenes and there's no backstory provided for General Grievous (nor Count Dooku, who never got a proper amount of screen time), you don't miss a thing if you skip it. Oh, unless you wanted to know why C3PO turned gold. There's a weird scene when C3PO strips to show his new body to Annakin and Padme, and the camera gets a good look at him. Let's move on.
The animation was better then I was expecting. I still hate the anime-inspired character designs, but the animation was good. The ships remind me of the 3d work that Futurama did, which I always liked. It's stuff like that that makes me wish I took a computer animation class even though I can't draw well.
The voices did a good job of imitating the live action counterparts, with the exception of Annakin and Padme. They both that a weird twang at times that reminded me of Lu Anne from King of the Hill.
Wow, that was far nerdier then I intended. Anyway, although it probably looks like I was bitching, I just meant to poke fun at the Clone Wars. It's an ok waste of time and the animation is worth a look.
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