JediKermit's Full Review: Star Wars - Clone Wars: Vol. 2
The first volume of the Clone Wars cartoons came out several months ago, and impressed me with it's tight storytelling and strong characterization. The three-minute long animated shorts were like mini-movies, and the style and content of the cartoons were in many ways better than George Lucas' actual films. You can read my complete review of Volume I here: http://www.epinions.com/content_177565240964 ...it may help you make sense of the rest of this review.
Volume 2 picks up right where Volume 1 left off. A group of Jedi had been taken out by the vicious and mysterious General Grievous. He's a cyborg, so he's mostly robot built around the eyes, brain, and "organ sac" of an alien general who's become the perfect killing machine. He's good with lightsabers, he's got superhuman strength and speed, and he's got a mad-on for killing Jedi. The episodes in this collection are each longer than the episodes in the first collection, and the stories are better served by the additional length.
The episodes are all very much interconnected, but the basic plots include:
Defeating General Grievous and rescuing the surviving Jedi.
A Jedi Council Debate about Anakin's future--should he become a full-fledged Jedi Knight? Is he the Chosen One?
A clandestine meeting between Anakin and Padme on Coruscant.
Various battles between the Clone Army (good guys, led by the Jedi Generals) and the Droid Army (bad guys, led by the Separatists).
And the final arc has General Grievous leading an all-out assault on the city-world Coruscant, kidnaping Chancellor Palpatine and wreaking havoc on the capital world and with the Jedi.
In all of these episodes, we get moments for our heroic characters that in many ways do a better job of defining them and their situations than the "real" live-action movies do. In particular, the debate about Anakin and the Jedi Council--that's something I would have liked to have seen in the movies, but it's something that was only touched on. It's sad when the cartoon gets it right. Ditto with the scenes between Anakin and Padme. Is it George Lucas' scripts? His direction? The actors? Because the scenes between Anakin and Padme in the cartoon--and there are only two or three of them--are more alive and poignant than the scenes in either Episode II or III.
We also get various "secrets" answered, like the ceremony of promoting a Jedi from Padawan to Knight, and where C-3PO got his gold-plate covering. We see Anakin's strength grow, and the relationship between Anakin and Obi-Wan deepens. We even see the invasion of Kashyyyk (the Wookiee homeworld) and see Yoda unleash his mighty power to defend Coruscant.
This cartoon gets "Star Wars" right. The sound effects and music are taken directly from the movies, and do a lot to make the stylized animation more epic--it looks and sounds like "Star Wars" should.
There's more dialogue, more action, and more thought behind this batch of cartoons than in Volume I, and it does what it sets out to do--"connect the dots" between "Attack of the Clones" and "Revenge of the Sith." In fact, this DVD is a perfect companion to "Sith," as it basically illustrates the opening crawl so famous in the Star Wars movies.
If you've never seen the "Clone Wars" cartoons, I'd start with Volume I and then pick up Volume II. It gives a lot of insight into the characters and situations in the Star Wars prequels, and (ironically) is more three-dimensional than the flesh and blood movies they're intended to complement.
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