Star Wars: The Clone Wars – The Complete Season Five

Executive Produced by George Lucas.

Featuring the voice talents of Matt Lanter, Ashley Eckstein, James Arnold Taylor, Dee Bradley Baker, Tom Kane, Jim Cummings, Samuel Witwer, and David Tennant.

SYNOPSIS:

In its fifth season, The Clone Wars story moves closer to the grim events of Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith and several major players face their destinies as the galaxy plunges into darkness. Planets are rocked by revolution, ancient Jedi secrets are explored, and spirited Padawan Ahsoka Tano faces a major crisis that will change her forever.

It’s certainly a good time to be a Star Wars fan, with Walt Disney Pictures set to revisit and expand the galaxy far, far away by launching annual Star Wars movies from 2015, starting with the first instalment of a new Sequel Trilogy in J.J. Abrams’ Star Wars: Episode VII. However, one casualty of the Mouse House’s four-billion dollar purchase of Lucasfilm is the Emmy Award-winning CG animated series Star Wars: The Clone Wars, which finished its run on Cartoon Network earlier this year and now completes its home-entertainment release with the arrival of the fifth and final season.

Were you one of the unfortunate ones who suffered through theatrically-released 2008 pilot for Star Wars: The Clone Wars (or a Prequel-hater who gave it as wide a berth as possible), then you’d be forgiven for having skipped the subsequent series. Indeed, I can still remember sitting down in the cinema, popcorn in hand, intrigued by what the Star Wars universe might have left in the tank post-Revenge of the Sith. The next two hours could only be described as one of the most god-awful theatrical experiences of my life, struggling through a “movie” so bad it made the love scenes from Attack of the Clones seem like the last twenty minutes of The Empire Strikes Back, and – Holiday Special aside – the lowest point of George Lucas’ epic space opera.

However, after a somewhat slow start, the series quickly found it stride – or, to use a Star Trek: The Next Generation analogy, grew its beard – and went on to deliver a consistently solid slice of Star Wars television, which – at its best – is right up there with the very best the saga has had to offer since the Original Trilogy came to an end in the early 80s. And this final season is no exception, delivering five distinct story arcs which provides a solid blend of action, excitement and humour, not to mention some emotional storytelling absent from much of the Prequels themselves. Indeed, the fact that much of the season revolves around Ahsoko Tano and that this isn’t a bad thing at all is testament to just how far the show has evolved since its disastrous unveiling; gone Anakin’s annoying Padawan brat ‘Snips’, and in her place is an ass-kicking Jedi who rightfully deserves to be regarded as one of the finest characters of the whole Prequel era.

Visually, the show is among the very best animated programmes on television, particularly when it comes to depicting the large scale battles of the Clone Wars, not to mention its numerous lightsaber showdowns. However, as strong as it is, the fifth season isn’t without problems. At times, the humour is a little too forced (see the ‘D-Squadron’ arc, which although entertaining for Artoo fans, includes a couple of comic relief characters who quickly wear thin), and although I’ll probably be in the minority here, I also found the Darth Maul arc underwhelming, barring the final showdown between Maul, his brother Savage Opress, and his former master Darth Sidious. Still, I have no doubt that fans of the tattooed Sith Lord will lap this one up, assuming they can buy into the fact that the guy somehow managed to survive being chopped in half before being knocked down a huge shaft by Obi-Wan Kenobi [Note to J.J. Abrams: Please don’t try and pull something similar off with Palpatine in Episode VII – it’s just ridiculous].

It’s a shame that Disney has elected to cut the The Clone Wars down in its prime, but Filoni and company do a good job of wrapping things up with the final story arc, and assuming the very thought of the Prequel era doesn’t make you feel nauseous, then you’ll be well served by picking up season five of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, and indeed the entire series. It will certainly help ease the agonising wait for Star Wars: Episode VII.

Gary Collinson is a writer and lecturer from the North East of England. He is the editor-in-chief of FlickeringMyth.com and the author of Holy Franchise, Batman! Bringing the Caped Crusader to the Screen.