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Highly Opinionated Essay

Picture this scenario. An animated cartoon series, directed by the creator of a number of successful animated shows, set in the Clone Wars, packed with action and battling, featuring new and old characters alike. What could go wrong?

Where do I start?

Let's look at the guy who was behind it all. , director of shows such as Samurai Jack and the Powerpuff girls. The first is an admittedly enjoyable romp, with almost hypnotic action sequences and fairly cool stylized animation. The second involves small, deformed primary-coloured little girls performing brutal and gratious violence on a variety of creatures. 'nuff said.

Now, Tartakovsky cleary intended to carry on the styles of his previous shows into the cartoon. And this is were it all went wrong. We can accept Samurai Jack chopping up legions of robots because that's what we've come to accept from his titular show. But Mace Windu, decimating a literal army of droids (WITHOUT his lightsaber), when the films quite clearly showed that even two hundred Jedi get their asses largely handed to them by a much smaller amount...no. Just...no. Sure, the kiddies will enjoy it, but any self-respecting fan should at least raise an eyebrow.

I could bitch on about other offending moments (Yoda pushing transports around? So why didn't he get his green arse spaceside and take care of the CIS fleet with the flick of a wrist?) that make a few ridiclous Mary Sues seem realistic and thoughtful in comparison, but I haven't the patience. Let's move on to the animation. Granted, this aspect is more conjectural than most. Some people liked the stylised, angular, vaguely anime-ish character models. Me? Well, to be honest, some of the models are actually not bad, such as Grievous and the clones. But some are just...ugh. Yoda looks like a drug-addicted maniac (which he sometimes did in the film, to be fair) Obi-Wan looks somebody stuck play-doh to his lower jaw while he was asleep, and Dooku's head looks like it was surgically altered to be used as an industrial chopping knife. Seeing Ewan McGregor and Christopher Lee malformed like this is slightly jarring, in my view.

What else is there to moan about? Let's look at the actual episodes themselves. The ones that involve Jedi or Force-users (and that's nearly all of them) usually consist of some dialogue mixed with some action that's over the top, to put it lightly. Some, like the ones involving the ARC troopers, do not require as much suspension of disbelief as the others. Others, like the aforementioned Windu-pwnage episode, feel like someone just spliced Jedi and droids into an episode of Samurai Jack. Which would have not been such a bad thing, if it didn't feel so ludicrous in comparison to the films. There are a few nice touches, such as Anakin's Nelvaan vision and Grievous's badass intro, but they are generally too far and in between.

So, in conclusion, I view this animation as a generally mediocre work, and considering it spawned the recent animated movie, which you should by now know of what sort of calibre that is, I'm not sure what some of the people at Lucasfilm were thinking. Thankfully, Tartovsky is apparently not getting involved with the upcoming series. And if that means no more Jack-aping, I feel that is for the better.