The Jedi Knights of the Republic are at war with the Separatists led by the evil Count Dooku. The Jedi Knights and their Clone Trooper allies are also trying to keep the peace across the populated systems, as privateers and looters take advantage of the chaos to get in some quality piracy time. Dooku's Separatists are threatening the Republic's space lanes, a turn of events that will involve the Hutts, including one particular Hutt named Jabba who lives on a certain dusty planet in the galaxy's backwaters.

Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker are in a tight spot ... leading their Clone Troopers in an urban ground assault against the Separatists' Battle Droids. Obi-Wan has asked the Jedi Council for a new Padawan apprentice, and she arrives in the middle of the battle—a feisty Youngling named Ahsoka Tano (who kind of looks like she could be the kid sister of the Green Lantern Corps' Katma Tui). But the spunky Padawan seems to have been sent into this hot spot for reasons other than to be Obi-Wan's apprentice.

How will the two Jedi face Dooku's new plot? How will the involvement of Ahsoka affect the team of Obi-Wan and Anakin? And what exactly do the Separatists have planned for Jabba?

Maybe they shoulda just filmed this

The Clone Wars is a vermifuge for those who hated The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones. It's a really fun, smart, fast-paced addition to the Star Wars canon that is, as a movie—not just a lead-in for the upcoming animated Cone Wars TV show—a lot better than Episodes I and II. The Clone Wars takes a bit of getting used to, stylistically. At first, the characters look like Easter Island statues in a Shrek movie gone terribly, terribly wrong. The opening is really clunky, full of ugnaught-awkward exposition that hits like a hydrospanner to the head. But once Clone Wars gets up to speed, with a Private Ryan-like assault featuring Clone Troopers and Battle Droids, what at first felt like a new Star Wars experience becomes an old Star Wars experience—a return to a nice, gritty universe in which of course a guy like Han would shoot first. The SF action has a vigorously violent feel to it, but there's still a kid-friendly vibe to things that allows for a Buster Keaton quote featuring midi-chlorian mojo. And by "kid-friendly" I mean "inner kid," too.

The Clone Wars actually provides something that's been missing from the filmed mythology as a whole. For the most part, in the prequels, we don't get to see enough of Anakin being ... you know ... heroic. We typically encounter him as a kind of creepy kid, a whiner, or a guy being corrupted. Anakin's fall and rebirth as Darth Vader are of course tragic. But for tragedy to really work, the tragic figure needs to be lofty in some way; he needs to occupy a place from which he can really fall. The Clone Wars lets us see Anakin as a hero with a tragic flaw. A full-blown good guy with a dark side. We needed this in the story arc of the prequels, and in this movie, we at last get it.

The Clone Wars also gives us some cool new-to-the-movies characters to chew on. Ahsoka, as a new kid hero in the mix, could have been disastrous. But she's a great butt-kicker in her own right, full of spunk that's cool, not grating. Her presence adds another layer of the tragic to Anakin's later dealings with the Younglings in Sith. We also get a totally cool villainess in the form of the Sith-ilicious assassin Asajj Ventress, who combines the best of Eartha Kitt's Catwoman, a spitting cobra and the badass chicks in the Kill Bill movies.

If this is what Lucasfilm has planned for the new Clone Wars TV show, I'm in. But part of me, as I watched the flick, kinda wished they'd just filmed this thing. Filmed, The Clone Wars, even more than it does now as animated flick, would make The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones look like mynock droppings.