I have no problem with the big, shiny Clone Wars cartoon that ran from 2008-2020. But that series’ success came at the expense of an older Clone Wars show that, having been thrown into Disney’s Great Pit Of Cartoon, is finally going to get the comeback it has long deserved.
On April 2 Disney is adding a bunch of Star Wars projects to its Disney Plus streaming service, and among them are stuff like the Ewoks movies and the Ewoks animated series. But they’re also adding Star Wars: Clone Wars. Not the big one—Star Wars: The Clone Wars—that’s always been there. They’re adding 2003's Star Wars: Clone Wars, a series both created and then drawn by Samurai Jack’s Genndy Tartakovsky, and which has languished unloved—out of print on DVD and unavailable to stream—for over a decade.
It ruled. The show was comprised of a series of short, hyper-focused episodes, each one a vignette depicting one tiny aspect of the larger Clone Wars.
Some are heart-warming, others provide insights into parts of Star Wars that larger projects have never bothered to look. But for the most part, the show was just badass, showing both Jedi and Clone Troopers at the absolute peak of their powers, able to pull off shit that not even George Lucas at his most bombastic would even have dared have them do (or be able to pull off with even half of Tartakovsky’s style).
I could post loads of examples of this, but to keep things short let’s just look at two.
The first: ladies and gentlemen, the Clone Troopers:
And the second, a sequence where Mace Windu does some shit.
Ah, God, it’s so good. I can’t wait to get back to it, since I’ve only been able to relive it in shitty YouTube clips for the longest time. And I’m so glad that, 18 years after its first release, a whole new generation of Star Wars fans—many of whom may never have seen the entirety of this series—will get to experience it.