Star Wars: The Clone Wars

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About

Star Wars: The Clone Wars is an American animated television and film series based on the Star Wars franchise. Set in during the fictional Clone Wars between the films Star Wars: Episode II -- Attack of the Clones and Star Wars: Episode III -- Revenge of the Sith, the franchise tells the store of Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi during that time.

History

Star Wars: Clone Wars.

On November 3rd, 2003, the first iteration of the Clone Wars animated series, Star Wars: Clone Wars, also referred to as Tartakovsky's Clone Wars, after the show's creator, premiered.^[1] The series featured 25 short episodes, which were five minutes in length in the first season and 12-minutes long in the second season. The relatively short runtime of the episodes led the show being referred to as a "micro-series."The series concluded in 2005 after two seasons.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars

On August 15th, 2008, the Star Wars: The Clone Wars film premiered.^[2] Unlike its predecessor, the film was 3D animated and did not follow the continuity of the original series.

Later that year, on October 3rd, a new television series based on the film premiered.^[3] The show ran for 121 episodes. The series originally concluded after six seasons.

Revival

On July 19th, 2018, Disney announced that there would be reviving the series would be premiering on the studio's streaming service in 2019.^[4] That day, they released a trailer for the series, which received more than 3 million views in 24 hours.

That day, fans of the series expressed their excitment using the hashtag #CloneWarsSaved. Twitter user @JasonBivona3 tweeted^[8] a screenshot of the series with the caption "it’s back baby, the clone wars is back #CloneWarsSaved." The post (shown below, center) received more than 450 retweets and 2,200 likes in 24 hours.

That day, Twitter^[9] user @TheSWU posted an image of the "#SaveTheCloneWars" campaign from 2013 and the "#CloneWarsSaved" campaign of 2018. The post (shown below, right) received more than 500 retweets and 1,500 likes in 24 hours.

Reception

The original series was nominated for three Emmys and was ranked #21 in IGN's Top 100 Animated Series.^[5]

2008's Star Wars: Clone Wars film received mostly negative reviews from critics. The review aggregate Rotten Tomatoes ^[6] scored the film 21% based on 169 reviews. In their critical consensus, the site wrote, "Mechanical animation and a less-than stellar script make The Clone Wars a pale shadow of George Lucas' once great franchise."

The movie's followup series was much more well received. Rotten Tomatoes gave the series a 95% fresh rating.^[7]