Wednesday, November 8, 2017

The Clones Wars is Better Than The Prequels

As promised for this Sci-Fi Month, I'm about to talk about my favorite Sci-Fi franchise, STAR WARS!

*Queue the crawl opening music*

You all know that I love me some Star Wars...and if you don't, well you do now! The prequels came out when I was a kid, and I liked them -- mostly because I thought Hayden Christensen was dreamy (DON'T JUDGE ME!!). I also am a person that likes to go back to the source material so I got really into the original trilogy, and I STILL have a massive crush on Luke, not Mark Hamill, LUKE SKYWALKER. I still thinks it holds up, but I have to admit there are A LOT of problems with the prequels. But you know what fills a lot of holes that those movies left? The Clone Wars Cartoon! So that's what I'm talking about today.

I was kinda iffy on The Clone Wars cartoon when it first came out. It was at a time when CGI was still new and clunky that I just wasn't into it. So my first time viewing it was actually last year! I got over my issues with the animation style because the stories this series told were just way more interesting. We barely get to see what happens in The Clone Wars from the prequel movies, even though it's a major plot point. It's crazy to me that if it wasn't because of this long form cartoon we wouldn't have seen what this actually entailed!

I think this series just does a better job of story telling. We get a lot more about how Anakin is slowly turning his back on the Jedi way. There's a really interesting 3-part episode on the planet Mortis that I think really hammers in why he ends up where he does. The series also introduces us to Ahsoka Tano, Anakin's padawan. Ahsoka is such a cool character, and the Jedi Council really does her wrong in the end. I think part of that is another pin in Anakin's distrust of the organization he is a part of, but we never get to see her in the prequels!

I feel like we barely get to know the Clones in the movies, but this series does a really good job of showing how even though they are all clones they have different identities and personalities. I re-watched Revenge of The Sith after watching this series and man did it hurt my heart when order 66 was activated. Especially with the scenes with Cody and Obi-Wan, they were best buds!

In the third film of the prequel trilogy Padme's character gets reduced to a woman who just sits around being pregnant, and that made me so angry! She was such a cool character in the first two movies, and we see a lot more from her in this cartoon that it's just insulting to her character in that final film. Padme wouldn't just be sitting around, she would be fighting the good fight, and this always bothered me.

Not every episode is a hit in this series. They are short 20ish minutes long, but there are a lot of episodes and there are definitely some filler episodes. But there are also some really awesome episodes that get to the heart of the Star Wars story. Also the cartoon was cancelled so it doesn't really end which is unfortunate.

I feel like you shouldn't HAVE to consume additional media so that a movie makes more sense. Super fans like me will always seek out the books and if there are cartoons we are definitely going to watch them, but a casual fan might not do the same thing. So saying you have to watch The Clone Wars to understand the prequels is just not fair. I think the cartoon is just a better way of telling the story, and I think maybe the prequels should have just starting with the clone wars and how Anakin turned to the dark side, not starting with Anakin's story as a young boy. 

Hey, Star Wars fans did you watch The Clone Wars? What did you think about it? 

Happy Reads Everyone!