Star Wars: The Clone Wars Season 2 Episode 5, The Landing at Point Rain - WTF?!

I just checked IMDB, and noticed that “Star Wars: The Clone Wars” has a rating of 5.4/10. WTF?! Really?

Okay, admittedly, after the first few episodes of Season 1, I wrote The Clone Wars off as a cheezy way to patch up the mistakes of the first three movies (which were really the last three, but you get my point).

However, a few months later I was channel surfing and discovered that the show I once shunned, had grown up. The slapstick Yoda jokes and Storm Trooper humor became secondary to a larger, more dark, adult themed show. The animation alone was a step above anything I’d seen on TV before, especially in an ongoing, serialized show. “Internally, we just keep getting better and better,” says Dave Filoni, supervising director of Star Wars: The Clone Wars. “There’s no way we could have done something like this in the first season. We just didn’t have the assets to populate a battle this big, but we’ve learned so much and we’re still learning. It’s pretty amazing to be able to do something so theatrical and ambitious.”

The Clone Wars is a refreshing and bold approach to TV animation. I can’t tell you tired I am of Flash cartoons, pseudo-Anime style shows, Ren & Stimpy Show animated humor and Adult Swim stop-motion. Yeah, I still tune in occasionally, but when shows like Avatar: The Last Airbender show up, which beg to be followed, I have to let my voice be heard. The Clone Wars may not hold a candle to Aang, but the show has proven that every show on the Cartoon Network does not have to suffer from lazy animation for the sake of cost-efficiency.

Season 2 Episode 5, “The Landing Point, promises to be the most cinematic episode yet. “George [Lucas] wanted ‘Landing at Point Rain’ to be as intense as any live-action movie about the assault on Omaha Beach,” says Brian Kalin O’Connell, the episode’s director. “In order to give it that sense of frenetic intensity, we needed to be able to have a fully populated background. This episode was a challenge to our studios and is a testament to what we were all capable of doing in Season Two. George challenged us to make something big and didn’t let us deliver anything that didn’t raise the bar for the whole series. This episode was filled with challenges but I am really happy with how it turned out. It’s non-stop, in-your-face action, and I hope the fans like it.”

About Star Wars: The Clone Wars Season 2 Episode 5, The Landing at Point Rain:
Anakin, Ahsoka and Ki-Adi-Mundi lead a landing party to destroy a droid factory that Poggle the Lesser has rebuilt on Geonosis, but things go terribly awry when Separatist gunners shoot down the Republic ships. Despite heavy losses, Anakin and Ki-Adi-Mundi must rendezvous in time to destroy the enemy factory before it can begin production.

“The Landing at Point Rain” premieres at 8:00 p.m. ET/PT Wednesday, November 4 on Cartoon Network.