After the perceived failures of the Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars was in a dire place but Star Wars: The Clone Wars changed all of that. Created by George Lucas and his protege Dave Filoni, the animated series fleshed out the Clone Wars and gave Star Wars fans some amazing stories and characters. In fact, its success is a big factor in the more favored way the Prequels are looked at nowadays.
Full of fan favorite episodes, there is a lot that Lucasfilm can learn from the successes and failures of the show, lessons that will especially help them in their future Star Wars shows.
10 Creating Great Secondary Characters Is Crucial
The Prequels gifted a whole lot of characters to the show, from Jedi to Separatist bad guys. However, the show also created a plethora of secondary characters and that was a key to the show’s success. These secondary characters really gave the audience a taste of the galaxy far, far away and how the war affected its people.
One of the biggest triumphs of the show was the clone troopers. Instead of a same-faced legion of soldiers, they were shown to be individuals, men with hopes and fears. As great as the main characters may be, without compelling secondary characters, everything falls apart.
9 Great Lightsaber Battles Are A Key Part Of Successful Star Wars
One of the biggest strengths of being an animated show is that the action choreography is only limited by what the animators can do. Star Wars: The Clone Wars excelled here, especially with its lightsaber fights. The show is full of great lightsaber fights, some of the best in the entire Saga.
Post-Disney Lucasfilm can’t really boast of too many great lightsaber fights and the ones they do have are mostly in animated fares like The Clone Wars and Rebels. Amazing lightsaber fights are one of the biggest parts of great Star Wars.
8 Constantly Defeating The Villains Isn’t A Great Idea
Star Wars: The Clone Wars is full of great fights but one of the problems with those fights is how often the main villains lose. Villains like Count Dooku, General Grievous, and Asajj Ventress lose a lot of fights, with General Grievous being made to look especially bad. Even Jar Jar Binks beat him in one episode.
This is not good. What makes it more mystifying is that there were literal legions of Prequel era Jedi that could have been fed to villains like Ventress and Grievous, allowing them to get some wins in and look like credible threats. It’s very important for villains to seem dangerous and constantly showing them get beat isn’t the way to do this.
7 Big Space Action Is Important
The battles in Star Wars: The Clone Wars combine awesome army versus army action with big outer space battles. There’s a reason it’s called Star Wars after all- it’s about wars in the stars. Space battles are a big part of that equation and Star Wars: The Clone Wars delivers, whether it be fighter sorties or capital ships slugging it out.
In recent years, Lucasfilm has forgotten how important these types of battles are to the success of Star Wars. The Sequel Trilogy had a dearth of space battles and the ones it did have were not good. There are many reasons that many fans prefer The Clone Wars to the Sequels and this is one of them.
6 Visiting New Corners Of The Star Wars Universe Is A Good Thing
Star Wars: The Clone Wars served to give general audiences a glimpse of parts of the Star Wars universe they’d never seen before. For fans of the Expanded Universe, concepts like the Nightsisters of Dathomir were pretty familiar but The Clone Wars shone a light on the concept like never before, exploring them and their culture.
This was one of the show’s greatest strengths. Being a show meant that it had a lot of time to fill and this allowed it to explore facets of the galaxy far, far away that hadn’t gotten a lot of light before. Lucasfilm can take this approach with future shows, fleshing out its universe.
5 New Villains Are Always A Good Thing
The Clone Wars inherited a lot from the Prequels but it also created a lot, as well. One of the places it excelled was in creating villains. Villains like Mother Talzin, Savage Oppress, and Cad Bane were all created for the series and presented interesting and new threats for the heroes to tackle.
New villains are always welcome. One of the ironies of the new villains created for the show is that they were often better treated than the established villains- Grievous got beat on a lot but Savage Oppress, for example, won nearly every battle he was in. Creating great new villains is always a good thing.
4 Alternating Between Short And Long Stories Is The Way To Go
Nowadays, most shows go all in for the whole long-form storytelling thing, with each season telling one entire story that adds to the whole. While this has led to a Golden Age of TV, it’s not always the best bet. While The Clone Wars had an endpoint in mind- the beginning of Revenge Of The Sith- it got there by alternating between single episode stories that built characters and longer arcs that told full stories.
Long-form storytelling is all well and good but the best way to do it can be The Clone War method, using long story arcs to tell important parts of the story while also putting out one-shot episodes that do character work and that a casual viewer can watch and enjoy.
3 Focusing On The Jedi Is Always Going To Be Popular
The Clone Wars fleshed out the Jedi Order like no other Star Wars media outside of the Expanded Universe novels. This was very important as it inherited the multitude of Jedi of the Prequels, many of whom were seemingly just meant for action figure fodder. The show went to great lengths to flesh these characters out and it paid off.
The Jedi are a huge part of Star Wars and focusing on them equals money. One of the most mystifying things about the High Republic initiative is its lack of a show- The Clone Wars proves just how much people love the Jedi and how popular a show focusing on their exploits can be.
2 Shows Like The Clone Wars Can Redeem What Fans Don’t Like
The Sequel Trilogy isn’t exactly universally loved. Far from it, in fact. While some fans love it, a lot of fans don’t, with many fans decrying its shallow storytelling, the squandered potential of so many of its characters, and the way it devalued the heroes and events of the Original Trilogy to make itself look better.
The Prequels were also reviled for a long time but have gone through a change of image, with a whole legion of fans coming out of the woodwork to vociferously defend them and sing their praises. A big part of this is because of The Clone Wars. While Resistance failed to catch on, shows like The Clone Wars can go a long way to helping redeem things in the fans’ eyes.
1 Ahsoka Tano Is Fan Favourite
Ahsoka Tano is one of the breakout characters of The Clone Wars. The fans love her and their love for her stands in the face of the idea that the fandom hates Rey because she’s a woman. Ahsoka is a great character, one that The Clone Wars built from the ground up and the fandom can’t get enough of her.
Lucasfilm has seemingly already taken action on this one, but they need to remember it. More Ahsoka is better than less Ahsoka for a large percentage of the fandom.
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