What happened in this series that will be helpful to know for when I see Revenge of the Sith next week?
Any major plot points advanced?
The Clone Wars series can be completely neglected and you still won’t miss anything in the movie. Granted, you will already know who General Grievous is, and you will see how Anakin gets that scar on his eye, but aside from that you can go straight from Episode 2 to Episode 3 and not miss a beat.
That is what the opening scrolls are for, after all. 
I personally was not a huge fan of what I saw in the Clone Wars series. The Jedi were basically transformed into invincible demigods, when Lucas’ whole point in Episode 2 was to show that they aren’t.
It is understandable however, because of the style of the cartoon. It has a very anime/extreme quality to it, hence beefing everyone’s powers up.
I agree, and even for cartoons Mace Windu was made waaaaaaay over the top. It was just ridiculous.
Yeah, but come on! Mace’s battle on Dantooine against an entire army of battle droids was freakin’ spectacular.
Considering how over a hundred Jedi died in the Geonosian arena, and Mace would have died too (though probably last) if the fighting had continued for a few more minutes…it’s just entirely implausible to think of him single-handedly wiping out an entire army of droids.
C’mon, the droids are weak, but not THAT weak.
Look, Genndy Tartakovsky had Mace Windu
ripping the control wires out of a droid fighter then flying it around like the green goblin’s glider and hacking at other fighters with his lightsaber!
That was a wee bit over the top.
You can go to this site and watch the whole thing:
http://www.starwars.com/clonewars/microseries/chapter/archive.html
It was over the top at times, but you don’t have to suffer through the horrible dialogue and bad direction that Lucas foists on his viewing public, not to mention all of the bizarre inconsistencies. (Sorry, just watched Ep II the last couple of nights with my kids)
Maybe he got better!
Y’all are right, within the SW universe the Mace Windu sequences in Clone Wars are unrealistic, to put it nicely. But the skill and charm with which they were executed won me over. If the prequels were as well done as the cartoons, there would be a lot less bitching on the Internet.
Well, given the nature of the Internet, that’s probably not true. But you get my point.
There were lots of good scenes in the Clone Wars. I think Aanakin’s characterization was better than Ep. II. Hayden, take note–when you’re out-acted by a cartoon character, you’ve got problems. The whole Asaji Ventress subplot was great. She was a fantastic character who looked great and had more personality than Darth Maul. The attack on the Jedi Temple at Illum was fantastic. It’s a setting I had only read vague rumors about and finally got to see, and when Luminari Unduli knelt down in the midst of the battle and saved her and her apprentice (and the lightsaber crystals) from being buried alive, I got chills. Qui Gon did the same thing in Phantom Menace during his battle with Darth Maul. It really says something about the difference between the Jedi and Sith.
So yeah, I liked it a lot.
Well said. I completely agree.
I heartily recommend a viewing. I’ve only watched Volume 1, but here’s what you should know:
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Jedi can block flamethrowers, bullets, and blasterfire with their bare hands.
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Mace Windu, a la Neo, can make a tsunami of droids with a wave of his arm.
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Anakin is really, really cocky…but good.
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A light saber duel in the rain lends itself to good effects (sizzle! crack! pop!)
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An underwater battle with swimming jedi is ugly.
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Yoda can do summersaults and outrun a large pack of droids but he still has to carry his walking stick.
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CP3O has some sort of device that makes droids miss him horribly when he is in
the middle of an open field. See: stormtrooper syndrome. -
General Grevious is the anti-jedi and ultimate badass. He can take down half a dozen Jedi at once like it’s nothing, ultilizing spinning light sabers, fly-like reaction time, and his handy dandy feet which can of course hold more sabers. It also helps he can walk on the walls and ceiling.
I’m curious how he goes from a 15 foot tall demi-god to a 5 foot tall coughing weakling in Ep. 3.
True enough, but I gotta give extra weight to the cartoon battle on account of it not sucking like a hole in the outer hull of a Star Destroyer. It’s kinda sad how much better Star Wars is when George Lucas isn’t directly involved.
Clone Wars also has the one thing that was entirely missing from the prequel trilogy: cool space dogfights! Anakin versus the 'droid fighters over the banking planet was every bit as good as the action around the two Death Stars in the OT. The clone troopers are too damn cool, too.
Now, I gotta admit, I actually kinda liked RotS. Easily the best of the prequel trilogy, roughly on par with Jedi, but I think a good amount of that came because the Clone Wars series finally managed to get me to invest some emotions in these characters, something the first two movies entirely failed to do. After AotC, the only reason I wanted to see Sith was to see Hayden Christiansen pushed into a pool of lava. After seeing the superior characterization of him in the microseries, I was actually dreading him turning to the darkside.
I think, rather than just reading the spoilers, you should run out and grab the first series on DVD. It’s only $20 or so, and it’ll make it that much easier to enjoy the movie.
I never saw the Clone Wars cartoons until after seeing Revenge of the Sith.
For the most part, you can omit the cartoon without any great problem, but I was confused watching RoTS and seeing General Grievous
wheeze and cough like an old man, and fight like a wuss.
That annoyed me for much of the movie, which prompted me to look at Clone Wars to figure out what happened:
In the last episode of Clone Wars, Grievous gets his chest cavity crused by Mace Windu in battle. RotS starts immediately after the last episode, so Grievous hasn’t had time to rest/recuperate/repair himself from the injury.