Yeah, if you're even a casual Star Wars fan, you probably know about this little project. Conceived in 2008 as a 90-minute film designed to promote a TV series of the same name, this project has pretty much devastated the Star Wars community. While the movie is universally regarded as trash, the TV series is holding its own with roughly a million and a half viewers a week.
Now, not many people enjoy the new series, but I've been following it and thought I'd point out some of it's better aspects. The visuals have been steadily improving and are now pretty spectacular. While a good portion of the episodes seem to regress the Star Wars story and feel to something less than it deserves, the episodes that are good really stand out, and are great to watch. The plots have slowly become more complex, and even the trashy dialog has improved. Overall, it's looking promising.
However, that isn't to say I fully approve of this series, even with it being Star Wars. The fact of the matter is that it is too destructive towards previous works in the Star Wars canon, the first and greatest offense being the creation of Ashoka, Anakin's never-before-mentioned Padawan, who, while having become a somewhat interesting character over the course of the series, simply does not fit in to the established Clone Wars mythos. The Clone Wars was a period that had already seen dozens of stories injected into it, and the new series has already denied the existence of some works (mainly everything in the year 22 BBY) and is threatening others. Karen Traviss' Republic Commando novels are no longer considered true canon because of a plan to redesign Mandalore as a peace-loving planet that is recovering from an environmental war. This even goes against the backstories of characters in the films, like Jango Fett, and make no sense in the overall picture of the Star Wars saga. It should be noted that several authors, including Traviss, have broken off from all Star Wars-related work in protest.
I understand that George Lucas does have all rights to the Star Wars universe, and that it is his, but still, I find it hard to believe that he would destroy whole story arcs in the continuity of the saga, works that represent tens of thousands of hours of artists' work, just to create a new TV series. I sincerely hope that, at the end of this series, a decision will be made that labels Star Wars: The Clone Wars either secondary canon or non-canon. No offense, George, but it's just not working, and I guarantee you'll regret it in the long run.
So yeah, does anyone else have an opinion?