On the surface, Cartoon Network’s smash hit Clone Wars is a breezy little space adventure. Obi-Wan, Anakin, Padme, and the rest of the prequel pack (yes, even Jar-Jar) zip around the galaxy, taking out hordes of bumbling robots and crossing lightsabers with a series of snarling bad guys. Everyone is constantly in danger, but nobody ever gets hurt, and the good guys inevitably save the day while learning valuable life lessons. Even though there’s a massive interstellar war raging, the tone is doggedly upbeat. In other words, this is a high-tech version of G.I. Joe, Thunder Cats, Transformers, or any of those other boy shows we enjoyed with our Rice Krispies back in the 80s.

However, when you consider the series in the context of Episodes II and III, everything changes. The Clone Wars suddenly seems darker than the inside of a Sarlacc. In fact, it seems almost cruel to market it to eight-year-olds.

Here’s the key thing to remember about the galactic conflict known as the Clone Wars: they are a complete and utter farce. Palpatine is literally controlling both sides: he commands the Republic’s clone army as Supreme Chancellor, and he leads the Separatist’s droid army as Darth Sidious. The sole reason for the war is to solidify Palpatine’s political power, and to keep the Jedi bogged down in a bunch of totally meaningless battles.

These cows almost killed Disney.

It was only five years ago that Disney ran up the white flag and did the unthinkable: it shuttered its 2D animation facilities. This is the Walt Freaking Disney Company: they invented animated movies as we know them. But a series of flops (Treasure Planet, Brother Bear, Home on the Range) at the same time as Pixar churned out a string of instant classics was too much for the Mouse House. They decided that the public clearly wanted computer animation, and that’s what Disney was going to give them.

Except that didn’t work either. 2005’s Chicken Little didn’t even make back its budget domestically. So in 2006, Disney took the if-you-can’t-beat-’em-join-’em route, purchasing Pixar for $7.4 billion (which actually seems like a steal to me). The Pixar people were suddenly in charge of Walt Disney Animation… and the first thing they did was get the 2D animation department back up and running.

John Lasseter and Co. were betting that audiences hadn’t stayed away from Home on the Range because it was 2D. They had stayed away because:

a) It was lame, but more importantly…

b) a trio of sassy cows wasn’t what audiences wanted to see from Disney.

Anyone who’s been around a little girl in the last twenty years knows that the old Disney films still resonate, maybe even more than the new Pixar stuff. In 2009, the Disney Princess line of merchandise netted over $4 billion for the company. In a way, the continuing popularity of those 2D films is what enabled Disney to buy Pixar.

So when they set out to make The Princess and the Frog, they had a tricky task: produce something that recreated what people loved about the old Disney movies (especially the early-90s triumvirate of Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and Aladdin), but also something creative enough to get consumers back into the habit of reflexively going to Disney movies. It’s sort of like making a Bond movie–you need to stick to the formula, but also keep it fresh.

So how did they do it? Well, let’s go to the chart. (And by the way, bigtime Princess and the Frog spoilers begin now.)

A few times a generation, a book comes along that is so revered, so respected, that copies of it become heirlooms. The physical objects become mementos of joyful reads as well as signs of status and conversation pieces.  Many more times a generation, a book comes along that is so overprinted, so unnecessary, that copies of it are stashed in the corners of warehouses for a decade until they are donated in bulk to Goodwill.

On the Court with . . . Hakeem Olajuwon is one of those books.  Yeah, it’s one of the second kind of books.

So, when one of my friends managed to score five copies of it in a Yankee gift swap (along with matching Captain Picard and Commander Riker commemorative plates and three bags of Chocolate Reisen), it seemed doubtful anyone would read it. But here at Overthinking It, doubtful doesn’t stop us. We specialize in taking the doubtful and making the dubious.

Plus, there were those two words at the top: “Matt Christopher.”  If those words don’t make you cry out in joy, read on to find out what you’re missing.

More on the Dream Shake as rite of passage, the mid-90s perception of Islam, and the zombie Tom Clancy of Little League Baseball, after the jump!

[CORRECTION: The original edition of this article confused John Von Neumann with Werner Von Braun, and very unjustifiably referred to Von Neumann as an “Evil Nazi.” Von Neumann was neither Nazi nor Evil. We hear he was a pretty cool guy, and we wish A Beautiful Mind had been made about him instead. OTI very much regrets the error.]

Great heroes are often defined by their villains. Luke Skywalker had Darth Vader. He-Man had Skeletor. U.S. Grant had Robert E. Lee.

But some heroes aren’t defined by their villains, they’re defined by their shiny, brushable hair, their many collectible colors, or their gracefully molded haunches.

Designing villains for heroes that go around saving planets or slaying dragons is easy — some good ideas might begin with a dragon or something that could destroy a planet, not necessarily in that order.

But in the maddening crush to narrativize, syndicate and cross-market every collectible under creation, every once in a while, somebody, somewhere has to confront the one of the most daunting challenges a character designer can face.

How do you make a villain for a hero who doesn’t do anything? Maybe you start with something like this:

Today, we discuss one of the most compelling answers anyone came up with for that question: The Smooze, the sentient Grey Goo that terrorizes the prancing protagonists of 1986’s My Little Pony: The Movie –

The moral values that have held together this country and this world are in an advanced stage of decay. From schools to shops to our own homes, we turn on one another — race against race, religion against religion, nation against nation and brother against brother. Feuds great and small divide us. I say, no more!

In such times, we need strong leadership! We need a Lord Protector who guides with his gut to dispel this discord and disagreement that has sapped the world’s vitality and capacity for greatness! I am proud to say, I am that Lord Protector. And I have a plan.

Our true enemy is excessive and destructive emotional freedom — recklessly granted in the well-meaning spirit of progress, it has been abused to the point of madness.

It’s time for a new moral authority, one of tenderness, true, but one supported by the only thing human beings seem to understand — force.

Stare into our brave new world, after the jump —