Introduction - 12 Years Late to the party
(Skip if you don't care for context)
So I'll start this with saying that I am sorry. Sorry for two things:Introduction - 12 Years Late to the party
1) The pun in the title.
2) For writing the coldest hot take in the history of hot takes. Why am I so late with this?
The Clone Wars first aired 12 years ago, following a pilote Movie which I actually watched at the cinema back when I was a kid. So why didn't I watch the show until now?
Well: Because of the Movie.
While not overly devastated when I left the cinema back then I started disliking the movie the more I thought about it.
I didn't like the anime-esque fights, the fact that droids were destroyed like it was a dynasty warriors game, the art-style, the story and I really, really didn't like bratty teenage "Skyguy"-spouting Ahsoka.
I think you could even say I hated her.
Keep in mind I was like 14 or so, we'll get back to her later.
After that I saw one or two episodes of seasons 1 or 2 and they didn't really do anything for me so I decided I'd just leave the show be and maybe give it another try later on.
And then: I saw this.
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| Darth Maul, the least interesting Star Wars Villain to ever appear in the Star War. Alive and kicking...kicking with massive robot legs that is. |
So what changed my mind all these years later?
It's a long story but it actually ties into the whole "discourse" surrounding The Last Jedi back in 2017.
the backlash not the movie, that I just straight up stopped bothering with anything Star Wars related until shortly after the Trailers to The Rise of Skywalker got me back into the swing of things (I still have yet to watch Solo):
I activated my existing but never used twitter profile and started getting back to interacting with people over Star Wars, finding that there were much more sane people than I had been led to believe.
After The Rise of Skywalker things became even more chaotic.
Where there once were two sides there were now numerous smaller camps and a lot of confusion.
What stood out to me however was that so many in so many of these camps seemed to agree on one thing. The Clone Wars.
With a season 7 on the horizon, people saying interesting things about characters I hadn't liked from what I had seen and me having some freetime on my hand I figured it was time to give the show another look.
Over the last three weeks or so I have watched all six seasons that are available in Europe so far and while I thought about waiting for the last season to finish and Disney+ to reach for my wallet I figured I have already a lot of stuff to talk about as is.
But rather than going through each season I'll go through the Good, the bad and the ugly.
Now obviously this is all just my opinion and you might disagree, you might not. That's fine.
The Star Wars fandom has too much "if you like X you are wrong" or "y isn't canon to me" BS going in as is already.
Afterall: Only a sith deals in absolutes ;)
The Good - New Characters, New Stories, New Points of View
And we start with the one thing I kind of suspected would change the more I watched the Show.
From the first season onwards Ahsoka is a lot less insufferable than I remembered her from the pilote film.
Now back then many more people hated on her but I always felt bad to have the same opinion as those who just hated that she had the audacity of being a girl, much like those who later on hated on Rey, denying that Ahsoka had gotten the same treatment back in 2008.
Well let me tell you: She did.
And I'm not proud I was among them even though I think it has a lot to do with me just disliking most bratty-teenager characters by default and over the course of the show she matured and changed into an incredibly likable character far removed from the kid she started out as.
Still I took my dislike way too far back then and I certainly changed my stance now.
In fact when people say Ahsoka is the heart of the Clone Wars I find myself unable and unwilling to disagree.
Her relationships and actions define a good chunk of the show but I would argue that there are two more characters who fulfill a similar role.
Asajj Ventress and Captain Rex, to be more specific.
Ventress at the start didn't seem much more interesting than my least favourite Sith apprentice, Maul, before her.
But from the moment on Dooku betrays her she goes through a metamorphosis unlike any other in the entire show that sees her becoming more and more three dimensional and complex and the roles she plays in different plots become far more interesting over time, especially later on when she helps Ahsoka in one of the best arcs the show has to offer.
On the other side we have Captain Rex who doesn't really change much over the course of the show.
He starts out as a cool but caring Clone Soldier and he is the very same thing in the end only that we now know much more about the trials he went through and how he has deep connections to his soldiers and the Jedi he serves with... apart from one.
Which brings me to one theof the mains reasons these three characters stand out so much: They all had key-roles in some of the the best story arcs in the entire show:
After six seasons there isn 't a shortage of material to go through but it wasn't hard for me to pic my favourites.
- While only a two episode deal, Rex spending some time with a Deserter and his family in season 2 is an early sign that the Show can be more than it has proven to be at that point in time.
- Ahsoka being captured to be hunted as part of some sick game and leading a bunch of padawan maybe doesn't sound like much when you break it down to the basic premise but these episodes looked better, showed more character depth and conveyed much more emotion than anything we had seen prior with the conversation between Ahsoka and Anakin in the end being my second favourite interaction between them.
This was the arc were I started to notice that I had gone and pulled a 180 on my opinion on Anakin's padawan.
- The Slavers City which gave us the most heroic and charming Anakin we ever got and the interactions between our three heroes felt earnest and fun throughout.
- The 501's war disadventure with a traitorous Jedi trying to get them killed was the greatest soldier/war story I have yet seen in anything Star Wars related. Sorry, Rogue One.
- Ahsoka's trial and everything surrounding it.
Barriss was a surprising choice for a Villain (of course it was clear it was her before we were halfway through, but still), Ventress a great surprise ally, Anakin's conflict between helping Ahsoka and playing by the rules was grand and Ahsoka probably became my favourite character in the show in the process.
And my word that ending was so very emotional.
If I was a person who cries during movies/shows I probably would have done so at that point. It's up there with the "You were my brother Anakin" scene in Revenge of the Sith.
- And last but certainly not least: Fivers coming so close to revealing the Order 66 matter but failing in the End was splendid.
The Bad - Some Killer, more Filler
When The Clone Wars greatest strength is integrating new, interesting and likable characters into the fold, it's weakness is that it doesn't really seem to be doing nearly as well with characters that appeared in the Movie.
Commander Cody doesn't get nearly as much to do as Rex, Fivers, Echo and who have you despite being right there and ready for use.
We don't really get a look at how he interacts with his fellow soldiers we don't really have an idea how close he and Obi-wan are.
As far as the Jedi council goes we only really expand on Plo-Koon's character and focus on him for more than one episode apart from Windu, Yoda and our main heroes.
There are younglings who play a role in one single arc but they are kind of lumped in with something that I'll throw into the last category.
All these things can be forgiven but what I really don't think can be is the fact the Show barely if at all expands upon the relationship between ObiWan and Anakin.
Anakin has one, maybe two heart to heart talks with Obi-Wan and while they are often together the show doesn't seem to be interested in having them do much more than having them chase down and lose sight of Dooku, Grivious and whoever else needs some chasing.
Generally speaking as soon as ObiWan enters a scene we always know the enemy will escape.
It's in the nature of an episodic show to have multiple encounters between the heroes and Villains without a definitive outcome but there is so much escaping going on it makes pretty much everyone involved look rather silly after a while.
But it's worse for our Villains if we are being honest.
Mother Talzin is so ambigous and lacking characterisation that she usually isn't more than a plot device for whatever the story demands.
Count Dooku has been done dirty the most. As a former Jedi one would think there is space for inner conflict or at least flashbacks and conversations with Jedi he once called friends that could offer some insight in his reasons to turn to the dark side.
But there really isn't anything to him.
He seems one dimensional and only ever appears to bark orders, rarely gets to do anything cool and at one point let's himself be captured by a dozen or so pirates without having any kind of back-up plan.
But at least he's consistent even when it's consistent disappointment.
Grivious meanwhile is an unstoppable murder machine in one scene and kind of pathethic in another, especially in the first three seasons were he almost feels like a comedy chara ter at times.
And to get back to that word:
My feelings on how the show uses Movie characters aside, inconsistency is actually my really big issue with it.
Inconsistency in quality that is
You have arcs like the ones I described above in the good section and other fun little adventures like ObiWan's time undercover as a bounty hunter and then you have dull and directionless nonsense like the D-Squad arc in season 5 were we follow five droids and a small Alien from setpiece to setpiece and the conflict changes every few minutes.
I don't mind comedic arcs, I don't mind a bit of filler to allow the good stuff to come in bursts and have more impact that way but I sometimes feel like a good two thirds of the show can be skipped and you wouldn't miss anything of importance.
And that's a problem.
Another good example would be the political episodes.
I never really minded the politics in the Prequels seeing them as necessary world building but here they are even more frequent which would be fine if they were interesting but usually it's just about Padme getting kidnapped and messages that are about as deep as the words written on motivational posters.
The one exception which shows the Seperatist side of things is cut short immediately and remains the sole political episode that had a deeper meaning.
The Ugly - I have a bad feeling about this
This might very well be full of the kind of stuff others really liked about the show but I am not others. I am me.
So keep that in mind.
Let's start with the obvious one.
DARTH. MAUL. SUCKS.
And the fact that he got a brother with the name "Savage Oppress" made my skin crawl.
If I hadn't seen pictures and clips of him back many years ago there would have been a glimmer of hope for me since when we discover Maul we do get to see his most interesting form.
A broken, insane and suffering shell with the looks to go with it that. It surprised me in the best possible way because if you go with the whole "He survived because he was so angry" story you might as well follow that thought through and see how the hatred that kept him alive also completely destroyed him. If that isn't the most Sith thing ever than I don't know what is.
But of course, there are toys to sell and so we got a restored Maul back and to make matters worse we not only paired him with his brother we also lumped him together with the Legion of Neckbeard favourites: Mandalorians.
I can not tell you how happy I was that the Mandalorian Show didn't end up being an absolute "cool guy" Edgefest.
Because I know Mandalorian stories often times are, be that in games or some of those then-EU/ now-Legends books I read.
And the Mandalorians we get in the Clone Wars are the perfect example of just that.
The Deathwatch to be mors specific.
The name alone gives me the creeps and the Darksaber that looks like a 15 year old Anime nerds wet-dream certainly didn't help.
While I liked the pacifistic way of the Dutchess and Mandalore in theory it was never an interesting place in the show nor was her love story with ObiWan all that engaging so it was obvious that the "cool kids" would take over in time and in the end they actually did so with the only other ones as edgy as them.
Red and Yellow Maul as I like to call them.
While the story behind how they did it and them betraying each other was actually fine enough it wasn't until Palpatine crashed the party and killed yellow Maul that I managed to get any enjoyment out of it.
I am ware I have to watch either Season 7 in a month or start watching Rebels to see where things go from here but I quite frankly don't care.
For this article at the very least, none of that matters.
One more thing I want to talk about is something that wasn't pulled off badly or anything I just reject the concept:
I am talking about something I already disliked in the books:
The constant overexplaining of the Force.
I didn't really mind it as a kid but I now see why the whole midichlorian thing wasn't a very popular idea back in the day,
And what's worse is that the Show insists on over-explaining the force further, putting it in categories, tying it to certain places and god-like beings.
As much as I enjoyed seeing more Qui-Gon it came at a price.
I didn't enjoy the story of the brother, the sister, father and their macguffin dagger and certainly I didn't enjoy Yoda's trials and encounters with Darth Bane or those five weird masked beings.
And even the Padawan trials and lightsaber construction fall into that category for me although I found these to be a bit more agreeable and at least the first episodes of that arc was pretty fun.
In Conclusion
There is a lot to like about Star Wars the Clone Wars and when it's good it is REALLY good but there is a lot of forgettable nonsense happening.Between arcs I tried and failed to get invested in, Battle Droids that are consistently incredible unfunny, catchphrases being thrown around like they are going out of fashion, nostalgia callbacks and iconography that, unlike in The Force Awakens, feel incredibly empty and serve no purpose and wasting many characters who just straight up deserve better it's by no means flawless.
Many say it kind of redeems the Prequels but I am not of the opinion that that's a) needed and b) a thing they really do.
With the exception of showing Anakin and the Clones in a more heroic light it often feels like the Clone Wars co-exist next to the Movies rather than tying into them.
Next time I watch revenge of the Sith I would be very surprised if I felt more about Kit Fisto dying than I have done up until now.
Next time I watch revenge of the Sith I'll not be under the impression that Anakin's turn to the dark side feels any less sudden. If anything, him killing a bunch of children five minutes later will feel more out of nowhere.
Don't mistake my intentions, this article isn't intended as take-down of sorts.
I enjoyed the show just fine.
It's mostly just that "fine" with good to great parts inbetween but also weighed down by a lot of "meh".
But generally speaking it has developed in a positive way over the years and I'm curious to see how much season 7 will affect my overall opinion.
I certainly hope so it will do so in a positive way because, contrary to popular believe, mostly among my friends, I get lot more out of liking stuff than I do out of disliking stuff and with that said I hope Clone Wars lives long and pros...erm...I mean may the force be with the final season of the Show.
All we can do know is abwarten und tee trinken which is a german phrase that translates to wait and drink tea and it doesn't mean more than wait and see but I wanted to use this gif in the end so now you had to learn some german for context.
That's it folks!
