I’m watching this series for the first time with my girlfriend (on her suggestion) but watching only these suggested episodes for brevity. We’re almost through season 3 and I wanted to give a couple of thoughts.
We are pleasantly surprised at the quality of the episodes overall. Granted neither of us had high expectations, but we’re enjoying the humor of the droids and the fast pace of the episodes. Even a lesser episode is better for not wasting too much time.
The animation is good and keeps getting better, and I definitely like it more than Rebels. In fact there’s a slightly more mature tone in Clone Wars than in Rebels, which is welcome.
As for the bad, well, it’s still a kid’s show and suffers all the pitfalls of a Saturday morning cartoon. The plots can be repetitive, the action can become tedious, and the morals are often blunt and simplistic. Where the show tries to become more nuanced (so far, we’re only through the Mortis Arc), it merely becomes muddled and confusing.
The heroes an villains of the show suffer from aggressive plot armor syndrome, and lightsaber battles are becoming mere light shows. Consider, for contrast, the lightsaber encounters of the original trilogy: most of the scenes involving a lightsaber end with dismemberment or death. Granted there’s only so much you can do with a kid’s show, but every time a lightsaber is sheathed unbloodied, its power and danger is diminished, and this ethos of indestructible characters has carried over to the Mandalorian.
The overall impression I get going into Season 4 of this show is that the Clone Wars are a game - in every sense of the word. Although surrounded by death and battling for the soul of the Republic, none of our main characters seem to truly care about the damage inflicted or are truly affected by it. Each episode opens with a glib moral presumably relating to the content of the episode, followed by the announcer setting the stage. It would make sense as a sort of in-universe Republic propaganda, but it’s not nearly clear enough on this point if so. Whereas another show aimed at kids might show smaller moments between battles to illustrate moral points while keeping the battles themselves as backdrop, Clone Wars often weaves the morality tales directly into the battles, regardless of its effect on the seriousness of the situation. Even episodes without the focus on the Jedi have this issue.
ARC Troopers is a good example of this problem. Here’s the moral:
“Fighting a war tests a soldier’s skills, defending his home tests a soldier’s heart.”
That might as well be the moral of the show. The Clone Wars are often merely an exercise in the ability to deal cold destruction. There’s some kind of sense to this, given that the enemies are machines, but many battles suffer clone and civilian casualties, which often go unmarked. In subsequent shows this moral still seems to be in effect, with Stormtroopers and Rebels being the cannon fodder. Troops rarely flee battle, and only retreat under huge losses. Mourning consists of a brief downturned mouth and eyes.
But okay, it’s a kid’s show. It’s not supposed to show realistic mayhem and horror, right? Indeed, but this show ends up sanitizing and idealizing the process of war to the point that it feels truly alien. There’s no shame in avoiding the grim realities of war in a kid’s show to focus on small moments and the mobilization that happens behind the front lines. That is the Clone Wars kid’s show that I keep wanting to see, and episodes like Heroes on Both Sides feel like a breath of fresh air amid the endless spinning lightsabers and blaster fire.
Here’s to hoping the later seasons move in this direction.