Genndy Tartakovsky’s Clone Wars was the first Star Wars animated series since the mid-1980s and — much like this year’s Emmy nominee from a galaxy far, far away, Andor — a huge leap forward in style and storytelling, for which the Television Academy rewarded it.
Tartakovsky, who had created Dexter’s Laboratory and Samurai Jack and worked on The Powerpuff Girls, developed Clone Wars with Lucasfilm, marking the first animated show from the Star Wars universe since the 1985 Saturday morning cartoons Droids and Ewoks. Clone Wars originally aired in 2003 as a series of shorts on Cartoon Network, employing Tartakovsky’s signature style of angular forms, kinetic action and sparse dialogue. Some of the three-minute shorts are nearly wordless, though Anthony Daniels, the original voice of C-3PO, reprised his role here, as he had for the animated Droids.
In 2004, Clone Wars earned the Emmy for best animated program of an hour or more. Tartakovsky was a double winner that year, as his series Samurai Jack took home the Emmy for best animated program under an hour.
Clone Wars repeated its Emmy victory in 2005 for the final five chapters, which clocked in at 12 minutes each and, like the preceding ones, depicted events between the prequel trilogy films Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith in the Star Wars timeline. The show also won an outstanding individual achievement in animation award that year for background designer Justin Thompson.
Tartakovsky’s take served as something of an extended pilot for the 2008 Cartoon Network series Star Wars: The Clone Wars, which used 3D CGI animation (as opposed to the earlier show’s digital 2D) but kept some elements of Tartakovsky’s designs. After Disney acquired Lucasfilm in 2014, Tartakovsky’s Clone Wars was deemed no longer part of the official Star Wars canon, but with a cult following, it remains among the more acclaimed animated series of this century.
This story first appeared in an August stand-alone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.