Revisiting a Classic:
“Star Wars Vintage: Clone Wars 2D Micro-Series”
(2003 - 2005)
Volume 2
Gendy Tartakovsky drawing for Hotel Transylvania
Dexter’s Laboratory — A series about a genius boy and his secret laboratory which his parents don’t know about but that his sister Deedee regularly trespasses into.
Power Puff Girls - A series about girl superheroes accidentally created in a lab by their professor-father via the ingredients of sugar, spice, everything nice … but also Chemical X.
Samurai Jack - A series about a samurai who gets magically flung into the future by a shapeshifting demon he failed to defeat.
Obi-Wan vs the Durge the Mercenary
Count Dooku taming Asaj Ventress
Asaj fighting Anakin
Windu fighting battle-droids
Luminara and her apprentice Barriss fighting stealth-droids
Kit diving down to battle aqua-droids
General Grievous confronting a group of Jedi.
(Phone Screenshots)
There’s all these sides to Anakin Skywalker—there’s the desert slave boy who was told he was special by a famous Jedi.
Then there’s Anakin the tech-savy creator of C-3PO. The two of them have come along way from their dusty rock slavequarters on Tattooine.
And then there’s Anakin—the young man in love. This screenshot is also poetic in that his unactivated lightsaber is there and ready, just like his passion’s pension for violence.
This is a beautiful scene, almost Arthurian drama-wise like Anakin is joining Camelot’s Roundtable. It is especially touching because he’s just secretly met up with Padme and had an argument with Obi-Wan about the difficulty of his training as a Padawan without Qui-Gon Jin’s guidance.
Anakin’s first apearance as a Jedi Knight, alongside his Master Obi-Wan Kenobi.
I’m not at all sure where Anakin received this scar but it’s romantic of him to visit Padme during the war—as if he’s saying, “I’m going through hard stuff but still thinking of you.” There’s also an interesting far away scene where we see the light to Padme’s house go out … maybe that’s when Luke entered the galaxy.
Anakin leaving on his spiritual trial to save the natives of Nelvan.
Anakin force-choking and killing the last of the Separatist scientists on Nelvan. This was especially badass but Jedi are supposed to be galactic cops and what Anakin did here did not look like an arrest.
The Clone Shock Troopers appearance was a great show of the balance of power. While a lightsaber-wielding opponent like Grievous could be deadly, he could still be overwhelmed by sheer numbers or large machinery.
Sometimes when we see menacing villains, we think their evil and skill is innate—but here we get to see it the result of strenuos training. I like that Dooku is his teacher since he’s famous for being a legendary lightsaber duelist.
The chain of command in the Sith: Sidiois then Dooku, then Grievous … or Asaj Ventress.
One of the lessons Dooku imparts to Grievous is that the secret to defeating the Jedi is surprise, fear, and intimidation which he uses very well when he ambushes Palpatine and Shaak Ti.
There’s not much more surprising than learning the guy you couldnt beat with two arms has secretly had four arms all along.
It probably doesn’t matter but among the few Jedi who survived Grievous’s first attack—Shaak Ti is the only one whose hand Ki-Adi-Mundi holds.
Poor Shaak Ti, always put in the worse scenarios. After watching him slaughter her friends, Grievous is probably the stuff of nightmares to her.
Just when she thought they got away, Grievous seems to defy the laws of gravity and chase down their elevator.
But Shaak Ti is not exactly helpless, she’s a trained Jedi Master able to easily hold her own against a couple staff droids.
Even when battling a large group of staff-wielding droids, Shaak Ti shows superior speed and turna their weapons against them.
Finding more of her friends slain by General Grievous once again, Shaak Ti rushes him in anger.
And yet once again, the young Jedi Master is no match for the superior Grievous.
Never in the movies do we see Yoda this dramatic, he’s always much more reserved. Here it looks like he’s striking a pose and yelling, “Battle stations!”
There’s a video of Samuel L. Jackson talking about his request to George Lucas for a purple lightsaber. Lucas asks why and Jackson says he wants to stand out in a sea of blue and green lightsabers. In an attempt to disuade Jackson, Lucas says a purple lightsaber would require changes to the Star Wars lore, to which Jackson tells him, “Well then somebody should probably tell the lore guy.” Funnily enough, Lucas reveals to Jackson, “I’m the lore guy,” and Jackson says, “Well then sounds like we’re done here then.” I don’t know if it’s a deepfake AI video but I found hilarious and very fitting of the two guys’ personalities … which is probably why Mace Windu’s ship is purple too.
Yoda riding around like Jedi cavalry, swinging his lightsaber was amazing to see as a kid.
Without a doubt, Mace Windu flying around cutting droid-ships in half is ultra-fantastic but …
… Very few moments will be as badass as Master Saesi Tan putting on his helmet and literally jumping into space with his Clone Troopers to hijack a droid-ship.
We need a movie or series just about the alien members of the Jedi all the ignored badasserg they’ve committed in the Star Wars universe.
Wookies watching an invading droid army.
I don’t actually know what’s going on here — who’s fighting, where they are, but it’s a treat to watch skirmishes far from the Jedi.
One of these days, I’ll have to look up the total number of worlds in the Star Wars galaxy.
I really like this shot because despite the awesomeness of the Clone Army, it shows that some battles were lost, that groups had to surrender, that it wasn’t a sweeping victory all the time.
After Grievous runs away with Palpatine, he turns to confront Mace Windu when he arrives — and Windu Force Crushes his rib-cage, resulting in the cough Grievous suffers in the films.
They truly turned Windu into a Jedi God in this series: after Force-Crushing Grievous’s rib cage, he jumps into the air while deflecting aircraft blasts and only fails in reaching thanks to gravity. And just as it’s about to leave, Windu reaches towards it—as if he could grab the ship with the Force—but it hyperjumps out of reach.
Hope you all enjoyed this post!
Feel free to leave comments or questions below!
OBI-WAN: Are you still talking about Star Wars?
ANAKIN: What? No … Maybe. R2, end Hive Post.
~
Image Sources:
Cover Pic
Cartoon Network pic
Dexter’s Lab pic
Power Puff Girls
Samurai Jack pic
Primal
Pics after that are screenshots from my phone
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This is a really good review, and I love this 2D series. I remember watching it on Cartoon Network back in the day when it released. Also, yeah I think this was where Ventress had her debut as a character.
Yeah, I read the original Thrawn Trilogy and they're great books, it was cool that Timothy Zahn came back to write the rebooted novels with Thrawn, but those originals were great.
It is pretty mad how much story they could cram between the films, but thinking about it, there's 8-10 years or so between Phantom Menace and AOTC, and then maybe another 3 years between that and ROTS, then 17 or so years between that and ANH, 3 or so between that and Empire and another 2 or 3 between that and ROTJ, so there is plenty of room for expansion with books, shows, games and comics.
I think the Sequals missed a chance to do that, considering TFW and TLJ transition instantly with no room for expansion, and kind of the same with the final film. Because of that, they couldn't flesh out characters and add new ones with ease like they could here.
I loved this, and the 3D clone wars is really good too, because like you said, there is so much expansion for characters, I especially love how the clones were given some real personality in the 3D version, compared to how we see them in the films.