Over the summer, I began watching Star Wars: Clone Wars in chronological order. I took a brief hiatus after beginning season five due to my last semester of school being particularly demanding. Since The Force Awakens, I have been living in a Star Wars trash compactor catching up on the “new” canon, so I have just finished the series and felt like posting some thoughts about it.
I can’t figure out why they created and aired these episodes in the order that they did because watching them in airing order really does not make any sense. There’s nothing at the beginning of the episodes to indicate the time period, so without that list, watching in airing order, I feel like I’d have been pretty confused. For example: the season finale for season one (1×22) has Ziro the Hutt being freed from prison. The episode chronologically leading up to this is 3×08, which shows Hutt families planning to break him out. The one after it is about tracking him down. So the episode order is 3×08, 1×22, 3×09. This was poorly planned. They use all manner of weird accents for aliens which sort of takes me out of the universe at times. Random French, Scottish, Russian, etc. accents. Everywhere.
There were some really good episodes, but most of them were actually, in my opinion, pretty boring. I like the episodes that focus on Jedi lore the best. At the same time, I hate that the Jedi are even participating in the war, since it’s hardly peacekeeping. I think it says a lot about the corruption of the Jedi Order that they are totally cool commanding an army of slave labor. The clones have no autonomy and the Jedi don’t question this at all, they just go with it. As much as the clones annoy me, I feel a bit bad for them because they don’t get a choice. And the Jedi are blind to it like they are blind to damn near everything else. While a few clones are just “good guys”, they still turn on their Jedi “friends” in the end and it just doesn’t make much sense to me to waste so much time getting to know their fake personalities. I really hated episodes about them because I found them to be extremely boring. My favorite episodes were the Mortis story arc from season three (“Overlords” – “Altar of Mortis” – “Ghosts of Mortis”) and the last three episodes of season six focusing on Yoda (“Voices” – “Destiny” – “Sacrifice”).
About midway through season three, the budget must have increased because the animation became smoother/less blocky and there were better stories. When they aged Ahsoka up a little, they fixed her wonky too long/slightly off proportion upper arm issue that bothered me. Due to her growing up a bit, Ahsoka became sassier and less annoying — Anakin’s habits rubbing off on her, no doubt, but they never bothered to explain her sudden use of dual lightsabers. Also, I have a hard time believing Darth Vader would just forget about her after she left the Order. Anakin doesn’t seem to dwell on it too much when it seems like he should’ve felt something about her leaving. I hope this is addressed in Rebels at some point.
One thing that really got on my nerves, was that every other episode centered around an indigenous people who are pacifists and wanted to remain neutral through the conflict between the Republic and the Separatists only to have to side with the Republic in the end. Like, I get it. The Separatists are the bad guys, but the Republic brought them to these worlds in the first place. The Republic goes to a world, tries to convince them to join forces or the Separatists will oppress and/or kill them, then the Separatists show up because they’re chasing Republic representatives. And apparently the only capable dignitary is Padmé because they send her literally everywhere. Somehow, Jar Jar is far more annoying in Clone Wars than he ever was in any film and I say that as someone who isn’t actually that bothered by him. I don’t care how they try to explain it, it makes no god damned sense that Darth Maul survived BEING CUT IN HALF and apparently LANDING IN GARBAGE. He wants revenge on Obi-Wan for “taking his legs”, but I think it’s more like for taking his butt. Cause he doesn’t have one now. No butt. That concerns me more than it should and seems like a great place to leave off.
I’d rate the series 3 out of 5 stars overall.
Fourth-Moon.com 