TV Watch: Clone Wars Marathon

Tivo'd and watched the Clone Wars marathon that Cartoon Network aired on Saturday. While I think the main franchise lost it's soul years ago and is now so full of itself that it's in danger of an implosion which could threaten to swallow Venus ... others have managed to avoid the allure of simply using the mythos like it was one long after-school television show designed to sell toys.

For instance, the first Knights Of The Old Republic reminded me why I had any hope for the prequels in the first place, as sadly dashed as they might be.

I had actually avoided Clone Wars at first, due to my intolerance of TPM and AOTC. A co-worker forced me to watch a couple episodes and then it was just innocent negligence that I didn't give it a full on try. So the marathon was a great opportunity to give it a real chance.

Verdict? Didn't love, but really liked it. It neatly sidesteps much of Lucas' mistakes by focusing heavily on the action, which has always been the best part of the movies. It accomplished much better than AOTC did the feeling of a galactic conflict ensuing while still keeping pace with the characters. Comic relief was brief and unintrusive, unlike say, Phantom Menace.

Course Anakin is still a jerk, but I guess that's because his character is a bit of a jerk. He gets a moment of redemption towards the end, but that's fleeting. Anakin is such a missed ball when it comes to juggling this whole epic that it's just unavoidable in any format. He's reckless, he's violent, he's insubordinate, he's irresponsible, he's an egomaniac and he's ... the chosen one? C'mon ... the Jedi need to do their math better.

The Sith come out spotless though. Makes me want to see Grevious on the big screen. The same animation techniques which made Samurai Jack enjoyable work favorably here and on occasion bring out some real character to the scenes. Voice acting and sound effects were top notch. All in all, much more looking forward to more of this than Revenge of the Sith.

But I guess proclaiming that Lucas was a whore probably hinted to that anyway. On a side note, I read that Kevin Smith declared Episode III to be the one that all the haters will enjoy. I actually don't like being called a Star Wars hater. It makes it sound like I wanted Lucas to pillage his own work until there was nothing left but another opportunity to sell children some cheap plastic toys while completely ignoring the actual story, but I really wasn't involved in that decision at all.