A Review Of "The Clone Wars" - With A Few Ideas

A little note: I tried adding in some Star Wars images so that this article would be less wordy. It didn't work out. We have to go with this, I guess.

I received a copy of the fourth season of Star Wars: The Clone Wars for my birthday. I have only watched the series sporadically since the initial movie that came out but wow, was it good.

The character development in The Clone Wars is really good. Really good. While a huge level of Star Wars books and comic books delved in to the worlds that George Lucas created, when it came to television or movies we were usually stuck with what Lucas gave us. That meant being stuck with tacky lines like "I'm Luke Skywalker, I'm here to rescue you!" and "You are so beautiful..."

Both the original trilogy and the prequel trilogy are a bit one dimensional in that regard. The Clone Wars is really amazing - with the return of Darth Maul in Season Four, we get to empathize and go deep in to the backstory of Palpatine's first apprentice in a way we never got to even the most significant characters of the original trilogy (Despite the significance of Harrison Ford's character Han Solo in the original trilogy, we don't find out much about who he really is, how he became a smuggler, how he met Chewbacca, etc.).

There is development also of a series that would take place after 2005's Episode III: Revenge of the Sith and before the Original Trilogy and if Clone Wars is any sign of what is to come, that should be awesome. Unlike Star Trek, which gave us television shows in which to explore the universe that Gene Roddenberry created, we have been pretty limited in scope to what we get to see with Star Wars. As interesting as the world Lucas created is, we never really got to see beyond his limited presentation of it. With the sale of Star Wars to Disney, we will finally get to see others - who, to put it bluntly, may have better writing abilities - play around in his sandbox and present the worlds that Lucas created.

One of the biggest problems with The Clone Wars and what left me scratching my chin the most was the role of Ahsoka Tono. Ahsoka is Anakin Skywalker's padawan learner in the events leading up to Revenge of the Sith. The movies show us a twisted element of Anakin who, while childish and lovelike at times, is most reminiscent of something from A Clockwork Orange. Anakin helps to kill almost all of the Jedi once he turns to the Dark Side - since Ahsoka doesn't show up in the Original Trilogy, we must assume she is killed as well.

There have been many articles written about how the continuity mess Ahsoka presents should be handled - some presented ridiculous suggestions like that the Clone Wars series should not be "canon" ("canon" being a term for in the continuity of Star Wars). Since George Lucas himself is heavily involved in the series, that idea seems just really ridiculous and a bit insulting to people who have enjoyed this series.

The best idea, in my personal view, would be to have the films and this series overlap. Depict many of the events in Revenge of the Sith in the show - albeit from the point of view of Ahsoka. As Anakin's padawan and someone who trusted and loved Anakin, it would especially be heartbreaking for her to see Anakin fall the way that he did. Ahsoka either escaping, so that she could play a future role in Star Wars projects, or taking on Anakin in his full blown Darth Vader stage would be an amazing continuation of the saga.