Clone Wars Movie becomes Clone Wars TVSeries

The first Star Wars film to see theatres in a little over 3 years was really just a big publicity stunt to draw attention to the proposed animated series on Cartoon Network. The “Movie” tied together the first 3 episodes with the intention of carrying on as a weekly series. IESB.net reports when the show will air:

STAR WARS: THE CLONE WARS, the first weekly television series from Lucasfilm Animation, premieres on Cartoon Network Friday, October 3 at 9 p.m. (ET, PT) with a special one-hour presentation that anchors the Network’s all-new night of fantasy, action and adventure. New series The Secret Saturdays and the current hit Ben 10: Alien Force join STAR WARS: THE CLONE WARS for a night of non-stop adventure, exciting storytelling and innovative animation.

I guess when the writer of the article calls it the first weekly show, they forgot completely about the Droids and Ewoks Adventure Hour that aired weekly on Saturday Mornings. I have both in their entirety on DVD.

At least they are not hiding the fact that Star Wars has been manufactured to appeal to preteens, showcasing it on Cartoon Network in the timeslot best viewed by babysitters while their parents (or anyone over 19) is out having a life.

In any normal network, with such overwhelming criticisms about the whiny character of Ahsoka, the voice tracks would be edited to refine the character. But we know Lucas. The only things he likes to change is who shot first and the eternal fate of force ghosts. Star Wars is gospel, and not much will be altered.

On the lighter side, it seems the first episode to air will pick up right after the movie and will be a Yoda/Dooku episode. This implies that the series will not dwell on Ahsoka. Also, we know that at some point Ahsoka has to go since she wasn’t in Revenge of the Sith. With any luck she will “graduate” and get reassigned or just eatten by a Mynock or something.

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13 thoughts on “Clone Wars Movie becomes Clone Wars TVSeries

  1. The Clone Wars show was always intended to be a ‘new’ animated series. After seeing test footage, George thought it would be great to see it on the big screen so he challenged the production team to create a movie that could be separated into episodes as well.

    The Clone Wars series that aired in 2003 was directed by Genndy Tartakovsky and was created by Cartoon Network. It was originally labeled a ‘micro-series’ because the first ‘season’ consisted of 3 minute episodes that group together to make a single show. There 20 of these in all. After the success of these Cartoon Network upped the ante and the crew made a second season with 15 minute episodes. Both seasons would be later collected into 2 dvd’s.

    The new series has no connection story wise or production wise to the 2003 series. Rodney pointed out that there were prior animated shows based on Star Wars but these also were created by outside production companies and not Lucasfilm. The Clone Wars is the first production that Lucasfilm Animation has created.

    I can’t comment on the new movie aside from I wish they would have used the look that Genndy’s team had established. They had already created toys and statues based on the look so the 3D side had been fleshed out, so to speak. The styling of the new show is OK but I preferred the prior look and feel.

  2. “Sky-Guy” was used twice. Yes my nephew was facing the right way. So was his brother, who loved it. I honestly didn’t think it was as garbage as everyone was saying. I expected to hate it a lot more than I did. Ahsoka’s personality seemed to me to be pretty disrespectful as someone who is supposed to be a Padawan. I didn’t find her “bratty” at all as some people were saying. I just found the writing to be sub-par, even for Star Wars movie standards.

    I loved the animation style, and much of the voice acting was phenomenal, particularly the guy who voiced Obi Wan.

    Nobody is saying it needs to be dark, even though the Original Trilogy was pretty damned dark if you ask me. Kids can enjoy something that is well written. It needn’t feel like it has been dumbed down for anyone, but in all honesty, that’s the impression I was left with. There was much that could have been said about the film that was great (such as the duels and combat) but the writing seemed to have been done by someone who watches too much “That’s So Raven” rather than someone who read, or is capable of reading, the Thrawn trilogy.

    The greater issue here, is that the overall story-arc wasn’t too shabby. The way the story was told was garbage.

  3. After reading the lambasting the movie got here I went to see it expecting to hate it but it wasn’t that bad.

    The new charachter wasn’t as annoying as she was made out to be, I have seen much worse “bratty” characters for sure. I do hope the TV show dosen’t overly focus on her though.

    I only remember “Little Stinky” and “Sky-Guy” being used breifly and not to the point to make me want to gag. Yes, it was aimed at kids but not as bad as the crap Jar-Jar spouted in TPM at all.

    Besides some very bad moments in “The Phantom Menace,” I thought the prequels were good, but then again I never expected them to live up to the classic movies.

    The Cartoon TV show won’t be Batman: The Animated Series or anything but should be watchable. Hopefully the live action show will really reedem the legacy it has the potential if done right and with maturity.

  4. @bishop,

    was your nephew facing the right direction? ;)
    did you see it?
    if i remember correctly “sky-guy” was only used once… big deal.
    my son enjoyed the movie, he enjoyed it so much that he played clone wars at school with his classmates. he was rex. the younger generation will appreciate the prequels a lot more than us “older” folks. just like we did with the original trilogy.
    this star wars tv series doesn’t need to be all dark and shit and all adult, just as long as it’s entertaining. give me jedis, lightsabers and space battles and i’ll be a happy camper.

  5. Man, my 11 year old nephew said it best. When I asked him what he thought he flat out said that “Nothing happened.”

    it was 90 minutes of irrelevance.

    SO much potential wasted. I am sorry but there is no excusing “Sky-Guy”.

  6. They just posted a trailer for the TV show, as opposed to the movie on the Cartoon Network website! You can see it here:
    http://www.cartoonnetwork.com/clonewars/

    Looks pretty good, definitely seems that not all episodes will focus on the Obi-Wan, Anakin, Ahsoka trio. This gives much more scope for including various characters both from the films and not. Also we’ll be able to get a sense of the epic size of the Clone Wars themselves by viewing different battles with different heroes on different planets.

    I’m actually really looking forward to this TV series, way more than I ever was to the “movie”. And I put that in quotation marks because it’s not a movie, it’s just a TV pilot that happened to be released in theatres. If you look at many TV shows, their pilots were often not as good as the rest of the show (there are exceptions of course, like the BSG mini-series). But releasing thisTV pilot into theatres was pretty misleading on the part of Lucasfilm, as many people were expecting a proper Star Wars film from it when in fact its role was a glorified trailer for the TV show.

  7. The titles of the two shows are different. The original is Clone Wars while the new is The Clone Wars. Kinda dumb really.

    I loved the original series because it was made by the people who made Samurai Jack and had a similar style to it. It was much more dramatic than the new one.

    The Clone Wars movie was the worst Star Wars related thing I have ever seen. I haven’t seen the Christmas special or anything, but at least that had the actual cast, not just Dooku and Samuel Jackson for like 1 minute.

  8. All I am saying is that this is taken from that old short story or short series or whatever you want to call it shown on Cartoon Network. As for their being a CG animation series with a new story and new adventures… I will have to wait and see. Forgive me if I seem skeptical.

  9. Cartoon Network has more mature animated series too. There is no reason they had to make this exclusively appeal to 12 year olds.

    and Jason, the “series” you mention was a collection of 4 minute shorts that were shown between episodes. They were collected on DVD to make a 40 minute continuous story, but they were NOT a series.

    This series is new. It’s a CG series (not 2d cell animation) with an entirely new creative team, animation style, and different story.

  10. Cheese and Rice! Can;t people just get over it?? The clone wars TV show is a Cartoon on the Cartoon Network! This is for KIDS!
    All you fanboys will have to wait the live action TV show that is for adults then you can rip that apart as well.

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