- I sometimes wonder exactly how bad the Star Wars prequel trilogy really is. It certainly has a reputation for being awful, and I don't remember liking the series as a whole all that much. Still, I occasionally imagine that it would be interesting to see them again with the perspective gained by over a decade of time and the arrival of multiple new Star Wars movies, good and evil alike. But then I decided to just watch Star Wars: The Clone Wars instead, which is an animated feature set between Attack of the Clones and Return of the Sith. Let's just say the bar was low enough that I was relatively impressed.
- In The Clone Wars, Anakin Skywalker (Matt Lanter) and Obi-Wan Kenobi (James Arnold Taylor) team up to battle droid armies and evil Sith lords (Christopher Lee, Ian Abercrombie, Nika Futterman) with the assistance of a rebellious padawan named Ahsoka (Ashley Eckstein) and some old friends (Samuel L. Jackson, Tom Kane, Anthony Daniels). Gradually, the action shifts to rescuing the darling little son of Jabba the Hutt (Kevin Michael Richardson), and Padmé Amidala even shows up for an abbreviated adventure infiltrating the lair of the oddly flamboyant Ziro the Hutt (Corey Burton).
- While nobody would mistake The Clone Wars for high art, it does improve upon what I remember of the prequel trilogy in a few respects. For one thing, the interactions between Obi-Wan and Anakin are compelling and natural instead of perfunctory and dull. Likewise, Anakin and Padmé manage to convey more genuine emotion than either did in the live-action movies. The animation is decent enough, the voice acting is quite strong, and the plot is no stupider than something George Lucas might have written. There are a few too many droid battles and a little too much baby Hutt, but the fact is that I enjoyed this cartoon version of Star Wars enough that I'll be checking out the TV series it spawned. We'll put this one in the 'win' column.
- Directed by Dave Filoni, who also directed some episodes of Avatar: The Last Airbender.
