Originally posted by: Gaffer Tape
But had they "gone nuts", wouldn't that have just been an opportunity for them to drop even more story and just have even more hours of CG battles?

I've got a bad feeling about this... Absolutely, in GL's hands that's all it'd probably be. I can't say that with certainty because we'll never know. The only star wars prequel story that totally takes place during the clone wars is of course the cartoon series. I'm just saying the battles would seem less pointless if the war were a more central point of the story.

I personally wouldn't miss all the tax disputes and rolling in the grass anyway...

What I liked seeing in the clone wars toon was the impact War on these people. Some want to end it, some want to prolong it, some don't care. I guess it'd be a lot like LOTR. There's romance too but at its core its a story of heros versus villains and god, these Villains didn't seem like clowns, they were a serious threat... Anakin wasn't crying and pouting though he still of course retained some of his jerk attitude but whatever, in the next chapter he was kicking ass, eating bugs, being the best pilot ever and liking it... man, everything we were being told about this man was actually being shown. That's what I waited years to see... hmm I'll check my dvd right now in fact. It's been a long while since i've seen this show.

Oh and another very well written story about the clone wars that I loved was the story for the Star Wars battlfront game voiced by Temeura Morrison recounting the war journals of the 501st Legion. This was brilliant. That's what I'm trying to clarify here when I say I'd have liked the war to be a greater part of the story than something that happens offscreen between the movies. In this, we see and hear how the clone wars were viewed through the eyes of a clone trooper and what's very interesting to me was not only play the videogame and blowing stuff up, which was fun, but we hear the troopers question themselves, and they really seem so human, yet they're slaves to their owner's will. That's something I'd never have really realized just by seeing the films. In this way I think there's so much potential in a star wars story that's actually about war. We can go in and see it not just from the beginning or the end, but right in the middle when you don't really know who's going to win and the robots actually seem like dangerous terminators, not silly toys...

So I conclude not just because of star wars can war give way to good drama and cool cgi stuff, but the cartoons, the games, all this EU that I've come to enjoy more than lucas' new films have developed stories about war that highlight and study its effects rather than push it to the background in favor of, I don't know what to call it... lightsaber orgy, perhaps... that happens after all the war's over. I'd have just approached things differently. But that's all over with now isn't it...