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SU-152

2022-03-31T06:50:28Z

2607:FB90:3883:1966:E01A:22F1:B033:7B84: /* IRL */

The SU-152 is a unit available in Flames of War and the last Soviet armored vehicle built off the KV-1 chassis. It was armed with a 15.2 cm Cannon and earned a fierce reputation as Stalin's answer to the Tiger and Panther tanks.

==IRL==
Originally, the 152 traces its origins back to Stalingrad. See, the Soviets, contrary to what the [[Communism|Tankies]] will tell you, was largely a backwards state in many ways in the 1940s. Stalin's purges didn't help matters and it's why the Union struggled against Finland, and it's poor performance in Finland is one reason (among many) that the Germans thought they could roll the Soviet Union over. As such at war start the USSR was not yet big on the concept of mechanization, which meant that if you needed part of a building to not exist, you'd have to drag a really fucking big gun there with horses, and that's assuming the Commissar likes you. This left the guns incredibly vulnerable in urban combat environments to fanatic retards with 1200rpm machine guns and overrated smgs screaming about Jews and the Fuhrer.

However, the Soviets had been getting their asses handed to them by a lot of stuff, but during that time they had been figuring out how to copy Hitler's Homework. As usual, it didn't take long for a casemate vehicle to appear in the Russian army. However, it miraculously was not just a cheap copy of the STUG III, but a whole new design.

The 152 was built on a KV-1S chassis, and was armed with a 15.2 cm gun, which was later given a DsHK 50 cal for protection in urban combat. The gun quickly earned a fierce reputation for blowing anything it aimed at back to Naziland, and that's assuming it only barely missed. However, the 152 wasn't remembered for being a highly effective assault gun, though it performed this role quite well.

No, the SU-152 was remembered as the "beast killer". By which we mean it killed Panthers, Tigers, and really anything it so much as sneezed it. The gun could easily be turned against Heavy German tanks, and it often blew turrets right off anything it hit. It could even destroy [[FAIL|Elefants]]. It was awesome shit like this that caused the (at points, retarded) tank arms race between the two countries in the latter part of the war, that spawned such wonderful vehicles such the Maus, IS-3, and Ratte.

For all the wonderful things about it though, the 152 had its fair share of issues. The vehicle, being an entirely enclosed Self-propelled Gun, was understandably cramped, and quite unergonomic, a pattern for many Soviet vehicles. While the HE shell being able to rip turrets off is undoubtedly awesome, Howitzers are not nearly as accurate at far ranges than they are at close range, something that the Tiger's 88mm Cannon didn't give two shits about. Additionally, Tigers could still kill them at decent ranges, and normal Panzers could too if they flanked them. The final problem is that the SU is slow to reload. So while it absolutely *could* be a tank destroyer, this was largely a secondary purpose for the vehicle.

The 152 was later superceded by the ISU-152, a tank that was largely similar, but used the IS chassis instead of a KV chassis, as the KV chassis had been retired by that point.

{{Soviet Forces in Flames of War}}

Soviet Rifles

2022-03-31T06:44:31Z

2607:FB90:3883:1966:E01A:22F1:B033:7B84: /* In Real Life */

In the bloodiest conflict in history of the world, even with massive technological and tactical innovation, the humble rifle had a place in its resolution. Despite the popular depictions from old propaganda, the brunt of the fighting wasn't massive tank formations sweeping majestically across the Russian steppes, but poor, freezing infantrymen manning defensive positions, assaulting across no mans land, or dying in droves for a city named after your leader. Russian riflemen in Flames of War are cheap and poorly trained, but come in some of the largest units in the game. Alternatively one can bring hero rifle units, fielding the much smarter and more survivable remnants of veteran soviet rifle units.

==Mid War==
===Regulars===

===Hero===

==Late War==
===Regulars===

===Hero===

===Shock Hero===

==In Real Life==
[[image:Mosin_Nagant_189130.jpeg|thumb|300px|right|The dreaded Moist Nugget, slayer of Fascists]]
The average Soviet soldier in World War II was armed with a Mosin Nagant bolt action rifle. A time tested design that had been in service for half a century at that point through World War I and '''two''' revolutions with a few tweeks. It was a bare bones five-shot gun, but was cheap to make, simple to service, robust and reliable and could put a 7.62×54mmR round through a Nazi at ranges up to 800 meters.

The Soviets intended to replace it with the SVT-40 semi-automatic rifle earlier in the 1940s. It was a good rifle, but what held it back was that it was too fragile for the dumbfuck farmers that were using them, and more importantly it cost too much to try and produce. It was at least on par with the Gewehr 43 (which had systems copied from it), and better than the Gewehr 41, interestingly enough. The Soviets coninued to work on the idea of semi-auto rifles and soon after the war introduced the SKS.

The Fedorov Avtomat, a WWI automatic rifle, was also issued in limited numbers early in the war to make up for the lack of infantry-portable automatic weapons, and mostly saw action in the Finnish front where they were used up or destroyed. The Federov was a novel experiment cooked up during the great war and was arguably the first Assault-Rifle, but it had obvious shortcomings. The biggest being using outdated Japanese 6.5mm ammo (Protip: If your rifle needs special ammo that 99% of the army does not use, you're doing ground war wrong), [[FAIL|as well as having a 25 bullet magazine that was fed through 5 bullet clips.]] As a result, it was largely forgotten about outside of Russia, since it primarily saw service in the Russian Civil war while everyone was trying to kill each other.

Another oddball weapon used by the Red Army in limited numbers was the Winchester 1895. Yes, a goddamn lever-action rifle. In WWII. In Russia. The Russian Empire had procured a large quantity of them in WWI to make up for shortages of Mosin-Nagant rifles, and the Soviets still had some around for the Winter War. Unlike the vast majority of lever-actions, the Model 1895 was adapted to use stripper clips of 7.62x54mmR, to simplify logistical concerns and overall useability.

Companies tended to have 143 men each, commanded by 6 officers if you count the Commissar, all falling under the command of a Captain. These were further broken down into platoons, each commanded by Liuetenant. Interestingly, the Soviets emulated the German Panzergrenadiers by having snipers assigned to the command section of Platoons as opposed to someone being appointed a marksman in individual squads. Each Platoon was made up of 4 sections, typically Rifle Sections, which are the equivalent of squads. A normal section had 9 men: A squad leader with PPSH-41, an assistant squad leader with a Mosin, a Machine Gunner with a DP-27 LMG, and 6 grunts, one of which who would be given the dubious honor of helping carry ammo for the Machine gunner.

The Red Army took heavy casualties in the early days of Barbarossa, with large sections of the Red Army being overwhelmed and defeated in detail. Part of this is is because the Vodka drinkers adopted tactics that would use infantry rushes to create a hole in the enemy line, then use tanks to exploit the break and surround any unfortunate Germans that didn't decide to run the moment their lines broke.

In the early phases of the war numbers of POWs were captured by the nazis and [[Grimdark|subject to forced labor, starvation, casual brutality and cullings]]. That said, from 1943 onwards the exchange rate between Red Army and German forces eventually evened out as the Nazis lost the initiative.

This list is limited due to us having dedicated pages for some of these weapons, but these stand out the most.

*The Mosin-Nagant was a dated, but at least reliable rifle that served about on par with the Kar98. Due to the sheer number of the things produced, the Mosin saw service in every conflict post war. It even saw a boom in popularity in the 2010s due to it being cheap, but reliable. Surprisingly enough, Mosins are very popular in America, in part due to being cheap war surplus, but also because they were manufactured in America before the Revolution.

*The PTRD was similar to the Panzerbüchse in many ways, but it was a more modern design that retained service throughout the war. After failing hard to make the thing work, the Ruskis decided to relegate it to shoot light armored targets like Half tracks, armored cars, trucks, and <s>hospitals</s> extremely light tanks.

*The DP-27/28 was the distant second best LMG in the war. While it did not have the fire rate or general superiority of the MG34, it it was slightly better than the Bren due to having more shots at an almost equivalent caliber. The Pan magazine made it somewhat awkward and were a pain to reload or carry ammo for. However, its slower fire rate meant that it didn't have to worry about the barrel overheating as much. The Finns captured a ton of them during the Winter war and ended up using them to partially replace their own LMGs.

{{Soviet Forces in Flames of War}}

Star Wars Movies

2022-03-31T06:41:36Z

2607:FB90:3883:1966:E01A:22F1:B033:7B84: /* Episode 9: The Rise of Skywalker (aka Plan Palpa-Nine from Outer Space) */

{{Skubby}}
==The rise of the original trilogy==

A long long time ago, in a galaxy far far away....etc etc you all know the lines.

A man called George Lucas had the idea to create a series of epic sci-fi space operas that would become so successful that Disney would take notice and give it the franchise fluttering eye lashes, trying to seduce it.

They would be called... ''Flash Gordon''.

Unfortunately for Georgie boy, and fortunately for modern nerddom, Dino de Laurentiis already owned ''Flash Gordon'', and were busy making his doomed, hilariously eighties version, so he said, screw it, I'll make my own!

He decided to start with the fourth movie in the series he envisioned, for at the time he didn't have the special effects to create the first three to the standard he wanted, and/or he just kinda made up the first movie as he went along (drawing heavily on Akira Kurosawa's seminal samurai action film, ''Hidden Fortress'' in the process as well as the book [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hero_with_a_Thousand_Faces ''The Hero with a Thousand Faces''], a complex 1949 Joseph Campbell analysis of the various mythologies of human history all boiled down into the basic archetypes and elements required in heroic myth). Alternatively, he melded together all his great personal loves into one film: swashbuckling sword fights, heroic democratic resistance against fascist pigs, Eastern mysticism and sage samurai warriors, sassy princesses who sometimes need rescuing and sometimes do the rescuing themselves, World War II dogfights, gamblin', hard livin', outlaw gunslingers, and stories of friendship and love between comrades in war, then attached a buncha pretentious mythopoeia onto it when all his fellow New Hollywood directors started talkin' shit about how they wished he'd finish with these stupid space movies and get back to making films like ''American Graffiti''. So Episode Four ''A New Hope'' was created (simply titled ''Star Wars'' at the time) and it is not an exaggeration to say it changed the face of sci-fi and general moviemaking forever, bringing a new era of special effects and imagination to cinema and changing the lives of many who would go onto to become dedicated fan boys.

Originally, the studio had forced Lucas to take ever-increasing paycuts for what they were sure was going to be a flop, and only let him keep merchandising rights. However, whatever his flaws, George Lucas was a man of vision. Having helped pioneer the summer blockbuster, he went on to do the same to ginormous piles of movie-tie-in memorabilia. His production company, Lucasfilm ended up rolling in dosh, and with Episode Five ''The Empire Strikes Back'' and Episode Six ''The Return of the Jedi'', the legend of Star Wars and its place in cultural history was assured.

tl;dr: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ij4w7ChpuaM Pretty much this.]

==The coming of the prequel trilogy==
With the year 2000 coming, George Lucas felt that special effects technology had reached the level he wanted and began to create the first three movies in the star wars story he had envisioned. (As a side-note, he also made some touch-ups to the three original films, re-mastering them with special effects and a couple of extra scenes that weren't doable with the eighties' animatronics. But those were mostly accepted/shrugged away since they didn't deeply modify anything.The fandoms opinion on the matter however, remains a very heated [[Skub|debate]].)

The hype for the movies was immense.

And then the first movie, Episode One ''The Phantom Menace'' came out.....and there was nerd rage beyond expectation.

Part of the problem was that the immense expectations of the fandom had grown until anything less-than-perfect simply would not do, so perhaps that is somewhat to blame for the reaction to the prequel trilogy. In a vacuum one has to admit that they aren't completely ''[[Twilight|terrible films]]'', not even ''Phantom Menace''. But there ''were'' a lot of problems that had grown out of control, from the infamously-ill-received comic relief character of Jar Jar Binks to stilted and/or child acting.

Episode Two ''Attack of the Clones'' and Episode Three ''Revenge of the Sith'' followed after a few years each and didn't garner nearly as much hatred, though fans complained they didn't match the greatness of the original trilogy, more concerned with flashy action and effects than competent story-telling; but hooo-boy did it deliver in flashy action, with laser armed [[MI-24 Hind|MI-24's]] full of <s>storm</s>troopers extracting jedi from a coliseum full of shooty killbots.

''Revenge of the Sith'' did, however, receive higher ratings than ''Return of the Jedi'', and is generally seen as the best and most-complete of the three prequel films as a story and many even consider it their favorite Star Wars film by those who don't find it boring as shit until the Order 66 scene. Unusually the novelization alters some details and is considered a legitimately good book on its own merits.

What was generally more well received (despite a rocky start with a two hour pilot being pressed into service as a movie and an art style that took some time to gel) during this time for Star Wars was the Clone Wars animated series (both the traditionally-animated ''Clone Wars'' and the later seasons of the CGI show '''''The''' Clone Wars'', the latter of which most everyone agrees is what the prequels should have been), following the war between the Republic and the Confederacy that sprung up during the time between the second and third of the prequels.

It'd be ''really'' hard to find a group of movies more skubtastic than the prequel trilogy, and saying a good or bad thing about it in front of the wrong crowd's sure to provoke huge amounts of nerdrage. In defense of the prequel trilogy's sins, they did at least do their own thing. Because of how much money the original trilogy made, practically every form of media in the 80s and 90s aped it to some form or another, and instead of falling back on the same old shit the prequels branched out and tried to get out of the franchise's comfort zone a bit. While a lot of it sucked, it blazed a trail for better writers to follow and helped liven up the universe by showing us the galaxy beyond fuckhueg spaceships and faux-Western shitholes like Tatooine. And all but the most [[Neckbeard|diehard OT purists]] can get behind shit like Naboo architecture, the Clone Army and Mace "The Ace" Windu. From a story perspective the worst sin of the prequels was demystifying the force, and subsequent works have largely swept that detail under the carpet. Then Disney bought Star Wars and prequels become popular. Makes sense considering they had good scenario, sense and original events and characters and other things sequels do not have. Not to forget that they are a goldmine for [[meme|memes]].

==Disney and the sequel trilogy==

Finally, all the efforts by Disney to woo George Lucas paid off and in 2012 Disney acquired the Star Wars franchise for 4 billion dollars, with LucasFilm becoming part of Disney, appointing film producer Kathleen Kennedy as its president. This was immediately followed by an announcement that they would produce a new trilogy of films set after the original trilogy.

Expectations were almost as high as the private fears of the fans. Bringing on the creative talent behind the [[skub|skubtastic]] ''[[Star Trek]]'' reboot was equally... well, [[skub|take a wild guess (and that's before we factor in identity politics)]]. The end result saw millions of voices cry out in terror, and were suddenly subsumed into hitherto unseen levels of [[Skub]]. Tellingly, even SEVERAL OF THE LEAD ACTORS THEMSELVES have criticized the filmmakers or how the film was made, including John Boyega, Daisy Ridley and Luke Skywalker himself - Mark Hamill; also, Kathleen Kennedy and Rian Johnson have become to Star Wars what [[C.S Goto]] is to Warhammer. Rumors are circulating that the Disney trilogy may even get declared non-canon, which is bound to create a shockwave of skub so powerful that oldfags might actually side with the prequel fans for once.

For sake of sanity, these section have been condensed. Read at your own peril.
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===Episode 7: The Mouse Awakens===
''Star Wars Episode 7: The Force Awakens'' debuted in December of 2015, and reception was what you would expect: the film was immediately a massive success from a monetary standpoint as everyone ([[China|almost]]) everywhere rushed to the theaters in response to the hype, with children engaging in as many repeat viewings as their parent's money could allow as fans did the same thing with their own. It has become a financial hit with the general public and a (critically) generally well-reviewed piece, with decent cinematography, special effects, technical stuff, etc. It also went on to become the third biggest financial success in film history (at the time), when not adjusted for inflation.
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Fan response was a good deal more mixed. Many criticize the plot for rehashing Episode IV, without doing anything to establish its own identity and claim that it had a bland main character, [[Mary Sue|who had too many abilities]] whereas others find the replication of ''Star Wars'' feel an acceptable trade and praise it for being a decent action film, [[skub|and claim the lead doesn't outdo any of the previous main characters]].

Some would argue that by rehashing the original trilogy it basically nullified the accomplishments of the original crew; the Empire's still around, they've got yet another superweapon, Han & Leia split up, Luke failed to rebuild the Jedi, etc. Other fans praised it simply for being a new Star Wars that was better than the prequel trilogy (expectations were lowered due to those, to be honest). Some see poor storytelling when there was no proper showing of what went on in the galaxy 3 decades since Palpatine died, and not explaining what caused big character changes like why Han returned to his old ways or Luke ran from his friends was critical. Other say this is going to be explained in the next film and people should keep their curiosity. Some argue even with their superweapon, none of the villains feel threatening. Others argue the incompetence of the main villain is a fresh change and the point of the plot will be to see him change, to be more competent, or even learn to become good.

Overall, those against argued JJ Abrams' mystery box approach may do well for a TV series but does not mesh with films that take years to make. Defendants held the position that fans should wait to see whether the next film will do anything with the unexplained plot points.

Coincidentally, when Hamill and Fisher were originally approached by Disney to reprise their roles as Luke and Leia, they ''didn't want to do it'' right from the start. But, they didn't want to give an out-and-out "no" answer either, so they told Disney they'd return if Harrison Ford agreed to return as Han Solo as well. Knowing how much Ford ''hated'' Solo, Hamill and Fisher figured they were safe, until Disney irresistibly sweetened the deal for Ford by agreeing to kill off his character, thus forcing a reluctant Hamill and Fisher to make good on their deal... [[skub|only for the three characters to never appear on the screen at the same time, and now that Carrie Fisher's dead...]] To be fair, Hamill has a history of saying he won’t do something only to immediately agree like he’s making a standard sitcom gag in real life, even if that usually just applies to still voicing the Joker in Batman media.
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===Star Wars: Rogue One===
December of 2016 brought us the first standalone Star Wars movie, "Rogue One", showing the theft of the original Death Star plans.
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While "Rogue One" can be justly criticized for lacking in character development, that was basically mandated by being set just before another movie whose actors were now decades too old (or, in the case of Peter Cushing, too dead) to reprise their previous roles. The cast of the movie includes almost no one who appears in Episode IV, and the few familiar faces who do appear show up as cameos. (Fair warning: spoilers)

Accordingly, every main character dies by the end. It still manages to pack quite a lot of [[awesome]] into the movie, with Donnie Yen, Alan Tudyk and Darth Vader all used to great effect. Rogue One also answers several questions, plugs several plot holes, and just generally makes A New Hope make a lot more sense in retrospect ("I'm on a diplomatic mission from Alderaan." "Bitch, I saw the tail end of this ship over Scarif twenty minutes ago."). It also has the distinctions of being the only Star Wars movie to focus on regular soldiers instead of Jedi, and being more like the original Star Wars than any of the sequels, including the other two of the main trilogy. The original, back before it was "A New Hope", was a genre mashup of samurai + gunslinger rescue princess from space Nazis, then team up for a World War II dogfight. This one is wuxia cast + heist crew rob a space Nazi base, then team up for a World War II dogfight ''in the South Pacific''. Much, much [[Skub]] still exists of course, since no Star Wars movie will ever please all the neckbeards but out of the five post-Disney Star Wars movies released so far, this one is definitely the least divisive and arguably the best of the bunch. It also helps that Gareth Edwards once directly stated that he was a massive Star Wars fan at SXSW, which is a lot more than certain fucktards can claim.
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===Episode 8: The Last Royalty Check (aka zomg Luke dies!)===
On December 14 2017, ''Star Wars Episode 8: The Last Jedi'' was released world wide. The critical reception was [[Bullshit|extremely positive]], with many critics considering it the best movie in the series since The Empire Strikes Back. The fan reception has been a great deal more negative and [[Skub|mixed]], and a number of fans are convinced that Disney leaned on media outlets to shill the new movie or else. If you have watched the Empire Strikes Back, you ''WILL'' be [[Rage|disappointed at best]], if you want to see a Star Wars film that would finally expand the characters of Kylo Ren and Rey, you ''WILL'' be satisfied and disappointed at the same time, if you want to watch the film because it is the last film starring the great and wonderful Carrie Fisher, you ''WILL'' feel hollow and sad inside. (Actual results may vary). The Last Jedi is seen as the most divisive film in the franchise by the fandom, [[FAIL|which is one hell of an achievement]] considering other films.
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The complaints about The Last Jedi are many: the treatment of Luke (which even his actor, Mark Hamill, hated, to the point that he claimed he had no interest in playing Luke again), Leia's Superman asspull, Finn's plot arc that serves practically zero purpose and has him undergo the same character arc as the last movie, the forced humor, the complete disregard for established [[fluff]], disregard for even the most basic laws of physics, the fact that the central conflict is essentially the same as the one in the originals right down to the last stand ripped straight out of ''Empire'', the PC bullshit (a hipster admiral who the plot always treats as being in the right despite killing 90% of the Resistance, the Gilded Age planet arc that [[Namek|sucks up a third of the movie to no benefit,]] Rose expressing her desire to get BLACKED with a horrendous and forced #LoveTrumpsHate one-liner in the final act), added solely to virtue-signal and the whole thing being basically a 2.5h screed against the franchise it belongs to and the culture which spawned it.

Fans have also criticized the movie for dropping or discarding major plot points from TFA and repeatedly invoking Shamalamadingdong-tier plot twists for cheap gotchas that are somehow less interesting than the recycled cliches they play off of. Director Rian Johnson responded by shitting on said critics - including also mocking them with a character in his next film "Knives Out" - and trying to defend the film on social media like something out of an ED or RW article (Important note: George Lucas never tried to defend the prequels, despite the huge backlash at the time, and he agreed with fans that [[C.S Goto|The Star Wars Holiday Special]] was an abomination.) It later came out that Johnson had not been given any kind of roadmap beyond Lucas' old and unfinished concept scripts and was not allowed to see what Abrams had done until TLJ was too far into production to write in most of the previous movie's plot points, which makes the fail Disney's fault just as much as it is Johnson's. Except we also know that he had at least a modicum of influence over the ending of TFA, so they must have talked on at least some degree, and Rian's 100% to blame for his shitting on critics. As with TFA Lucasfilm has tried to paper over the holes with tie-in material, and just like TFA the fans recognize the damage control.

World-building is also of major note as The Last Jedi not only disregards fluff but also fails to come up with anything of interest. The best it could do is a casino planet which solely exists for "much capitalism". Meanwhile by comparison, while The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones were the most [[skub|skubtastic]] Star Wars movies before the sequels, each of them still did arguably more for world-building than all three originals combined, laying the groundwork for things to come, most notably [[Star Wars:The Clone Wars|The Clone Wars]]. People simply wanted to see more of the universe. Meanwhile TLJ only managed to lead to [[Star Wars:Resistance]] and the lack of fan interest in it speaks for itself as many have decided to not watch it solely due to it being set in the sequel era. The point of all these examples is that Star Wars is by nature a very lore-heavy franchise so how could they fuck it up so badly? The reason is quite simple: [[Heresy|Rian Johnson outright admitted that canon, lore and world-building is of no interest to him and he doesn't care about anything outside the story he is trying to tell. Lore contradictions? Don't matter. World-building? Waste of time. What happens to the story after he is done? Not his problem]] <ref>https://boundingintocomics.com/2020/03/03/star-wars-the-last-jedi-director-rian-johnson-admits-he-didnt-care-about-star-wars-canon-and-history/</ref> Why a guy like that would ever be hired to make a movie in such a lore-heavy franchise and why was he allowed to contradict canon as he wished is beyond us. But with that taken into consideration, it is certainly no wonder that The Last Jedi was so hated and that it caused people to lose interest in not only the trilogy but the sequel era as a whole.

The Last Jedi has without a doubt torn the fanbase apart in ways even the prequels and most of the Legends didn't come close to, with many fans declaring that they have dropped the sequel trilogy. Even Star Wars' famous merchandising has taken a mauling, as [[/toy/]] giggles at Rose Tico, Admiral Holdo and General Hux figures warming shelves while new product shipments go straight from the transport case to the clearance bin. Many had even said that The Last Jedi caused them to lose interest in Disney Star Wars as a whole until [[Star Wars:The Mandalorian|The Mandalorian]] managed to drag the franchise back up again.
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===[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lg_FoEy8T_A I'm Solo, Han Solo, Han Solo]===
On May 25th 2018, the 41st anniversary of the franchise, ''Solo: A Star Wars Story'' was released. The general consensus seems to be that it is the most average film in the series. At the very least, most people agree that it is at least better than The Last Jedi (if barely) and the backlash from that movie can be felt even in Solo: many fans have chosen to boycott the movie. Even before release, many fans had derided the whole affair as unnecessary: no one was really asking for a Han Solo origin movie, particularly one without Harrison Ford. Han Solo's entire life history had already been explored thoroughly in EU novels and comics, so the movie could only be a retread or a retcon, both things most fanbases tend to disapprove of.
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Whether it is because of this boycott or not, [[Not as planned|something no one expected happened:]] ''Solo'' was a box office bomb. Its opening weekend performed way below expectations and it didn't even manage to break even. Disney still continued to labor under the delusion that China would save their bottom line regardless of the fact that Star Wars has never been popular in China.

So what is it like? Well, rather than being a space opera like the other films, this is a space Western. Rather than being about large-scale battles and saving the galaxy from tyranny, it's about heists and the galactic underworld. (Except for the Mimban sequence, which you'd swear was lifted from a live-action Imperial Guard movie.) It's essentially Disney's reboot/retcon of the old EU Han Solo novels, taking things that were mentioned offhand in the original trilogy (like how Han did the Kessel Run in 12 parsecs) and making that the subject of an entire movie. The film was perhaps cursed from the beginning due to its [[Fail|troubled production.]] How troubled? The lead needed an acting coach to get through his shoots (Han may have walked away with the Falcon, but Donald Glover's Lando stole the spotlight every time) and 70% of the movie had to be reshot by a different director due to [[Butthurt|creative differences]] between Lucasfilm and the original directors.

The fail only compounded when it premiered and fans got to see what those "creative differences" may have wrought: the writing staff started spewing bullshit to the press about Lando being "pansexual" with no precedent in any Star Wars production including ''Solo'' (not to forget he was quite a ladiesman in the originals), the film's tone is a schizophrenic nightmare to the last-minute reshoots. Perhaps the most damning sin is that these are the movie's only notable qualities: take them away and you're left with a movie that would make you think "Huh, that was okay," and then never think about it again for the rest of your life, were it not for the crippling disappointment of seeing one of the most beloved franchises in the world fall so far. Between the boycotts, the mediocrity of the movie itself, and [https://encyclopediadramatica.rs/Gawker certain news outlets] claiming that the driving force behind said boycotts was [[/pol/]], ''Solo'' cratered so badly that [[Exterminatus|all non-''Episode 9'' Star Wars movies were shelved at least until 2023]] and [[Lulz|focus of the series has instead gone to smaller scale TV-series instead of movies.]] Incidentally, one of the writers picked by Lucasfilm to handle ''Solo'''s tie-in content, Cavan Scott, has been hired by [[Games Workshop]] for the [[Warhammer Adventures]] series.
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===Episode 9: The Rise of Skywalker (aka Plan Palpa-Nine from Outer Space)===
Your opinion of this movie is very easy to predict based on what you thought of the others; if you found The Last Jedi to be "refreshing", you'll absolutely HATE this one. If you hate all Disney content aside from ''maybe'' The Mandalorian, you'll hate this one as much as the others. If you absolutely detested The Last Jedi but have mixed opinions of the rest, you'll probably consider this to be the best of the new movies to varying degrees of actual enthusiasm. The movie largely undoes or ignores swathes of the previous one.
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After finishing shooting, the film was shown to test audiences (which Jar Jar lied never happened). The film was extremely poorly received, one of many reasons being because it had [[Mary Sue|Rey curb-stomping Palpatine by herself in the final battle]] (test audiences reportedly either laughed at the film or had to be stopped from walking out of the test screenings). The poor showing made Disney CEO Bob Iger - who was overseeing the screening - furious, and he immediately ordered the film to be reshot. The resulting reshoots were so extensive, [http://archive.ph/RLj94 they spanned months and the film didn't have a final edit till December 2019, the month of release], causing trailer studios to be so desperate for uncut footage that they had to fill half the length with footage from prior films and stuff used in prior trailers. To make matters worse for Disney, the plot was leaked months before release, and said plot turned out to be ''very stupid''. Despite Disney spokespeople and media <s>shills</s> outlets extensively denying the leaks, the leaks were proven correct by getting then unrevealed names and plot objects right. Camera leaks the week before release showed very little of the fantastically stupid content leaked months beforehand was changed, only minor details.

Before reading on, be aware that Rey and Kylo are no longer movie-type Force users, they have been changed to video game characters. Like KOTOR and Jedi Academy type where you just get powers by killing enough dudes. None of the powers are new to the franchise, but have been rarely seen and in some cases never before have in movies. You should also know that unlike the first Visual Dictionary that mostly just gave little prop trivia and plot hooks for other works, and the second which was mostly irrelevant until it gets referenced in a decade or two, the final Visual Dictionary is damn near required reading (this shit will get a "VD" to indicate it) since a lot of explanations were cut in the reshoots and recuts. Like for example the connection between Rey and Kylo is a "Force Dyad", basically one soul in the Force that inhabits two bodies (setting up a bit of a snarl what happens when one dies and not the other, and implying the personality is mostly in the brain which is why they can have unique experiences, but whatever) and warps space/time. This is why Rey was inexplicably powerful and knew how to do shit instinctively, because Kylo's training passed onto her, and likewise her nonstop playing with X-Wing training sims as a child made him a badass pilot. Dyads used to be far more common in the KOTOR era, and were apparently the inspiration for the Sith Rule Of Two. This is never mentioned in the final cut of the film, but leaks show it was in one of the earlier ones.

The movie pressed on with breakneck speed that doesn't make time for musical interludes or wipe transitions, the opening crawl informing you that Palpatine has somehow returned and sent a message to the galaxy with the Resistance trying to rebuild and gather information, Rey being trained by Leia on the planet Ajan Kloss (AKA not!Yavin #2, VD) after repairing Anakin's lightsaber (VD) who had received partial training from Luke before stopping for reasons explained later in the movie and supplementing the rest with her pouring over the Jedi texts, and Kylo Ren trying to find Palpatine because his existence is a threat to his rule. The movie takes a lot of inspiration from KOTOR era lore with Ren finding a Sith McGuffin Holocron-type navigation device on Mustafar (VD) showing him the secret planet of the Sith (not Korriban/Pesegam/Moraband, this one is a planet in a red nebula that is under constant lightning storms called Exegol). There he finds a MASSIVE Sith cult that has kept itself secret and managed to not only build a fucking massive fleet of Star Destroyers equipped with planetkiller guns like something straight out of the old canon, but divisions of Stormtroopers, technicians, and officers to fill them along with the typical cultists in robes who administer to keeping Palpatine alive and seeing to his Sith alchemy shit...which includes tanks containing multiple clones of Snoke, revealing the guy was literally born looking like that with a manufactured backstory all so Palpatine could use him as a puppet to create the First Order (which is almost a meta commentary about the backstory controversy).

Kylo is offered the chance to be the new Emperor by Palpatine, who is a corpse kept barely alive through methods some would consider... Unnatural, while strapped to a machine with [[Lord Kroak|his spirit sticking nearby]] (the filmmakers zig-zagged on the nature of this; first it was the original Palpatine who had somehow duped everyone in ''Return of the Jedi'' with a clone stand in, then the reshoots changed it to the original's zombie-like rotting corpse animated by his lingering spirit and Lucasfilm later retconned him to be a zombie-like clone of Palpatine after the film's release). The only requirement for Palps to pass him Emperorship is killing Rey, although Ren is immediately suspicious of the other strings attached (including choking a guy in a hissyfit when that concern is voiced) and decides instead to recruit Rey again, this time as a co-Emperor.

Finn and Poe obtain information about a spy within the First Order (yeah, you know its fucking Hux even before they say there is a spy at all) while Rey gets visions during her training with Leia. The spy confirms that Palpatine is legit and the info about the fuckmassive deathfleet is legit, and Rey finds the Jedi texts contain notes from Luke about his search for that planet. They go to his last clue, a desert planet that isn't Tatooine and is the middle of a festival where they find Lando has been holed up enjoying himself since him and Luke traveled there. They are immediately spotted by the First Order and escape from them to find the ship of one of Palpatine's servants who had last been seen there. They fall into sinkholes around the ship created by giant tunneling worms, and find the skeleton of Sheev's boy as well as a Sith dagger. 3PO is programmed with the Sith language, but his programming from the Old Republic era forbids him from giving the translation to civilians. Rey manages to get the sand worms to leave them alone by using Force powers to heal one's wound, and they attempt to get the Sheev servant's ship up and running before they are attacked by the First Order. Chewie is taken prisoner and Rey wrecks Kylo's TIE Fighter before the two engage in a Force tug of war to pull the transport Chewie is on, which ends in Rey accidentally Force Lightning it and causing it to explode when she becomes frustrated with the stalemate. Chewie is revealed to have been on another transport and is taken to Ren's flagship Star Destroyer while the heroes, instead of do something sensible like seek a Rebel leader who can give security clearance for 3PO's protocol (Leia's the obvious choice), they head to a planet under VERY Nazi-like occupation to find a droid technician who can hack 3PO's memory. They encounter a woman from Poe's past, revealing he was a former spice smuggler like Han until abandoning his crew (causing them to fall into debt and become bitter at him) to join the Resistance. She threatens to turn the group in to pay off their debt [[Mary Sue| but Rey kicks her ass, earning her respect and she takes them to the technician without further incident.]] The technician unlocks 3PO's memory at the cost of wiping him. The translation reveals the dagger is the key to finding the Sith navigation McGuffin they are looking for. During this BB-8 reactivates Sheev's servant's old droid, who does fuck all for anyone.

The heroes proceed to board Ren's flagship with the help of a First Order officer's badge, and shoot their way through as they free Chewie. Rey and Ren have another linked vision where her parents are revealed to have attempted to hide her from her grandfather Palpatine, who wanted to merge the souls of himself and '''ALL''' other preceding Sith (presumably not Revan, since his redemption is canon) while he discovers they are on his ship and orders it put on lockdown. Rey is confronted in the hangar by Ren, who offers her to join him again. She refuses and the Falcon appears, the engines blowing away the Stormtroopers while Rey jumps aboard. The crew head to Endor after finding out from Sheev's servant's old droid that it was where he was going to go next (this is the only thing the droid does other than serve as a "pet the dog moment" for the cast a few times) where the Death Star wreckage of the disk and throne room landed, encountering a division of former child-soldier Stormtroopers like Finn who went AWOL. The dagger has a slide-out metal prong from the handle which perfectly lines up with the corridor leading to Sheev's throne room. The team work on repairing the Falcon while Rey presses on ahead, alone, to the Death Star wreckage. Once in the throne room a hidden door opens, revealing a sanctum full of crystal mirrors that are the same as the ones she saw in her vision in The Last Jedi (the scene where she snaps her fingers and all the mirrored ones do as well). There she finds the Sith McGuffin and gets a "The Cave" vision of herself as a Sith with a red double-bladed lightsaber which she fights. Kylo is waiting for her in the throne room, and crushes the Sith McGuffin in his hand before informing her they are linked in the Force as one soul inhabiting two bodies and offering her again to be the Vader to her Palpatine. She responds by the offer by telling him to stick a lightsaber up his ass and tries to murdify him. The two fight while Finn and one of the Stormtroopers try to rescue her. They fight their way onto the remnants of the Death Star hangar, reminiscent of Anakin and Obi-wan in Revenge Of The Sith with water instead of lava, before Ren freezes as he senses his mother start to die. This pause gives Rey time to grab his lightsaber and stab him before she freezes sensing Leia actually pass away. Rey uses the Force to heal him because his swole body is too perfect to just stab, then steals his TIE Fighter while Poe and Finn return to the Resistance base. Rey initially attempts to hide on Luke's monastery to let Palpatine's bloodline die with her, but after lighting Kylo's TIE on fire (so she's destroyed 2 of his personal TIE Fighters at this point) Luke appears as a Force ghost to tell her <strike>Rian Johnson</strike> he was wrong, and was motivated by fear when he tried to hide. He reveals that all the Jedi who came before are rooting for her, and tells her where Leia's lightsaber is hidden. He reveals she stopped her training because in a vision she saw that her son would be destroyed by the Dark Side, and a Light Side counterpart would take up her blade instead. Meanwhile, Kylo is visited by the memory of Han. The two reenact the scene from Force Awakens, only this time Kylo throws his lightsaber into the sea and renounces the name Kylo Ren to become simply Ben again. Meanwhile the First Order blow up Poe's home planet where the droid technician and Poe's old crew were, although they had managed to get offworld by that point. Also, R2-D2 restores C-3PO's memory wipe by finding a backup which contains everything from before the mission.

Luke lifts his X-Wing from the waves and Rey scavenges the Sith McGuffin from the flaming wreck of Kylo's ship. As she proceeds to the Sith planet she sends out a beacon to track her progress, giving the entire galaxy a map to the Sith fleet. Poe, now leader of the Resistance, sends Lando with the Falcon and Nien Nunb to gather any forces they can, all the ones who refused to aid them in The Last Jedi, while the rest of the Resistance gears up to attack Sheev's fleet before they can leave the storm cloud. The initial plan is to destroy the navigation device which orients them to the rest of the galaxy without which the fleet cannot leave, until the commander of the flagship (a former Imperial officer) realizes what they are doing and orders it to be shut down so his own ship could serve as the navigation for the rest. Rey confronts Sheev in a coliseum/throne room full of the Cultist parents of the personnel of the fleet (VD) and is informed of his plan to have her kill him so all the Sith could merge with her and rule as basically the God Emperor of Star Wars. She raises her lightsaber before using the strange wormhole Force connection thing they have to pass it to Ben, who had gotten there with a salvaged TIE from the Death Star wreckage and was being beaten by his former servants, the Knights Of Ren. Armed with Luke's old lightsaber he kills them and proceeds to the throne room. Ben arrives and the two attempt to fight him. He simply Force Pushes them back and forces them to kneel before draining a portion of their souls, the "two bodies one soul" thing apparently being a massive source of Force power he can heal himself with to rule in his own rejuvenated body again (but with Darth Maul eyes) rather than Rey's. Meanwhile, the ex-Stormtroopers and Resistance ground personnel lead by Finn land on the flagship Star Destroyer (its still in the atmosphere of the Sith planet, thus gravity and breathable air applies) and due to bringing goat-horse things from Endor are not affected by onboard EMP that would otherwise short out speeders and tanks (which is a thing from past canon, mostly comics and novels, which they use to explain why such a thing doesn't happen more often). Meanwhile, Lando appears with a fucking enormous fleet (remember the backstory that the New Republic didn't have a fleet, instead paying for every planet to have a militia of their own which would unite when there was a big enough threat? Well, Jar Jar finally remembered because all those fucks show up alongside a neat little game of "spot that ship from the series you know" in a few shots). They begin attacking the superweapons underneath the Star Destroyers directly, causing chain reactions that blow the entire ship.

Ben is Force-pushed by Sheev into a pit as revenge for how Vader did the same thing to him before taunting the dying Rey and unleashing a MASSIVE Force Lightning storm which shorts out the fleet. While this is going on the spirits of all the dead Jedi (like pretty much anyone they could find to record a line from any of the past movies or shows, including Ahsoka; which is pretty lame since it means she was killed off-screen, with natural causes being unlikely since Ahsoka wouldn't have been 80 yet, and even that's below the average Togruta life expectancy, though this may not necessarily be the case according to Filoni) who inhabit her body the same way that Palpatine is currently full of all the Sith. Rey manages to stand and deflects his Force Lightning with Leia's lightsaber, which isn't enough until Ben manages to climb out of the pit and throw her Luke's lightsaber; with the two together she's able to walk close enough to Sheev for his Force Lightning to burn him, and despite this being the third fucking time this has happened he does not turn off the lightning and instead Raiders Of The Lost Ark's himself into a skeleton before blowing up and destroying not only himself but the spirits of all the past Sith. Despite Palpatine's plan being to possess Rey when she kills him, for some reason he doesn't do so. The Jedi spirits leave Rey and she dies, with the barely lingering on Ben healing her. They share a kiss (<s>reminder that since Sheev created Anakin, they're basically cousins</s> Innacurate him and Plagueis tried to build a "weapon" using the Force but having none of that shit it backlashed and created Anakin, and their relationship is so adversarial it makes Edward and Bella's from Twilight look healthy, something the novelization tries to claim is "purely platonic") before Ben dies. His body vanishes, as does Leia's. The Resistance/Militia fleet destroy all the Star Destroyers after Finn's ground crew hijacks one of the cannons of the flagship to shoot at the ship bridge, killing the last of the old Empire and First Order leadership.

The heroes return to the Resistance planet where they celebrate, scenes showing the rest of the galaxy shooting the last of the First Order Star Destroyers play, Chewie is given Han's old medal from A New Hope, and the ex-Stormtrooper leader is hinted to be Lando's daughter or grandaughter implying a spinoff with the two (also shares a gay kiss with another woman... which was cut to appease to the Chinese and Singapore markets). After the celebrations Rey returns to Luke's old home on Tatooine where she buries Anakin and Leia's lightsabers, revealing she built her own from her Force vision only with yellow blades instead of red ones. An old woman who was a neighbor of Owen and Beru comments nobody had been to that place in years and asks Rey's name. Seeing the Force Ghosts of Luke and Leia, she tells the woman her name is Rey Skywalker. The End.

Because the fandom has become fractured like never before, there was immediately fan wars going on everywhere Star Wars fans are found. Fans accused haters of review bombing, those who hated the movie claimed the critic score (which, if you recall, is mostly people who liked The Last Jedi and hate this movie for doing a U-turn on it) vindicates them. The fan fighting probably won't ever end, since now we apparently have to reevaluate if A New Hope and the Kenner Star Wars toys were ever good in the first place because some contrarians now claim the prequels are the pinnacle of Star Wars. Whatever the case, Disney CEO Bob Iger resigned in the middle of the work week in late February 2020, before coming a couple of months later, with insiders saying he's "livid" over certain changes, and there was an absolutely chaotic mess regarding the possibility of firing Kathleen Kennedy for the whole situation that happened under her charge and as a producer for each sequel trilogy film. They eventually settled in the far more diplomatic solution of taking all her creative input rights and classifying them as creative input wrongs, giving far more freedom to Favruea and Filoni to develop their shows unmolested by "Lord Sauron".

For anyone interested, here is a video explaining why the Rise of Skywalker failed musically, because if you're gonna fail, why not fail entirely? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_8-dWSLDWI

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==Gallery==
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File:War(1).jpg|An accurate representation of the fandom discussing the movies at any given moment
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{{Star Wars}}

Star Wars Movies

2022-03-31T06:18:54Z

2607:FB90:3883:1966:E01A:22F1:B033:7B84: /* Episode 8: The Last Royalty Check (aka zomg Luke dies!) */

{{Skubby}}
==The rise of the original trilogy==

A long long time ago, in a galaxy far far away....etc etc you all know the lines.

A man called George Lucas had the idea to create a series of epic sci-fi space operas that would become so successful that Disney would take notice and give it the franchise fluttering eye lashes, trying to seduce it.

They would be called... ''Flash Gordon''.

Unfortunately for Georgie boy, and fortunately for modern nerddom, Dino de Laurentiis already owned ''Flash Gordon'', and were busy making his doomed, hilariously eighties version, so he said, screw it, I'll make my own!

He decided to start with the fourth movie in the series he envisioned, for at the time he didn't have the special effects to create the first three to the standard he wanted, and/or he just kinda made up the first movie as he went along (drawing heavily on Akira Kurosawa's seminal samurai action film, ''Hidden Fortress'' in the process as well as the book [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hero_with_a_Thousand_Faces ''The Hero with a Thousand Faces''], a complex 1949 Joseph Campbell analysis of the various mythologies of human history all boiled down into the basic archetypes and elements required in heroic myth). Alternatively, he melded together all his great personal loves into one film: swashbuckling sword fights, heroic democratic resistance against fascist pigs, Eastern mysticism and sage samurai warriors, sassy princesses who sometimes need rescuing and sometimes do the rescuing themselves, World War II dogfights, gamblin', hard livin', outlaw gunslingers, and stories of friendship and love between comrades in war, then attached a buncha pretentious mythopoeia onto it when all his fellow New Hollywood directors started talkin' shit about how they wished he'd finish with these stupid space movies and get back to making films like ''American Graffiti''. So Episode Four ''A New Hope'' was created (simply titled ''Star Wars'' at the time) and it is not an exaggeration to say it changed the face of sci-fi and general moviemaking forever, bringing a new era of special effects and imagination to cinema and changing the lives of many who would go onto to become dedicated fan boys.

Originally, the studio had forced Lucas to take ever-increasing paycuts for what they were sure was going to be a flop, and only let him keep merchandising rights. However, whatever his flaws, George Lucas was a man of vision. Having helped pioneer the summer blockbuster, he went on to do the same to ginormous piles of movie-tie-in memorabilia. His production company, Lucasfilm ended up rolling in dosh, and with Episode Five ''The Empire Strikes Back'' and Episode Six ''The Return of the Jedi'', the legend of Star Wars and its place in cultural history was assured.

tl;dr: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ij4w7ChpuaM Pretty much this.]

==The coming of the prequel trilogy==
With the year 2000 coming, George Lucas felt that special effects technology had reached the level he wanted and began to create the first three movies in the star wars story he had envisioned. (As a side-note, he also made some touch-ups to the three original films, re-mastering them with special effects and a couple of extra scenes that weren't doable with the eighties' animatronics. But those were mostly accepted/shrugged away since they didn't deeply modify anything.The fandoms opinion on the matter however, remains a very heated [[Skub|debate]].)

The hype for the movies was immense.

And then the first movie, Episode One ''The Phantom Menace'' came out.....and there was nerd rage beyond expectation.

Part of the problem was that the immense expectations of the fandom had grown until anything less-than-perfect simply would not do, so perhaps that is somewhat to blame for the reaction to the prequel trilogy. In a vacuum one has to admit that they aren't completely ''[[Twilight|terrible films]]'', not even ''Phantom Menace''. But there ''were'' a lot of problems that had grown out of control, from the infamously-ill-received comic relief character of Jar Jar Binks to stilted and/or child acting.

Episode Two ''Attack of the Clones'' and Episode Three ''Revenge of the Sith'' followed after a few years each and didn't garner nearly as much hatred, though fans complained they didn't match the greatness of the original trilogy, more concerned with flashy action and effects than competent story-telling; but hooo-boy did it deliver in flashy action, with laser armed [[MI-24 Hind|MI-24's]] full of <s>storm</s>troopers extracting jedi from a coliseum full of shooty killbots.

''Revenge of the Sith'' did, however, receive higher ratings than ''Return of the Jedi'', and is generally seen as the best and most-complete of the three prequel films as a story and many even consider it their favorite Star Wars film by those who don't find it boring as shit until the Order 66 scene. Unusually the novelization alters some details and is considered a legitimately good book on its own merits.

What was generally more well received (despite a rocky start with a two hour pilot being pressed into service as a movie and an art style that took some time to gel) during this time for Star Wars was the Clone Wars animated series (both the traditionally-animated ''Clone Wars'' and the later seasons of the CGI show '''''The''' Clone Wars'', the latter of which most everyone agrees is what the prequels should have been), following the war between the Republic and the Confederacy that sprung up during the time between the second and third of the prequels.

It'd be ''really'' hard to find a group of movies more skubtastic than the prequel trilogy, and saying a good or bad thing about it in front of the wrong crowd's sure to provoke huge amounts of nerdrage. In defense of the prequel trilogy's sins, they did at least do their own thing. Because of how much money the original trilogy made, practically every form of media in the 80s and 90s aped it to some form or another, and instead of falling back on the same old shit the prequels branched out and tried to get out of the franchise's comfort zone a bit. While a lot of it sucked, it blazed a trail for better writers to follow and helped liven up the universe by showing us the galaxy beyond fuckhueg spaceships and faux-Western shitholes like Tatooine. And all but the most [[Neckbeard|diehard OT purists]] can get behind shit like Naboo architecture, the Clone Army and Mace "The Ace" Windu. From a story perspective the worst sin of the prequels was demystifying the force, and subsequent works have largely swept that detail under the carpet. Then Disney bought Star Wars and prequels become popular. Makes sense considering they had good scenario, sense and original events and characters and other things sequels do not have. Not to forget that they are a goldmine for [[meme|memes]].

==Disney and the sequel trilogy==

Finally, all the efforts by Disney to woo George Lucas paid off and in 2012 Disney acquired the Star Wars franchise for 4 billion dollars, with LucasFilm becoming part of Disney, appointing film producer Kathleen Kennedy as its president. This was immediately followed by an announcement that they would produce a new trilogy of films set after the original trilogy.

Expectations were almost as high as the private fears of the fans. Bringing on the creative talent behind the [[skub|skubtastic]] ''[[Star Trek]]'' reboot was equally... well, [[skub|take a wild guess (and that's before we factor in identity politics)]]. The end result saw millions of voices cry out in terror, and were suddenly subsumed into hitherto unseen levels of [[Skub]]. Tellingly, even SEVERAL OF THE LEAD ACTORS THEMSELVES have criticized the filmmakers or how the film was made, including John Boyega, Daisy Ridley and Luke Skywalker himself - Mark Hamill; also, Kathleen Kennedy and Rian Johnson have become to Star Wars what [[C.S Goto]] is to Warhammer. Rumors are circulating that the Disney trilogy may even get declared non-canon, which is bound to create a shockwave of skub so powerful that oldfags might actually side with the prequel fans for once.

For sake of sanity, these section have been condensed. Read at your own peril.
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===Episode 7: The Mouse Awakens===
''Star Wars Episode 7: The Force Awakens'' debuted in December of 2015, and reception was what you would expect: the film was immediately a massive success from a monetary standpoint as everyone ([[China|almost]]) everywhere rushed to the theaters in response to the hype, with children engaging in as many repeat viewings as their parent's money could allow as fans did the same thing with their own. It has become a financial hit with the general public and a (critically) generally well-reviewed piece, with decent cinematography, special effects, technical stuff, etc. It also went on to become the third biggest financial success in film history (at the time), when not adjusted for inflation.
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Fan response was a good deal more mixed. Many criticize the plot for rehashing Episode IV, without doing anything to establish its own identity and claim that it had a bland main character, [[Mary Sue|who had too many abilities]] whereas others find the replication of ''Star Wars'' feel an acceptable trade and praise it for being a decent action film, [[skub|and claim the lead doesn't outdo any of the previous main characters]].

Some would argue that by rehashing the original trilogy it basically nullified the accomplishments of the original crew; the Empire's still around, they've got yet another superweapon, Han & Leia split up, Luke failed to rebuild the Jedi, etc. Other fans praised it simply for being a new Star Wars that was better than the prequel trilogy (expectations were lowered due to those, to be honest). Some see poor storytelling when there was no proper showing of what went on in the galaxy 3 decades since Palpatine died, and not explaining what caused big character changes like why Han returned to his old ways or Luke ran from his friends was critical. Other say this is going to be explained in the next film and people should keep their curiosity. Some argue even with their superweapon, none of the villains feel threatening. Others argue the incompetence of the main villain is a fresh change and the point of the plot will be to see him change, to be more competent, or even learn to become good.

Overall, those against argued JJ Abrams' mystery box approach may do well for a TV series but does not mesh with films that take years to make. Defendants held the position that fans should wait to see whether the next film will do anything with the unexplained plot points.

Coincidentally, when Hamill and Fisher were originally approached by Disney to reprise their roles as Luke and Leia, they ''didn't want to do it'' right from the start. But, they didn't want to give an out-and-out "no" answer either, so they told Disney they'd return if Harrison Ford agreed to return as Han Solo as well. Knowing how much Ford ''hated'' Solo, Hamill and Fisher figured they were safe, until Disney irresistibly sweetened the deal for Ford by agreeing to kill off his character, thus forcing a reluctant Hamill and Fisher to make good on their deal... [[skub|only for the three characters to never appear on the screen at the same time, and now that Carrie Fisher's dead...]] To be fair, Hamill has a history of saying he won’t do something only to immediately agree like he’s making a standard sitcom gag in real life, even if that usually just applies to still voicing the Joker in Batman media.
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===Star Wars: Rogue One===
December of 2016 brought us the first standalone Star Wars movie, "Rogue One", showing the theft of the original Death Star plans.
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While "Rogue One" can be justly criticized for lacking in character development, that was basically mandated by being set just before another movie whose actors were now decades too old (or, in the case of Peter Cushing, too dead) to reprise their previous roles. The cast of the movie includes almost no one who appears in Episode IV, and the few familiar faces who do appear show up as cameos. (Fair warning: spoilers)

Accordingly, every main character dies by the end. It still manages to pack quite a lot of [[awesome]] into the movie, with Donnie Yen, Alan Tudyk and Darth Vader all used to great effect. Rogue One also answers several questions, plugs several plot holes, and just generally makes A New Hope make a lot more sense in retrospect ("I'm on a diplomatic mission from Alderaan." "Bitch, I saw the tail end of this ship over Scarif twenty minutes ago."). It also has the distinctions of being the only Star Wars movie to focus on regular soldiers instead of Jedi, and being more like the original Star Wars than any of the sequels, including the other two of the main trilogy. The original, back before it was "A New Hope", was a genre mashup of samurai + gunslinger rescue princess from space Nazis, then team up for a World War II dogfight. This one is wuxia cast + heist crew rob a space Nazi base, then team up for a World War II dogfight ''in the South Pacific''. Much, much [[Skub]] still exists of course, since no Star Wars movie will ever please all the neckbeards but out of the five post-Disney Star Wars movies released so far, this one is definitely the least divisive and arguably the best of the bunch. It also helps that Gareth Edwards once directly stated that he was a massive Star Wars fan at SXSW, which is a lot more than certain fucktards can claim.
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===Episode 8: The Last Royalty Check (aka zomg Luke dies!)===
On December 14 2017, ''Star Wars Episode 8: The Last Jedi'' was released world wide. The critical reception was [[Bullshit|extremely positive]], with many critics considering it the best movie in the series since The Empire Strikes Back. The fan reception has been a great deal more negative and [[Skub|mixed]], and a number of fans are convinced that Disney leaned on media outlets to shill the new movie or else. If you have watched the Empire Strikes Back, you ''WILL'' be [[Rage|disappointed at best]], if you want to see a Star Wars film that would finally expand the characters of Kylo Ren and Rey, you ''WILL'' be satisfied and disappointed at the same time, if you want to watch the film because it is the last film starring the great and wonderful Carrie Fisher, you ''WILL'' feel hollow and sad inside. (Actual results may vary). The Last Jedi is seen as the most divisive film in the franchise by the fandom, [[FAIL|which is one hell of an achievement]] considering other films.
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The complaints about The Last Jedi are many: the treatment of Luke (which even his actor, Mark Hamill, hated, to the point that he claimed he had no interest in playing Luke again), Leia's Superman asspull, Finn's plot arc that serves practically zero purpose and has him undergo the same character arc as the last movie, the forced humor, the complete disregard for established [[fluff]], disregard for even the most basic laws of physics, the fact that the central conflict is essentially the same as the one in the originals right down to the last stand ripped straight out of ''Empire'', the PC bullshit (a hipster admiral who the plot always treats as being in the right despite killing 90% of the Resistance, the Gilded Age planet arc that [[Namek|sucks up a third of the movie to no benefit,]] Rose expressing her desire to get BLACKED with a horrendous and forced #LoveTrumpsHate one-liner in the final act), added solely to virtue-signal and the whole thing being basically a 2.5h screed against the franchise it belongs to and the culture which spawned it.

Fans have also criticized the movie for dropping or discarding major plot points from TFA and repeatedly invoking Shamalamadingdong-tier plot twists for cheap gotchas that are somehow less interesting than the recycled cliches they play off of. Director Rian Johnson responded by shitting on said critics - including also mocking them with a character in his next film "Knives Out" - and trying to defend the film on social media like something out of an ED or RW article (Important note: George Lucas never tried to defend the prequels, despite the huge backlash at the time, and he agreed with fans that [[C.S Goto|The Star Wars Holiday Special]] was an abomination.) It later came out that Johnson had not been given any kind of roadmap beyond Lucas' old and unfinished concept scripts and was not allowed to see what Abrams had done until TLJ was too far into production to write in most of the previous movie's plot points, which makes the fail Disney's fault just as much as it is Johnson's. Except we also know that he had at least a modicum of influence over the ending of TFA, so they must have talked on at least some degree, and Rian's 100% to blame for his shitting on critics. As with TFA Lucasfilm has tried to paper over the holes with tie-in material, and just like TFA the fans recognize the damage control.

World-building is also of major note as The Last Jedi not only disregards fluff but also fails to come up with anything of interest. The best it could do is a casino planet which solely exists for "much capitalism". Meanwhile by comparison, while The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones were the most [[skub|skubtastic]] Star Wars movies before the sequels, each of them still did arguably more for world-building than all three originals combined, laying the groundwork for things to come, most notably [[Star Wars:The Clone Wars|The Clone Wars]]. People simply wanted to see more of the universe. Meanwhile TLJ only managed to lead to [[Star Wars:Resistance]] and the lack of fan interest in it speaks for itself as many have decided to not watch it solely due to it being set in the sequel era. The point of all these examples is that Star Wars is by nature a very lore-heavy franchise so how could they fuck it up so badly? The reason is quite simple: [[Heresy|Rian Johnson outright admitted that canon, lore and world-building is of no interest to him and he doesn't care about anything outside the story he is trying to tell. Lore contradictions? Don't matter. World-building? Waste of time. What happens to the story after he is done? Not his problem]] <ref>https://boundingintocomics.com/2020/03/03/star-wars-the-last-jedi-director-rian-johnson-admits-he-didnt-care-about-star-wars-canon-and-history/</ref> Why a guy like that would ever be hired to make a movie in such a lore-heavy franchise and why was he allowed to contradict canon as he wished is beyond us. But with that taken into consideration, it is certainly no wonder that The Last Jedi was so hated and that it caused people to lose interest in not only the trilogy but the sequel era as a whole.

The Last Jedi has without a doubt torn the fanbase apart in ways even the prequels and most of the Legends didn't come close to, with many fans declaring that they have dropped the sequel trilogy. Even Star Wars' famous merchandising has taken a mauling, as [[/toy/]] giggles at Rose Tico, Admiral Holdo and General Hux figures warming shelves while new product shipments go straight from the transport case to the clearance bin. Many had even said that The Last Jedi caused them to lose interest in Disney Star Wars as a whole until [[Star Wars:The Mandalorian|The Mandalorian]] managed to drag the franchise back up again.
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===[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lg_FoEy8T_A I'm Solo, Han Solo, Han Solo]===
On May 25th 2018, the 41st anniversary of the franchise, ''Solo: A Star Wars Story'' was released. The general consensus seems to be that it is the most average film in the series. At the very least, most people agree that it is at least better than The Last Jedi (if barely) and the backlash from that movie can be felt even in Solo: many fans have chosen to boycott the movie. Even before release, many fans had derided the whole affair as unnecessary: no one was really asking for a Han Solo origin movie, particularly one without Harrison Ford. Han Solo's entire life history had already been explored thoroughly in EU novels and comics, so the movie could only be a retread or a retcon, both things most fanbases tend to disapprove of.
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Whether it is because of this boycott or not, [[Not as planned|something no one expected happened:]] ''Solo'' was a box office bomb. Its opening weekend performed way below expectations and it didn't even manage to break even. Disney still continued to labor under the delusion that China would save their bottom line regardless of the fact that Star Wars has never been popular in China.

So what is it like? Well, rather than being a space opera like the other films, this is a space Western. Rather than being about large-scale battles and saving the galaxy from tyranny, it's about heists and the galactic underworld. (Except for the Mimban sequence, which you'd swear was lifted from a live-action Imperial Guard movie.) It's essentially Disney's reboot/retcon of the old EU Han Solo novels, taking things that were mentioned offhand in the original trilogy (like how Han did the Kessel Run in 12 parsecs) and making that the subject of an entire movie. The film was perhaps cursed from the beginning due to its [[Fail|troubled production.]] How troubled? The lead needed an acting coach to get through his shoots (Han may have walked away with the Falcon, but Donald Glover's Lando stole the spotlight every time) and 70% of the movie had to be reshot by a different director due to [[Butthurt|creative differences]] between Lucasfilm and the original directors.

The fail only compounded when it premiered and fans got to see what those "creative differences" may have wrought: the writing staff started spewing bullshit to the press about Lando being "pansexual" with no precedent in any Star Wars production including ''Solo'' (not to forget he was quite a ladiesman in the originals), the film's tone is a schizophrenic nightmare to the last-minute reshoots. Perhaps the most damning sin is that these are the movie's only notable qualities: take them away and you're left with a movie that would make you think "Huh, that was okay," and then never think about it again for the rest of your life, were it not for the crippling disappointment of seeing one of the most beloved franchises in the world fall so far. Between the boycotts, the mediocrity of the movie itself, and [https://encyclopediadramatica.rs/Gawker certain news outlets] claiming that the driving force behind said boycotts was [[/pol/]], ''Solo'' cratered so badly that [[Exterminatus|all non-''Episode 9'' Star Wars movies were shelved at least until 2023]] and [[Lulz|focus of the series has instead gone to smaller scale TV-series instead of movies.]] Incidentally, one of the writers picked by Lucasfilm to handle ''Solo'''s tie-in content, Cavan Scott, has been hired by [[Games Workshop]] for the [[Warhammer Adventures]] series.
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===Episode 9: The Rise of Skywalker (aka Plan Palpa-Nine from Outer Space)===
Your opinion of this movie is very easy to predict based on what you thought of the others; if you found The Last Jedi to be "refreshing", you'll absolutely HATE this one. If you hate all Disney content aside from ''maybe'' The Mandalorian, you'll hate this one as much as the others. If you absolutely detested The Last Jedi but have mixed opinions of the rest, you'll probably consider this to be the best of the new movies to varying degrees of actual enthusiasm. The movie largely undoes or ignores swathes of the previous one.
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After finishing shooting, the film was shown to test audiences (which JJ Abrams lied never happened). The film was extremely poorly received, one of many reasons being because it had [[Mary Sue|Rey curb-stomping Palpatine by herself in the final battle]] (test audiences reportedly either laughed at the film or had to be stopped from walking out of the test screenings). The poor showing made Disney CEO Bob Iger - who was overseeing the screening - furious, and he immediately ordered the film to be reshot. The resulting reshoots were so extensive, [http://archive.ph/RLj94 they spanned months and the film didn't have a final edit till December 2019, the month of release], causing trailers to be so desperate for footage that wouldn't be cut they had to fill half the length with footage from prior films and stuff used in prior trailers. To make matters worse for Disney, the plot was leaked months before release, and said plot turned out to be ''very stupid''. Despite Disney spokespeople and media outlets extensively denying the leaks, the leaks were proven correct by getting then unrevealed names and plot objects right. Camera leaks the week before release showed very little of the fantastically stupid content leaked months beforehand was changed, only minor details.

Before reading on, be aware that Rey and Kylo are no longer movie-type Force users, they have been changed to video game characters. Like KOTOR and Jedi Academy type where you just get powers by killing enough dudes. None of the powers are new to the franchise, but have been rarely seen and in some cases never before have in movies. You should also know that unlike the first Visual Dictionary that mostly just gave little prop trivia and plot hooks for other works, and the second which was mostly irrelevant until it gets referenced in a decade or two, the final Visual Dictionary is damn near required reading (this shit will get a "VD" to indicate it) since a lot of explanations were cut in the reshoots and recuts. Like for example the connection between Rey and Kylo is a "Force Dyad", basically one soul in the Force that inhabits two bodies (setting up a bit of a snarl what happens when one dies and not the other, and implying the personality is mostly in the brain which is why they can have unique experiences, but whatever) and warps space/time. This is why Rey was inexplicably powerful and knew how to do shit instinctively, because Kylo's training passed onto her, and likewise her nonstop playing with X-Wing training sims as a child made him a badass pilot. Dyads used to be far more common in the KOTOR era, and were apparently the inspiration for the Sith Rule Of Two. This is never mentioned in the final cut of the film, but leaks show it was in one of the earlier ones.

The movie pressed on with breakneck speed that doesn't have time for musical interludes or wipe transitions, the opening crawl informing you that Palpatine has somehow returned and sent a message to the galaxy with the Resistance trying to rebuild and gather information, Rey being trained by Leia on the planet Ajan Kloss (AKA not!Yavin #2, VD) after repairing Anakin's lightsaber (VD) who had received partial training from Luke before stopping for reasons explained later in the movie and supplementing the rest with her pouring over the Jedi texts, and Kylo Ren trying to find Palpatine because his existence is a threat to his rule. The movie takes a lot of inspiration from KOTOR era lore with Ren finding a Sith McGuffin Holocron-type navigation device on Mustafar (VD) showing him the secret planet of the Sith (not Korriban/Pesegam/Moraband, this one is a planet in a red nebula that is under constant lightning storms called Exegol). There he finds a MASSIVE Sith cult that has kept itself secret and managed to not only build a fucking massive fleet of Star Destroyers equipped with planetkiller guns like something straight out of the old canon, but divisions of Stormtroopers, technicians, and officers to fill them along with the typical cultists in robes who administer to keeping Palpatine alive and seeing to his Sith alchemy shit...which includes tanks containing multiple clones of Snoke, revealing the guy was literally born looking like that with a manufactured backstory all so Palpatine could use him as a puppet to create the First Order (which is almost a meta commentary about the backstory controversy).

Kylo is offered the chance to be the new Emperor by Palpatine, who is a corpse kept barely alive through methods some would consider... Unnatural, while strapped to a machine with [[Lord Kroak|his spirit sticking nearby]] (the filmmakers zig-zagged on the nature of this; first it was the original Palpatine who had somehow duped everyone in ''Return of the Jedi'' with a clone stand in, then the reshoots changed it to the original's zombie-like rotting corpse animated by his lingering spirit and Lucasfilm later retconned him to be a zombie-like clone of Palpatine after the film's release). The only requirement for Palps to pass him Emperorship is killing Rey, although Ren is immediately suspicious of the other strings attached (including choking a guy in a hissyfit when that concern is voiced) and decides instead to recruit Rey again, this time as a co-Emperor.

Finn and Poe obtain information about a spy within the First Order (yeah, you know its fucking Hux even before they say there is a spy at all) while Rey gets visions during her training with Leia. The spy confirms that Palpatine is legit and the info about the fuckmassive deathfleet is legit, and Rey finds the Jedi texts contain notes from Luke about his search for that planet. They go to his last clue, a desert planet that isn't Tatooine and is the middle of a festival where they find Lando has been holed up enjoying himself since him and Luke traveled there. They are immediately spotted by the First Order and escape from them to find the ship of one of Palpatine's servants who had last been seen there. They fall into sinkholes around the ship created by giant tunneling worms, and find the skeleton of Sheev's boy as well as a Sith dagger. 3PO is programmed with the Sith language, but his programming from the Old Republic era forbids him from giving the translation to civilians. Rey manages to get the sand worms to leave them alone by using Force powers to heal one's wound, and they attempt to get the Sheev's servant's ship up and running before they are attacked by the First Order. Chewie is taken prisoner and Rey wrecks Kylo's TIE Fighter before the two engage in a Force tug of war to pull the transport Chewie is on, which ends in Rey accidentally Force Lightning it and causing it to explode when she becomes frustrated with the stalemate. Chewie is revealed to have been on another transport and is taken to Ren's flagship Star Destroyer while the heroes, instead of do something sensible like seek a Rebel leader who can give security clearance for 3PO's protocol (Leia's the obvious choice), they head to a planet under VERY Nazi-like occupation to find a droid technician who can hack 3PO's memory. They encounter a woman from Poe's past, revealing he was a former spice smuggler like Han until abandoning his crew (causing them to fall into debt and become bitter at him) to join the Resistance. She threatens to turn the group in to pay off their debt [[Mary Sue| but Rey kicks her ass, earning her respect and she takes them to the technician without further incident.]] The technician unlocks 3PO's memory at the cost of wiping him. The translation reveals the dagger is the key to finding the Sith navigation McGuffin they are looking for. During this BB-8 reactivates Sheev's servant's old droid, who doesn't do much.

The heroes proceed to board Ren's flagship with the help of a First Order officer's badge, and shoot their way through as they free Chewie. Rey and Ren have another linked vision where her parents are revealed to have attempted to hide her from her grandfather Palpatine, who wanted to merge the souls of himself and '''ALL''' other preceding Sith (presumably not Revan, since his redemption is canon) while he discovers they are on his ship and orders it put on lockdown. Rey is confronted in the hangar by Ren, who offers her to join him again. She refuses and the Falcon appears, the engines blowing away the Stormtroopers while Rey jumps aboard. The crew head to Endor after finding out from Sheev's servant's old droid that it was where he was going to go next (this is the only thing the droid does other than serve as a "pet the dog moment" for the cast a few times) where the Death Star wreckage of the disk and throne room landed, encountering a division of former child-soldier Stormtroopers like Finn who went AWOL. The dagger has a slide-out metal prong from the handle which perfectly lines up with the corridor leading to Sheev's throne room. The team work on repairing the Falcon while Rey presses on ahead, alone, to the Death Star wreckage. Once in the throne room a hidden door opens, revealing a sanctum full of crystal mirrors that are the same as the ones she saw in her vision in The Last Jedi (the scene where she snaps her fingers and all the mirrored ones do as well). There she finds the Sith McGuffin and gets a "The Cave" vision of herself as a Sith with a red double-bladed lightsaber which she fights. Kylo is waiting for her in the throne room, and crushes the Sith McGuffin in his hand before informing her they are linked in the Force as one soul inhabiting two bodies and offering her again to be the Vader to her Palpatine which she again refuses. The two fight while Finn and one of the Stormtroopers try to rescue her. They fight their way onto the remnants of the Death Star hangar, reminiscent of Anakin and Obi-wan in Revenge Of The Sith with water instead of lava, before Ren freezes as he senses his mother start to die. This pause gives Rey time to grab his lightsaber and stab him before she freezes sensing Leia actually pass away. Rey uses the Force to heal him, then steals his TIE Fighter while Poe and Finn return to the Resistance base. Rey initially attempts to hide on Luke's monastery to let Palpatine's bloodline die with her, but after lighting Kylo's TIE on fire (so she's destroyed 2 of his personal TIE Fighters at this point) Luke appears as a Force ghost to tell her <strike>Rian Johnson</strike> he was wrong, and was motivated by fear when he tried to hide. He reveals that all the Jedi who came before are rooting for her, and tells her where Leia's lightsaber is hidden. He reveals she stopped her training because in a vision she saw that her son would be destroyed by the Dark Side, and a Light Side counterpart would take up her blade instead. Meanwhile, Kylo is visited by the memory of Han. The two reenact the scene from Force Awakens, only this time Kylo throws his lightsaber into the sea and renounces the name Kylo Ren to become simply Ben again. Meanwhile the First Order blow up Poe's home planet where the droid technician and Poe's old crew were, although they had managed to get offworld by that point. Also, R2-D2 restores C-3PO's memory wipe by finding a backup which contains everything from before the mission.

Luke lifts his X-Wing from the waves and Rey scavenges the Sith McGuffin from the flaming wreck of Kylo's ship. As she proceeds to the Sith planet she sends out a beacon to track her progress, giving the entire galaxy a map to the Sith fleet. Poe, now leader of the Resistance, sends Lando with the Falcon and Nien Nunb to gather any forces they can, all the ones who refused to aid them in The Last Jedi, while the rest of the Resistance gears up to attack Sheev's fleet before they can leave the storm cloud. The initial plan is to destroy the navigation device which orients them to the rest of the galaxy without which the fleet cannot leave, until the commander of the flagship (a former Imperial officer) realizes what they are doing and orders it to be shut down so his own ship could serve as the navigation for the rest. Rey confronts Sheev in a coliseum/throne room full of the Cultist parents of the personnel of the fleet (VD) and is informed of his plan to have her kill him so all the Sith could merge with her and rule as basically the God Emperor of Star Wars. She raises her lightsaber before using the strange wormhole Force connection thing they have to pass it to Ben, who had gotten there with a salvaged TIE from the Death Star wreckage and was being beaten by his former servants, the Knights Of Ren. Armed with Luke's old lightsaber he kills them and proceeds to the throne room. Ben arrives and the two attempt to fight him. He simply Force Pushes them back and forces them to kneel before draining a portion of their souls, the "two bodies one soul" thing apparently being a massive source of Force power he can heal himself with to rule in his own rejuvenated body again (but with Darth Maul eyes) rather than Rey's. Meanwhile, the ex-Stormtroopers and Resistance ground personnel lead by Finn land on the flagship Star Destroyer (its still in the atmosphere of the Sith planet, thus gravity and breathable air applies) and due to bringing goat-horse things from Endor are not affected by onboard EMP that would otherwise short out speeders and tanks (which is a thing from past canon, mostly comics and novels, which they use to explain why such a thing doesn't happen more often). Meanwhile, Lando appears with a fucking enormous fleet (remember the backstory that the New Republic didn't have a fleet, instead paying for every planet to have a militia of their own which would unite when there was a big enough threat? Well, JJ finally remembered because all those fucks show up alongside a neat little game of "spot that ship from the series you know" in a few shots). They begin attacking the superweapons underneath the Star Destroyers directly, causing chain reactions that blow the entire ship.

Ben is Force-pushed by Sheev into a pit as revenge for how Vader did the same thing to him before taunting the dying Rey and unleashing a MASSIVE Force Lightning storm which shorts out the fleet. While this is going on the spirits of all the dead Jedi (like pretty much anyone they could find to record a line from any of the past movies or shows, including Ahsoka; which is pretty lame since it means she was killed off-screen, with natural causes being unlikely since Ahsoka wouldn't have been 80 yet, and even that's below the average Togruta life expectancy, though this may not necessarily be the case according to Filoni) who inhabit her body the same way that Palpatine is currently full of all the Sith. Rey manages to stand and deflects his Force Lightning with Leia's lightsaber, which isn't enough until Ben manages to climb out of the pit and throw her Luke's lightsaber; with the two together she's able to walk close enough to Sheev for his Force Lightning to burn him, and despite this being the third fucking time this has happened he does not turn off the lightning and instead Raiders Of The Lost Ark's himself into a skeleton before blowing up and destroying not only himself but the spirits of all the past Sith. Despite Palpatine's plan being to possess Rey when she kills him, for some reason he doesn't do so. The Jedi spirits leave Rey and she dies, with the barely lingering on Ben healing her. They share a kiss (<s>reminder that since Sheev created Anakin, they're basically cousins</s> Innacurate him and Plagueis tried to build a "weapon" using the Force but having none of that shit it backlashed and created Anakin, and their relationship is so adversarial it makes Edward and Bella's from Twilight look healthy, something the novelization tries to claim is "purely platonic") before Ben dies. His body vanishes, as does Leia's. The Resistance/Militia fleet destroy all the Star Destroyers after Finn's ground crew hijacks one of the cannons of the flagship to shoot at the ship bridge, killing the last of the old Empire and First Order leadership.

The heroes return to the Resistance planet where they celebrate, scenes showing the rest of the galaxy shooting the last of the First Order Star Destroyers play, Chewie is given Han's old medal from A New Hope, and the ex-Stormtrooper leader is hinted to be Lando's daughter or grandaughter implying a spinoff with the two (also shares a gay kiss with another woman... which was cut to appease China's and Singapore's media watchdogs). After the celebrations Rey returns to Luke's old home on Tatooine where she buries Anakin and Leia's lightsabers, revealing she built her own from her Force vision only with yellow blades instead of red ones. An old woman who was a neighbor of Owen and Beru comments nobody had been to that place in years and asks Rey's name. Seeing the Force Ghosts of Luke and Leia, she tells the woman her name is Rey Skywalker. The End.

Because the fandom has become fractured like never before, there was immediately fan wars going on everywhere Star Wars fans are found. Fans accused haters of review bombing, those who hated the movie claimed the critic score (which, if you recall, is mostly people who liked The Last Jedi and hate this movie for doing a U-turn on it) vindicates them. The fan fighting probably won't ever end, since now we apparently have to reevaluate if A New Hope and the Kenner Star Wars toys were ever good in the first place because some contrarians now claim the prequels are the pinnacle of Star Wars. Whatever the case, Disney CEO Bob Iger resigned in the middle of the work week in late February 2020, before coming a couple of months later, with insiders saying he's "livid" over certain changes, and there's an absolutely chaotic mess regarding the possibility of firing Kathleen Kennedy for the whole situation that happened under her charge and as a producer for each sequel trilogy film.

For anyone interested, here is a video explaining why the Rise of Skywalker failed musically. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_8-dWSLDWI

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==Gallery==
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File:War(1).jpg|An accurate representation of the fandom discussing the movies at any given moment
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{{Star Wars}}

Star Wars Movies

2022-03-31T06:13:34Z

2607:FB90:3883:1966:E01A:22F1:B033:7B84: /* Star Wars: Rogue One */

{{Skubby}}
==The rise of the original trilogy==

A long long time ago, in a galaxy far far away....etc etc you all know the lines.

A man called George Lucas had the idea to create a series of epic sci-fi space operas that would become so successful that Disney would take notice and give it the franchise fluttering eye lashes, trying to seduce it.

They would be called... ''Flash Gordon''.

Unfortunately for Georgie boy, and fortunately for modern nerddom, Dino de Laurentiis already owned ''Flash Gordon'', and were busy making his doomed, hilariously eighties version, so he said, screw it, I'll make my own!

He decided to start with the fourth movie in the series he envisioned, for at the time he didn't have the special effects to create the first three to the standard he wanted, and/or he just kinda made up the first movie as he went along (drawing heavily on Akira Kurosawa's seminal samurai action film, ''Hidden Fortress'' in the process as well as the book [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hero_with_a_Thousand_Faces ''The Hero with a Thousand Faces''], a complex 1949 Joseph Campbell analysis of the various mythologies of human history all boiled down into the basic archetypes and elements required in heroic myth). Alternatively, he melded together all his great personal loves into one film: swashbuckling sword fights, heroic democratic resistance against fascist pigs, Eastern mysticism and sage samurai warriors, sassy princesses who sometimes need rescuing and sometimes do the rescuing themselves, World War II dogfights, gamblin', hard livin', outlaw gunslingers, and stories of friendship and love between comrades in war, then attached a buncha pretentious mythopoeia onto it when all his fellow New Hollywood directors started talkin' shit about how they wished he'd finish with these stupid space movies and get back to making films like ''American Graffiti''. So Episode Four ''A New Hope'' was created (simply titled ''Star Wars'' at the time) and it is not an exaggeration to say it changed the face of sci-fi and general moviemaking forever, bringing a new era of special effects and imagination to cinema and changing the lives of many who would go onto to become dedicated fan boys.

Originally, the studio had forced Lucas to take ever-increasing paycuts for what they were sure was going to be a flop, and only let him keep merchandising rights. However, whatever his flaws, George Lucas was a man of vision. Having helped pioneer the summer blockbuster, he went on to do the same to ginormous piles of movie-tie-in memorabilia. His production company, Lucasfilm ended up rolling in dosh, and with Episode Five ''The Empire Strikes Back'' and Episode Six ''The Return of the Jedi'', the legend of Star Wars and its place in cultural history was assured.

tl;dr: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ij4w7ChpuaM Pretty much this.]

==The coming of the prequel trilogy==
With the year 2000 coming, George Lucas felt that special effects technology had reached the level he wanted and began to create the first three movies in the star wars story he had envisioned. (As a side-note, he also made some touch-ups to the three original films, re-mastering them with special effects and a couple of extra scenes that weren't doable with the eighties' animatronics. But those were mostly accepted/shrugged away since they didn't deeply modify anything.The fandoms opinion on the matter however, remains a very heated [[Skub|debate]].)

The hype for the movies was immense.

And then the first movie, Episode One ''The Phantom Menace'' came out.....and there was nerd rage beyond expectation.

Part of the problem was that the immense expectations of the fandom had grown until anything less-than-perfect simply would not do, so perhaps that is somewhat to blame for the reaction to the prequel trilogy. In a vacuum one has to admit that they aren't completely ''[[Twilight|terrible films]]'', not even ''Phantom Menace''. But there ''were'' a lot of problems that had grown out of control, from the infamously-ill-received comic relief character of Jar Jar Binks to stilted and/or child acting.

Episode Two ''Attack of the Clones'' and Episode Three ''Revenge of the Sith'' followed after a few years each and didn't garner nearly as much hatred, though fans complained they didn't match the greatness of the original trilogy, more concerned with flashy action and effects than competent story-telling; but hooo-boy did it deliver in flashy action, with laser armed [[MI-24 Hind|MI-24's]] full of <s>storm</s>troopers extracting jedi from a coliseum full of shooty killbots.

''Revenge of the Sith'' did, however, receive higher ratings than ''Return of the Jedi'', and is generally seen as the best and most-complete of the three prequel films as a story and many even consider it their favorite Star Wars film by those who don't find it boring as shit until the Order 66 scene. Unusually the novelization alters some details and is considered a legitimately good book on its own merits.

What was generally more well received (despite a rocky start with a two hour pilot being pressed into service as a movie and an art style that took some time to gel) during this time for Star Wars was the Clone Wars animated series (both the traditionally-animated ''Clone Wars'' and the later seasons of the CGI show '''''The''' Clone Wars'', the latter of which most everyone agrees is what the prequels should have been), following the war between the Republic and the Confederacy that sprung up during the time between the second and third of the prequels.

It'd be ''really'' hard to find a group of movies more skubtastic than the prequel trilogy, and saying a good or bad thing about it in front of the wrong crowd's sure to provoke huge amounts of nerdrage. In defense of the prequel trilogy's sins, they did at least do their own thing. Because of how much money the original trilogy made, practically every form of media in the 80s and 90s aped it to some form or another, and instead of falling back on the same old shit the prequels branched out and tried to get out of the franchise's comfort zone a bit. While a lot of it sucked, it blazed a trail for better writers to follow and helped liven up the universe by showing us the galaxy beyond fuckhueg spaceships and faux-Western shitholes like Tatooine. And all but the most [[Neckbeard|diehard OT purists]] can get behind shit like Naboo architecture, the Clone Army and Mace "The Ace" Windu. From a story perspective the worst sin of the prequels was demystifying the force, and subsequent works have largely swept that detail under the carpet. Then Disney bought Star Wars and prequels become popular. Makes sense considering they had good scenario, sense and original events and characters and other things sequels do not have. Not to forget that they are a goldmine for [[meme|memes]].

==Disney and the sequel trilogy==

Finally, all the efforts by Disney to woo George Lucas paid off and in 2012 Disney acquired the Star Wars franchise for 4 billion dollars, with LucasFilm becoming part of Disney, appointing film producer Kathleen Kennedy as its president. This was immediately followed by an announcement that they would produce a new trilogy of films set after the original trilogy.

Expectations were almost as high as the private fears of the fans. Bringing on the creative talent behind the [[skub|skubtastic]] ''[[Star Trek]]'' reboot was equally... well, [[skub|take a wild guess (and that's before we factor in identity politics)]]. The end result saw millions of voices cry out in terror, and were suddenly subsumed into hitherto unseen levels of [[Skub]]. Tellingly, even SEVERAL OF THE LEAD ACTORS THEMSELVES have criticized the filmmakers or how the film was made, including John Boyega, Daisy Ridley and Luke Skywalker himself - Mark Hamill; also, Kathleen Kennedy and Rian Johnson have become to Star Wars what [[C.S Goto]] is to Warhammer. Rumors are circulating that the Disney trilogy may even get declared non-canon, which is bound to create a shockwave of skub so powerful that oldfags might actually side with the prequel fans for once.

For sake of sanity, these section have been condensed. Read at your own peril.
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===Episode 7: The Mouse Awakens===
''Star Wars Episode 7: The Force Awakens'' debuted in December of 2015, and reception was what you would expect: the film was immediately a massive success from a monetary standpoint as everyone ([[China|almost]]) everywhere rushed to the theaters in response to the hype, with children engaging in as many repeat viewings as their parent's money could allow as fans did the same thing with their own. It has become a financial hit with the general public and a (critically) generally well-reviewed piece, with decent cinematography, special effects, technical stuff, etc. It also went on to become the third biggest financial success in film history (at the time), when not adjusted for inflation.
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Fan response was a good deal more mixed. Many criticize the plot for rehashing Episode IV, without doing anything to establish its own identity and claim that it had a bland main character, [[Mary Sue|who had too many abilities]] whereas others find the replication of ''Star Wars'' feel an acceptable trade and praise it for being a decent action film, [[skub|and claim the lead doesn't outdo any of the previous main characters]].

Some would argue that by rehashing the original trilogy it basically nullified the accomplishments of the original crew; the Empire's still around, they've got yet another superweapon, Han & Leia split up, Luke failed to rebuild the Jedi, etc. Other fans praised it simply for being a new Star Wars that was better than the prequel trilogy (expectations were lowered due to those, to be honest). Some see poor storytelling when there was no proper showing of what went on in the galaxy 3 decades since Palpatine died, and not explaining what caused big character changes like why Han returned to his old ways or Luke ran from his friends was critical. Other say this is going to be explained in the next film and people should keep their curiosity. Some argue even with their superweapon, none of the villains feel threatening. Others argue the incompetence of the main villain is a fresh change and the point of the plot will be to see him change, to be more competent, or even learn to become good.

Overall, those against argued JJ Abrams' mystery box approach may do well for a TV series but does not mesh with films that take years to make. Defendants held the position that fans should wait to see whether the next film will do anything with the unexplained plot points.

Coincidentally, when Hamill and Fisher were originally approached by Disney to reprise their roles as Luke and Leia, they ''didn't want to do it'' right from the start. But, they didn't want to give an out-and-out "no" answer either, so they told Disney they'd return if Harrison Ford agreed to return as Han Solo as well. Knowing how much Ford ''hated'' Solo, Hamill and Fisher figured they were safe, until Disney irresistibly sweetened the deal for Ford by agreeing to kill off his character, thus forcing a reluctant Hamill and Fisher to make good on their deal... [[skub|only for the three characters to never appear on the screen at the same time, and now that Carrie Fisher's dead...]] To be fair, Hamill has a history of saying he won’t do something only to immediately agree like he’s making a standard sitcom gag in real life, even if that usually just applies to still voicing the Joker in Batman media.
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===Star Wars: Rogue One===
December of 2016 brought us the first standalone Star Wars movie, "Rogue One", showing the theft of the original Death Star plans.
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While "Rogue One" can be justly criticized for lacking in character development, that was basically mandated by being set just before another movie whose actors were now decades too old (or, in the case of Peter Cushing, too dead) to reprise their previous roles. The cast of the movie includes almost no one who appears in Episode IV, and the few familiar faces who do appear show up as cameos. (Fair warning: spoilers)

Accordingly, every main character dies by the end. It still manages to pack quite a lot of [[awesome]] into the movie, with Donnie Yen, Alan Tudyk and Darth Vader all used to great effect. Rogue One also answers several questions, plugs several plot holes, and just generally makes A New Hope make a lot more sense in retrospect ("I'm on a diplomatic mission from Alderaan." "Bitch, I saw the tail end of this ship over Scarif twenty minutes ago."). It also has the distinctions of being the only Star Wars movie to focus on regular soldiers instead of Jedi, and being more like the original Star Wars than any of the sequels, including the other two of the main trilogy. The original, back before it was "A New Hope", was a genre mashup of samurai + gunslinger rescue princess from space Nazis, then team up for a World War II dogfight. This one is wuxia cast + heist crew rob a space Nazi base, then team up for a World War II dogfight ''in the South Pacific''. Much, much [[Skub]] still exists of course, since no Star Wars movie will ever please all the neckbeards but out of the five post-Disney Star Wars movies released so far, this one is definitely the least divisive and arguably the best of the bunch. It also helps that Gareth Edwards once directly stated that he was a massive Star Wars fan at SXSW, which is a lot more than certain fucktards can claim.
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===Episode 8: The Last Royalty Check (aka zomg Luke dies!)===
On December 14 2017, ''Star Wars Episode 8: The Last Jedi'' was released world wide. The critical reception was [[Bullshit|extremely positive]], with many critics considering it the best movie in the series since The Empire Strikes Back. The fan reception has been a great deal more negative and [[Skub|mixed]], and a number of fans are convinced that Disney leaned on media outlets to shill the new movie or else. If you have watched the Empire Strikes Back, you ''WILL'' be [[Rage|disappointed at best]], if you want to see a Star Wars film that would finally expand the characters of Kylo Ren and Rey, you ''WILL'' be satisfied and disappointed at the same time, if you want to watch the film because it is the last film starring the great and wonderful Carrie Fisher, you ''WILL'' feel hollow and sad inside. (Actual results may vary). The Last Jedi is seen as the most divisive film in the franchise by the fandom, [[FAIL|which is one hell of an achievement]] considering other films.
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The complaints about The Last Jedi are many: the treatment of Luke (which even his actor, Mark Hamill, hated, to the point that he has no interest in playing Luke again), Leia's Superman asspull, Finn's plot arc that serves practically zero purpose and has him undergo the same character arc as the last movie, the forced humor, the complete disregard for established [[fluff]], disregard for even the most basic laws of physics, the fact that the central conflict is essentially the same as the one in the originals right down to the last stand ripped straight out of ''Empire'', the PC bullshit (a hipster admiral who the plot always treats as being in the right despite killing 90% of the Resistance, the Gilded Age planet arc that [[Namek|sucks up a third of the movie to no benefit,]] Rose expressing her desire to get BLACKED with a horrendous and forced #LoveTrumpsHate one-liner in the final act), added solely to virtue-signal and the whole thing being basically a 2,5h screed against the franchise it belongs to and the culture which spawned it.

Fans have also criticized the movie for dropping or discarding major plot points from TFA and repeatedly invoking Shamalamadingdong-tier plot twists for cheap gotchas that are somehow less interesting than the recycled cliches they play off of. Director Rian Johnson responded by shitting on said critics - including also mocking them with a character in his next film "Knives Out" - and trying to defend the film on social media like something out of an ED or RW article (Important note: George Lucas never tried to defend the prequels, despite the huge backlash at the time, and he agreed with fans that [[C.S Goto|The Star Wars Holiday Special]] was an abomination.) It later came out that Johnson had not been given any kind of roadmap beyond Lucas' old and unfinished concept scripts and was not allowed to see what Abrams had done until TLJ was too far into production to write in most of the previous movie's plot points, which makes the fail Disney's fault just as much as it is Johnson's. Except we also know that he had at least a modicum of influence over the ending of TFA, so they must have talked on at least some degree, and Rian's 100% to blame for his shitting on critics. As with TFA Lucasfilm has tried to paper over the holes with tie-in material, and just like TFA the fans recognize the damage control.

World-building is also of major note as The Last Jedi not only disregards fluff but also fails to come up with anything of interest. The best it could do is a casino planet which solely exists to preach about capitalism. Meanwhile by comparison, while The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones were the most [[skub|skubtastic]] Star Wars movies before the sequels, each of them still did arguably more for world-building than all three originals combined, laying the groundwork for things to come, most notably [[Star Wars:The Clone Wars|The Clone Wars]]. People simply wanted to see more of the universe. Meanwhile TLJ only managed to lead to [[Star Wars:Resistance]] and the lack of fan interest in it speaks for itself as many have decided to not watch it solely due to it being set in the sequel era. What I am trying to say is that Star Wars is by nature a very lore-heavy franchise so how could they fuck it up so badly? The reason is quite simple: [[Heresy|Rian Johnson outright admitted that canon, lore and world-building is of no interest to him and he doesn't care about anything outside the story he is trying to tell. Lore contradictions? Don't matter. World-building? Waste of time. What happens to the story after he is done? Not his problem]] <ref>https://boundingintocomics.com/2020/03/03/star-wars-the-last-jedi-director-rian-johnson-admits-he-didnt-care-about-star-wars-canon-and-history/</ref> Why a guy like that would ever be hired to make a movie in such a lore-heavy franchise and why was he allowed to contradict canon as he wished is beyond us. But with that taken into consideration, it is certainly no wonder that The Last Jedi was so hated and that it caused people to lose interest in not only the trilogy but the sequel era as a whole.

The Last Jedi has without a doubt torn the fanbase apart in ways even the prequels and most of the Legends didn't come close to, with many fans declaring that they have dropped the sequel trilogy. Even Star Wars' famous merchandising has taken a mauling, as [[/toy/]] giggles at Rose Tico, Admiral Holdo and General Hux figures warming shelves while new product shipments go straight from the transport case to the clearance bin. Many had even said that The Last Jedi caused them to lose interest in Disney Star Wars as a whole until [[Star Wars:The Mandalorian|The Mandalorian]] managed to drag the franchise back up again.
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===[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lg_FoEy8T_A I'm Solo, Han Solo, Han Solo]===
On May 25th 2018, the 41st anniversary of the franchise, ''Solo: A Star Wars Story'' was released. The general consensus seems to be that it is the most average film in the series. At the very least, most people agree that it is at least better than The Last Jedi (if barely) and the backlash from that movie can be felt even in Solo: many fans have chosen to boycott the movie. Even before release, many fans had derided the whole affair as unnecessary: no one was really asking for a Han Solo origin movie, particularly one without Harrison Ford. Han Solo's entire life history had already been explored thoroughly in EU novels and comics, so the movie could only be a retread or a retcon, both things most fanbases tend to disapprove of.
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Whether it is because of this boycott or not, [[Not as planned|something no one expected happened:]] ''Solo'' was a box office bomb. Its opening weekend performed way below expectations and it didn't even manage to break even. Disney still continued to labor under the delusion that China would save their bottom line regardless of the fact that Star Wars has never been popular in China.

So what is it like? Well, rather than being a space opera like the other films, this is a space Western. Rather than being about large-scale battles and saving the galaxy from tyranny, it's about heists and the galactic underworld. (Except for the Mimban sequence, which you'd swear was lifted from a live-action Imperial Guard movie.) It's essentially Disney's reboot/retcon of the old EU Han Solo novels, taking things that were mentioned offhand in the original trilogy (like how Han did the Kessel Run in 12 parsecs) and making that the subject of an entire movie. The film was perhaps cursed from the beginning due to its [[Fail|troubled production.]] How troubled? The lead needed an acting coach to get through his shoots (Han may have walked away with the Falcon, but Donald Glover's Lando stole the spotlight every time) and 70% of the movie had to be reshot by a different director due to [[Butthurt|creative differences]] between Lucasfilm and the original directors.

The fail only compounded when it premiered and fans got to see what those "creative differences" may have wrought: the writing staff started spewing bullshit to the press about Lando being "pansexual" with no precedent in any Star Wars production including ''Solo'' (not to forget he was quite a ladiesman in the originals), the film's tone is a schizophrenic nightmare to the last-minute reshoots. Perhaps the most damning sin is that these are the movie's only notable qualities: take them away and you're left with a movie that would make you think "Huh, that was okay," and then never think about it again for the rest of your life, were it not for the crippling disappointment of seeing one of the most beloved franchises in the world fall so far. Between the boycotts, the mediocrity of the movie itself, and [https://encyclopediadramatica.rs/Gawker certain news outlets] claiming that the driving force behind said boycotts was [[/pol/]], ''Solo'' cratered so badly that [[Exterminatus|all non-''Episode 9'' Star Wars movies were shelved at least until 2023]] and [[Lulz|focus of the series has instead gone to smaller scale TV-series instead of movies.]] Incidentally, one of the writers picked by Lucasfilm to handle ''Solo'''s tie-in content, Cavan Scott, has been hired by [[Games Workshop]] for the [[Warhammer Adventures]] series.
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===Episode 9: The Rise of Skywalker (aka Plan Palpa-Nine from Outer Space)===
Your opinion of this movie is very easy to predict based on what you thought of the others; if you found The Last Jedi to be "refreshing", you'll absolutely HATE this one. If you hate all Disney content aside from ''maybe'' The Mandalorian, you'll hate this one as much as the others. If you absolutely detested The Last Jedi but have mixed opinions of the rest, you'll probably consider this to be the best of the new movies to varying degrees of actual enthusiasm. The movie largely undoes or ignores swathes of the previous one.
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After finishing shooting, the film was shown to test audiences (which JJ Abrams lied never happened). The film was extremely poorly received, one of many reasons being because it had [[Mary Sue|Rey curb-stomping Palpatine by herself in the final battle]] (test audiences reportedly either laughed at the film or had to be stopped from walking out of the test screenings). The poor showing made Disney CEO Bob Iger - who was overseeing the screening - furious, and he immediately ordered the film to be reshot. The resulting reshoots were so extensive, [http://archive.ph/RLj94 they spanned months and the film didn't have a final edit till December 2019, the month of release], causing trailers to be so desperate for footage that wouldn't be cut they had to fill half the length with footage from prior films and stuff used in prior trailers. To make matters worse for Disney, the plot was leaked months before release, and said plot turned out to be ''very stupid''. Despite Disney spokespeople and media outlets extensively denying the leaks, the leaks were proven correct by getting then unrevealed names and plot objects right. Camera leaks the week before release showed very little of the fantastically stupid content leaked months beforehand was changed, only minor details.

Before reading on, be aware that Rey and Kylo are no longer movie-type Force users, they have been changed to video game characters. Like KOTOR and Jedi Academy type where you just get powers by killing enough dudes. None of the powers are new to the franchise, but have been rarely seen and in some cases never before have in movies. You should also know that unlike the first Visual Dictionary that mostly just gave little prop trivia and plot hooks for other works, and the second which was mostly irrelevant until it gets referenced in a decade or two, the final Visual Dictionary is damn near required reading (this shit will get a "VD" to indicate it) since a lot of explanations were cut in the reshoots and recuts. Like for example the connection between Rey and Kylo is a "Force Dyad", basically one soul in the Force that inhabits two bodies (setting up a bit of a snarl what happens when one dies and not the other, and implying the personality is mostly in the brain which is why they can have unique experiences, but whatever) and warps space/time. This is why Rey was inexplicably powerful and knew how to do shit instinctively, because Kylo's training passed onto her, and likewise her nonstop playing with X-Wing training sims as a child made him a badass pilot. Dyads used to be far more common in the KOTOR era, and were apparently the inspiration for the Sith Rule Of Two. This is never mentioned in the final cut of the film, but leaks show it was in one of the earlier ones.

The movie pressed on with breakneck speed that doesn't have time for musical interludes or wipe transitions, the opening crawl informing you that Palpatine has somehow returned and sent a message to the galaxy with the Resistance trying to rebuild and gather information, Rey being trained by Leia on the planet Ajan Kloss (AKA not!Yavin #2, VD) after repairing Anakin's lightsaber (VD) who had received partial training from Luke before stopping for reasons explained later in the movie and supplementing the rest with her pouring over the Jedi texts, and Kylo Ren trying to find Palpatine because his existence is a threat to his rule. The movie takes a lot of inspiration from KOTOR era lore with Ren finding a Sith McGuffin Holocron-type navigation device on Mustafar (VD) showing him the secret planet of the Sith (not Korriban/Pesegam/Moraband, this one is a planet in a red nebula that is under constant lightning storms called Exegol). There he finds a MASSIVE Sith cult that has kept itself secret and managed to not only build a fucking massive fleet of Star Destroyers equipped with planetkiller guns like something straight out of the old canon, but divisions of Stormtroopers, technicians, and officers to fill them along with the typical cultists in robes who administer to keeping Palpatine alive and seeing to his Sith alchemy shit...which includes tanks containing multiple clones of Snoke, revealing the guy was literally born looking like that with a manufactured backstory all so Palpatine could use him as a puppet to create the First Order (which is almost a meta commentary about the backstory controversy).

Kylo is offered the chance to be the new Emperor by Palpatine, who is a corpse kept barely alive through methods some would consider... Unnatural, while strapped to a machine with [[Lord Kroak|his spirit sticking nearby]] (the filmmakers zig-zagged on the nature of this; first it was the original Palpatine who had somehow duped everyone in ''Return of the Jedi'' with a clone stand in, then the reshoots changed it to the original's zombie-like rotting corpse animated by his lingering spirit and Lucasfilm later retconned him to be a zombie-like clone of Palpatine after the film's release). The only requirement for Palps to pass him Emperorship is killing Rey, although Ren is immediately suspicious of the other strings attached (including choking a guy in a hissyfit when that concern is voiced) and decides instead to recruit Rey again, this time as a co-Emperor.

Finn and Poe obtain information about a spy within the First Order (yeah, you know its fucking Hux even before they say there is a spy at all) while Rey gets visions during her training with Leia. The spy confirms that Palpatine is legit and the info about the fuckmassive deathfleet is legit, and Rey finds the Jedi texts contain notes from Luke about his search for that planet. They go to his last clue, a desert planet that isn't Tatooine and is the middle of a festival where they find Lando has been holed up enjoying himself since him and Luke traveled there. They are immediately spotted by the First Order and escape from them to find the ship of one of Palpatine's servants who had last been seen there. They fall into sinkholes around the ship created by giant tunneling worms, and find the skeleton of Sheev's boy as well as a Sith dagger. 3PO is programmed with the Sith language, but his programming from the Old Republic era forbids him from giving the translation to civilians. Rey manages to get the sand worms to leave them alone by using Force powers to heal one's wound, and they attempt to get the Sheev's servant's ship up and running before they are attacked by the First Order. Chewie is taken prisoner and Rey wrecks Kylo's TIE Fighter before the two engage in a Force tug of war to pull the transport Chewie is on, which ends in Rey accidentally Force Lightning it and causing it to explode when she becomes frustrated with the stalemate. Chewie is revealed to have been on another transport and is taken to Ren's flagship Star Destroyer while the heroes, instead of do something sensible like seek a Rebel leader who can give security clearance for 3PO's protocol (Leia's the obvious choice), they head to a planet under VERY Nazi-like occupation to find a droid technician who can hack 3PO's memory. They encounter a woman from Poe's past, revealing he was a former spice smuggler like Han until abandoning his crew (causing them to fall into debt and become bitter at him) to join the Resistance. She threatens to turn the group in to pay off their debt [[Mary Sue| but Rey kicks her ass, earning her respect and she takes them to the technician without further incident.]] The technician unlocks 3PO's memory at the cost of wiping him. The translation reveals the dagger is the key to finding the Sith navigation McGuffin they are looking for. During this BB-8 reactivates Sheev's servant's old droid, who doesn't do much.

The heroes proceed to board Ren's flagship with the help of a First Order officer's badge, and shoot their way through as they free Chewie. Rey and Ren have another linked vision where her parents are revealed to have attempted to hide her from her grandfather Palpatine, who wanted to merge the souls of himself and '''ALL''' other preceding Sith (presumably not Revan, since his redemption is canon) while he discovers they are on his ship and orders it put on lockdown. Rey is confronted in the hangar by Ren, who offers her to join him again. She refuses and the Falcon appears, the engines blowing away the Stormtroopers while Rey jumps aboard. The crew head to Endor after finding out from Sheev's servant's old droid that it was where he was going to go next (this is the only thing the droid does other than serve as a "pet the dog moment" for the cast a few times) where the Death Star wreckage of the disk and throne room landed, encountering a division of former child-soldier Stormtroopers like Finn who went AWOL. The dagger has a slide-out metal prong from the handle which perfectly lines up with the corridor leading to Sheev's throne room. The team work on repairing the Falcon while Rey presses on ahead, alone, to the Death Star wreckage. Once in the throne room a hidden door opens, revealing a sanctum full of crystal mirrors that are the same as the ones she saw in her vision in The Last Jedi (the scene where she snaps her fingers and all the mirrored ones do as well). There she finds the Sith McGuffin and gets a "The Cave" vision of herself as a Sith with a red double-bladed lightsaber which she fights. Kylo is waiting for her in the throne room, and crushes the Sith McGuffin in his hand before informing her they are linked in the Force as one soul inhabiting two bodies and offering her again to be the Vader to her Palpatine which she again refuses. The two fight while Finn and one of the Stormtroopers try to rescue her. They fight their way onto the remnants of the Death Star hangar, reminiscent of Anakin and Obi-wan in Revenge Of The Sith with water instead of lava, before Ren freezes as he senses his mother start to die. This pause gives Rey time to grab his lightsaber and stab him before she freezes sensing Leia actually pass away. Rey uses the Force to heal him, then steals his TIE Fighter while Poe and Finn return to the Resistance base. Rey initially attempts to hide on Luke's monastery to let Palpatine's bloodline die with her, but after lighting Kylo's TIE on fire (so she's destroyed 2 of his personal TIE Fighters at this point) Luke appears as a Force ghost to tell her <strike>Rian Johnson</strike> he was wrong, and was motivated by fear when he tried to hide. He reveals that all the Jedi who came before are rooting for her, and tells her where Leia's lightsaber is hidden. He reveals she stopped her training because in a vision she saw that her son would be destroyed by the Dark Side, and a Light Side counterpart would take up her blade instead. Meanwhile, Kylo is visited by the memory of Han. The two reenact the scene from Force Awakens, only this time Kylo throws his lightsaber into the sea and renounces the name Kylo Ren to become simply Ben again. Meanwhile the First Order blow up Poe's home planet where the droid technician and Poe's old crew were, although they had managed to get offworld by that point. Also, R2-D2 restores C-3PO's memory wipe by finding a backup which contains everything from before the mission.

Luke lifts his X-Wing from the waves and Rey scavenges the Sith McGuffin from the flaming wreck of Kylo's ship. As she proceeds to the Sith planet she sends out a beacon to track her progress, giving the entire galaxy a map to the Sith fleet. Poe, now leader of the Resistance, sends Lando with the Falcon and Nien Nunb to gather any forces they can, all the ones who refused to aid them in The Last Jedi, while the rest of the Resistance gears up to attack Sheev's fleet before they can leave the storm cloud. The initial plan is to destroy the navigation device which orients them to the rest of the galaxy without which the fleet cannot leave, until the commander of the flagship (a former Imperial officer) realizes what they are doing and orders it to be shut down so his own ship could serve as the navigation for the rest. Rey confronts Sheev in a coliseum/throne room full of the Cultist parents of the personnel of the fleet (VD) and is informed of his plan to have her kill him so all the Sith could merge with her and rule as basically the God Emperor of Star Wars. She raises her lightsaber before using the strange wormhole Force connection thing they have to pass it to Ben, who had gotten there with a salvaged TIE from the Death Star wreckage and was being beaten by his former servants, the Knights Of Ren. Armed with Luke's old lightsaber he kills them and proceeds to the throne room. Ben arrives and the two attempt to fight him. He simply Force Pushes them back and forces them to kneel before draining a portion of their souls, the "two bodies one soul" thing apparently being a massive source of Force power he can heal himself with to rule in his own rejuvenated body again (but with Darth Maul eyes) rather than Rey's. Meanwhile, the ex-Stormtroopers and Resistance ground personnel lead by Finn land on the flagship Star Destroyer (its still in the atmosphere of the Sith planet, thus gravity and breathable air applies) and due to bringing goat-horse things from Endor are not affected by onboard EMP that would otherwise short out speeders and tanks (which is a thing from past canon, mostly comics and novels, which they use to explain why such a thing doesn't happen more often). Meanwhile, Lando appears with a fucking enormous fleet (remember the backstory that the New Republic didn't have a fleet, instead paying for every planet to have a militia of their own which would unite when there was a big enough threat? Well, JJ finally remembered because all those fucks show up alongside a neat little game of "spot that ship from the series you know" in a few shots). They begin attacking the superweapons underneath the Star Destroyers directly, causing chain reactions that blow the entire ship.

Ben is Force-pushed by Sheev into a pit as revenge for how Vader did the same thing to him before taunting the dying Rey and unleashing a MASSIVE Force Lightning storm which shorts out the fleet. While this is going on the spirits of all the dead Jedi (like pretty much anyone they could find to record a line from any of the past movies or shows, including Ahsoka; which is pretty lame since it means she was killed off-screen, with natural causes being unlikely since Ahsoka wouldn't have been 80 yet, and even that's below the average Togruta life expectancy, though this may not necessarily be the case according to Filoni) who inhabit her body the same way that Palpatine is currently full of all the Sith. Rey manages to stand and deflects his Force Lightning with Leia's lightsaber, which isn't enough until Ben manages to climb out of the pit and throw her Luke's lightsaber; with the two together she's able to walk close enough to Sheev for his Force Lightning to burn him, and despite this being the third fucking time this has happened he does not turn off the lightning and instead Raiders Of The Lost Ark's himself into a skeleton before blowing up and destroying not only himself but the spirits of all the past Sith. Despite Palpatine's plan being to possess Rey when she kills him, for some reason he doesn't do so. The Jedi spirits leave Rey and she dies, with the barely lingering on Ben healing her. They share a kiss (<s>reminder that since Sheev created Anakin, they're basically cousins</s> Innacurate him and Plagueis tried to build a "weapon" using the Force but having none of that shit it backlashed and created Anakin, and their relationship is so adversarial it makes Edward and Bella's from Twilight look healthy, something the novelization tries to claim is "purely platonic") before Ben dies. His body vanishes, as does Leia's. The Resistance/Militia fleet destroy all the Star Destroyers after Finn's ground crew hijacks one of the cannons of the flagship to shoot at the ship bridge, killing the last of the old Empire and First Order leadership.

The heroes return to the Resistance planet where they celebrate, scenes showing the rest of the galaxy shooting the last of the First Order Star Destroyers play, Chewie is given Han's old medal from A New Hope, and the ex-Stormtrooper leader is hinted to be Lando's daughter or grandaughter implying a spinoff with the two (also shares a gay kiss with another woman... which was cut to appease China's and Singapore's media watchdogs). After the celebrations Rey returns to Luke's old home on Tatooine where she buries Anakin and Leia's lightsabers, revealing she built her own from her Force vision only with yellow blades instead of red ones. An old woman who was a neighbor of Owen and Beru comments nobody had been to that place in years and asks Rey's name. Seeing the Force Ghosts of Luke and Leia, she tells the woman her name is Rey Skywalker. The End.

Because the fandom has become fractured like never before, there was immediately fan wars going on everywhere Star Wars fans are found. Fans accused haters of review bombing, those who hated the movie claimed the critic score (which, if you recall, is mostly people who liked The Last Jedi and hate this movie for doing a U-turn on it) vindicates them. The fan fighting probably won't ever end, since now we apparently have to reevaluate if A New Hope and the Kenner Star Wars toys were ever good in the first place because some contrarians now claim the prequels are the pinnacle of Star Wars. Whatever the case, Disney CEO Bob Iger resigned in the middle of the work week in late February 2020, before coming a couple of months later, with insiders saying he's "livid" over certain changes, and there's an absolutely chaotic mess regarding the possibility of firing Kathleen Kennedy for the whole situation that happened under her charge and as a producer for each sequel trilogy film.

For anyone interested, here is a video explaining why the Rise of Skywalker failed musically. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_8-dWSLDWI

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==Gallery==
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File:War(1).jpg|An accurate representation of the fandom discussing the movies at any given moment
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{{Star Wars}}

Star Wars:Rebels

2022-03-31T06:08:33Z

2607:FB90:3883:1966:E01A:22F1:B033:7B84: /* Imperial Incompetence? */

[[File:Rebels.jpeg|thumb|And thus begins the slow but sure descent into [[Star Wars:Resistance|mediocrity]], ''Sigh..'']]
{{Spoilers}}

Star Wars: Rebels was an american TV series that was released in the shadow of [[Star Wars:The Clone Wars|TCW]]. Generally considered an '''ok''' show, but not a great one. It adds the nice little bits of mysticism back into the Star Wars universe, while also making its most powerful threat look like [[Abbadon|harmless fails.]] General opinion is mixed, but the results tend to lean towards tolerable. Ultimately its up to you whether or not its good, though most fans agree its way above whatever the [[Star Wars:Resistance|hell Resistance was supposed to be]].

''Rebels'' is set a few years before ''A New Hope'' and covers the early formation of the rebellion from the perspective of one cell focused on the planet Lothal. Much like the Clone Wars, it starts off weakly with slow pacing and erroneous animation, but gets better as the seasons and storyline progress, with season 4 sometimes rivaling the very best Clone Wars arcs for quality and storytelling. If you liked ''Rogue One'' but thought it should be about 25 hours long and done in cartoony CGI then this is the show for you.

Since the show does have a fair amount of dedicated fans, <strike>likely possibly</strike> certainly more than the sequel trilogy itself, Disney has made a habit of planting Easter Egg references to Rebels in basically everything moving forward, usually in the form of an appearance by the iconic ship The Ghost or the friendly-ish space pirate character Hondo Ohnaka.

<strike>(Wait a second, wasn’t Hondo in [[Star Wars:The Clone Wars|clone wars]] first-) </strike>

==Season 1==
[[Image:Alderaan.jpg|right|300px|thumb|The original vision for Alderaan, a planet of grassy rolling hills and mound-like cities.]]
Season 1 is perhaps the most hotly debated and skubby season. As this series amounts to a sequel to the Clone Wars, it had deep shoes to fill, and to be frank, it doesn't fill those shoes well at all. However, high points include Tarkin, the Grand Inquisitor, and Fulcrum. Special note about Fulcrum is that she is Ahsoka, and probably the only reason this show got another season.

Most of this Season takes place on or around Lothal. Lothal as a place isn't too boring either, coming across as a cool mix of Kansas/Oklahoma, with a centralized capital city as it's main point of commerce. The setting is based on Ralph McQuarrie's drawings for Alderaan, which went unused in the original and prequel movies.

The main complaint about season one is that the baddies are completely incompetent. The Imperial occupation of Lothal is seemingly commanded by two Imperial captains (a fat neckbeard and a skinny one with a Habsburg chin) led by a blond ditz who's just the real governor's stuck up secretary. Thankfully, Tarkin shows up towards the end who quickly proceeds to [[blam|execute]] the two captains for their incompetence and under his command, the Imperials become slightly more competent for the rest of the season.

==Season 2==
The real reason that this show got a second season is that Darth FUCKING Vader appears, and he is played appropriately as an essential avatar of destruction ([[awesome|and is voiced by James Earl Jones to add up to the awesomeness]]). His first act? Carbombing the comedy baddie of season one, Minister Tua and blaming it on rebel terrorism. The plot armor heroes get brutally destroyed, shattering them and dispersing the rebels from Lothal for a time. Such appearances from awesome characters are kept relatively low, due to the need to not let them overshadow the main cast.

The Inquisitors are ok (one of them comes across as having a light attraction to Ezra), and ISB agent Kallus continues to be a presence around the show. The finale really solidifies the show's right to continue, throwing Maul into the mix, and having the epic confrontation that Ahsoka and Anakin were destined to have since the beginning of The Clone Wars series.

It's in Season 2 that the rebellion makes its appearance, as a collection of independent cells largely focused on system level actions. Ryloth is in open revolt, Princess Leia is out on "mercy missions", and Bail Organa is bankrolling Jun Sato's ''Phoenix Squadron'', a renegade paramilitary force that assists other rebel cells. Alderaan is pretty openly building the rebel fleet by stealing it from themselves.

==Season 3==
Season 3 is generally considered to be all around good, due to the introduction of Thrawn, and general lack of outright retarded episodes, with only a few exceptions. Thrawn is appropriately written as cunningly intelligent, kicking ass in every scene he is in, including [[Awesome|beating assassin droids with his bare fists and a blaster]]. We even get another new character in Governor Pryce, who apparently chose to twiddle her thumbs on Coruscant for two whole seasons rather than do her actual fucking job on Lothal. Ezra also gets changes; he now has a lot less hair, and he has built a new lightsaber to replace the toy he was using for the first two seasons.

[[Image:WomanYellingAtLothcat.jpeg|right|400px|thumb|''Stop foiling our plans, you rebel scum!'']]

Most of the character development for the season is focused on two arcs: Ezra's entanglement with Maul, and Sabine's history with her people. Ezra's arc ends with Kenobi telling Maul to stay dead in the greatest and most illustrative lightsaber fight ever. Along the way Sabine discovers the Darksaber and then goes away for a few episodes on Mandalore until returning for the finale.

For the alliance as a whole, Mon Mothma is on the run conducting pirate broadcasts against the Empire. Jan Dodonna has defected and begun assembling a fleet of defector pilots and stolen ships; among the new recruits are Wedge and Hobbie. Phoenix Squadron and the Dodonna force suffer severe losses fighting to escape Thrawn's fleet as the season ends.

==Season 4==

The survivors of the Battle of Atollon at the end of the 3rd season escape to Mon Mothma's new base on Yavin IV. The rebellion is now taking on its recognizable form from the movies, although is having difficulty reining in its wilder elements. Fighters like Saw Gerrera advocate aggressive direct action, to the dismay of the more moderate leaders. This arc is left for ''Rogue One'' to resolve, while the main cast of Rebels returns to Lothal, themselves in favor of direct action against Thrawn and his TIE Defender project.

The liberation of Lothal is the main arc of the season although that starts with the Rebels getting punched in the face because Lothal belongs to Thrawn and he's ready for them. [[lolwut|Pryce manages to kill Kanan]], but only by [[fail|blowing up the occupation's entire fuel reserve]]. The true extent and power of Ezra's connection to the force and Lothal is revealed, and it becomes clear that the Imperial occupation of Lothal is only tangentially about building fighters and more about the fact that it has a Jedi temple, which the Emperor is very interested in [[profit|for reasons]].

==The Good==

* All the main characters are well-written, fleshed out, with reasonable, sympathetic backstories and significant character arcs, along with different enough skill sets that they don't step on each others' toes. Each one feels like an integral part of the team; the pilot, the gunner, the muscle, the tech, the swordsman and the hot-shot rookie.
** Seriously, you'd think that with two jedi in a 6-man crew you'd get some overlap, but they feel like very different characters, both in personality and powers. Kanan is very much the quintessential combat jedi (as is to be expected as he was trained during the Clone Wars), while Ezra's signature ability to connect with the galaxy around him and especially its wildlife marks him out not only from the rest of the Ghost crew, but from every other force user we've seen on the screen.
* Ghost and it's shuttlecraft, Phantom, are both pretty cool ships
* Sense of escalation. In season 1, focus is entirely on the crew of the Ghost and the existence of a larger Rebellion is mostly unknown to them. In season 2, the crew has joined a larger Rebel cell named Phoenix Squadron. In season 3, Phoenix Squadron has acquired themselves a permanent base and we see more cells from the larger Rebellion. In season 4, Rebellion has taken the form we know from the movies, The Alliance to Restore the Republic, and the Galactic Civil War has officially begun.
* Having the crew use callsigns instead of names when on mission or on a radio is a cool detail
* Grand Admiral Thrawn makes his debut in Disney Star Wars, along with the TIE Defender project. The character doesn’t lose much in the translation.
* Zeb is voiced by [[Steve Blum]] who also voices some other characters (mostly Stormtroopers)
* Original trilogy actors such as Billy Dee Williams (Lando), James Earl Jones (Vader) and Frank Oz (Yoda) return to voice their characters
* Dee Bradley Baker is back to voice clones and even though they are naturally much less common here than in The Clone Wars (mostly it's just Rex), he does as good of a job as always
* <strike>The bearded old guy in the Endor strike team in RotJ turns out to be Captain Rex. Fan theory at first, later confirmed.</strike> Not really but he was confirmed to be there.
* You CAN [[combi-weapon]] a lightsaber and a blaster, and it's OP as shit
* Fighters sometimes perform some actual space-maneuvers instead of just flying in space like aircraft as is usually the case
* Plenty of Imperial warships, unlike the movies where we only really see Star Destroyers. Of particular note is the Arquitens-class Command Cruiser, a light cruiser which is generally more common in this series than the Star Destroyer. Makes sense since the galaxy is big and you can build 35 of these at the price of one Star Destroyer. They are also used as escorts for Star Destroyer, something we also don't see in the movies.
* Force wolves (no, not [[Rune Priest|those force wolves]])
* [[A Song of Ice and Fire|Game of Thrones-style]] Mandos (Krownest is pretty much Space-Winterfell).
* Imperial Inquisitors. Sure they don’t last long, but they were intimidating while they were, and it planted the seed that was used in other Star Wars media.
* Good appearances by Vader and Sheev.
* The Maul vs Obi-wan decades-long duel finally comes to an end... and what an end it is.
* The season finales are, invariably, fantastic.
* Animation gets better as the show goes on.

A note about the wolves... ''Rebels'' turns the force mysticism up past 11. Forget just being precog space monks with laser swords; as far as ''Rebels'' is concerned the Jedi are [[craftworld]] [[eldar]] without the racism. Rebels picks up the torch of the Clone Wars “Force Gods” and mixes in some of the straight-up fantasy shit from the Lucas era novels and the KOTOR/Old Republic Jedi philosophy schools and heresies beyond just “Light good, Dark bad”. By the end of the series Ezra's force connection to Lothal is akin to that of an [[Exodite]] World Singer in 40k.

==The Bad==

* Since this is a Disney cartoon, the bad guys spend a large amount of their on-screen time (though not all, mind you) losing. This changes the Imperials not named Thrawn, Tarkin, Palpatine or Vader from an imposing force to [[Abbadon|cartoon villains]], although Rebels villains manage to stay intimidating more than Grievous did in Clone Wars.
* Battles slower paced than a Death Guard movement phase. Enjoy characters having conversations in cover-based shooting when everyone has Stormtrooper aim, including the main characters. Unlike The Clone Wars, this issue doesn't even get better as the series progresses.
* Like The Clone Wars, existence of shields is often either completely ignored or they deplete so quickly that it's barely worth it to even have them.
* The "lets punch and kick metal droids and people wearing armor"-thing from The Clone Wars returns
* Artstyle is generally considered a downgrade from The Clone Wars, though it does improve.
* [[Bullshit|Helicopter lightsabers]].
* Complete bipolarity in tone. This can create some great moments, but invariably ruins the mood episode by episode, or between the A and B plots.
* Iron Squadron. Just...fucking [[Rage|Iron Squadron]].
* Star Destroyers take some getting used to, mostly due to their bridge towers being way taller than they should be.
* Space Squid-whales annihilating a maximum strength Imperial Blockade in under 30 seconds.
* The changes to Hondo Ohnaka's character.
* Hera is a captain in the beginning of the series and later gets promoted to general... [[FAIL|yet wears rank insignia of a lieutenant throughout the series.]]
* TIE Fighters are used in space without spacesuits, even though it's well-known that TIE Fighters have no life support systems

==Imperial Incompetence?==
Especially in early seasons the Empire comes off rather poorly as they are easily tricked and befuddled by our heroes, it is however worth remembering:
*The primary setting in the early seasons, Lothal, is a backwater world and these are not front line troopers here.
*Based on the Academy episodes some of them may be as young as 16 with '''two months''' of training. The Academy episodes also show why Stormtroopers seem so crap compared to the Clone Troopers from The Clone Wars: where the Clones were trained to fight together as actual comrades in arms, the morons in charge of the Lothal Academy decided it was more important to train Stormtroopers to actively sabotage each other for personal gain. Which also tie in to why many early fights end with less lethal encounters, especially the ones involving Sabine's explosives.

Of the Imperials appearing in the early seasons, the Inquisitor (his title was later revealed to actually be '''Grand''' Inquisitor) was the only one who didn't seem like an absolute fucking idiot. Agent Kallus was allegedly an elite Imperial Security Bureau agent, but the Rebels generally ran rings around him. Minister Tua was basically a glorified secretary who was in over her head, and all things considered was actually somewhat sympathetic.

However, whenever a more notable (i.e. movie) Imperial shows up, they are almost certainly played completely straight. Tarkin shows up towards the end of the first season and quickly demonstrates he's there to Get Things Done by having the Inquisitor behead the aforementioned idiots in charge of the Lothal Academy and subtly warning Kallus and Tua their heads were next on the chopping block. In the finale, Tarkin is defeated and the Inquisitor killed, but that causes the Emperor to send Tarkin some backup in the form of Darth Fucking Vader, and every encounter with him left the rebels thanking the force they simply got away alive.

Of course, both Vader and Tarkin have Plot Armor since they both have to live to see Episode IV, so they don't stick around. New Imperial characters get introduced in the form of Governor Pryce (the actual governor of Lothal who apparently spent most of the early seasons mucking around on Coruscant instead of actually doing her job), a couple of new Inquisitors eager to take the now vacant title of Grand Inquisitor, and Tarkin sends in Grand Admiral Thrawn (more on Thrawn below). Unfortunately, despite being shown to be threats at first, fans noticed they became less and less of a threat as time went on. A counter to this is that neither Kanan nor Ezra ever manage to beat the second set of Inquisitors; Fulcrum can take them both, but given who she is that is not surprising. It isn't until the old master returns that the Inquisitors are.... [[BLAM|removed]].

This was one of the biggest criticisms of the series, in fact. The heroes have plot armor, and worse at times seemed to know they had plot armor. At several points, they even dismiss the presence of Stormtroopers as being nuisances at best. Again, it was implied that the Stormtroopers assigned to Lothal are just crap, but when later in the series it's revealed Lothal is actually pretty important to the Imperial war machine it makes it strange that more competent troops aren't rotated in.

==Thrawn==

Forget all that noise about Imperial incompetence, because the real bad of Rebels doesn't disappoint. Grand Admiral Thrawn is in peak form in Rebels. He's observant, he's ruthless, he plays the long game, and he's [[Frazetta Man|fucking ripped for a guy who's into art]] and strategy.

Thrawn's first spotlight moment is on Ryloth, when Hera attempts to steal back her family's Kalikori heirloom. Thrawn (understanding the artifact's significance) instantly realizes her identity as the daughter of Ryloth's renegade leader, while his aide Slavin struggles to put the pieces together (with Thrawn literally having to spell it out for the guy). Taking an interest in the actions of Hera's band of rebels, Thrawn begins collecting Sabine Wren's graffiti.

Another moment was when Agent Kallus, now a double agent for the rebels, assisted Ezra in hacking the records of Thrawn's search for the rebel base and then reprogramming some combat training droids as assassins (which Thrawn beats down like a boss). Kallus attempts to pin the incident on Lieutenant Lys, effectively throwing off everyone including Wullf Yularen... except Thrawn, who deduces that Kallus switched sides and uses him to leak false intelligence. The giveaways? Thrawn's knowledge of his subordinates and Ezra's helmet. Thrawn knew Lys isn't that skilled and that someone like Fulcrum wouldn't get caught so easily. Thrawn recognized the helmet's custom paint-job as a symbol of Lothal and Sabine's handiwork, identifying its owner as Ezra, and the fact that Kallus didn't tell them their "captive" was Ezra combined with Thrawn's knowledge of Kallus' abilities allowed him to deduce that Kallus was Fulcrum.

In Imperial politics, Thrawn is a pragmatist standing in opposition to the Death Star project as it draws resources away from his own projects. He sees it as [[Nazi Equipment#Wunderwaffen|a waste on big dumb object]] when the Empire would have an enormous advantage over the rebels [[meme|once the TIE Defender is mass produced]]. Thrawn was even going to make his case to the Emperor about this, but unwittingly waited too long. Just after Thrawn left to persuade the Emperor, the TIE Defender project was ruined by Pryce's incompetence and Rebel sabotage.

Thrawn's only mistake was his dismissal of the supernatural despite knowing about the Force, Jedi and Sith. He knew about the planet Atollon from folklore, where he found the rebel base, but didn't look further and learn about the godlike Force entity Bendu (whose intervention enabled the Rebels to escape and decimated Thrawn's forces). To be fair, while Thrawn admitted to Ezra that he didn't know much about the Force, Thrawn had the Resistance on the ropes then and was only beaten by Ezra using the Force to call a pod of giant space whales (which Thrawn had no way of knowing would show up).

In summary, Rebels gives Thrawn fair treatment as one of the most dangerous men in the Empire. He's not a force-choking sith lord, nor a power crazed moff with a superweapon. He's an efficient and brutally intelligent admiral who will use everything at his disposal to hunt down the empire's enemies, and the only way to beat him is to exploit the flaws of his officers, have the attacker sacrifice themselves to bring Thrawn down with them or hit him with something nobody would expect.

{{Star Wars}}

Star Wars:Rebels

2022-03-31T06:03:44Z

2607:FB90:3883:1966:E01A:22F1:B033:7B84: /* Season 3 */

[[File:Rebels.jpeg|thumb|And thus begins the slow but sure descent into [[Star Wars:Resistance|mediocrity]], ''Sigh..'']]
{{Spoilers}}

Star Wars: Rebels was an american TV series that was released in the shadow of [[Star Wars:The Clone Wars|TCW]]. Generally considered an '''ok''' show, but not a great one. It adds the nice little bits of mysticism back into the Star Wars universe, while also making its most powerful threat look like [[Abbadon|harmless fails.]] General opinion is mixed, but the results tend to lean towards tolerable. Ultimately its up to you whether or not its good, though most fans agree its way above whatever the [[Star Wars:Resistance|hell Resistance was supposed to be]].

''Rebels'' is set a few years before ''A New Hope'' and covers the early formation of the rebellion from the perspective of one cell focused on the planet Lothal. Much like the Clone Wars, it starts off weakly with slow pacing and erroneous animation, but gets better as the seasons and storyline progress, with season 4 sometimes rivaling the very best Clone Wars arcs for quality and storytelling. If you liked ''Rogue One'' but thought it should be about 25 hours long and done in cartoony CGI then this is the show for you.

Since the show does have a fair amount of dedicated fans, <strike>likely possibly</strike> certainly more than the sequel trilogy itself, Disney has made a habit of planting Easter Egg references to Rebels in basically everything moving forward, usually in the form of an appearance by the iconic ship The Ghost or the friendly-ish space pirate character Hondo Ohnaka.

<strike>(Wait a second, wasn’t Hondo in [[Star Wars:The Clone Wars|clone wars]] first-) </strike>

==Season 1==
[[Image:Alderaan.jpg|right|300px|thumb|The original vision for Alderaan, a planet of grassy rolling hills and mound-like cities.]]
Season 1 is perhaps the most hotly debated and skubby season. As this series amounts to a sequel to the Clone Wars, it had deep shoes to fill, and to be frank, it doesn't fill those shoes well at all. However, high points include Tarkin, the Grand Inquisitor, and Fulcrum. Special note about Fulcrum is that she is Ahsoka, and probably the only reason this show got another season.

Most of this Season takes place on or around Lothal. Lothal as a place isn't too boring either, coming across as a cool mix of Kansas/Oklahoma, with a centralized capital city as it's main point of commerce. The setting is based on Ralph McQuarrie's drawings for Alderaan, which went unused in the original and prequel movies.

The main complaint about season one is that the baddies are completely incompetent. The Imperial occupation of Lothal is seemingly commanded by two Imperial captains (a fat neckbeard and a skinny one with a Habsburg chin) led by a blond ditz who's just the real governor's stuck up secretary. Thankfully, Tarkin shows up towards the end who quickly proceeds to [[blam|execute]] the two captains for their incompetence and under his command, the Imperials become slightly more competent for the rest of the season.

==Season 2==
The real reason that this show got a second season is that Darth FUCKING Vader appears, and he is played appropriately as an essential avatar of destruction ([[awesome|and is voiced by James Earl Jones to add up to the awesomeness]]). His first act? Carbombing the comedy baddie of season one, Minister Tua and blaming it on rebel terrorism. The plot armor heroes get brutally destroyed, shattering them and dispersing the rebels from Lothal for a time. Such appearances from awesome characters are kept relatively low, due to the need to not let them overshadow the main cast.

The Inquisitors are ok (one of them comes across as having a light attraction to Ezra), and ISB agent Kallus continues to be a presence around the show. The finale really solidifies the show's right to continue, throwing Maul into the mix, and having the epic confrontation that Ahsoka and Anakin were destined to have since the beginning of The Clone Wars series.

It's in Season 2 that the rebellion makes its appearance, as a collection of independent cells largely focused on system level actions. Ryloth is in open revolt, Princess Leia is out on "mercy missions", and Bail Organa is bankrolling Jun Sato's ''Phoenix Squadron'', a renegade paramilitary force that assists other rebel cells. Alderaan is pretty openly building the rebel fleet by stealing it from themselves.

==Season 3==
Season 3 is generally considered to be all around good, due to the introduction of Thrawn, and general lack of outright retarded episodes, with only a few exceptions. Thrawn is appropriately written as cunningly intelligent, kicking ass in every scene he is in, including [[Awesome|beating assassin droids with his bare fists and a blaster]]. We even get another new character in Governor Pryce, who apparently chose to twiddle her thumbs on Coruscant for two whole seasons rather than do her actual fucking job on Lothal. Ezra also gets changes; he now has a lot less hair, and he has built a new lightsaber to replace the toy he was using for the first two seasons.

[[Image:WomanYellingAtLothcat.jpeg|right|400px|thumb|''Stop foiling our plans, you rebel scum!'']]

Most of the character development for the season is focused on two arcs: Ezra's entanglement with Maul, and Sabine's history with her people. Ezra's arc ends with Kenobi telling Maul to stay dead in the greatest and most illustrative lightsaber fight ever. Along the way Sabine discovers the Darksaber and then goes away for a few episodes on Mandalore until returning for the finale.

For the alliance as a whole, Mon Mothma is on the run conducting pirate broadcasts against the Empire. Jan Dodonna has defected and begun assembling a fleet of defector pilots and stolen ships; among the new recruits are Wedge and Hobbie. Phoenix Squadron and the Dodonna force suffer severe losses fighting to escape Thrawn's fleet as the season ends.

==Season 4==

The survivors of the Battle of Atollon at the end of the 3rd season escape to Mon Mothma's new base on Yavin IV. The rebellion is now taking on its recognizable form from the movies, although is having difficulty reining in its wilder elements. Fighters like Saw Gerrera advocate aggressive direct action, to the dismay of the more moderate leaders. This arc is left for ''Rogue One'' to resolve, while the main cast of Rebels returns to Lothal, themselves in favor of direct action against Thrawn and his TIE Defender project.

The liberation of Lothal is the main arc of the season although that starts with the Rebels getting punched in the face because Lothal belongs to Thrawn and he's ready for them. [[lolwut|Pryce manages to kill Kanan]], but only by [[fail|blowing up the occupation's entire fuel reserve]]. The true extent and power of Ezra's connection to the force and Lothal is revealed, and it becomes clear that the Imperial occupation of Lothal is only tangentially about building fighters and more about the fact that it has a Jedi temple, which the Emperor is very interested in [[profit|for reasons]].

==The Good==

* All the main characters are well-written, fleshed out, with reasonable, sympathetic backstories and significant character arcs, along with different enough skill sets that they don't step on each others' toes. Each one feels like an integral part of the team; the pilot, the gunner, the muscle, the tech, the swordsman and the hot-shot rookie.
** Seriously, you'd think that with two jedi in a 6-man crew you'd get some overlap, but they feel like very different characters, both in personality and powers. Kanan is very much the quintessential combat jedi (as is to be expected as he was trained during the Clone Wars), while Ezra's signature ability to connect with the galaxy around him and especially its wildlife marks him out not only from the rest of the Ghost crew, but from every other force user we've seen on the screen.
* Ghost and it's shuttlecraft, Phantom, are both pretty cool ships
* Sense of escalation. In season 1, focus is entirely on the crew of the Ghost and the existence of a larger Rebellion is mostly unknown to them. In season 2, the crew has joined a larger Rebel cell named Phoenix Squadron. In season 3, Phoenix Squadron has acquired themselves a permanent base and we see more cells from the larger Rebellion. In season 4, Rebellion has taken the form we know from the movies, The Alliance to Restore the Republic, and the Galactic Civil War has officially begun.
* Having the crew use callsigns instead of names when on mission or on a radio is a cool detail
* Grand Admiral Thrawn makes his debut in Disney Star Wars, along with the TIE Defender project. The character doesn’t lose much in the translation.
* Zeb is voiced by [[Steve Blum]] who also voices some other characters (mostly Stormtroopers)
* Original trilogy actors such as Billy Dee Williams (Lando), James Earl Jones (Vader) and Frank Oz (Yoda) return to voice their characters
* Dee Bradley Baker is back to voice clones and even though they are naturally much less common here than in The Clone Wars (mostly it's just Rex), he does as good of a job as always
* <strike>The bearded old guy in the Endor strike team in RotJ turns out to be Captain Rex. Fan theory at first, later confirmed.</strike> Not really but he was confirmed to be there.
* You CAN [[combi-weapon]] a lightsaber and a blaster, and it's OP as shit
* Fighters sometimes perform some actual space-maneuvers instead of just flying in space like aircraft as is usually the case
* Plenty of Imperial warships, unlike the movies where we only really see Star Destroyers. Of particular note is the Arquitens-class Command Cruiser, a light cruiser which is generally more common in this series than the Star Destroyer. Makes sense since the galaxy is big and you can build 35 of these at the price of one Star Destroyer. They are also used as escorts for Star Destroyer, something we also don't see in the movies.
* Force wolves (no, not [[Rune Priest|those force wolves]])
* [[A Song of Ice and Fire|Game of Thrones-style]] Mandos (Krownest is pretty much Space-Winterfell).
* Imperial Inquisitors. Sure they don’t last long, but they were intimidating while they were, and it planted the seed that was used in other Star Wars media.
* Good appearances by Vader and Sheev.
* The Maul vs Obi-wan decades-long duel finally comes to an end... and what an end it is.
* The season finales are, invariably, fantastic.
* Animation gets better as the show goes on.

A note about the wolves... ''Rebels'' turns the force mysticism up past 11. Forget just being precog space monks with laser swords; as far as ''Rebels'' is concerned the Jedi are [[craftworld]] [[eldar]] without the racism. Rebels picks up the torch of the Clone Wars “Force Gods” and mixes in some of the straight-up fantasy shit from the Lucas era novels and the KOTOR/Old Republic Jedi philosophy schools and heresies beyond just “Light good, Dark bad”. By the end of the series Ezra's force connection to Lothal is akin to that of an [[Exodite]] World Singer in 40k.

==The Bad==

* Since this is a Disney cartoon, the bad guys spend a large amount of their on-screen time (though not all, mind you) losing. This changes the Imperials not named Thrawn, Tarkin, Palpatine or Vader from an imposing force to [[Abbadon|cartoon villains]], although Rebels villains manage to stay intimidating more than Grievous did in Clone Wars.
* Battles slower paced than a Death Guard movement phase. Enjoy characters having conversations in cover-based shooting when everyone has Stormtrooper aim, including the main characters. Unlike The Clone Wars, this issue doesn't even get better as the series progresses.
* Like The Clone Wars, existence of shields is often either completely ignored or they deplete so quickly that it's barely worth it to even have them.
* The "lets punch and kick metal droids and people wearing armor"-thing from The Clone Wars returns
* Artstyle is generally considered a downgrade from The Clone Wars, though it does improve.
* [[Bullshit|Helicopter lightsabers]].
* Complete bipolarity in tone. This can create some great moments, but invariably ruins the mood episode by episode, or between the A and B plots.
* Iron Squadron. Just...fucking [[Rage|Iron Squadron]].
* Star Destroyers take some getting used to, mostly due to their bridge towers being way taller than they should be.
* Space Squid-whales annihilating a maximum strength Imperial Blockade in under 30 seconds.
* The changes to Hondo Ohnaka's character.
* Hera is a captain in the beginning of the series and later gets promoted to general... [[FAIL|yet wears rank insignia of a lieutenant throughout the series.]]
* TIE Fighters are used in space without spacesuits, even though it's well-known that TIE Fighters have no life support systems

==Imperial Incompetence?==
Especially in early seasons the Empire comes off rather poorly as they are easily tricked and befuddled by our heroes, it is however worth remembering:
*The primary setting in the early seasons, Lothal, is a backwater world and these are not front line troopers here.
*Based on the Academy episodes some of them may be as young as 16 with '''two months''' of training. The Academy episodes also show why Stormtroopers seem so crap compared to the Clone Troopers from The Clone Wars: where the Clones were trained to fight together as actual comrades in arms, the morons in charge of the Lothal Academy decided it was more important to train Stormtroopers to actively sabotage each other for personal gain. Which also tie in to why some many early fights end with less lethal encounters, espically the ones involving Sabine's exposives.

Of the Imperials appearing in the early seasons, the Inquisitor (his title was later revealed to actually be '''Grand''' Inquisitor) was the only one who didn't seem like an absolute fucking idiot. Agent Kallus was allegedly an elite Imperial Security Bureau agent, but the Rebels generally ran rings around him. Minister Tua was basically a glorified secretary who was in over her head, and all things considered was actually somewhat sympathetic.

However, whenever a more notable (i.e. movie) Imperial shows up, they are almost certainly played completely straight. Tarkin shows up towards the end of the first season and quickly demonstrates he's there to Get Things Done by having the Inquisitor behead the aforementioned idiots in charge of the Lothal Academy and subtly warning Kallus and Tua their heads were next on the chopping block. In the finale, Tarkin is defeated and the Inquisitor killed, but that causes the Emperor to send Tarkin some backup in the form of Darth Fucking Vader, and every encounter with him left the rebels thanking the force they simply got away alive.

Of course, both Vader and Tarkin have Plot Armor since they both have to live to see Episode IV, so they don't stick around. New Imperial characters get introduced in the form of Governor Pryce (the actual governor of Lothal who apparently spent most of the early seasons mucking around on Coruscant instead of actually doing her job), a couple of new Inquisitors eager to take the now vacant title of Grand Inquisitor, and Tarkin sends in Grand Admiral Thrawn (more on Thrawn below). Unfortunately, despite being shown to be threats at first, fans noticed they became less and less of a threat as time went on. A counter to this is that neither Kanan nor Ezra ever manage to beat the second set of Inquisitors; Fulcrum can take them both, but given who she is that is not surprising. It isn't until the old master returns that the Inquisitors are.... [[BLAM|removed]].

This was one of the biggest criticisms of the series, in fact. The heroes have plot armor, and worse at times seemed to know they had plot armor. At several points, they even dismiss the presence of Stormtroopers as being nuisances at best. Again, it was implied that the Stormtroopers assigned to Lothal are just crap, but when later in the series it's revealed Lothal is actually pretty important to the Imperial war machine it makes it strange that more competent troops aren't rotated in.

==Thrawn==

Forget all that noise about Imperial incompetence, because the real bad of Rebels doesn't disappoint. Grand Admiral Thrawn is in peak form in Rebels. He's observant, he's ruthless, he plays the long game, and he's [[Frazetta Man|fucking ripped for a guy who's into art]] and strategy.

Thrawn's first spotlight moment is on Ryloth, when Hera attempts to steal back her family's Kalikori heirloom. Thrawn (understanding the artifact's significance) instantly realizes her identity as the daughter of Ryloth's renegade leader, while his aide Slavin struggles to put the pieces together (with Thrawn literally having to spell it out for the guy). Taking an interest in the actions of Hera's band of rebels, Thrawn begins collecting Sabine Wren's graffiti.

Another moment was when Agent Kallus, now a double agent for the rebels, assisted Ezra in hacking the records of Thrawn's search for the rebel base and then reprogramming some combat training droids as assassins (which Thrawn beats down like a boss). Kallus attempts to pin the incident on Lieutenant Lys, effectively throwing off everyone including Wullf Yularen... except Thrawn, who deduces that Kallus switched sides and uses him to leak false intelligence. The giveaways? Thrawn's knowledge of his subordinates and Ezra's helmet. Thrawn knew Lys isn't that skilled and that someone like Fulcrum wouldn't get caught so easily. Thrawn recognized the helmet's custom paint-job as a symbol of Lothal and Sabine's handiwork, identifying its owner as Ezra, and the fact that Kallus didn't tell them their "captive" was Ezra combined with Thrawn's knowledge of Kallus' abilities allowed him to deduce that Kallus was Fulcrum.

In Imperial politics, Thrawn is a pragmatist standing in opposition to the Death Star project as it draws resources away from his own projects. He sees it as [[Nazi Equipment#Wunderwaffen|a waste on big dumb object]] when the Empire would have an enormous advantage over the rebels [[meme|once the TIE Defender is mass produced]]. Thrawn was even going to make his case to the Emperor about this, but unwittingly waited too long. Just after Thrawn left to persuade the Emperor, the TIE Defender project was ruined by Pryce's incompetence and Rebel sabotage.

Thrawn's only mistake was his dismissal of the supernatural despite knowing about the Force, Jedi and Sith. He knew about the planet Atollon from folklore, where he found the rebel base, but didn't look further and learn about the godlike Force entity Bendu (whose intervention enabled the Rebels to escape and decimated Thrawn's forces). To be fair, while Thrawn admitted to Ezra that he didn't know much about the Force, Thrawn had the Resistance on the ropes then and was only beaten by Ezra using the Force to call a pod of giant space whales (which Thrawn had no way of knowing would show up).

In summary, Rebels gives Thrawn fair treatment as one of the most dangerous men in the Empire. He's not a force-choking sith lord, nor a power crazed moff with a superweapon. He's an efficient and brutally intelligent admiral who will use everything at his disposal to hunt down the empire's enemies, and the only way to beat him is to exploit the flaws of his officers, have the attacker sacrifice themselves to bring Thrawn down with them or hit him with something nobody would expect.

{{Star Wars}}

Star Wars:Rebels

2022-03-31T06:00:24Z

2607:FB90:3883:1966:E01A:22F1:B033:7B84: /* Season 2 */

[[File:Rebels.jpeg|thumb|And thus begins the slow but sure descent into [[Star Wars:Resistance|mediocrity]], ''Sigh..'']]
{{Spoilers}}

Star Wars: Rebels was an american TV series that was released in the shadow of [[Star Wars:The Clone Wars|TCW]]. Generally considered an '''ok''' show, but not a great one. It adds the nice little bits of mysticism back into the Star Wars universe, while also making its most powerful threat look like [[Abbadon|harmless fails.]] General opinion is mixed, but the results tend to lean towards tolerable. Ultimately its up to you whether or not its good, though most fans agree its way above whatever the [[Star Wars:Resistance|hell Resistance was supposed to be]].

''Rebels'' is set a few years before ''A New Hope'' and covers the early formation of the rebellion from the perspective of one cell focused on the planet Lothal. Much like the Clone Wars, it starts off weakly with slow pacing and erroneous animation, but gets better as the seasons and storyline progress, with season 4 sometimes rivaling the very best Clone Wars arcs for quality and storytelling. If you liked ''Rogue One'' but thought it should be about 25 hours long and done in cartoony CGI then this is the show for you.

Since the show does have a fair amount of dedicated fans, <strike>likely possibly</strike> certainly more than the sequel trilogy itself, Disney has made a habit of planting Easter Egg references to Rebels in basically everything moving forward, usually in the form of an appearance by the iconic ship The Ghost or the friendly-ish space pirate character Hondo Ohnaka.

<strike>(Wait a second, wasn’t Hondo in [[Star Wars:The Clone Wars|clone wars]] first-) </strike>

==Season 1==
[[Image:Alderaan.jpg|right|300px|thumb|The original vision for Alderaan, a planet of grassy rolling hills and mound-like cities.]]
Season 1 is perhaps the most hotly debated and skubby season. As this series amounts to a sequel to the Clone Wars, it had deep shoes to fill, and to be frank, it doesn't fill those shoes well at all. However, high points include Tarkin, the Grand Inquisitor, and Fulcrum. Special note about Fulcrum is that she is Ahsoka, and probably the only reason this show got another season.

Most of this Season takes place on or around Lothal. Lothal as a place isn't too boring either, coming across as a cool mix of Kansas/Oklahoma, with a centralized capital city as it's main point of commerce. The setting is based on Ralph McQuarrie's drawings for Alderaan, which went unused in the original and prequel movies.

The main complaint about season one is that the baddies are completely incompetent. The Imperial occupation of Lothal is seemingly commanded by two Imperial captains (a fat neckbeard and a skinny one with a Habsburg chin) led by a blond ditz who's just the real governor's stuck up secretary. Thankfully, Tarkin shows up towards the end who quickly proceeds to [[blam|execute]] the two captains for their incompetence and under his command, the Imperials become slightly more competent for the rest of the season.

==Season 2==
The real reason that this show got a second season is that Darth FUCKING Vader appears, and he is played appropriately as an essential avatar of destruction ([[awesome|and is voiced by James Earl Jones to add up to the awesomeness]]). His first act? Carbombing the comedy baddie of season one, Minister Tua and blaming it on rebel terrorism. The plot armor heroes get brutally destroyed, shattering them and dispersing the rebels from Lothal for a time. Such appearances from awesome characters are kept relatively low, due to the need to not let them overshadow the main cast.

The Inquisitors are ok (one of them comes across as having a light attraction to Ezra), and ISB agent Kallus continues to be a presence around the show. The finale really solidifies the show's right to continue, throwing Maul into the mix, and having the epic confrontation that Ahsoka and Anakin were destined to have since the beginning of The Clone Wars series.

It's in Season 2 that the rebellion makes its appearance, as a collection of independent cells largely focused on system level actions. Ryloth is in open revolt, Princess Leia is out on "mercy missions", and Bail Organa is bankrolling Jun Sato's ''Phoenix Squadron'', a renegade paramilitary force that assists other rebel cells. Alderaan is pretty openly building the rebel fleet by stealing it from themselves.

==Season 3==
Season 3 is generally considered to be all around good, due to the introduction of Thrawn, and general lack of outright retarded episodes, with only a few exceptions. Thrawn is appropriately written as cunningly intelligent, kicking ass in every scene he is in, including [[Awesome|beating assassin droids with his bare fists and a blaster]]. We even get another new character in Governor Pryce, who apparently chose to chill on Coruscant for two whole seasons rather than do her actual fucking job on Lothal. Ezra also gets changes; he now has a lot less hair, and he has built a new lightsaber to replace the toy he was using for the first two seasons.

[[Image:WomanYellingAtLothcat.jpeg|right|400px|thumb|''Stop foiling our plans, you rebel scum!'']]

Most of the character development for the season is focused on two arcs: Ezra's entanglement with Maul, and Sabine's history with her people. Ezra's arc ends with Kenobi telling Maul to stay dead in the greatest and most illustrative lightsaber fight ever. Along the way Sabine discovers the Darksaber and then sits out a few episodes on Mandalore until returning for the finale.

For the alliance as a whole, Mon Mothma is on the run conducting pirate broadcasts against the Empire. Jan Dodonna has defected and begun assembling a fleet of defector pilots and stolen ships; among the new recruits are Wedge and Hobbie. Phoenix Squadron and the Dodonna force suffer severe losses fighting to escape Thrawn's fleet as the season ends.

==Season 4==

The survivors of the Battle of Atollon at the end of the 3rd season escape to Mon Mothma's new base on Yavin IV. The rebellion is now taking on its recognizable form from the movies, although is having difficulty reining in its wilder elements. Fighters like Saw Gerrera advocate aggressive direct action, to the dismay of the more moderate leaders. This arc is left for ''Rogue One'' to resolve, while the main cast of Rebels returns to Lothal, themselves in favor of direct action against Thrawn and his TIE Defender project.

The liberation of Lothal is the main arc of the season although that starts with the Rebels getting punched in the face because Lothal belongs to Thrawn and he's ready for them. [[lolwut|Pryce manages to kill Kanan]], but only by [[fail|blowing up the occupation's entire fuel reserve]]. The true extent and power of Ezra's connection to the force and Lothal is revealed, and it becomes clear that the Imperial occupation of Lothal is only tangentially about building fighters and more about the fact that it has a Jedi temple, which the Emperor is very interested in [[profit|for reasons]].

==The Good==

* All the main characters are well-written, fleshed out, with reasonable, sympathetic backstories and significant character arcs, along with different enough skill sets that they don't step on each others' toes. Each one feels like an integral part of the team; the pilot, the gunner, the muscle, the tech, the swordsman and the hot-shot rookie.
** Seriously, you'd think that with two jedi in a 6-man crew you'd get some overlap, but they feel like very different characters, both in personality and powers. Kanan is very much the quintessential combat jedi (as is to be expected as he was trained during the Clone Wars), while Ezra's signature ability to connect with the galaxy around him and especially its wildlife marks him out not only from the rest of the Ghost crew, but from every other force user we've seen on the screen.
* Ghost and it's shuttlecraft, Phantom, are both pretty cool ships
* Sense of escalation. In season 1, focus is entirely on the crew of the Ghost and the existence of a larger Rebellion is mostly unknown to them. In season 2, the crew has joined a larger Rebel cell named Phoenix Squadron. In season 3, Phoenix Squadron has acquired themselves a permanent base and we see more cells from the larger Rebellion. In season 4, Rebellion has taken the form we know from the movies, The Alliance to Restore the Republic, and the Galactic Civil War has officially begun.
* Having the crew use callsigns instead of names when on mission or on a radio is a cool detail
* Grand Admiral Thrawn makes his debut in Disney Star Wars, along with the TIE Defender project. The character doesn’t lose much in the translation.
* Zeb is voiced by [[Steve Blum]] who also voices some other characters (mostly Stormtroopers)
* Original trilogy actors such as Billy Dee Williams (Lando), James Earl Jones (Vader) and Frank Oz (Yoda) return to voice their characters
* Dee Bradley Baker is back to voice clones and even though they are naturally much less common here than in The Clone Wars (mostly it's just Rex), he does as good of a job as always
* <strike>The bearded old guy in the Endor strike team in RotJ turns out to be Captain Rex. Fan theory at first, later confirmed.</strike> Not really but he was confirmed to be there.
* You CAN [[combi-weapon]] a lightsaber and a blaster, and it's OP as shit
* Fighters sometimes perform some actual space-maneuvers instead of just flying in space like aircraft as is usually the case
* Plenty of Imperial warships, unlike the movies where we only really see Star Destroyers. Of particular note is the Arquitens-class Command Cruiser, a light cruiser which is generally more common in this series than the Star Destroyer. Makes sense since the galaxy is big and you can build 35 of these at the price of one Star Destroyer. They are also used as escorts for Star Destroyer, something we also don't see in the movies.
* Force wolves (no, not [[Rune Priest|those force wolves]])
* [[A Song of Ice and Fire|Game of Thrones-style]] Mandos (Krownest is pretty much Space-Winterfell).
* Imperial Inquisitors. Sure they don’t last long, but they were intimidating while they were, and it planted the seed that was used in other Star Wars media.
* Good appearances by Vader and Sheev.
* The Maul vs Obi-wan decades-long duel finally comes to an end... and what an end it is.
* The season finales are, invariably, fantastic.
* Animation gets better as the show goes on.

A note about the wolves... ''Rebels'' turns the force mysticism up past 11. Forget just being precog space monks with laser swords; as far as ''Rebels'' is concerned the Jedi are [[craftworld]] [[eldar]] without the racism. Rebels picks up the torch of the Clone Wars “Force Gods” and mixes in some of the straight-up fantasy shit from the Lucas era novels and the KOTOR/Old Republic Jedi philosophy schools and heresies beyond just “Light good, Dark bad”. By the end of the series Ezra's force connection to Lothal is akin to that of an [[Exodite]] World Singer in 40k.

==The Bad==

* Since this is a Disney cartoon, the bad guys spend a large amount of their on-screen time (though not all, mind you) losing. This changes the Imperials not named Thrawn, Tarkin, Palpatine or Vader from an imposing force to [[Abbadon|cartoon villains]], although Rebels villains manage to stay intimidating more than Grievous did in Clone Wars.
* Battles slower paced than a Death Guard movement phase. Enjoy characters having conversations in cover-based shooting when everyone has Stormtrooper aim, including the main characters. Unlike The Clone Wars, this issue doesn't even get better as the series progresses.
* Like The Clone Wars, existence of shields is often either completely ignored or they deplete so quickly that it's barely worth it to even have them.
* The "lets punch and kick metal droids and people wearing armor"-thing from The Clone Wars returns
* Artstyle is generally considered a downgrade from The Clone Wars, though it does improve.
* [[Bullshit|Helicopter lightsabers]].
* Complete bipolarity in tone. This can create some great moments, but invariably ruins the mood episode by episode, or between the A and B plots.
* Iron Squadron. Just...fucking [[Rage|Iron Squadron]].
* Star Destroyers take some getting used to, mostly due to their bridge towers being way taller than they should be.
* Space Squid-whales annihilating a maximum strength Imperial Blockade in under 30 seconds.
* The changes to Hondo Ohnaka's character.
* Hera is a captain in the beginning of the series and later gets promoted to general... [[FAIL|yet wears rank insignia of a lieutenant throughout the series.]]
* TIE Fighters are used in space without spacesuits, even though it's well-known that TIE Fighters have no life support systems

==Imperial Incompetence?==
Especially in early seasons the Empire comes off rather poorly as they are easily tricked and befuddled by our heroes, it is however worth remembering:
*The primary setting in the early seasons, Lothal, is a backwater world and these are not front line troopers here.
*Based on the Academy episodes some of them may be as young as 16 with '''two months''' of training. The Academy episodes also show why Stormtroopers seem so crap compared to the Clone Troopers from The Clone Wars: where the Clones were trained to fight together as actual comrades in arms, the morons in charge of the Lothal Academy decided it was more important to train Stormtroopers to actively sabotage each other for personal gain. Which also tie in to why some many early fights end with less lethal encounters, espically the ones involving Sabine's exposives.

Of the Imperials appearing in the early seasons, the Inquisitor (his title was later revealed to actually be '''Grand''' Inquisitor) was the only one who didn't seem like an absolute fucking idiot. Agent Kallus was allegedly an elite Imperial Security Bureau agent, but the Rebels generally ran rings around him. Minister Tua was basically a glorified secretary who was in over her head, and all things considered was actually somewhat sympathetic.

However, whenever a more notable (i.e. movie) Imperial shows up, they are almost certainly played completely straight. Tarkin shows up towards the end of the first season and quickly demonstrates he's there to Get Things Done by having the Inquisitor behead the aforementioned idiots in charge of the Lothal Academy and subtly warning Kallus and Tua their heads were next on the chopping block. In the finale, Tarkin is defeated and the Inquisitor killed, but that causes the Emperor to send Tarkin some backup in the form of Darth Fucking Vader, and every encounter with him left the rebels thanking the force they simply got away alive.

Of course, both Vader and Tarkin have Plot Armor since they both have to live to see Episode IV, so they don't stick around. New Imperial characters get introduced in the form of Governor Pryce (the actual governor of Lothal who apparently spent most of the early seasons mucking around on Coruscant instead of actually doing her job), a couple of new Inquisitors eager to take the now vacant title of Grand Inquisitor, and Tarkin sends in Grand Admiral Thrawn (more on Thrawn below). Unfortunately, despite being shown to be threats at first, fans noticed they became less and less of a threat as time went on. A counter to this is that neither Kanan nor Ezra ever manage to beat the second set of Inquisitors; Fulcrum can take them both, but given who she is that is not surprising. It isn't until the old master returns that the Inquisitors are.... [[BLAM|removed]].

This was one of the biggest criticisms of the series, in fact. The heroes have plot armor, and worse at times seemed to know they had plot armor. At several points, they even dismiss the presence of Stormtroopers as being nuisances at best. Again, it was implied that the Stormtroopers assigned to Lothal are just crap, but when later in the series it's revealed Lothal is actually pretty important to the Imperial war machine it makes it strange that more competent troops aren't rotated in.

==Thrawn==

Forget all that noise about Imperial incompetence, because the real bad of Rebels doesn't disappoint. Grand Admiral Thrawn is in peak form in Rebels. He's observant, he's ruthless, he plays the long game, and he's [[Frazetta Man|fucking ripped for a guy who's into art]] and strategy.

Thrawn's first spotlight moment is on Ryloth, when Hera attempts to steal back her family's Kalikori heirloom. Thrawn (understanding the artifact's significance) instantly realizes her identity as the daughter of Ryloth's renegade leader, while his aide Slavin struggles to put the pieces together (with Thrawn literally having to spell it out for the guy). Taking an interest in the actions of Hera's band of rebels, Thrawn begins collecting Sabine Wren's graffiti.

Another moment was when Agent Kallus, now a double agent for the rebels, assisted Ezra in hacking the records of Thrawn's search for the rebel base and then reprogramming some combat training droids as assassins (which Thrawn beats down like a boss). Kallus attempts to pin the incident on Lieutenant Lys, effectively throwing off everyone including Wullf Yularen... except Thrawn, who deduces that Kallus switched sides and uses him to leak false intelligence. The giveaways? Thrawn's knowledge of his subordinates and Ezra's helmet. Thrawn knew Lys isn't that skilled and that someone like Fulcrum wouldn't get caught so easily. Thrawn recognized the helmet's custom paint-job as a symbol of Lothal and Sabine's handiwork, identifying its owner as Ezra, and the fact that Kallus didn't tell them their "captive" was Ezra combined with Thrawn's knowledge of Kallus' abilities allowed him to deduce that Kallus was Fulcrum.

In Imperial politics, Thrawn is a pragmatist standing in opposition to the Death Star project as it draws resources away from his own projects. He sees it as [[Nazi Equipment#Wunderwaffen|a waste on big dumb object]] when the Empire would have an enormous advantage over the rebels [[meme|once the TIE Defender is mass produced]]. Thrawn was even going to make his case to the Emperor about this, but unwittingly waited too long. Just after Thrawn left to persuade the Emperor, the TIE Defender project was ruined by Pryce's incompetence and Rebel sabotage.

Thrawn's only mistake was his dismissal of the supernatural despite knowing about the Force, Jedi and Sith. He knew about the planet Atollon from folklore, where he found the rebel base, but didn't look further and learn about the godlike Force entity Bendu (whose intervention enabled the Rebels to escape and decimated Thrawn's forces). To be fair, while Thrawn admitted to Ezra that he didn't know much about the Force, Thrawn had the Resistance on the ropes then and was only beaten by Ezra using the Force to call a pod of giant space whales (which Thrawn had no way of knowing would show up).

In summary, Rebels gives Thrawn fair treatment as one of the most dangerous men in the Empire. He's not a force-choking sith lord, nor a power crazed moff with a superweapon. He's an efficient and brutally intelligent admiral who will use everything at his disposal to hunt down the empire's enemies, and the only way to beat him is to exploit the flaws of his officers, have the attacker sacrifice themselves to bring Thrawn down with them or hit him with something nobody would expect.

{{Star Wars}}

Star Wars:The Clone Wars

2022-03-31T05:57:39Z

2607:FB90:3883:1966:E01A:22F1:B033:7B84: /* The Bad */

{{awesome}}
{{Spoilers}}
{{topquote|Insolence? We are pirates! We don't even know what that means!|Hondo Onaka}}

{{topquote|The Republic couldn't have asked for better soldiers, Nor I a better friend.|Ahsoka Tano}}

'''Star Wars: The Clone Wars''', also known as TCW, is a 3D computer animated cartoon created by Lucasfilm before the days of the dread lord <s>Kathleen Kennedy</s> Sauron, and released on Cartoon Network until its cancellation. Despite a rough start (not uncommon for TV shows as they get) the series was incredibly popular for a number of reasons: its dark tone, amazing character development, the entire goddamn clone army and their balls of steel, and generally being what the prequels were trying to be.

[[File:Clonewars.jpeg|thumb|One of the most Kick-Ass Kid’s cartoons in the history of Television]]

The premise is pretty simple: adventures set in the Clone Wars era. This gave us the ability to explore life in all kinds of different ways: willingness to help others during war, the meaning of being a good soldier, the dangers of corporations in government, political tribalism, the evils and justifications of corrupt leaders, crime in nations devoted to total war, and even stuff like the dangers of revenge and touching on the debate of destiny. Most of these are served on the side, while we get some kickass action sequences that would make C.S. Goto greener than a 3-day old Ork with jealousy.

Some tend to pass it as just a kids show due to it being an animated series but doing so would be a mistake: Despite having a low age rating, it deals with topics that most kids would probably not even be able to understand, such as war profiteering, war economy and corruption. Some arcs also get more [[grimdark]], such as an arc dealing with Trandoshans who kidnap children and then set them free on their planet to hunt them for sport, an arc dealing with an empire whose economy is based solely on slave trade and many arcs which deal with war and its consequences. Some bits are also quite violent, with the show being able to keep its low age rating only due to it hiding most of the graphic stuff with camera-angles.

Generally, it is regarded as the best of the animated series released by Lucasfilm. Disney, having realised this, is getting their rears in gear after the disaster that was [[Star Wars:Resistance|Star Wars: Resistance]] and gave us an incredible, harrowing final season... [[Games Workshop|on their own streaming service.]]

==Origins==
The Origins of The Clone Wars were to act primarily as a stop gap series until the next money making idea that George Lucas could create. He got together with a team in order to shill a novel idea: tell the story of the Clone Wars, something that they were never able to do with the movies due to time constraints.

Funnily enough, a man named Dave Filoni (Who had plenty of experience on ATLA and Boondocks before this) created one of the first characters on the show: A young Togruta girl who later became Ahsoka.

Technically, there are two series called similar titles. The first was 2003's ''Star Wars: Clone Wars'', an animated miniseries made by Genndy Tartakovsky (He of Dexter's Lab and [[Samurai Jack]] fame) chronicling, among other things, the titular Clone Wars and introducing a much more sinister General Grievous to the world.

But then we have ''The Clone Wars'', a CGI animated series (and tie-in movie) that we'll be talking about more and contributed more to the EU. One of the most universally known and loved parts of Star Wars, most fans worth their action figures and limited edition movie sets have watched the show and have an opinion on it one way or another. Some of the most notable characteristics are:

* The Clone Troopers are fleshed out, and we see that they are manly motherfuckers who make Guardsmen's balls of steel look like the cardboard their armour is made out of (seriously, in the movie, they literally charge straight into close combat with ''giant armoured walkers with large guns'', jump off roofs to get on top of them to shoot them point blank, and punch droids in the face)
* Anakin Skywalker is actually a good, fleshed out character, with a good voice actor and shows his descent to child-murdering Force-choking asshat wasn't just him going 'welp, guess I'll fall to the Dark Side.' There was a fair amount of bad-cop moments and “it was him or me” murder to get there, along with several pretty significant personal losses, being forced to relive childhood trauma and displays of incompetence from his superiors in the Order.
* Introduces Ahsoka Tano, a major character who's a female Togruta Jedi that's well-written, non-OP, non-Mary Sue and doesn't invalidate characters from the movies. Starts off a bit annoying in the Clone Wars movie, but manages to do something truly special: she ''learns''. Over the course of Clone Wars and Rebels, Ahsoka probably has the most character development out of any other Star Wars character.
* Obi-Wan being a sexy one-liner spouting sarcastic badass.
* And many others.

However, there were some pretty derp moments too, such as

* Babysitting episode and movie.
* D-squad, where a bunch of droids become heroes of the Republic.
* Mandalore and how its fluff was basically screwed 180 degrees, and then some. (Skub, depending on your exact POV).
* Droids were comic relief of the first and second seasons. It was annoying.
* Grievous, and how his character went from 'BBEG' to 'Can't beat a Padawan'.

All in all, it was a good show that took some time to find its feet.

After many years, a seventh season was announced in an attempt to take away from ''The Last Jedi'' being shit and add ''something'' to the empty Disney Plus lineup. At least some of the episodes will be ones that were in production when the show ended. It promptly disappeared after that announcement for a couple years till it was announced it was going to come out in 2019. And when it did, it blew pretty much everyone away, with fantastic animation, great storytelling, and a harrowing final few episodes. Maul's speech to Ahsoka in particular is downright chilling when you realize he's 100% sincere, is ''afraid'' of what's coming, and genuinely wants to try and stop it.

==Season One==
Ok...the first Season is a rough patch that has a some golden moments sprinkled throughout. Part of these problems stem from early show stuff, and the limits of their ability to animate. One in particular was a scene where two characters were fist fighting, and looked like two Fire Warriors in a melee phase.

BUT, nonetheless, there were some good episodes and good characterization. Among them were Plo Koon as space Gandalf, Aayla Secura as hot alien chick who now has a voice (Jennifer Hale, [[Awesome|which means Aayla shares a VA with Samus... and gets a sexy French accent]]), the Awesomeness that is sarcastic Obi-Wan Kenobi, Anakin's voice actor, and the fifth episode of the series, where the clones really shine on their own, some of which later return. Speaking of clones, special note to Dee Bradley Baker, who literally voices dozens of different clones, each with unique Personalities and voices. Did we mention he does this for 7 seasons? No? Well remember that you twit.

==Season Two==
Season two is much better and more watchable than the majority of Season One. Pick a random episode in Season Two, and there is a good chance it is better than almost anything in Season One. Season Two is notorious for not only the bounty hunters being a part of no less than three separate storylines, but introduces us to what we would later see out of this series, particularly the Battle of Geonosis arc, which was no less than four episodes of intense, attrition warfare with all the explosions and casualties a die hard fa/tg/uy could ever need, with a special brew of horror on the side to boot.

Another introduction in Season Two is Mandalore, which will become a staple in the rest of the series. The big problem with Mandalore is how it retcons Mandalorians from their original awesome state as warriors to having abandoned that past, and those who embrace that warrior tradition being terrorists. The storyline itself is actually a great political series of episodes with sporadic action, [[Skub|but to fans of the old Mandalorians, it was practically a slap in the face]]. Season Two also did something in one Episode that the entirety of Attack of the Clones couldn't do: show a genuine romance and love between Anakin and Padme that wasn't about [[Derp|sand and founding Fascist dictatorships]].

==Season Three==
This is where things get legit. At this point, the sailing becomes real smooth. It is rare to find a one off episode at this point in the series, as everything is arcs now. Clones from the first season return here, and man do you grow a connection with them. We also get more "criminal underworld" and "political subterfuge" episodes here, which despite not having people getting gunned down in droves, are still entertaining to watch and not overly boring.

Of particular note is that Anakin and Ahsoka start to really come into focus here, with a three episode Arc alone exploring Anakin in a super weird realm called Mortis, with Ahsoka getting her own self contained arc in the Season finale. [[Awesome|Anakin is able to hold off the equivalent of the Force's Chaos Gods]], while Ahsoka singlehandedly kicks the butt of Trandoshans, coincidentally also introducing fan favourite furball Chewbacca. There are also some moments here that downright sting your heart. Definitely worth suffering through the first season to watch this.

Half-way through the season, the animation also got a major overhaul with new and better models for everything, turning the series from an odd-looking animation to one of the best-looking 3D-animations out there. The best way to describe it is that it looks like animated concept art. Seriously, pause at right moments and you couldn't tell that it's from an animated series.

==Season Four==
Hot dang, this is where stuff gets insane. Not only does the violence escalate substantially, but so does the production quality and storytelling. It's mostly more of the same stuff from Season Three, except for two major, and by association awesome, differences: Umbara, and The Return of Maul. Umbara is unique in that it hammers in on the clones, and looks so good that you might mistake it for a theatrical film if you didn't see the Cartoon Network logo and annoying ads. Clones get zapped by what are effectively Necron Gauss weapons, crushed by Necron-battlesuit hybrids, eaten by [[Catachan|wild animals]], serve under [[Commissar|a ruthless new commander who sees them as cannon fodder]]... all the while fighting through it like complete chads with their <s>Mars</s> Kaminoan pattern balls of steel. The other story arcs are fantastic, but Umbara is one of the best, and explores many of the questions seen above at the beginning of the page. It is regarded as one of the best arcs in the show for good reason.

But the return of Maul is... amazing. His entire motivation is revenge, and the way they show Obi-Wan rise above it proves he truly has [[Meme|the high ground]]. Unlike in The Phantom Menace, Maul gets plenty of screen time to be fleshed out as a very talkative, profound character, a trait that will define him for the reminder of his appearances in media, mouse or pre-mouse. He also teams up with his younger brother, the Star Wars equivalent of a Khornate Bezerker(yeah, he showed up a bit in Season Three) and the two go around cutting through fools like a hot knife through butter.

==Season Five==
Season Five was once supposed to be the last Season, and it really zeroes in on Ahsoka. It shows how she has changed, and even uses General Grievous to show this. It also continues Maul's story, showing how much of a genius he is, and speaks volumes of him as a character. This also introduces us to what will later become the early foundations of the Rebel Alliance in an Arc that takes place on Onderon.

But the finale of this Season is both heart wrenching and awesome at the same time. But lo and behold, shortly after this season was complete, the [[Rage|series was cancelled by Cartoon Network]].

==Season Six==
This is where the Paywalls start, and...yeah. Netflix agreed to take on the Clone Wars for a brief period of time, allowing those diehard fans to watch the last episodes. These episodes are dark, but the focus becomes less on the war, and really hits hard on the themes of the Corruption of the Jedi, the Nature of the Force, and guest Appearances of Mark Hamil and Liam Neeson as Darth Bane and Qui-gon respectively.

This season also sees the end of another fan loved character in what is truly a tragic arc, and Mace Windu and the Temple of Doom. No, we're not joking. Go watch Indiana Jones, then watch this arc. The season also has an arc focusing on Yoda, for the first time since the first episode of the series and this time, we get to see him be the learner, not the master.

Unfortunately, after this season, the series was cancelled again, seemingly for good. As Lucasfilm Animation started to work on [[Star Wars:Rebels]], it seemed as this series will forever lack a true ending. Until six years after cancellation:

==Season Seven==
Beautiful. Assuming you paid the mouse for a Disney + subscription, then you know that it's just about worth every cent you spent. If the reason you got Disney + was to watch this, then you almost certainly got your money's worth from it. The Seventh Season is so good, that we could write a whole page alone on why it works, and why the characterization is far ahead of anything else currently or maybe even ever produced, with only ATLA maybe beating it in regards to animated shows.

There are three separate arcs: An arc for Captain Rex, which introduces a group named Bad Batch, who are getting their own series later. Then there is an arc for Ahsoka that most people will say they hated and yes, considering that this is the last season made years after cancellation of the series, it does feel a bit underwhelming. Finally there is an arc for the both Ahsoka and Rex that takes place before, during, and shortly after Order 66 with major focus on Maul and Mandalore. This arc really makes the series end on a high note as it is arguably the best arc of the whole series, and some might even argue that it overshadows anything done in any of the movies. Special credit goes to Sam Witwer, who's voicework with Darth Maul makes him not only iconic, but hyper-accentuates the dread and horror of Order 66. As if dismembered dead kids and Aayla Secura getting full auto'ed in the back by her own troops wasn't enough. Especially considering he was the "whiny bitch" from Force Unleashed is doubly awesome.

==Non-Exhaustive List of Awesome==
*Dee Bradley Baker (so many clones with different personalities and he voices them all)
*Clones in general
*Anakin and his Characterization
*Obi-Wan as a one-lining sarcastic chad
*Ahsoka as an actually good female character (''Looking at you [[Heresy|Rey]]'').
*The writing
*The cinematography in general
*The show's embrace of side characters and using them effectively
*Pre-episode intros which play out like Republic propaganda
*Matthew Wood (who voices all the battle droids plus General Grievous, Watt Tambor, Poggle the Lesser and the Senate Guards to boot. Chances are if a non-major male voice isn't Dee Bradley Baker, it's Matthew Wood)
*Admiral Tarkin
*Captain Rex, Fives, Echo all get special recognition as some of the best clones, though there are many good ones.
*Death Watch
*The dark tone and willingness to kill off significant characters.
*Kevin Kiner's scoring of the clone wars music. Some of his work alone rivals anything in the sequels, and destroys most music heard in modern television music composition. TBH the man could get a whole section just for himself.
*Umbara - A perfect marriage of 40K-grade grimdark and Star Wars.
*Dee Bradley Baker (clones are not even the only characters he voices)
*The exploration of the universe. There are single episodes that do more in terms of worldbuilding than the whole sequel trilogy did.
*Matt Lanter's voice work with Anakin, which is comparable and in some ways better than anything Hayden Christensen ever did.
*Plo Koon
*Darth Maul
*Sam Witwer
*Mace Motherfucking Windu showing off as a total chad and proving why he's THE master. Imagine if there was someone as badass as Vader but for the good guys and that's basically what he is in this series.
*Cad Bane (AKA Chad, which one character actually calls him in the show... albeit mispronouncing "Cad", but still), the galaxy's best bounty hunter with Jango dead and Boba still an inexperienced kid. The character's also a love letter to fans of old westerns, doesn't take crap from anyone and provides one of the Indiana Jones references mentioned below.
*Battle Of Ryloth
*Mandalore
*The Indiana Jones references. Seriously, I dare you, go find the ones I'm thinking of, there is one in Season three and another in Season four and one more in Season six.
*Did we mention Dee Bradley Baker (seriously, some Umbaran episodes have several characters and he plays all but one of them)?
*Zygerria as space Mesopatamian slavers
*Hondo Ohnaka being a Magnificent Bastard
*Shaak Ti hammering home the 'Clones are developed characters too' thing.
*The Bad Batch. Imagine a squad of [[Vindicare]], [[Eversor]] and [[Vanus]] Assassins, led by clone trooper Rambo. And they got their own series too.
*Savage Oppress. Darth Maul's brother, he allowed for Darth Maul's return and was a truly sympathetic character you can always feel bad for even despite the atrocities he commits.
*Darth Sidious is the scariest badass in the galaxy.

==The Bad==
There is no bad. {{BLAM|Heresy.}}

Fine. For all that the Clone Wars did right, there are at least a dozen things they did wrong. One of the most obvious of these is Grievous. Now for context, in the Original Clone Wars, Grievous was a killing machine who cut through Jedi like a power sword through a Fire Warrior; his initial reveal had him bulldoze four Jedi Masters in a four-on-one duel (all without revealing his second pair of arms), to the point where Mace Windu himself was only able to stop him by using a Dark Side technique to ''crush Grievous' organs''. He was genuinely terrifying, and Revenge of the Sith had a (sadly deleted) scene where he killed a Jedi to show how strong he was. But in this Clone Wars, he was a tactically incompetent Saturday morning cartoon villain, right down to killing his flunkies for bringing him bad news, being completely unable to win, and generally being used as a beatstick for the hero of the week. Granted, Grievous did have his victories, but they were too few and far between to make up for the initial five seasons worth of [[Fail]]. When he can't even kill a Padawan in his second to last appearance in Season One, you know something is wrong.

Another problem with this show was that unlike Avatar, the production quality could be all over the place. In fact, what many fans agree to be the worst arc in the series are in the fifth season, and many tend to think the second worst is in the seventh. This can be applied in some capacity to every season, and though it doesn't detract from the overall quality, we wouldn't be proper fans if we didn't [[Neckbeard|criticize absolutely everything]]!

There are also some more minor gripes like terrible aim (so bad at times that it makes stormtroopers in A New Hope look like [[Vindicare|Vindicare Assassins]] by comparison), the existence of shields being ignored constantly, people punching and kicking droids and people wearing armour [[derp|(even though Obi-Wan tried that in Revenge of the Sith and hurt his shin as a result)]], [[what|B1 battledroids head apparently being so poorly attached to the body that you can rip it off with your bare hands]] and LAATs not using their massive arsenal of weapons ([[FAIL|there is even a scene where troopers inside the ship fire their weapons instead of the LAAT using its own weapons]]). Thankfully as with most issues in the series, these got less prevalent as the series went on.

Finally there is the thing that although the Clone Wars was a relatively morally gray conflict in the [[fluff]], where the Separatists became Separatists because they were tired of the corruption and ineffectiveness of the Republic, in the series the Republic side is almost always portrayed as heroic while the separatists are sometimes portrayed as moustache-twirling villains. In the first season, we have Grievous and Ventress killing their allies when they feel like it, an incendiary weapon which completely destroys everything that lives while sparing anything that doesn't (highly effective for an army composed primarily of droids) being taken for a test run on a pacifist village who wish to remain neutral, and a mad scientist who redevelops an exterminated virus (he even says the virus was 'murdered' despite his apathy for other people's lives) and develops it further into an airborne bioweapon. Even the attempt in season 3 to try and humanize the Separatists falls a little flat when you see the war crimes the Separatists regularly commit. Thankfully, this issue becomes less common as the series progresses and is almost non-existent towards the end of the series.

Unlike Avatar, the show also has several animation and sound design mistakes. However, as these are mostly only noticable to people who are allergic to grass, you won't notice them too much.

They also dropped Ventress' arc even though it was in the plans, forcing them to eventually finish it as a novel. Still a shame and most would certainly preferred a conclusion for that over Ahsoka's arc in Season 7.

Also "Jedi Cruiser" was always a dumb term for a ship but hearing characters actually say it in universe is just so much worse.

{{Star Wars}}

Star Wars:The Clone Wars

2022-03-31T05:53:52Z

2607:FB90:3883:1966:E01A:22F1:B033:7B84: /* Non-Exhaustive List of Awesome */

{{awesome}}
{{Spoilers}}
{{topquote|Insolence? We are pirates! We don't even know what that means!|Hondo Onaka}}

{{topquote|The Republic couldn't have asked for better soldiers, Nor I a better friend.|Ahsoka Tano}}

'''Star Wars: The Clone Wars''', also known as TCW, is a 3D computer animated cartoon created by Lucasfilm before the days of the dread lord <s>Kathleen Kennedy</s> Sauron, and released on Cartoon Network until its cancellation. Despite a rough start (not uncommon for TV shows as they get) the series was incredibly popular for a number of reasons: its dark tone, amazing character development, the entire goddamn clone army and their balls of steel, and generally being what the prequels were trying to be.

[[File:Clonewars.jpeg|thumb|One of the most Kick-Ass Kid’s cartoons in the history of Television]]

The premise is pretty simple: adventures set in the Clone Wars era. This gave us the ability to explore life in all kinds of different ways: willingness to help others during war, the meaning of being a good soldier, the dangers of corporations in government, political tribalism, the evils and justifications of corrupt leaders, crime in nations devoted to total war, and even stuff like the dangers of revenge and touching on the debate of destiny. Most of these are served on the side, while we get some kickass action sequences that would make C.S. Goto greener than a 3-day old Ork with jealousy.

Some tend to pass it as just a kids show due to it being an animated series but doing so would be a mistake: Despite having a low age rating, it deals with topics that most kids would probably not even be able to understand, such as war profiteering, war economy and corruption. Some arcs also get more [[grimdark]], such as an arc dealing with Trandoshans who kidnap children and then set them free on their planet to hunt them for sport, an arc dealing with an empire whose economy is based solely on slave trade and many arcs which deal with war and its consequences. Some bits are also quite violent, with the show being able to keep its low age rating only due to it hiding most of the graphic stuff with camera-angles.

Generally, it is regarded as the best of the animated series released by Lucasfilm. Disney, having realised this, is getting their rears in gear after the disaster that was [[Star Wars:Resistance|Star Wars: Resistance]] and gave us an incredible, harrowing final season... [[Games Workshop|on their own streaming service.]]

==Origins==
The Origins of The Clone Wars were to act primarily as a stop gap series until the next money making idea that George Lucas could create. He got together with a team in order to shill a novel idea: tell the story of the Clone Wars, something that they were never able to do with the movies due to time constraints.

Funnily enough, a man named Dave Filoni (Who had plenty of experience on ATLA and Boondocks before this) created one of the first characters on the show: A young Togruta girl who later became Ahsoka.

Technically, there are two series called similar titles. The first was 2003's ''Star Wars: Clone Wars'', an animated miniseries made by Genndy Tartakovsky (He of Dexter's Lab and [[Samurai Jack]] fame) chronicling, among other things, the titular Clone Wars and introducing a much more sinister General Grievous to the world.

But then we have ''The Clone Wars'', a CGI animated series (and tie-in movie) that we'll be talking about more and contributed more to the EU. One of the most universally known and loved parts of Star Wars, most fans worth their action figures and limited edition movie sets have watched the show and have an opinion on it one way or another. Some of the most notable characteristics are:

* The Clone Troopers are fleshed out, and we see that they are manly motherfuckers who make Guardsmen's balls of steel look like the cardboard their armour is made out of (seriously, in the movie, they literally charge straight into close combat with ''giant armoured walkers with large guns'', jump off roofs to get on top of them to shoot them point blank, and punch droids in the face)
* Anakin Skywalker is actually a good, fleshed out character, with a good voice actor and shows his descent to child-murdering Force-choking asshat wasn't just him going 'welp, guess I'll fall to the Dark Side.' There was a fair amount of bad-cop moments and “it was him or me” murder to get there, along with several pretty significant personal losses, being forced to relive childhood trauma and displays of incompetence from his superiors in the Order.
* Introduces Ahsoka Tano, a major character who's a female Togruta Jedi that's well-written, non-OP, non-Mary Sue and doesn't invalidate characters from the movies. Starts off a bit annoying in the Clone Wars movie, but manages to do something truly special: she ''learns''. Over the course of Clone Wars and Rebels, Ahsoka probably has the most character development out of any other Star Wars character.
* Obi-Wan being a sexy one-liner spouting sarcastic badass.
* And many others.

However, there were some pretty derp moments too, such as

* Babysitting episode and movie.
* D-squad, where a bunch of droids become heroes of the Republic.
* Mandalore and how its fluff was basically screwed 180 degrees, and then some. (Skub, depending on your exact POV).
* Droids were comic relief of the first and second seasons. It was annoying.
* Grievous, and how his character went from 'BBEG' to 'Can't beat a Padawan'.

All in all, it was a good show that took some time to find its feet.

After many years, a seventh season was announced in an attempt to take away from ''The Last Jedi'' being shit and add ''something'' to the empty Disney Plus lineup. At least some of the episodes will be ones that were in production when the show ended. It promptly disappeared after that announcement for a couple years till it was announced it was going to come out in 2019. And when it did, it blew pretty much everyone away, with fantastic animation, great storytelling, and a harrowing final few episodes. Maul's speech to Ahsoka in particular is downright chilling when you realize he's 100% sincere, is ''afraid'' of what's coming, and genuinely wants to try and stop it.

==Season One==
Ok...the first Season is a rough patch that has a some golden moments sprinkled throughout. Part of these problems stem from early show stuff, and the limits of their ability to animate. One in particular was a scene where two characters were fist fighting, and looked like two Fire Warriors in a melee phase.

BUT, nonetheless, there were some good episodes and good characterization. Among them were Plo Koon as space Gandalf, Aayla Secura as hot alien chick who now has a voice (Jennifer Hale, [[Awesome|which means Aayla shares a VA with Samus... and gets a sexy French accent]]), the Awesomeness that is sarcastic Obi-Wan Kenobi, Anakin's voice actor, and the fifth episode of the series, where the clones really shine on their own, some of which later return. Speaking of clones, special note to Dee Bradley Baker, who literally voices dozens of different clones, each with unique Personalities and voices. Did we mention he does this for 7 seasons? No? Well remember that you twit.

==Season Two==
Season two is much better and more watchable than the majority of Season One. Pick a random episode in Season Two, and there is a good chance it is better than almost anything in Season One. Season Two is notorious for not only the bounty hunters being a part of no less than three separate storylines, but introduces us to what we would later see out of this series, particularly the Battle of Geonosis arc, which was no less than four episodes of intense, attrition warfare with all the explosions and casualties a die hard fa/tg/uy could ever need, with a special brew of horror on the side to boot.

Another introduction in Season Two is Mandalore, which will become a staple in the rest of the series. The big problem with Mandalore is how it retcons Mandalorians from their original awesome state as warriors to having abandoned that past, and those who embrace that warrior tradition being terrorists. The storyline itself is actually a great political series of episodes with sporadic action, [[Skub|but to fans of the old Mandalorians, it was practically a slap in the face]]. Season Two also did something in one Episode that the entirety of Attack of the Clones couldn't do: show a genuine romance and love between Anakin and Padme that wasn't about [[Derp|sand and founding Fascist dictatorships]].

==Season Three==
This is where things get legit. At this point, the sailing becomes real smooth. It is rare to find a one off episode at this point in the series, as everything is arcs now. Clones from the first season return here, and man do you grow a connection with them. We also get more "criminal underworld" and "political subterfuge" episodes here, which despite not having people getting gunned down in droves, are still entertaining to watch and not overly boring.

Of particular note is that Anakin and Ahsoka start to really come into focus here, with a three episode Arc alone exploring Anakin in a super weird realm called Mortis, with Ahsoka getting her own self contained arc in the Season finale. [[Awesome|Anakin is able to hold off the equivalent of the Force's Chaos Gods]], while Ahsoka singlehandedly kicks the butt of Trandoshans, coincidentally also introducing fan favourite furball Chewbacca. There are also some moments here that downright sting your heart. Definitely worth suffering through the first season to watch this.

Half-way through the season, the animation also got a major overhaul with new and better models for everything, turning the series from an odd-looking animation to one of the best-looking 3D-animations out there. The best way to describe it is that it looks like animated concept art. Seriously, pause at right moments and you couldn't tell that it's from an animated series.

==Season Four==
Hot dang, this is where stuff gets insane. Not only does the violence escalate substantially, but so does the production quality and storytelling. It's mostly more of the same stuff from Season Three, except for two major, and by association awesome, differences: Umbara, and The Return of Maul. Umbara is unique in that it hammers in on the clones, and looks so good that you might mistake it for a theatrical film if you didn't see the Cartoon Network logo and annoying ads. Clones get zapped by what are effectively Necron Gauss weapons, crushed by Necron-battlesuit hybrids, eaten by [[Catachan|wild animals]], serve under [[Commissar|a ruthless new commander who sees them as cannon fodder]]... all the while fighting through it like complete chads with their <s>Mars</s> Kaminoan pattern balls of steel. The other story arcs are fantastic, but Umbara is one of the best, and explores many of the questions seen above at the beginning of the page. It is regarded as one of the best arcs in the show for good reason.

But the return of Maul is... amazing. His entire motivation is revenge, and the way they show Obi-Wan rise above it proves he truly has [[Meme|the high ground]]. Unlike in The Phantom Menace, Maul gets plenty of screen time to be fleshed out as a very talkative, profound character, a trait that will define him for the reminder of his appearances in media, mouse or pre-mouse. He also teams up with his younger brother, the Star Wars equivalent of a Khornate Bezerker(yeah, he showed up a bit in Season Three) and the two go around cutting through fools like a hot knife through butter.

==Season Five==
Season Five was once supposed to be the last Season, and it really zeroes in on Ahsoka. It shows how she has changed, and even uses General Grievous to show this. It also continues Maul's story, showing how much of a genius he is, and speaks volumes of him as a character. This also introduces us to what will later become the early foundations of the Rebel Alliance in an Arc that takes place on Onderon.

But the finale of this Season is both heart wrenching and awesome at the same time. But lo and behold, shortly after this season was complete, the [[Rage|series was cancelled by Cartoon Network]].

==Season Six==
This is where the Paywalls start, and...yeah. Netflix agreed to take on the Clone Wars for a brief period of time, allowing those diehard fans to watch the last episodes. These episodes are dark, but the focus becomes less on the war, and really hits hard on the themes of the Corruption of the Jedi, the Nature of the Force, and guest Appearances of Mark Hamil and Liam Neeson as Darth Bane and Qui-gon respectively.

This season also sees the end of another fan loved character in what is truly a tragic arc, and Mace Windu and the Temple of Doom. No, we're not joking. Go watch Indiana Jones, then watch this arc. The season also has an arc focusing on Yoda, for the first time since the first episode of the series and this time, we get to see him be the learner, not the master.

Unfortunately, after this season, the series was cancelled again, seemingly for good. As Lucasfilm Animation started to work on [[Star Wars:Rebels]], it seemed as this series will forever lack a true ending. Until six years after cancellation:

==Season Seven==
Beautiful. Assuming you paid the mouse for a Disney + subscription, then you know that it's just about worth every cent you spent. If the reason you got Disney + was to watch this, then you almost certainly got your money's worth from it. The Seventh Season is so good, that we could write a whole page alone on why it works, and why the characterization is far ahead of anything else currently or maybe even ever produced, with only ATLA maybe beating it in regards to animated shows.

There are three separate arcs: An arc for Captain Rex, which introduces a group named Bad Batch, who are getting their own series later. Then there is an arc for Ahsoka that most people will say they hated and yes, considering that this is the last season made years after cancellation of the series, it does feel a bit underwhelming. Finally there is an arc for the both Ahsoka and Rex that takes place before, during, and shortly after Order 66 with major focus on Maul and Mandalore. This arc really makes the series end on a high note as it is arguably the best arc of the whole series, and some might even argue that it overshadows anything done in any of the movies. Special credit goes to Sam Witwer, who's voicework with Darth Maul makes him not only iconic, but hyper-accentuates the dread and horror of Order 66. As if dismembered dead kids and Aayla Secura getting full auto'ed in the back by her own troops wasn't enough. Especially considering he was the "whiny bitch" from Force Unleashed is doubly awesome.

==Non-Exhaustive List of Awesome==
*Dee Bradley Baker (so many clones with different personalities and he voices them all)
*Clones in general
*Anakin and his Characterization
*Obi-Wan as a one-lining sarcastic chad
*Ahsoka as an actually good female character (''Looking at you [[Heresy|Rey]]'').
*The writing
*The cinematography in general
*The show's embrace of side characters and using them effectively
*Pre-episode intros which play out like Republic propaganda
*Matthew Wood (who voices all the battle droids plus General Grievous, Watt Tambor, Poggle the Lesser and the Senate Guards to boot. Chances are if a non-major male voice isn't Dee Bradley Baker, it's Matthew Wood)
*Admiral Tarkin
*Captain Rex, Fives, Echo all get special recognition as some of the best clones, though there are many good ones.
*Death Watch
*The dark tone and willingness to kill off significant characters.
*Kevin Kiner's scoring of the clone wars music. Some of his work alone rivals anything in the sequels, and destroys most music heard in modern television music composition. TBH the man could get a whole section just for himself.
*Umbara - A perfect marriage of 40K-grade grimdark and Star Wars.
*Dee Bradley Baker (clones are not even the only characters he voices)
*The exploration of the universe. There are single episodes that do more in terms of worldbuilding than the whole sequel trilogy did.
*Matt Lanter's voice work with Anakin, which is comparable and in some ways better than anything Hayden Christensen ever did.
*Plo Koon
*Darth Maul
*Sam Witwer
*Mace Motherfucking Windu showing off as a total chad and proving why he's THE master. Imagine if there was someone as badass as Vader but for the good guys and that's basically what he is in this series.
*Cad Bane (AKA Chad, which one character actually calls him in the show... albeit mispronouncing "Cad", but still), the galaxy's best bounty hunter with Jango dead and Boba still an inexperienced kid. The character's also a love letter to fans of old westerns, doesn't take crap from anyone and provides one of the Indiana Jones references mentioned below.
*Battle Of Ryloth
*Mandalore
*The Indiana Jones references. Seriously, I dare you, go find the ones I'm thinking of, there is one in Season three and another in Season four and one more in Season six.
*Did we mention Dee Bradley Baker (seriously, some Umbaran episodes have several characters and he plays all but one of them)?
*Zygerria as space Mesopatamian slavers
*Hondo Ohnaka being a Magnificent Bastard
*Shaak Ti hammering home the 'Clones are developed characters too' thing.
*The Bad Batch. Imagine a squad of [[Vindicare]], [[Eversor]] and [[Vanus]] Assassins, led by clone trooper Rambo. And they got their own series too.
*Savage Oppress. Darth Maul's brother, he allowed for Darth Maul's return and was a truly sympathetic character you can always feel bad for even despite the atrocities he commits.
*Darth Sidious is the scariest badass in the galaxy.

==The Bad==
There is no bad. {{BLAM|Heresy.}}

Fine. For all that the Clone Wars did right, there are at least a dozen things they did wrong. One of the most obvious of these is Grievous. Now for context, in the Original Clone Wars, Grievous was a killing machine who cut through Jedi like a power sword through a Fire Warrior; his initial reveal had him bulldoze four Jedi Masters in a four-on-one duel (all without revealing his second pair of arms), to the point where Mace Windu himself was only able to stop him by using a Dark Side technique to ''crush Grievous' organs''. He was genuinely terrifying, and Revenge of the Sith had a (sadly deleted) scene where he killed a Jedi to show how strong he was. But in this Clone Wars, he was a tactically incompetent Saturday morning cartoon villain, right down to killing his flunkies for bringing him bad news, being completely unable to win, and generally being used as a beatstick for the hero of the week. Granted, Grievous did have his victories, but they were too few and far between to make up for the initial five seasons worth of [[Fail]]. When he can't even kill a Padawan in his second to last appearance in Season One, you know something is wrong.

Another problem with this show was that unlike Avatar, the production quality could be all over the place. In fact, what many fans agree to be the worst arc in the series are in the fifth season, and many tend to think the second worst is in the seventh. This can be applied in some capacity to every season, and though it doesn't detract from the overall quality, we wouldn't be proper fans if we didn't [[Neckbeard|criticize absolutely everything]]!

There are also some more minor gripes like terrible aim (so bad at times that it makes stormtroopers in A New Hope look like [[Vindicare|Vindicare Assassins]] by comparison), the existence of shields being ignored constantly, people punching and kicking droids and people wearing armour [[derp|(even though Obi-Wan tried that in Revenge of the Sith and hurt his shin as a result)]], [[what|B1 battledroids head apparently being so poorly attached to the body that you can rip it off with your bare hands]] and LAATs not using their massive arsenal of weapons ([[FAIL|there is even a scene where troopers inside the ship fire their weapons instead of the LAAT using its own weapons]]). Thankfully as with most issues in the series, these got less prevalent as the series went on.

Finally there is the thing that although the Clone Wars was a relatively morally gray conflict in the [[fluff]], where the Separatists became Separatists because they were tired of the corruption and ineffectiveness of the Republic, in the series the Republic side is almost always portrayed as heroic while the separatists are sometimes portrayed as moustache-twirling villains. In the first season, we have Grievous and Ventress killing their allies when they feel like it, an incendiary weapon which completely destroys everything that lives while sparing anything that doesn't (highly effective for an army composed primarily of droids) being taken for a test run on a pacifist village who wish to remain neutral, and a mad scientist who redevelops an exterminated virus (he even says the virus was 'murdered' despite his apathy for other people's lives) and develops it further into an airborne bioweapon. Even the attempt in season 3 to try and humanize the Separatists falls a little flat when you see the war crimes the Separatists regularly commit. Thankfully, this issue becomes less common as the series progresses and is almost non-existent towards the end of the series.

They also dropped Ventress's arc even though it was in the plans, forcing them to eventually finish it as a novel. Still a shame and most would certainly preferred a conclusion for that over Ahsoka's arc in Season 7.

Also "Jedi Cruiser" was always a dumb term for a ship but hearing characters actually say it in universe is just so much worse.

{{Star Wars}}

Star Wars:The Clone Wars

2022-03-31T05:50:47Z

2607:FB90:3883:1966:E01A:22F1:B033:7B84: /* Season Four */

{{awesome}}
{{Spoilers}}
{{topquote|Insolence? We are pirates! We don't even know what that means!|Hondo Onaka}}

{{topquote|The Republic couldn't have asked for better soldiers, Nor I a better friend.|Ahsoka Tano}}

'''Star Wars: The Clone Wars''', also known as TCW, is a 3D computer animated cartoon created by Lucasfilm before the days of the dread lord <s>Kathleen Kennedy</s> Sauron, and released on Cartoon Network until its cancellation. Despite a rough start (not uncommon for TV shows as they get) the series was incredibly popular for a number of reasons: its dark tone, amazing character development, the entire goddamn clone army and their balls of steel, and generally being what the prequels were trying to be.

[[File:Clonewars.jpeg|thumb|One of the most Kick-Ass Kid’s cartoons in the history of Television]]

The premise is pretty simple: adventures set in the Clone Wars era. This gave us the ability to explore life in all kinds of different ways: willingness to help others during war, the meaning of being a good soldier, the dangers of corporations in government, political tribalism, the evils and justifications of corrupt leaders, crime in nations devoted to total war, and even stuff like the dangers of revenge and touching on the debate of destiny. Most of these are served on the side, while we get some kickass action sequences that would make C.S. Goto greener than a 3-day old Ork with jealousy.

Some tend to pass it as just a kids show due to it being an animated series but doing so would be a mistake: Despite having a low age rating, it deals with topics that most kids would probably not even be able to understand, such as war profiteering, war economy and corruption. Some arcs also get more [[grimdark]], such as an arc dealing with Trandoshans who kidnap children and then set them free on their planet to hunt them for sport, an arc dealing with an empire whose economy is based solely on slave trade and many arcs which deal with war and its consequences. Some bits are also quite violent, with the show being able to keep its low age rating only due to it hiding most of the graphic stuff with camera-angles.

Generally, it is regarded as the best of the animated series released by Lucasfilm. Disney, having realised this, is getting their rears in gear after the disaster that was [[Star Wars:Resistance|Star Wars: Resistance]] and gave us an incredible, harrowing final season... [[Games Workshop|on their own streaming service.]]

==Origins==
The Origins of The Clone Wars were to act primarily as a stop gap series until the next money making idea that George Lucas could create. He got together with a team in order to shill a novel idea: tell the story of the Clone Wars, something that they were never able to do with the movies due to time constraints.

Funnily enough, a man named Dave Filoni (Who had plenty of experience on ATLA and Boondocks before this) created one of the first characters on the show: A young Togruta girl who later became Ahsoka.

Technically, there are two series called similar titles. The first was 2003's ''Star Wars: Clone Wars'', an animated miniseries made by Genndy Tartakovsky (He of Dexter's Lab and [[Samurai Jack]] fame) chronicling, among other things, the titular Clone Wars and introducing a much more sinister General Grievous to the world.

But then we have ''The Clone Wars'', a CGI animated series (and tie-in movie) that we'll be talking about more and contributed more to the EU. One of the most universally known and loved parts of Star Wars, most fans worth their action figures and limited edition movie sets have watched the show and have an opinion on it one way or another. Some of the most notable characteristics are:

* The Clone Troopers are fleshed out, and we see that they are manly motherfuckers who make Guardsmen's balls of steel look like the cardboard their armour is made out of (seriously, in the movie, they literally charge straight into close combat with ''giant armoured walkers with large guns'', jump off roofs to get on top of them to shoot them point blank, and punch droids in the face)
* Anakin Skywalker is actually a good, fleshed out character, with a good voice actor and shows his descent to child-murdering Force-choking asshat wasn't just him going 'welp, guess I'll fall to the Dark Side.' There was a fair amount of bad-cop moments and “it was him or me” murder to get there, along with several pretty significant personal losses, being forced to relive childhood trauma and displays of incompetence from his superiors in the Order.
* Introduces Ahsoka Tano, a major character who's a female Togruta Jedi that's well-written, non-OP, non-Mary Sue and doesn't invalidate characters from the movies. Starts off a bit annoying in the Clone Wars movie, but manages to do something truly special: she ''learns''. Over the course of Clone Wars and Rebels, Ahsoka probably has the most character development out of any other Star Wars character.
* Obi-Wan being a sexy one-liner spouting sarcastic badass.
* And many others.

However, there were some pretty derp moments too, such as

* Babysitting episode and movie.
* D-squad, where a bunch of droids become heroes of the Republic.
* Mandalore and how its fluff was basically screwed 180 degrees, and then some. (Skub, depending on your exact POV).
* Droids were comic relief of the first and second seasons. It was annoying.
* Grievous, and how his character went from 'BBEG' to 'Can't beat a Padawan'.

All in all, it was a good show that took some time to find its feet.

After many years, a seventh season was announced in an attempt to take away from ''The Last Jedi'' being shit and add ''something'' to the empty Disney Plus lineup. At least some of the episodes will be ones that were in production when the show ended. It promptly disappeared after that announcement for a couple years till it was announced it was going to come out in 2019. And when it did, it blew pretty much everyone away, with fantastic animation, great storytelling, and a harrowing final few episodes. Maul's speech to Ahsoka in particular is downright chilling when you realize he's 100% sincere, is ''afraid'' of what's coming, and genuinely wants to try and stop it.

==Season One==
Ok...the first Season is a rough patch that has a some golden moments sprinkled throughout. Part of these problems stem from early show stuff, and the limits of their ability to animate. One in particular was a scene where two characters were fist fighting, and looked like two Fire Warriors in a melee phase.

BUT, nonetheless, there were some good episodes and good characterization. Among them were Plo Koon as space Gandalf, Aayla Secura as hot alien chick who now has a voice (Jennifer Hale, [[Awesome|which means Aayla shares a VA with Samus... and gets a sexy French accent]]), the Awesomeness that is sarcastic Obi-Wan Kenobi, Anakin's voice actor, and the fifth episode of the series, where the clones really shine on their own, some of which later return. Speaking of clones, special note to Dee Bradley Baker, who literally voices dozens of different clones, each with unique Personalities and voices. Did we mention he does this for 7 seasons? No? Well remember that you twit.

==Season Two==
Season two is much better and more watchable than the majority of Season One. Pick a random episode in Season Two, and there is a good chance it is better than almost anything in Season One. Season Two is notorious for not only the bounty hunters being a part of no less than three separate storylines, but introduces us to what we would later see out of this series, particularly the Battle of Geonosis arc, which was no less than four episodes of intense, attrition warfare with all the explosions and casualties a die hard fa/tg/uy could ever need, with a special brew of horror on the side to boot.

Another introduction in Season Two is Mandalore, which will become a staple in the rest of the series. The big problem with Mandalore is how it retcons Mandalorians from their original awesome state as warriors to having abandoned that past, and those who embrace that warrior tradition being terrorists. The storyline itself is actually a great political series of episodes with sporadic action, [[Skub|but to fans of the old Mandalorians, it was practically a slap in the face]]. Season Two also did something in one Episode that the entirety of Attack of the Clones couldn't do: show a genuine romance and love between Anakin and Padme that wasn't about [[Derp|sand and founding Fascist dictatorships]].

==Season Three==
This is where things get legit. At this point, the sailing becomes real smooth. It is rare to find a one off episode at this point in the series, as everything is arcs now. Clones from the first season return here, and man do you grow a connection with them. We also get more "criminal underworld" and "political subterfuge" episodes here, which despite not having people getting gunned down in droves, are still entertaining to watch and not overly boring.

Of particular note is that Anakin and Ahsoka start to really come into focus here, with a three episode Arc alone exploring Anakin in a super weird realm called Mortis, with Ahsoka getting her own self contained arc in the Season finale. [[Awesome|Anakin is able to hold off the equivalent of the Force's Chaos Gods]], while Ahsoka singlehandedly kicks the butt of Trandoshans, coincidentally also introducing fan favourite furball Chewbacca. There are also some moments here that downright sting your heart. Definitely worth suffering through the first season to watch this.

Half-way through the season, the animation also got a major overhaul with new and better models for everything, turning the series from an odd-looking animation to one of the best-looking 3D-animations out there. The best way to describe it is that it looks like animated concept art. Seriously, pause at right moments and you couldn't tell that it's from an animated series.

==Season Four==
Hot dang, this is where stuff gets insane. Not only does the violence escalate substantially, but so does the production quality and storytelling. It's mostly more of the same stuff from Season Three, except for two major, and by association awesome, differences: Umbara, and The Return of Maul. Umbara is unique in that it hammers in on the clones, and looks so good that you might mistake it for a theatrical film if you didn't see the Cartoon Network logo and annoying ads. Clones get zapped by what are effectively Necron Gauss weapons, crushed by Necron-battlesuit hybrids, eaten by [[Catachan|wild animals]], serve under [[Commissar|a ruthless new commander who sees them as cannon fodder]]... all the while fighting through it like complete chads with their <s>Mars</s> Kaminoan pattern balls of steel. The other story arcs are fantastic, but Umbara is one of the best, and explores many of the questions seen above at the beginning of the page. It is regarded as one of the best arcs in the show for good reason.

But the return of Maul is... amazing. His entire motivation is revenge, and the way they show Obi-Wan rise above it proves he truly has [[Meme|the high ground]]. Unlike in The Phantom Menace, Maul gets plenty of screen time to be fleshed out as a very talkative, profound character, a trait that will define him for the reminder of his appearances in media, mouse or pre-mouse. He also teams up with his younger brother, the Star Wars equivalent of a Khornate Bezerker(yeah, he showed up a bit in Season Three) and the two go around cutting through fools like a hot knife through butter.

==Season Five==
Season Five was once supposed to be the last Season, and it really zeroes in on Ahsoka. It shows how she has changed, and even uses General Grievous to show this. It also continues Maul's story, showing how much of a genius he is, and speaks volumes of him as a character. This also introduces us to what will later become the early foundations of the Rebel Alliance in an Arc that takes place on Onderon.

But the finale of this Season is both heart wrenching and awesome at the same time. But lo and behold, shortly after this season was complete, the [[Rage|series was cancelled by Cartoon Network]].

==Season Six==
This is where the Paywalls start, and...yeah. Netflix agreed to take on the Clone Wars for a brief period of time, allowing those diehard fans to watch the last episodes. These episodes are dark, but the focus becomes less on the war, and really hits hard on the themes of the Corruption of the Jedi, the Nature of the Force, and guest Appearances of Mark Hamil and Liam Neeson as Darth Bane and Qui-gon respectively.

This season also sees the end of another fan loved character in what is truly a tragic arc, and Mace Windu and the Temple of Doom. No, we're not joking. Go watch Indiana Jones, then watch this arc. The season also has an arc focusing on Yoda, for the first time since the first episode of the series and this time, we get to see him be the learner, not the master.

Unfortunately, after this season, the series was cancelled again, seemingly for good. As Lucasfilm Animation started to work on [[Star Wars:Rebels]], it seemed as this series will forever lack a true ending. Until six years after cancellation:

==Season Seven==
Beautiful. Assuming you paid the mouse for a Disney + subscription, then you know that it's just about worth every cent you spent. If the reason you got Disney + was to watch this, then you almost certainly got your money's worth from it. The Seventh Season is so good, that we could write a whole page alone on why it works, and why the characterization is far ahead of anything else currently or maybe even ever produced, with only ATLA maybe beating it in regards to animated shows.

There are three separate arcs: An arc for Captain Rex, which introduces a group named Bad Batch, who are getting their own series later. Then there is an arc for Ahsoka that most people will say they hated and yes, considering that this is the last season made years after cancellation of the series, it does feel a bit underwhelming. Finally there is an arc for the both Ahsoka and Rex that takes place before, during, and shortly after Order 66 with major focus on Maul and Mandalore. This arc really makes the series end on a high note as it is arguably the best arc of the whole series, and some might even argue that it overshadows anything done in any of the movies. Special credit goes to Sam Witwer, who's voicework with Darth Maul makes him not only iconic, but hyper-accentuates the dread and horror of Order 66. As if dismembered dead kids and Aayla Secura getting full auto'ed in the back by her own troops wasn't enough. Especially considering he was the "whiny bitch" from Force Unleashed is doubly awesome.

==Non-Exhaustive List of Awesome==
*Dee Bradley Baker (so many clones with different personalities and he voices them all)
*Clones in general
*Anakin and his Characterization
*Obi-Wan as a one-lining sarcastic chad
*Ahsoka as an actually good female character (''Looking at you [[Heresy|Rey]]'').
*The writing
*The cinematography in general
*The show's embrace of side characters and using them effectively
*Pre-episode intro's which play out like Republic propaganda
*Matthew Wood (who voices all the battle droids plus General Grievous, Watt Tambor, Poggle the Lesser and the Senate Guards to boot. Chances are if a non-major male voice isn't Dee Bradley Baker, it's Matthew Wood)
*Admiral Tarkin
*Captain Rex, Fives, Echo all get special recognition as some of the best clones, though there are many good ones.
*Death Watch
*The dark tone and willingness to kill off significant characters.
*Kevin Kiner's scoring of the clone wars music. Some of his work alone rivals anything in the sequels, and destroys most music heard in modern television music composition. TBH the man could get a whole section just for himself.
*Umbara - A perfect marriage of 40K-grade grimdark and Star Wars.
*Dee Bradley Baker (clones are not even the only characters he voices)
*The exploration of the universe. There are single episodes that do more in terms of worldbuilding than the whole sequel trilogy did.
*Matt Lanter's voice work with Anakin, which is comparable and in some ways better than anything Hayden Christensen ever did.
*Plo Koon
*Darth Maul
*Sam Witwer
*Mace Motherfucking Windu showing off as a total chad and proving why he's THE master. Imagine if there was someone as badass as Vader but for the good guys and that's basically what he is in this series.
*Cad Bane (AKA Chad, which one character actually calls him in the show... albeit mispronouncing "Cad", but still), the galaxy's best bounty hunter with Jango dead and Boba still an inexperienced kid. The character's also a love letter to fans of old westerns, doesn't take crap from anyone and provides one of the Indiana Jones references mentioned below.
*Battle Of Ryloth
*Mandalore
*The Indiana Jones references. Seriously, I dare you, go find the ones I'm thinking of, there is one in Season three and another in Season four and one more in Season six.
*Did we mention Dee Bradley Baker (seriously, some Umbaran episodes have several characters and he plays all but one of them)?
*Zygerria as space Mesopatamian slavers
*Hondo Ohnaka being a Magnificent Bastard
*Shaak Ti hammering home the 'Clones are developed characters too' thing.
*The Bad Batch. Imagine a squad of [[Vindicare]], [[Eversor]] and [[Vanus]] Assassins, led by clone trooper Rambo. And they got their own series too.
*Savage Oppress. Darth Maul's brother, he allowed for Darth Maul's return and was a truly sympathetic character you can always feel bad for even despite the atrocities he commits.
*Darth Sidious is the scariest badass in the galaxy.

==The Bad==
There is no bad. {{BLAM|Heresy.}}

Fine. For all that the Clone Wars did right, there are at least a dozen things they did wrong. One of the most obvious of these is Grievous. Now for context, in the Original Clone Wars, Grievous was a killing machine who cut through Jedi like a power sword through a Fire Warrior; his initial reveal had him bulldoze four Jedi Masters in a four-on-one duel (all without revealing his second pair of arms), to the point where Mace Windu himself was only able to stop him by using a Dark Side technique to ''crush Grievous' organs''. He was genuinely terrifying, and Revenge of the Sith had a (sadly deleted) scene where he killed a Jedi to show how strong he was. But in this Clone Wars, he was a tactically incompetent Saturday morning cartoon villain, right down to killing his flunkies for bringing him bad news, being completely unable to win, and generally being used as a beatstick for the hero of the week. Granted, Grievous did have his victories, but they were too few and far between to make up for the initial five seasons worth of [[Fail]]. When he can't even kill a Padawan in his second to last appearance in Season One, you know something is wrong.

Another problem with this show was that unlike Avatar, the production quality could be all over the place. In fact, what many fans agree to be the worst arc in the series are in the fifth season, and many tend to think the second worst is in the seventh. This can be applied in some capacity to every season, and though it doesn't detract from the overall quality, we wouldn't be proper fans if we didn't [[Neckbeard|criticize absolutely everything]]!

There are also some more minor gripes like terrible aim (so bad at times that it makes stormtroopers in A New Hope look like [[Vindicare|Vindicare Assassins]] by comparison), the existence of shields being ignored constantly, people punching and kicking droids and people wearing armour [[derp|(even though Obi-Wan tried that in Revenge of the Sith and hurt his shin as a result)]], [[what|B1 battledroids head apparently being so poorly attached to the body that you can rip it off with your bare hands]] and LAATs not using their massive arsenal of weapons ([[FAIL|there is even a scene where troopers inside the ship fire their weapons instead of the LAAT using its own weapons]]). Thankfully as with most issues in the series, these got less prevalent as the series went on.

Finally there is the thing that although the Clone Wars was a relatively morally gray conflict in the [[fluff]], where the Separatists became Separatists because they were tired of the corruption and ineffectiveness of the Republic, in the series the Republic side is almost always portrayed as heroic while the separatists are sometimes portrayed as moustache-twirling villains. In the first season, we have Grievous and Ventress killing their allies when they feel like it, an incendiary weapon which completely destroys everything that lives while sparing anything that doesn't (highly effective for an army composed primarily of droids) being taken for a test run on a pacifist village who wish to remain neutral, and a mad scientist who redevelops an exterminated virus (he even says the virus was 'murdered' despite his apathy for other people's lives) and develops it further into an airborne bioweapon. Even the attempt in season 3 to try and humanize the Separatists falls a little flat when you see the war crimes the Separatists regularly commit. Thankfully, this issue becomes less common as the series progresses and is almost non-existent towards the end of the series.

They also dropped Ventress's arc even though it was in the plans, forcing them to eventually finish it as a novel. Still a shame and most would certainly preferred a conclusion for that over Ahsoka's arc in Season 7.

Also "Jedi Cruiser" was always a dumb term for a ship but hearing characters actually say it in universe is just so much worse.

{{Star Wars}}

Star Wars:The Clone Wars

2022-03-31T05:49:01Z

2607:FB90:3883:1966:E01A:22F1:B033:7B84: /* Season Three */

{{awesome}}
{{Spoilers}}
{{topquote|Insolence? We are pirates! We don't even know what that means!|Hondo Onaka}}

{{topquote|The Republic couldn't have asked for better soldiers, Nor I a better friend.|Ahsoka Tano}}

'''Star Wars: The Clone Wars''', also known as TCW, is a 3D computer animated cartoon created by Lucasfilm before the days of the dread lord <s>Kathleen Kennedy</s> Sauron, and released on Cartoon Network until its cancellation. Despite a rough start (not uncommon for TV shows as they get) the series was incredibly popular for a number of reasons: its dark tone, amazing character development, the entire goddamn clone army and their balls of steel, and generally being what the prequels were trying to be.

[[File:Clonewars.jpeg|thumb|One of the most Kick-Ass Kid’s cartoons in the history of Television]]

The premise is pretty simple: adventures set in the Clone Wars era. This gave us the ability to explore life in all kinds of different ways: willingness to help others during war, the meaning of being a good soldier, the dangers of corporations in government, political tribalism, the evils and justifications of corrupt leaders, crime in nations devoted to total war, and even stuff like the dangers of revenge and touching on the debate of destiny. Most of these are served on the side, while we get some kickass action sequences that would make C.S. Goto greener than a 3-day old Ork with jealousy.

Some tend to pass it as just a kids show due to it being an animated series but doing so would be a mistake: Despite having a low age rating, it deals with topics that most kids would probably not even be able to understand, such as war profiteering, war economy and corruption. Some arcs also get more [[grimdark]], such as an arc dealing with Trandoshans who kidnap children and then set them free on their planet to hunt them for sport, an arc dealing with an empire whose economy is based solely on slave trade and many arcs which deal with war and its consequences. Some bits are also quite violent, with the show being able to keep its low age rating only due to it hiding most of the graphic stuff with camera-angles.

Generally, it is regarded as the best of the animated series released by Lucasfilm. Disney, having realised this, is getting their rears in gear after the disaster that was [[Star Wars:Resistance|Star Wars: Resistance]] and gave us an incredible, harrowing final season... [[Games Workshop|on their own streaming service.]]

==Origins==
The Origins of The Clone Wars were to act primarily as a stop gap series until the next money making idea that George Lucas could create. He got together with a team in order to shill a novel idea: tell the story of the Clone Wars, something that they were never able to do with the movies due to time constraints.

Funnily enough, a man named Dave Filoni (Who had plenty of experience on ATLA and Boondocks before this) created one of the first characters on the show: A young Togruta girl who later became Ahsoka.

Technically, there are two series called similar titles. The first was 2003's ''Star Wars: Clone Wars'', an animated miniseries made by Genndy Tartakovsky (He of Dexter's Lab and [[Samurai Jack]] fame) chronicling, among other things, the titular Clone Wars and introducing a much more sinister General Grievous to the world.

But then we have ''The Clone Wars'', a CGI animated series (and tie-in movie) that we'll be talking about more and contributed more to the EU. One of the most universally known and loved parts of Star Wars, most fans worth their action figures and limited edition movie sets have watched the show and have an opinion on it one way or another. Some of the most notable characteristics are:

* The Clone Troopers are fleshed out, and we see that they are manly motherfuckers who make Guardsmen's balls of steel look like the cardboard their armour is made out of (seriously, in the movie, they literally charge straight into close combat with ''giant armoured walkers with large guns'', jump off roofs to get on top of them to shoot them point blank, and punch droids in the face)
* Anakin Skywalker is actually a good, fleshed out character, with a good voice actor and shows his descent to child-murdering Force-choking asshat wasn't just him going 'welp, guess I'll fall to the Dark Side.' There was a fair amount of bad-cop moments and “it was him or me” murder to get there, along with several pretty significant personal losses, being forced to relive childhood trauma and displays of incompetence from his superiors in the Order.
* Introduces Ahsoka Tano, a major character who's a female Togruta Jedi that's well-written, non-OP, non-Mary Sue and doesn't invalidate characters from the movies. Starts off a bit annoying in the Clone Wars movie, but manages to do something truly special: she ''learns''. Over the course of Clone Wars and Rebels, Ahsoka probably has the most character development out of any other Star Wars character.
* Obi-Wan being a sexy one-liner spouting sarcastic badass.
* And many others.

However, there were some pretty derp moments too, such as

* Babysitting episode and movie.
* D-squad, where a bunch of droids become heroes of the Republic.
* Mandalore and how its fluff was basically screwed 180 degrees, and then some. (Skub, depending on your exact POV).
* Droids were comic relief of the first and second seasons. It was annoying.
* Grievous, and how his character went from 'BBEG' to 'Can't beat a Padawan'.

All in all, it was a good show that took some time to find its feet.

After many years, a seventh season was announced in an attempt to take away from ''The Last Jedi'' being shit and add ''something'' to the empty Disney Plus lineup. At least some of the episodes will be ones that were in production when the show ended. It promptly disappeared after that announcement for a couple years till it was announced it was going to come out in 2019. And when it did, it blew pretty much everyone away, with fantastic animation, great storytelling, and a harrowing final few episodes. Maul's speech to Ahsoka in particular is downright chilling when you realize he's 100% sincere, is ''afraid'' of what's coming, and genuinely wants to try and stop it.

==Season One==
Ok...the first Season is a rough patch that has a some golden moments sprinkled throughout. Part of these problems stem from early show stuff, and the limits of their ability to animate. One in particular was a scene where two characters were fist fighting, and looked like two Fire Warriors in a melee phase.

BUT, nonetheless, there were some good episodes and good characterization. Among them were Plo Koon as space Gandalf, Aayla Secura as hot alien chick who now has a voice (Jennifer Hale, [[Awesome|which means Aayla shares a VA with Samus... and gets a sexy French accent]]), the Awesomeness that is sarcastic Obi-Wan Kenobi, Anakin's voice actor, and the fifth episode of the series, where the clones really shine on their own, some of which later return. Speaking of clones, special note to Dee Bradley Baker, who literally voices dozens of different clones, each with unique Personalities and voices. Did we mention he does this for 7 seasons? No? Well remember that you twit.

==Season Two==
Season two is much better and more watchable than the majority of Season One. Pick a random episode in Season Two, and there is a good chance it is better than almost anything in Season One. Season Two is notorious for not only the bounty hunters being a part of no less than three separate storylines, but introduces us to what we would later see out of this series, particularly the Battle of Geonosis arc, which was no less than four episodes of intense, attrition warfare with all the explosions and casualties a die hard fa/tg/uy could ever need, with a special brew of horror on the side to boot.

Another introduction in Season Two is Mandalore, which will become a staple in the rest of the series. The big problem with Mandalore is how it retcons Mandalorians from their original awesome state as warriors to having abandoned that past, and those who embrace that warrior tradition being terrorists. The storyline itself is actually a great political series of episodes with sporadic action, [[Skub|but to fans of the old Mandalorians, it was practically a slap in the face]]. Season Two also did something in one Episode that the entirety of Attack of the Clones couldn't do: show a genuine romance and love between Anakin and Padme that wasn't about [[Derp|sand and founding Fascist dictatorships]].

==Season Three==
This is where things get legit. At this point, the sailing becomes real smooth. It is rare to find a one off episode at this point in the series, as everything is arcs now. Clones from the first season return here, and man do you grow a connection with them. We also get more "criminal underworld" and "political subterfuge" episodes here, which despite not having people getting gunned down in droves, are still entertaining to watch and not overly boring.

Of particular note is that Anakin and Ahsoka start to really come into focus here, with a three episode Arc alone exploring Anakin in a super weird realm called Mortis, with Ahsoka getting her own self contained arc in the Season finale. [[Awesome|Anakin is able to hold off the equivalent of the Force's Chaos Gods]], while Ahsoka singlehandedly kicks the butt of Trandoshans, coincidentally also introducing fan favourite furball Chewbacca. There are also some moments here that downright sting your heart. Definitely worth suffering through the first season to watch this.

Half-way through the season, the animation also got a major overhaul with new and better models for everything, turning the series from an odd-looking animation to one of the best-looking 3D-animations out there. The best way to describe it is that it looks like animated concept art. Seriously, pause at right moments and you couldn't tell that it's from an animated series.

==Season Four==
Hot dang, this is where stuff gets insane. Not only does the violence escalate substantially, but so does the production quality and storytelling. It's mostly more of the same stuff from Season Three, except for two major, and by association awesome, differences: Umbara, and The Return of Maul. Umbara is unique in that it hammers on on the clones, and looks so good that you might mistake it for a theatrical film if you didn't see it on Cartoon Network. Clones get zapped by what are effectively Necron Gauss weapons, crushed by Necron-battlesuit hybrids, eaten by [[Catachan|wild animals]], serve under [[Commissar|a ruthless new commander who sees them as cannon fodder]]... all the while fighting through it like complete chads with their <s>Mars</s> Kaminoan pattern balls of steel. The other story arcs are fantastic, but Umbara is one of the best, and explores many of the questions seen above at the beginning of the page. It is regarded as one of the best arcs in the show for good reason.

But the return of Maul is... amazing. His entire motivation is revenge, and the way they show Obi-Wan rise above it proves he truly has [[Meme|the high ground]]. Unlike in The Phantom Menace, Maul gets plenty of screen time to be fleshed out as a very talkative, profound character, a trait that will define him for the reminder of his appearances in media, mouse or pre-mouse. He also teams up with his younger brother, the Star Wars equivalent of a Khornate Bezerker, and the two go around cutting through fools like a hot knife through butter.

==Season Five==
Season Five was once supposed to be the last Season, and it really zeroes in on Ahsoka. It shows how she has changed, and even uses General Grievous to show this. It also continues Maul's story, showing how much of a genius he is, and speaks volumes of him as a character. This also introduces us to what will later become the early foundations of the Rebel Alliance in an Arc that takes place on Onderon.

But the finale of this Season is both heart wrenching and awesome at the same time. But lo and behold, shortly after this season was complete, the [[Rage|series was cancelled by Cartoon Network]].

==Season Six==
This is where the Paywalls start, and...yeah. Netflix agreed to take on the Clone Wars for a brief period of time, allowing those diehard fans to watch the last episodes. These episodes are dark, but the focus becomes less on the war, and really hits hard on the themes of the Corruption of the Jedi, the Nature of the Force, and guest Appearances of Mark Hamil and Liam Neeson as Darth Bane and Qui-gon respectively.

This season also sees the end of another fan loved character in what is truly a tragic arc, and Mace Windu and the Temple of Doom. No, we're not joking. Go watch Indiana Jones, then watch this arc. The season also has an arc focusing on Yoda, for the first time since the first episode of the series and this time, we get to see him be the learner, not the master.

Unfortunately, after this season, the series was cancelled again, seemingly for good. As Lucasfilm Animation started to work on [[Star Wars:Rebels]], it seemed as this series will forever lack a true ending. Until six years after cancellation:

==Season Seven==
Beautiful. Assuming you paid the mouse for a Disney + subscription, then you know that it's just about worth every cent you spent. If the reason you got Disney + was to watch this, then you almost certainly got your money's worth from it. The Seventh Season is so good, that we could write a whole page alone on why it works, and why the characterization is far ahead of anything else currently or maybe even ever produced, with only ATLA maybe beating it in regards to animated shows.

There are three separate arcs: An arc for Captain Rex, which introduces a group named Bad Batch, who are getting their own series later. Then there is an arc for Ahsoka that most people will say they hated and yes, considering that this is the last season made years after cancellation of the series, it does feel a bit underwhelming. Finally there is an arc for the both Ahsoka and Rex that takes place before, during, and shortly after Order 66 with major focus on Maul and Mandalore. This arc really makes the series end on a high note as it is arguably the best arc of the whole series, and some might even argue that it overshadows anything done in any of the movies. Special credit goes to Sam Witwer, who's voicework with Darth Maul makes him not only iconic, but hyper-accentuates the dread and horror of Order 66. As if dismembered dead kids and Aayla Secura getting full auto'ed in the back by her own troops wasn't enough. Especially considering he was the "whiny bitch" from Force Unleashed is doubly awesome.

==Non-Exhaustive List of Awesome==
*Dee Bradley Baker (so many clones with different personalities and he voices them all)
*Clones in general
*Anakin and his Characterization
*Obi-Wan as a one-lining sarcastic chad
*Ahsoka as an actually good female character (''Looking at you [[Heresy|Rey]]'').
*The writing
*The cinematography in general
*The show's embrace of side characters and using them effectively
*Pre-episode intro's which play out like Republic propaganda
*Matthew Wood (who voices all the battle droids plus General Grievous, Watt Tambor, Poggle the Lesser and the Senate Guards to boot. Chances are if a non-major male voice isn't Dee Bradley Baker, it's Matthew Wood)
*Admiral Tarkin
*Captain Rex, Fives, Echo all get special recognition as some of the best clones, though there are many good ones.
*Death Watch
*The dark tone and willingness to kill off significant characters.
*Kevin Kiner's scoring of the clone wars music. Some of his work alone rivals anything in the sequels, and destroys most music heard in modern television music composition. TBH the man could get a whole section just for himself.
*Umbara - A perfect marriage of 40K-grade grimdark and Star Wars.
*Dee Bradley Baker (clones are not even the only characters he voices)
*The exploration of the universe. There are single episodes that do more in terms of worldbuilding than the whole sequel trilogy did.
*Matt Lanter's voice work with Anakin, which is comparable and in some ways better than anything Hayden Christensen ever did.
*Plo Koon
*Darth Maul
*Sam Witwer
*Mace Motherfucking Windu showing off as a total chad and proving why he's THE master. Imagine if there was someone as badass as Vader but for the good guys and that's basically what he is in this series.
*Cad Bane (AKA Chad, which one character actually calls him in the show... albeit mispronouncing "Cad", but still), the galaxy's best bounty hunter with Jango dead and Boba still an inexperienced kid. The character's also a love letter to fans of old westerns, doesn't take crap from anyone and provides one of the Indiana Jones references mentioned below.
*Battle Of Ryloth
*Mandalore
*The Indiana Jones references. Seriously, I dare you, go find the ones I'm thinking of, there is one in Season three and another in Season four and one more in Season six.
*Did we mention Dee Bradley Baker (seriously, some Umbaran episodes have several characters and he plays all but one of them)?
*Zygerria as space Mesopatamian slavers
*Hondo Ohnaka being a Magnificent Bastard
*Shaak Ti hammering home the 'Clones are developed characters too' thing.
*The Bad Batch. Imagine a squad of [[Vindicare]], [[Eversor]] and [[Vanus]] Assassins, led by clone trooper Rambo. And they got their own series too.
*Savage Oppress. Darth Maul's brother, he allowed for Darth Maul's return and was a truly sympathetic character you can always feel bad for even despite the atrocities he commits.
*Darth Sidious is the scariest badass in the galaxy.

==The Bad==
There is no bad. {{BLAM|Heresy.}}

Fine. For all that the Clone Wars did right, there are at least a dozen things they did wrong. One of the most obvious of these is Grievous. Now for context, in the Original Clone Wars, Grievous was a killing machine who cut through Jedi like a power sword through a Fire Warrior; his initial reveal had him bulldoze four Jedi Masters in a four-on-one duel (all without revealing his second pair of arms), to the point where Mace Windu himself was only able to stop him by using a Dark Side technique to ''crush Grievous' organs''. He was genuinely terrifying, and Revenge of the Sith had a (sadly deleted) scene where he killed a Jedi to show how strong he was. But in this Clone Wars, he was a tactically incompetent Saturday morning cartoon villain, right down to killing his flunkies for bringing him bad news, being completely unable to win, and generally being used as a beatstick for the hero of the week. Granted, Grievous did have his victories, but they were too few and far between to make up for the initial five seasons worth of [[Fail]]. When he can't even kill a Padawan in his second to last appearance in Season One, you know something is wrong.

Another problem with this show was that unlike Avatar, the production quality could be all over the place. In fact, what many fans agree to be the worst arc in the series are in the fifth season, and many tend to think the second worst is in the seventh. This can be applied in some capacity to every season, and though it doesn't detract from the overall quality, we wouldn't be proper fans if we didn't [[Neckbeard|criticize absolutely everything]]!

There are also some more minor gripes like terrible aim (so bad at times that it makes stormtroopers in A New Hope look like [[Vindicare|Vindicare Assassins]] by comparison), the existence of shields being ignored constantly, people punching and kicking droids and people wearing armour [[derp|(even though Obi-Wan tried that in Revenge of the Sith and hurt his shin as a result)]], [[what|B1 battledroids head apparently being so poorly attached to the body that you can rip it off with your bare hands]] and LAATs not using their massive arsenal of weapons ([[FAIL|there is even a scene where troopers inside the ship fire their weapons instead of the LAAT using its own weapons]]). Thankfully as with most issues in the series, these got less prevalent as the series went on.

Finally there is the thing that although the Clone Wars was a relatively morally gray conflict in the [[fluff]], where the Separatists became Separatists because they were tired of the corruption and ineffectiveness of the Republic, in the series the Republic side is almost always portrayed as heroic while the separatists are sometimes portrayed as moustache-twirling villains. In the first season, we have Grievous and Ventress killing their allies when they feel like it, an incendiary weapon which completely destroys everything that lives while sparing anything that doesn't (highly effective for an army composed primarily of droids) being taken for a test run on a pacifist village who wish to remain neutral, and a mad scientist who redevelops an exterminated virus (he even says the virus was 'murdered' despite his apathy for other people's lives) and develops it further into an airborne bioweapon. Even the attempt in season 3 to try and humanize the Separatists falls a little flat when you see the war crimes the Separatists regularly commit. Thankfully, this issue becomes less common as the series progresses and is almost non-existent towards the end of the series.

They also dropped Ventress's arc even though it was in the plans, forcing them to eventually finish it as a novel. Still a shame and most would certainly preferred a conclusion for that over Ahsoka's arc in Season 7.

Also "Jedi Cruiser" was always a dumb term for a ship but hearing characters actually say it in universe is just so much worse.

{{Star Wars}}

Star Wars:The Clone Wars

2022-03-31T05:47:53Z

2607:FB90:3883:1966:E01A:22F1:B033:7B84: /* Season Two */

{{awesome}}
{{Spoilers}}
{{topquote|Insolence? We are pirates! We don't even know what that means!|Hondo Onaka}}

{{topquote|The Republic couldn't have asked for better soldiers, Nor I a better friend.|Ahsoka Tano}}

'''Star Wars: The Clone Wars''', also known as TCW, is a 3D computer animated cartoon created by Lucasfilm before the days of the dread lord <s>Kathleen Kennedy</s> Sauron, and released on Cartoon Network until its cancellation. Despite a rough start (not uncommon for TV shows as they get) the series was incredibly popular for a number of reasons: its dark tone, amazing character development, the entire goddamn clone army and their balls of steel, and generally being what the prequels were trying to be.

[[File:Clonewars.jpeg|thumb|One of the most Kick-Ass Kid’s cartoons in the history of Television]]

The premise is pretty simple: adventures set in the Clone Wars era. This gave us the ability to explore life in all kinds of different ways: willingness to help others during war, the meaning of being a good soldier, the dangers of corporations in government, political tribalism, the evils and justifications of corrupt leaders, crime in nations devoted to total war, and even stuff like the dangers of revenge and touching on the debate of destiny. Most of these are served on the side, while we get some kickass action sequences that would make C.S. Goto greener than a 3-day old Ork with jealousy.

Some tend to pass it as just a kids show due to it being an animated series but doing so would be a mistake: Despite having a low age rating, it deals with topics that most kids would probably not even be able to understand, such as war profiteering, war economy and corruption. Some arcs also get more [[grimdark]], such as an arc dealing with Trandoshans who kidnap children and then set them free on their planet to hunt them for sport, an arc dealing with an empire whose economy is based solely on slave trade and many arcs which deal with war and its consequences. Some bits are also quite violent, with the show being able to keep its low age rating only due to it hiding most of the graphic stuff with camera-angles.

Generally, it is regarded as the best of the animated series released by Lucasfilm. Disney, having realised this, is getting their rears in gear after the disaster that was [[Star Wars:Resistance|Star Wars: Resistance]] and gave us an incredible, harrowing final season... [[Games Workshop|on their own streaming service.]]

==Origins==
The Origins of The Clone Wars were to act primarily as a stop gap series until the next money making idea that George Lucas could create. He got together with a team in order to shill a novel idea: tell the story of the Clone Wars, something that they were never able to do with the movies due to time constraints.

Funnily enough, a man named Dave Filoni (Who had plenty of experience on ATLA and Boondocks before this) created one of the first characters on the show: A young Togruta girl who later became Ahsoka.

Technically, there are two series called similar titles. The first was 2003's ''Star Wars: Clone Wars'', an animated miniseries made by Genndy Tartakovsky (He of Dexter's Lab and [[Samurai Jack]] fame) chronicling, among other things, the titular Clone Wars and introducing a much more sinister General Grievous to the world.

But then we have ''The Clone Wars'', a CGI animated series (and tie-in movie) that we'll be talking about more and contributed more to the EU. One of the most universally known and loved parts of Star Wars, most fans worth their action figures and limited edition movie sets have watched the show and have an opinion on it one way or another. Some of the most notable characteristics are:

* The Clone Troopers are fleshed out, and we see that they are manly motherfuckers who make Guardsmen's balls of steel look like the cardboard their armour is made out of (seriously, in the movie, they literally charge straight into close combat with ''giant armoured walkers with large guns'', jump off roofs to get on top of them to shoot them point blank, and punch droids in the face)
* Anakin Skywalker is actually a good, fleshed out character, with a good voice actor and shows his descent to child-murdering Force-choking asshat wasn't just him going 'welp, guess I'll fall to the Dark Side.' There was a fair amount of bad-cop moments and “it was him or me” murder to get there, along with several pretty significant personal losses, being forced to relive childhood trauma and displays of incompetence from his superiors in the Order.
* Introduces Ahsoka Tano, a major character who's a female Togruta Jedi that's well-written, non-OP, non-Mary Sue and doesn't invalidate characters from the movies. Starts off a bit annoying in the Clone Wars movie, but manages to do something truly special: she ''learns''. Over the course of Clone Wars and Rebels, Ahsoka probably has the most character development out of any other Star Wars character.
* Obi-Wan being a sexy one-liner spouting sarcastic badass.
* And many others.

However, there were some pretty derp moments too, such as

* Babysitting episode and movie.
* D-squad, where a bunch of droids become heroes of the Republic.
* Mandalore and how its fluff was basically screwed 180 degrees, and then some. (Skub, depending on your exact POV).
* Droids were comic relief of the first and second seasons. It was annoying.
* Grievous, and how his character went from 'BBEG' to 'Can't beat a Padawan'.

All in all, it was a good show that took some time to find its feet.

After many years, a seventh season was announced in an attempt to take away from ''The Last Jedi'' being shit and add ''something'' to the empty Disney Plus lineup. At least some of the episodes will be ones that were in production when the show ended. It promptly disappeared after that announcement for a couple years till it was announced it was going to come out in 2019. And when it did, it blew pretty much everyone away, with fantastic animation, great storytelling, and a harrowing final few episodes. Maul's speech to Ahsoka in particular is downright chilling when you realize he's 100% sincere, is ''afraid'' of what's coming, and genuinely wants to try and stop it.

==Season One==
Ok...the first Season is a rough patch that has a some golden moments sprinkled throughout. Part of these problems stem from early show stuff, and the limits of their ability to animate. One in particular was a scene where two characters were fist fighting, and looked like two Fire Warriors in a melee phase.

BUT, nonetheless, there were some good episodes and good characterization. Among them were Plo Koon as space Gandalf, Aayla Secura as hot alien chick who now has a voice (Jennifer Hale, [[Awesome|which means Aayla shares a VA with Samus... and gets a sexy French accent]]), the Awesomeness that is sarcastic Obi-Wan Kenobi, Anakin's voice actor, and the fifth episode of the series, where the clones really shine on their own, some of which later return. Speaking of clones, special note to Dee Bradley Baker, who literally voices dozens of different clones, each with unique Personalities and voices. Did we mention he does this for 7 seasons? No? Well remember that you twit.

==Season Two==
Season two is much better and more watchable than the majority of Season One. Pick a random episode in Season Two, and there is a good chance it is better than almost anything in Season One. Season Two is notorious for not only the bounty hunters being a part of no less than three separate storylines, but introduces us to what we would later see out of this series, particularly the Battle of Geonosis arc, which was no less than four episodes of intense, attrition warfare with all the explosions and casualties a die hard fa/tg/uy could ever need, with a special brew of horror on the side to boot.

Another introduction in Season Two is Mandalore, which will become a staple in the rest of the series. The big problem with Mandalore is how it retcons Mandalorians from their original awesome state as warriors to having abandoned that past, and those who embrace that warrior tradition being terrorists. The storyline itself is actually a great political series of episodes with sporadic action, [[Skub|but to fans of the old Mandalorians, it was practically a slap in the face]]. Season Two also did something in one Episode that the entirety of Attack of the Clones couldn't do: show a genuine romance and love between Anakin and Padme that wasn't about [[Derp|sand and founding Fascist dictatorships]].

==Season Three==
This is where things get legit. At this point, the sailing becomes real smooth. It is rare to find a one off episode at this point in the series, as everything is arcs now. Clones from the first season return here, and man do you grow a connection with them. We also get more "criminal underworld" and "political subterfuge" episodes here, which despite not having people getting gunned down in droves, are still entertaining to watch and not overly boring.

Of particular note is that Anakin and Ahsoka start to really come into focus here, with a three episode Arc alone exploring Anakin in a super weird realm called Mortis, with Ahsoka getting her own self contained arc in the Season Finale. [[Awesome|Anakin is able to hold off the equivalent of the Force's Chaos Gods]], while Ahsoka singlehandedly kicks the butt of Trandoshans, coincidentally also introducing fan favourite furball Chewbacca. There are also some moments here that downright sting your heart. Definitely worth suffering through the first season to watch this.

Half-way through the season, the animation also got a major overhaul with new and better models for everything, turning the series from an odd-looking animation to one of the best-looking 3D-animations out there. The best way to describe it is that it looks like animated concept art. Seriously, pause at right moments and you couldn't tell that it's from an animated series.

==Season Four==
Hot dang, this is where stuff gets insane. Not only does the violence escalate substantially, but so does the production quality and storytelling. It's mostly more of the same stuff from Season Three, except for two major, and by association awesome, differences: Umbara, and The Return of Maul. Umbara is unique in that it hammers on on the clones, and looks so good that you might mistake it for a theatrical film if you didn't see it on Cartoon Network. Clones get zapped by what are effectively Necron Gauss weapons, crushed by Necron-battlesuit hybrids, eaten by [[Catachan|wild animals]], serve under [[Commissar|a ruthless new commander who sees them as cannon fodder]]... all the while fighting through it like complete chads with their <s>Mars</s> Kaminoan pattern balls of steel. The other story arcs are fantastic, but Umbara is one of the best, and explores many of the questions seen above at the beginning of the page. It is regarded as one of the best arcs in the show for good reason.

But the return of Maul is... amazing. His entire motivation is revenge, and the way they show Obi-Wan rise above it proves he truly has [[Meme|the high ground]]. Unlike in The Phantom Menace, Maul gets plenty of screen time to be fleshed out as a very talkative, profound character, a trait that will define him for the reminder of his appearances in media, mouse or pre-mouse. He also teams up with his younger brother, the Star Wars equivalent of a Khornate Bezerker, and the two go around cutting through fools like a hot knife through butter.

==Season Five==
Season Five was once supposed to be the last Season, and it really zeroes in on Ahsoka. It shows how she has changed, and even uses General Grievous to show this. It also continues Maul's story, showing how much of a genius he is, and speaks volumes of him as a character. This also introduces us to what will later become the early foundations of the Rebel Alliance in an Arc that takes place on Onderon.

But the finale of this Season is both heart wrenching and awesome at the same time. But lo and behold, shortly after this season was complete, the [[Rage|series was cancelled by Cartoon Network]].

==Season Six==
This is where the Paywalls start, and...yeah. Netflix agreed to take on the Clone Wars for a brief period of time, allowing those diehard fans to watch the last episodes. These episodes are dark, but the focus becomes less on the war, and really hits hard on the themes of the Corruption of the Jedi, the Nature of the Force, and guest Appearances of Mark Hamil and Liam Neeson as Darth Bane and Qui-gon respectively.

This season also sees the end of another fan loved character in what is truly a tragic arc, and Mace Windu and the Temple of Doom. No, we're not joking. Go watch Indiana Jones, then watch this arc. The season also has an arc focusing on Yoda, for the first time since the first episode of the series and this time, we get to see him be the learner, not the master.

Unfortunately, after this season, the series was cancelled again, seemingly for good. As Lucasfilm Animation started to work on [[Star Wars:Rebels]], it seemed as this series will forever lack a true ending. Until six years after cancellation:

==Season Seven==
Beautiful. Assuming you paid the mouse for a Disney + subscription, then you know that it's just about worth every cent you spent. If the reason you got Disney + was to watch this, then you almost certainly got your money's worth from it. The Seventh Season is so good, that we could write a whole page alone on why it works, and why the characterization is far ahead of anything else currently or maybe even ever produced, with only ATLA maybe beating it in regards to animated shows.

There are three separate arcs: An arc for Captain Rex, which introduces a group named Bad Batch, who are getting their own series later. Then there is an arc for Ahsoka that most people will say they hated and yes, considering that this is the last season made years after cancellation of the series, it does feel a bit underwhelming. Finally there is an arc for the both Ahsoka and Rex that takes place before, during, and shortly after Order 66 with major focus on Maul and Mandalore. This arc really makes the series end on a high note as it is arguably the best arc of the whole series, and some might even argue that it overshadows anything done in any of the movies. Special credit goes to Sam Witwer, who's voicework with Darth Maul makes him not only iconic, but hyper-accentuates the dread and horror of Order 66. As if dismembered dead kids and Aayla Secura getting full auto'ed in the back by her own troops wasn't enough. Especially considering he was the "whiny bitch" from Force Unleashed is doubly awesome.

==Non-Exhaustive List of Awesome==
*Dee Bradley Baker (so many clones with different personalities and he voices them all)
*Clones in general
*Anakin and his Characterization
*Obi-Wan as a one-lining sarcastic chad
*Ahsoka as an actually good female character (''Looking at you [[Heresy|Rey]]'').
*The writing
*The cinematography in general
*The show's embrace of side characters and using them effectively
*Pre-episode intro's which play out like Republic propaganda
*Matthew Wood (who voices all the battle droids plus General Grievous, Watt Tambor, Poggle the Lesser and the Senate Guards to boot. Chances are if a non-major male voice isn't Dee Bradley Baker, it's Matthew Wood)
*Admiral Tarkin
*Captain Rex, Fives, Echo all get special recognition as some of the best clones, though there are many good ones.
*Death Watch
*The dark tone and willingness to kill off significant characters.
*Kevin Kiner's scoring of the clone wars music. Some of his work alone rivals anything in the sequels, and destroys most music heard in modern television music composition. TBH the man could get a whole section just for himself.
*Umbara - A perfect marriage of 40K-grade grimdark and Star Wars.
*Dee Bradley Baker (clones are not even the only characters he voices)
*The exploration of the universe. There are single episodes that do more in terms of worldbuilding than the whole sequel trilogy did.
*Matt Lanter's voice work with Anakin, which is comparable and in some ways better than anything Hayden Christensen ever did.
*Plo Koon
*Darth Maul
*Sam Witwer
*Mace Motherfucking Windu showing off as a total chad and proving why he's THE master. Imagine if there was someone as badass as Vader but for the good guys and that's basically what he is in this series.
*Cad Bane (AKA Chad, which one character actually calls him in the show... albeit mispronouncing "Cad", but still), the galaxy's best bounty hunter with Jango dead and Boba still an inexperienced kid. The character's also a love letter to fans of old westerns, doesn't take crap from anyone and provides one of the Indiana Jones references mentioned below.
*Battle Of Ryloth
*Mandalore
*The Indiana Jones references. Seriously, I dare you, go find the ones I'm thinking of, there is one in Season three and another in Season four and one more in Season six.
*Did we mention Dee Bradley Baker (seriously, some Umbaran episodes have several characters and he plays all but one of them)?
*Zygerria as space Mesopatamian slavers
*Hondo Ohnaka being a Magnificent Bastard
*Shaak Ti hammering home the 'Clones are developed characters too' thing.
*The Bad Batch. Imagine a squad of [[Vindicare]], [[Eversor]] and [[Vanus]] Assassins, led by clone trooper Rambo. And they got their own series too.
*Savage Oppress. Darth Maul's brother, he allowed for Darth Maul's return and was a truly sympathetic character you can always feel bad for even despite the atrocities he commits.
*Darth Sidious is the scariest badass in the galaxy.

==The Bad==
There is no bad. {{BLAM|Heresy.}}

Fine. For all that the Clone Wars did right, there are at least a dozen things they did wrong. One of the most obvious of these is Grievous. Now for context, in the Original Clone Wars, Grievous was a killing machine who cut through Jedi like a power sword through a Fire Warrior; his initial reveal had him bulldoze four Jedi Masters in a four-on-one duel (all without revealing his second pair of arms), to the point where Mace Windu himself was only able to stop him by using a Dark Side technique to ''crush Grievous' organs''. He was genuinely terrifying, and Revenge of the Sith had a (sadly deleted) scene where he killed a Jedi to show how strong he was. But in this Clone Wars, he was a tactically incompetent Saturday morning cartoon villain, right down to killing his flunkies for bringing him bad news, being completely unable to win, and generally being used as a beatstick for the hero of the week. Granted, Grievous did have his victories, but they were too few and far between to make up for the initial five seasons worth of [[Fail]]. When he can't even kill a Padawan in his second to last appearance in Season One, you know something is wrong.

Another problem with this show was that unlike Avatar, the production quality could be all over the place. In fact, what many fans agree to be the worst arc in the series are in the fifth season, and many tend to think the second worst is in the seventh. This can be applied in some capacity to every season, and though it doesn't detract from the overall quality, we wouldn't be proper fans if we didn't [[Neckbeard|criticize absolutely everything]]!

There are also some more minor gripes like terrible aim (so bad at times that it makes stormtroopers in A New Hope look like [[Vindicare|Vindicare Assassins]] by comparison), the existence of shields being ignored constantly, people punching and kicking droids and people wearing armour [[derp|(even though Obi-Wan tried that in Revenge of the Sith and hurt his shin as a result)]], [[what|B1 battledroids head apparently being so poorly attached to the body that you can rip it off with your bare hands]] and LAATs not using their massive arsenal of weapons ([[FAIL|there is even a scene where troopers inside the ship fire their weapons instead of the LAAT using its own weapons]]). Thankfully as with most issues in the series, these got less prevalent as the series went on.

Finally there is the thing that although the Clone Wars was a relatively morally gray conflict in the [[fluff]], where the Separatists became Separatists because they were tired of the corruption and ineffectiveness of the Republic, in the series the Republic side is almost always portrayed as heroic while the separatists are sometimes portrayed as moustache-twirling villains. In the first season, we have Grievous and Ventress killing their allies when they feel like it, an incendiary weapon which completely destroys everything that lives while sparing anything that doesn't (highly effective for an army composed primarily of droids) being taken for a test run on a pacifist village who wish to remain neutral, and a mad scientist who redevelops an exterminated virus (he even says the virus was 'murdered' despite his apathy for other people's lives) and develops it further into an airborne bioweapon. Even the attempt in season 3 to try and humanize the Separatists falls a little flat when you see the war crimes the Separatists regularly commit. Thankfully, this issue becomes less common as the series progresses and is almost non-existent towards the end of the series.

They also dropped Ventress's arc even though it was in the plans, forcing them to eventually finish it as a novel. Still a shame and most would certainly preferred a conclusion for that over Ahsoka's arc in Season 7.

Also "Jedi Cruiser" was always a dumb term for a ship but hearing characters actually say it in universe is just so much worse.

{{Star Wars}}

Star Wars:The Clone Wars

2022-03-31T05:46:14Z

2607:FB90:3883:1966:E01A:22F1:B033:7B84: /* Season One */

{{awesome}}
{{Spoilers}}
{{topquote|Insolence? We are pirates! We don't even know what that means!|Hondo Onaka}}

{{topquote|The Republic couldn't have asked for better soldiers, Nor I a better friend.|Ahsoka Tano}}

'''Star Wars: The Clone Wars''', also known as TCW, is a 3D computer animated cartoon created by Lucasfilm before the days of the dread lord <s>Kathleen Kennedy</s> Sauron, and released on Cartoon Network until its cancellation. Despite a rough start (not uncommon for TV shows as they get) the series was incredibly popular for a number of reasons: its dark tone, amazing character development, the entire goddamn clone army and their balls of steel, and generally being what the prequels were trying to be.

[[File:Clonewars.jpeg|thumb|One of the most Kick-Ass Kid’s cartoons in the history of Television]]

The premise is pretty simple: adventures set in the Clone Wars era. This gave us the ability to explore life in all kinds of different ways: willingness to help others during war, the meaning of being a good soldier, the dangers of corporations in government, political tribalism, the evils and justifications of corrupt leaders, crime in nations devoted to total war, and even stuff like the dangers of revenge and touching on the debate of destiny. Most of these are served on the side, while we get some kickass action sequences that would make C.S. Goto greener than a 3-day old Ork with jealousy.

Some tend to pass it as just a kids show due to it being an animated series but doing so would be a mistake: Despite having a low age rating, it deals with topics that most kids would probably not even be able to understand, such as war profiteering, war economy and corruption. Some arcs also get more [[grimdark]], such as an arc dealing with Trandoshans who kidnap children and then set them free on their planet to hunt them for sport, an arc dealing with an empire whose economy is based solely on slave trade and many arcs which deal with war and its consequences. Some bits are also quite violent, with the show being able to keep its low age rating only due to it hiding most of the graphic stuff with camera-angles.

Generally, it is regarded as the best of the animated series released by Lucasfilm. Disney, having realised this, is getting their rears in gear after the disaster that was [[Star Wars:Resistance|Star Wars: Resistance]] and gave us an incredible, harrowing final season... [[Games Workshop|on their own streaming service.]]

==Origins==
The Origins of The Clone Wars were to act primarily as a stop gap series until the next money making idea that George Lucas could create. He got together with a team in order to shill a novel idea: tell the story of the Clone Wars, something that they were never able to do with the movies due to time constraints.

Funnily enough, a man named Dave Filoni (Who had plenty of experience on ATLA and Boondocks before this) created one of the first characters on the show: A young Togruta girl who later became Ahsoka.

Technically, there are two series called similar titles. The first was 2003's ''Star Wars: Clone Wars'', an animated miniseries made by Genndy Tartakovsky (He of Dexter's Lab and [[Samurai Jack]] fame) chronicling, among other things, the titular Clone Wars and introducing a much more sinister General Grievous to the world.

But then we have ''The Clone Wars'', a CGI animated series (and tie-in movie) that we'll be talking about more and contributed more to the EU. One of the most universally known and loved parts of Star Wars, most fans worth their action figures and limited edition movie sets have watched the show and have an opinion on it one way or another. Some of the most notable characteristics are:

* The Clone Troopers are fleshed out, and we see that they are manly motherfuckers who make Guardsmen's balls of steel look like the cardboard their armour is made out of (seriously, in the movie, they literally charge straight into close combat with ''giant armoured walkers with large guns'', jump off roofs to get on top of them to shoot them point blank, and punch droids in the face)
* Anakin Skywalker is actually a good, fleshed out character, with a good voice actor and shows his descent to child-murdering Force-choking asshat wasn't just him going 'welp, guess I'll fall to the Dark Side.' There was a fair amount of bad-cop moments and “it was him or me” murder to get there, along with several pretty significant personal losses, being forced to relive childhood trauma and displays of incompetence from his superiors in the Order.
* Introduces Ahsoka Tano, a major character who's a female Togruta Jedi that's well-written, non-OP, non-Mary Sue and doesn't invalidate characters from the movies. Starts off a bit annoying in the Clone Wars movie, but manages to do something truly special: she ''learns''. Over the course of Clone Wars and Rebels, Ahsoka probably has the most character development out of any other Star Wars character.
* Obi-Wan being a sexy one-liner spouting sarcastic badass.
* And many others.

However, there were some pretty derp moments too, such as

* Babysitting episode and movie.
* D-squad, where a bunch of droids become heroes of the Republic.
* Mandalore and how its fluff was basically screwed 180 degrees, and then some. (Skub, depending on your exact POV).
* Droids were comic relief of the first and second seasons. It was annoying.
* Grievous, and how his character went from 'BBEG' to 'Can't beat a Padawan'.

All in all, it was a good show that took some time to find its feet.

After many years, a seventh season was announced in an attempt to take away from ''The Last Jedi'' being shit and add ''something'' to the empty Disney Plus lineup. At least some of the episodes will be ones that were in production when the show ended. It promptly disappeared after that announcement for a couple years till it was announced it was going to come out in 2019. And when it did, it blew pretty much everyone away, with fantastic animation, great storytelling, and a harrowing final few episodes. Maul's speech to Ahsoka in particular is downright chilling when you realize he's 100% sincere, is ''afraid'' of what's coming, and genuinely wants to try and stop it.

==Season One==
Ok...the first Season is a rough patch that has a some golden moments sprinkled throughout. Part of these problems stem from early show stuff, and the limits of their ability to animate. One in particular was a scene where two characters were fist fighting, and looked like two Fire Warriors in a melee phase.

BUT, nonetheless, there were some good episodes and good characterization. Among them were Plo Koon as space Gandalf, Aayla Secura as hot alien chick who now has a voice (Jennifer Hale, [[Awesome|which means Aayla shares a VA with Samus... and gets a sexy French accent]]), the Awesomeness that is sarcastic Obi-Wan Kenobi, Anakin's voice actor, and the fifth episode of the series, where the clones really shine on their own, some of which later return. Speaking of clones, special note to Dee Bradley Baker, who literally voices dozens of different clones, each with unique Personalities and voices. Did we mention he does this for 7 seasons? No? Well remember that you twit.

==Season Two==
Season two is much better and more watchable than the majority of Season One. Pick a random episode in Season Two, and there is a good chance it is better than almost anything in Season One. Season two is notorious for not only the bounty hunters being a part of no less than three separate storylines, but introduces us to what we would later see out of this series, particularly the Battle of Geonosis arc, which was no less than four episodes of intense, attrition warfare with all the explosions and casualties a die hard fa/tg/uy could ever need, with a special brew of horror on the side to boot.

Another introduction in Season Two is Mandalore, which will become a staple in the rest of the series. The big problem with Mandalore is how it retcons Mandalorians from their original awesome state as warriors to having abandoned that past, and those who embrace that warrior tradition being terrorists. The storyline itself is actually a great political series of episodes with sporadic action, [[Skub|but to fans of the old Mandalorians, it was practically a slap in the face]]. Season Two also did something in one Episode that the entirety of Attack of the Clones couldn't do: show a genuine romance and love between Anakin and Padme.

==Season Three==
This is where things get legit. At this point, the sailing becomes real smooth. It is rare to find a one off episode at this point in the series, as everything is arcs now. Clones from the first season return here, and man do you grow a connection with them. We also get more "criminal underworld" and "political subterfuge" episodes here, which despite not having people getting gunned down in droves, are still entertaining to watch and not overly boring.

Of particular note is that Anakin and Ahsoka start to really come into focus here, with a three episode Arc alone exploring Anakin in a super weird realm called Mortis, with Ahsoka getting her own self contained arc in the Season Finale. [[Awesome|Anakin is able to hold off the equivalent of the Force's Chaos Gods]], while Ahsoka singlehandedly kicks the butt of Trandoshans, coincidentally also introducing fan favourite furball Chewbacca. There are also some moments here that downright sting your heart. Definitely worth suffering through the first season to watch this.

Half-way through the season, the animation also got a major overhaul with new and better models for everything, turning the series from an odd-looking animation to one of the best-looking 3D-animations out there. The best way to describe it is that it looks like animated concept art. Seriously, pause at right moments and you couldn't tell that it's from an animated series.

==Season Four==
Hot dang, this is where stuff gets insane. Not only does the violence escalate substantially, but so does the production quality and storytelling. It's mostly more of the same stuff from Season Three, except for two major, and by association awesome, differences: Umbara, and The Return of Maul. Umbara is unique in that it hammers on on the clones, and looks so good that you might mistake it for a theatrical film if you didn't see it on Cartoon Network. Clones get zapped by what are effectively Necron Gauss weapons, crushed by Necron-battlesuit hybrids, eaten by [[Catachan|wild animals]], serve under [[Commissar|a ruthless new commander who sees them as cannon fodder]]... all the while fighting through it like complete chads with their <s>Mars</s> Kaminoan pattern balls of steel. The other story arcs are fantastic, but Umbara is one of the best, and explores many of the questions seen above at the beginning of the page. It is regarded as one of the best arcs in the show for good reason.

But the return of Maul is... amazing. His entire motivation is revenge, and the way they show Obi-Wan rise above it proves he truly has [[Meme|the high ground]]. Unlike in The Phantom Menace, Maul gets plenty of screen time to be fleshed out as a very talkative, profound character, a trait that will define him for the reminder of his appearances in media, mouse or pre-mouse. He also teams up with his younger brother, the Star Wars equivalent of a Khornate Bezerker, and the two go around cutting through fools like a hot knife through butter.

==Season Five==
Season Five was once supposed to be the last Season, and it really zeroes in on Ahsoka. It shows how she has changed, and even uses General Grievous to show this. It also continues Maul's story, showing how much of a genius he is, and speaks volumes of him as a character. This also introduces us to what will later become the early foundations of the Rebel Alliance in an Arc that takes place on Onderon.

But the finale of this Season is both heart wrenching and awesome at the same time. But lo and behold, shortly after this season was complete, the [[Rage|series was cancelled by Cartoon Network]].

==Season Six==
This is where the Paywalls start, and...yeah. Netflix agreed to take on the Clone Wars for a brief period of time, allowing those diehard fans to watch the last episodes. These episodes are dark, but the focus becomes less on the war, and really hits hard on the themes of the Corruption of the Jedi, the Nature of the Force, and guest Appearances of Mark Hamil and Liam Neeson as Darth Bane and Qui-gon respectively.

This season also sees the end of another fan loved character in what is truly a tragic arc, and Mace Windu and the Temple of Doom. No, we're not joking. Go watch Indiana Jones, then watch this arc. The season also has an arc focusing on Yoda, for the first time since the first episode of the series and this time, we get to see him be the learner, not the master.

Unfortunately, after this season, the series was cancelled again, seemingly for good. As Lucasfilm Animation started to work on [[Star Wars:Rebels]], it seemed as this series will forever lack a true ending. Until six years after cancellation:

==Season Seven==
Beautiful. Assuming you paid the mouse for a Disney + subscription, then you know that it's just about worth every cent you spent. If the reason you got Disney + was to watch this, then you almost certainly got your money's worth from it. The Seventh Season is so good, that we could write a whole page alone on why it works, and why the characterization is far ahead of anything else currently or maybe even ever produced, with only ATLA maybe beating it in regards to animated shows.

There are three separate arcs: An arc for Captain Rex, which introduces a group named Bad Batch, who are getting their own series later. Then there is an arc for Ahsoka that most people will say they hated and yes, considering that this is the last season made years after cancellation of the series, it does feel a bit underwhelming. Finally there is an arc for the both Ahsoka and Rex that takes place before, during, and shortly after Order 66 with major focus on Maul and Mandalore. This arc really makes the series end on a high note as it is arguably the best arc of the whole series, and some might even argue that it overshadows anything done in any of the movies. Special credit goes to Sam Witwer, who's voicework with Darth Maul makes him not only iconic, but hyper-accentuates the dread and horror of Order 66. As if dismembered dead kids and Aayla Secura getting full auto'ed in the back by her own troops wasn't enough. Especially considering he was the "whiny bitch" from Force Unleashed is doubly awesome.

==Non-Exhaustive List of Awesome==
*Dee Bradley Baker (so many clones with different personalities and he voices them all)
*Clones in general
*Anakin and his Characterization
*Obi-Wan as a one-lining sarcastic chad
*Ahsoka as an actually good female character (''Looking at you [[Heresy|Rey]]'').
*The writing
*The cinematography in general
*The show's embrace of side characters and using them effectively
*Pre-episode intro's which play out like Republic propaganda
*Matthew Wood (who voices all the battle droids plus General Grievous, Watt Tambor, Poggle the Lesser and the Senate Guards to boot. Chances are if a non-major male voice isn't Dee Bradley Baker, it's Matthew Wood)
*Admiral Tarkin
*Captain Rex, Fives, Echo all get special recognition as some of the best clones, though there are many good ones.
*Death Watch
*The dark tone and willingness to kill off significant characters.
*Kevin Kiner's scoring of the clone wars music. Some of his work alone rivals anything in the sequels, and destroys most music heard in modern television music composition. TBH the man could get a whole section just for himself.
*Umbara - A perfect marriage of 40K-grade grimdark and Star Wars.
*Dee Bradley Baker (clones are not even the only characters he voices)
*The exploration of the universe. There are single episodes that do more in terms of worldbuilding than the whole sequel trilogy did.
*Matt Lanter's voice work with Anakin, which is comparable and in some ways better than anything Hayden Christensen ever did.
*Plo Koon
*Darth Maul
*Sam Witwer
*Mace Motherfucking Windu showing off as a total chad and proving why he's THE master. Imagine if there was someone as badass as Vader but for the good guys and that's basically what he is in this series.
*Cad Bane (AKA Chad, which one character actually calls him in the show... albeit mispronouncing "Cad", but still), the galaxy's best bounty hunter with Jango dead and Boba still an inexperienced kid. The character's also a love letter to fans of old westerns, doesn't take crap from anyone and provides one of the Indiana Jones references mentioned below.
*Battle Of Ryloth
*Mandalore
*The Indiana Jones references. Seriously, I dare you, go find the ones I'm thinking of, there is one in Season three and another in Season four and one more in Season six.
*Did we mention Dee Bradley Baker (seriously, some Umbaran episodes have several characters and he plays all but one of them)?
*Zygerria as space Mesopatamian slavers
*Hondo Ohnaka being a Magnificent Bastard
*Shaak Ti hammering home the 'Clones are developed characters too' thing.
*The Bad Batch. Imagine a squad of [[Vindicare]], [[Eversor]] and [[Vanus]] Assassins, led by clone trooper Rambo. And they got their own series too.
*Savage Oppress. Darth Maul's brother, he allowed for Darth Maul's return and was a truly sympathetic character you can always feel bad for even despite the atrocities he commits.
*Darth Sidious is the scariest badass in the galaxy.

==The Bad==
There is no bad. {{BLAM|Heresy.}}

Fine. For all that the Clone Wars did right, there are at least a dozen things they did wrong. One of the most obvious of these is Grievous. Now for context, in the Original Clone Wars, Grievous was a killing machine who cut through Jedi like a power sword through a Fire Warrior; his initial reveal had him bulldoze four Jedi Masters in a four-on-one duel (all without revealing his second pair of arms), to the point where Mace Windu himself was only able to stop him by using a Dark Side technique to ''crush Grievous' organs''. He was genuinely terrifying, and Revenge of the Sith had a (sadly deleted) scene where he killed a Jedi to show how strong he was. But in this Clone Wars, he was a tactically incompetent Saturday morning cartoon villain, right down to killing his flunkies for bringing him bad news, being completely unable to win, and generally being used as a beatstick for the hero of the week. Granted, Grievous did have his victories, but they were too few and far between to make up for the initial five seasons worth of [[Fail]]. When he can't even kill a Padawan in his second to last appearance in Season One, you know something is wrong.

Another problem with this show was that unlike Avatar, the production quality could be all over the place. In fact, what many fans agree to be the worst arc in the series are in the fifth season, and many tend to think the second worst is in the seventh. This can be applied in some capacity to every season, and though it doesn't detract from the overall quality, we wouldn't be proper fans if we didn't [[Neckbeard|criticize absolutely everything]]!

There are also some more minor gripes like terrible aim (so bad at times that it makes stormtroopers in A New Hope look like [[Vindicare|Vindicare Assassins]] by comparison), the existence of shields being ignored constantly, people punching and kicking droids and people wearing armour [[derp|(even though Obi-Wan tried that in Revenge of the Sith and hurt his shin as a result)]], [[what|B1 battledroids head apparently being so poorly attached to the body that you can rip it off with your bare hands]] and LAATs not using their massive arsenal of weapons ([[FAIL|there is even a scene where troopers inside the ship fire their weapons instead of the LAAT using its own weapons]]). Thankfully as with most issues in the series, these got less prevalent as the series went on.

Finally there is the thing that although the Clone Wars was a relatively morally gray conflict in the [[fluff]], where the Separatists became Separatists because they were tired of the corruption and ineffectiveness of the Republic, in the series the Republic side is almost always portrayed as heroic while the separatists are sometimes portrayed as moustache-twirling villains. In the first season, we have Grievous and Ventress killing their allies when they feel like it, an incendiary weapon which completely destroys everything that lives while sparing anything that doesn't (highly effective for an army composed primarily of droids) being taken for a test run on a pacifist village who wish to remain neutral, and a mad scientist who redevelops an exterminated virus (he even says the virus was 'murdered' despite his apathy for other people's lives) and develops it further into an airborne bioweapon. Even the attempt in season 3 to try and humanize the Separatists falls a little flat when you see the war crimes the Separatists regularly commit. Thankfully, this issue becomes less common as the series progresses and is almost non-existent towards the end of the series.

They also dropped Ventress's arc even though it was in the plans, forcing them to eventually finish it as a novel. Still a shame and most would certainly preferred a conclusion for that over Ahsoka's arc in Season 7.

Also "Jedi Cruiser" was always a dumb term for a ship but hearing characters actually say it in universe is just so much worse.

{{Star Wars}}

Star Wars:The Clone Wars

2022-03-31T05:45:07Z

2607:FB90:3883:1966:E01A:22F1:B033:7B84: /* Origins */

{{awesome}}
{{Spoilers}}
{{topquote|Insolence? We are pirates! We don't even know what that means!|Hondo Onaka}}

{{topquote|The Republic couldn't have asked for better soldiers, Nor I a better friend.|Ahsoka Tano}}

'''Star Wars: The Clone Wars''', also known as TCW, is a 3D computer animated cartoon created by Lucasfilm before the days of the dread lord <s>Kathleen Kennedy</s> Sauron, and released on Cartoon Network until its cancellation. Despite a rough start (not uncommon for TV shows as they get) the series was incredibly popular for a number of reasons: its dark tone, amazing character development, the entire goddamn clone army and their balls of steel, and generally being what the prequels were trying to be.

[[File:Clonewars.jpeg|thumb|One of the most Kick-Ass Kid’s cartoons in the history of Television]]

The premise is pretty simple: adventures set in the Clone Wars era. This gave us the ability to explore life in all kinds of different ways: willingness to help others during war, the meaning of being a good soldier, the dangers of corporations in government, political tribalism, the evils and justifications of corrupt leaders, crime in nations devoted to total war, and even stuff like the dangers of revenge and touching on the debate of destiny. Most of these are served on the side, while we get some kickass action sequences that would make C.S. Goto greener than a 3-day old Ork with jealousy.

Some tend to pass it as just a kids show due to it being an animated series but doing so would be a mistake: Despite having a low age rating, it deals with topics that most kids would probably not even be able to understand, such as war profiteering, war economy and corruption. Some arcs also get more [[grimdark]], such as an arc dealing with Trandoshans who kidnap children and then set them free on their planet to hunt them for sport, an arc dealing with an empire whose economy is based solely on slave trade and many arcs which deal with war and its consequences. Some bits are also quite violent, with the show being able to keep its low age rating only due to it hiding most of the graphic stuff with camera-angles.

Generally, it is regarded as the best of the animated series released by Lucasfilm. Disney, having realised this, is getting their rears in gear after the disaster that was [[Star Wars:Resistance|Star Wars: Resistance]] and gave us an incredible, harrowing final season... [[Games Workshop|on their own streaming service.]]

==Origins==
The Origins of The Clone Wars were to act primarily as a stop gap series until the next money making idea that George Lucas could create. He got together with a team in order to shill a novel idea: tell the story of the Clone Wars, something that they were never able to do with the movies due to time constraints.

Funnily enough, a man named Dave Filoni (Who had plenty of experience on ATLA and Boondocks before this) created one of the first characters on the show: A young Togruta girl who later became Ahsoka.

Technically, there are two series called similar titles. The first was 2003's ''Star Wars: Clone Wars'', an animated miniseries made by Genndy Tartakovsky (He of Dexter's Lab and [[Samurai Jack]] fame) chronicling, among other things, the titular Clone Wars and introducing a much more sinister General Grievous to the world.

But then we have ''The Clone Wars'', a CGI animated series (and tie-in movie) that we'll be talking about more and contributed more to the EU. One of the most universally known and loved parts of Star Wars, most fans worth their action figures and limited edition movie sets have watched the show and have an opinion on it one way or another. Some of the most notable characteristics are:

* The Clone Troopers are fleshed out, and we see that they are manly motherfuckers who make Guardsmen's balls of steel look like the cardboard their armour is made out of (seriously, in the movie, they literally charge straight into close combat with ''giant armoured walkers with large guns'', jump off roofs to get on top of them to shoot them point blank, and punch droids in the face)
* Anakin Skywalker is actually a good, fleshed out character, with a good voice actor and shows his descent to child-murdering Force-choking asshat wasn't just him going 'welp, guess I'll fall to the Dark Side.' There was a fair amount of bad-cop moments and “it was him or me” murder to get there, along with several pretty significant personal losses, being forced to relive childhood trauma and displays of incompetence from his superiors in the Order.
* Introduces Ahsoka Tano, a major character who's a female Togruta Jedi that's well-written, non-OP, non-Mary Sue and doesn't invalidate characters from the movies. Starts off a bit annoying in the Clone Wars movie, but manages to do something truly special: she ''learns''. Over the course of Clone Wars and Rebels, Ahsoka probably has the most character development out of any other Star Wars character.
* Obi-Wan being a sexy one-liner spouting sarcastic badass.
* And many others.

However, there were some pretty derp moments too, such as

* Babysitting episode and movie.
* D-squad, where a bunch of droids become heroes of the Republic.
* Mandalore and how its fluff was basically screwed 180 degrees, and then some. (Skub, depending on your exact POV).
* Droids were comic relief of the first and second seasons. It was annoying.
* Grievous, and how his character went from 'BBEG' to 'Can't beat a Padawan'.

All in all, it was a good show that took some time to find its feet.

After many years, a seventh season was announced in an attempt to take away from ''The Last Jedi'' being shit and add ''something'' to the empty Disney Plus lineup. At least some of the episodes will be ones that were in production when the show ended. It promptly disappeared after that announcement for a couple years till it was announced it was going to come out in 2019. And when it did, it blew pretty much everyone away, with fantastic animation, great storytelling, and a harrowing final few episodes. Maul's speech to Ahsoka in particular is downright chilling when you realize he's 100% sincere, is ''afraid'' of what's coming, and genuinely wants to try and stop it.

==Season One==
Ok...the first Season is a rough patch that has a some golden moments sprinkled throughout. Part of these problems stem from early show stuff, and the limits of their ability to animate. One in particular was a scene where to characters were fist fighting, and looked like two Fire Warriors in a melee phase.

BUT, nonetheless, there were some good episodes and good characterization. Among them were Plo Koon as space Gandalf, Aayla Secura as hot alien chick who now has a voice (Jennifer Hale, [[Awesome|which means Aayla shares a VA with Samus... and gets a sexy French accent]]), the Awesomeness that is sarcastic Obi-Wan Kenobi, Anakin's voice actor, and the fifth episode of the series, where the clones really shine on their own, some of which later return. Speaking of clones, special note to Dee Bradley Baker, who literally voices dozens of different clones, each with unique Personalities and voices. Did we mention he does this for 7 seasons? No? Well remember that you twit.

==Season Two==
Season two is much better and more watchable than the majority of Season One. Pick a random episode in Season Two, and there is a good chance it is better than almost anything in Season One. Season two is notorious for not only the bounty hunters being a part of no less than three separate storylines, but introduces us to what we would later see out of this series, particularly the Battle of Geonosis arc, which was no less than four episodes of intense, attrition warfare with all the explosions and casualties a die hard fa/tg/uy could ever need, with a special brew of horror on the side to boot.

Another introduction in Season Two is Mandalore, which will become a staple in the rest of the series. The big problem with Mandalore is how it retcons Mandalorians from their original awesome state as warriors to having abandoned that past, and those who embrace that warrior tradition being terrorists. The storyline itself is actually a great political series of episodes with sporadic action, [[Skub|but to fans of the old Mandalorians, it was practically a slap in the face]]. Season Two also did something in one Episode that the entirety of Attack of the Clones couldn't do: show a genuine romance and love between Anakin and Padme.

==Season Three==
This is where things get legit. At this point, the sailing becomes real smooth. It is rare to find a one off episode at this point in the series, as everything is arcs now. Clones from the first season return here, and man do you grow a connection with them. We also get more "criminal underworld" and "political subterfuge" episodes here, which despite not having people getting gunned down in droves, are still entertaining to watch and not overly boring.

Of particular note is that Anakin and Ahsoka start to really come into focus here, with a three episode Arc alone exploring Anakin in a super weird realm called Mortis, with Ahsoka getting her own self contained arc in the Season Finale. [[Awesome|Anakin is able to hold off the equivalent of the Force's Chaos Gods]], while Ahsoka singlehandedly kicks the butt of Trandoshans, coincidentally also introducing fan favourite furball Chewbacca. There are also some moments here that downright sting your heart. Definitely worth suffering through the first season to watch this.

Half-way through the season, the animation also got a major overhaul with new and better models for everything, turning the series from an odd-looking animation to one of the best-looking 3D-animations out there. The best way to describe it is that it looks like animated concept art. Seriously, pause at right moments and you couldn't tell that it's from an animated series.

==Season Four==
Hot dang, this is where stuff gets insane. Not only does the violence escalate substantially, but so does the production quality and storytelling. It's mostly more of the same stuff from Season Three, except for two major, and by association awesome, differences: Umbara, and The Return of Maul. Umbara is unique in that it hammers on on the clones, and looks so good that you might mistake it for a theatrical film if you didn't see it on Cartoon Network. Clones get zapped by what are effectively Necron Gauss weapons, crushed by Necron-battlesuit hybrids, eaten by [[Catachan|wild animals]], serve under [[Commissar|a ruthless new commander who sees them as cannon fodder]]... all the while fighting through it like complete chads with their <s>Mars</s> Kaminoan pattern balls of steel. The other story arcs are fantastic, but Umbara is one of the best, and explores many of the questions seen above at the beginning of the page. It is regarded as one of the best arcs in the show for good reason.

But the return of Maul is... amazing. His entire motivation is revenge, and the way they show Obi-Wan rise above it proves he truly has [[Meme|the high ground]]. Unlike in The Phantom Menace, Maul gets plenty of screen time to be fleshed out as a very talkative, profound character, a trait that will define him for the reminder of his appearances in media, mouse or pre-mouse. He also teams up with his younger brother, the Star Wars equivalent of a Khornate Bezerker, and the two go around cutting through fools like a hot knife through butter.

==Season Five==
Season Five was once supposed to be the last Season, and it really zeroes in on Ahsoka. It shows how she has changed, and even uses General Grievous to show this. It also continues Maul's story, showing how much of a genius he is, and speaks volumes of him as a character. This also introduces us to what will later become the early foundations of the Rebel Alliance in an Arc that takes place on Onderon.

But the finale of this Season is both heart wrenching and awesome at the same time. But lo and behold, shortly after this season was complete, the [[Rage|series was cancelled by Cartoon Network]].

==Season Six==
This is where the Paywalls start, and...yeah. Netflix agreed to take on the Clone Wars for a brief period of time, allowing those diehard fans to watch the last episodes. These episodes are dark, but the focus becomes less on the war, and really hits hard on the themes of the Corruption of the Jedi, the Nature of the Force, and guest Appearances of Mark Hamil and Liam Neeson as Darth Bane and Qui-gon respectively.

This season also sees the end of another fan loved character in what is truly a tragic arc, and Mace Windu and the Temple of Doom. No, we're not joking. Go watch Indiana Jones, then watch this arc. The season also has an arc focusing on Yoda, for the first time since the first episode of the series and this time, we get to see him be the learner, not the master.

Unfortunately, after this season, the series was cancelled again, seemingly for good. As Lucasfilm Animation started to work on [[Star Wars:Rebels]], it seemed as this series will forever lack a true ending. Until six years after cancellation:

==Season Seven==
Beautiful. Assuming you paid the mouse for a Disney + subscription, then you know that it's just about worth every cent you spent. If the reason you got Disney + was to watch this, then you almost certainly got your money's worth from it. The Seventh Season is so good, that we could write a whole page alone on why it works, and why the characterization is far ahead of anything else currently or maybe even ever produced, with only ATLA maybe beating it in regards to animated shows.

There are three separate arcs: An arc for Captain Rex, which introduces a group named Bad Batch, who are getting their own series later. Then there is an arc for Ahsoka that most people will say they hated and yes, considering that this is the last season made years after cancellation of the series, it does feel a bit underwhelming. Finally there is an arc for the both Ahsoka and Rex that takes place before, during, and shortly after Order 66 with major focus on Maul and Mandalore. This arc really makes the series end on a high note as it is arguably the best arc of the whole series, and some might even argue that it overshadows anything done in any of the movies. Special credit goes to Sam Witwer, who's voicework with Darth Maul makes him not only iconic, but hyper-accentuates the dread and horror of Order 66. As if dismembered dead kids and Aayla Secura getting full auto'ed in the back by her own troops wasn't enough. Especially considering he was the "whiny bitch" from Force Unleashed is doubly awesome.

==Non-Exhaustive List of Awesome==
*Dee Bradley Baker (so many clones with different personalities and he voices them all)
*Clones in general
*Anakin and his Characterization
*Obi-Wan as a one-lining sarcastic chad
*Ahsoka as an actually good female character (''Looking at you [[Heresy|Rey]]'').
*The writing
*The cinematography in general
*The show's embrace of side characters and using them effectively
*Pre-episode intro's which play out like Republic propaganda
*Matthew Wood (who voices all the battle droids plus General Grievous, Watt Tambor, Poggle the Lesser and the Senate Guards to boot. Chances are if a non-major male voice isn't Dee Bradley Baker, it's Matthew Wood)
*Admiral Tarkin
*Captain Rex, Fives, Echo all get special recognition as some of the best clones, though there are many good ones.
*Death Watch
*The dark tone and willingness to kill off significant characters.
*Kevin Kiner's scoring of the clone wars music. Some of his work alone rivals anything in the sequels, and destroys most music heard in modern television music composition. TBH the man could get a whole section just for himself.
*Umbara - A perfect marriage of 40K-grade grimdark and Star Wars.
*Dee Bradley Baker (clones are not even the only characters he voices)
*The exploration of the universe. There are single episodes that do more in terms of worldbuilding than the whole sequel trilogy did.
*Matt Lanter's voice work with Anakin, which is comparable and in some ways better than anything Hayden Christensen ever did.
*Plo Koon
*Darth Maul
*Sam Witwer
*Mace Motherfucking Windu showing off as a total chad and proving why he's THE master. Imagine if there was someone as badass as Vader but for the good guys and that's basically what he is in this series.
*Cad Bane (AKA Chad, which one character actually calls him in the show... albeit mispronouncing "Cad", but still), the galaxy's best bounty hunter with Jango dead and Boba still an inexperienced kid. The character's also a love letter to fans of old westerns, doesn't take crap from anyone and provides one of the Indiana Jones references mentioned below.
*Battle Of Ryloth
*Mandalore
*The Indiana Jones references. Seriously, I dare you, go find the ones I'm thinking of, there is one in Season three and another in Season four and one more in Season six.
*Did we mention Dee Bradley Baker (seriously, some Umbaran episodes have several characters and he plays all but one of them)?
*Zygerria as space Mesopatamian slavers
*Hondo Ohnaka being a Magnificent Bastard
*Shaak Ti hammering home the 'Clones are developed characters too' thing.
*The Bad Batch. Imagine a squad of [[Vindicare]], [[Eversor]] and [[Vanus]] Assassins, led by clone trooper Rambo. And they got their own series too.
*Savage Oppress. Darth Maul's brother, he allowed for Darth Maul's return and was a truly sympathetic character you can always feel bad for even despite the atrocities he commits.
*Darth Sidious is the scariest badass in the galaxy.

==The Bad==
There is no bad. {{BLAM|Heresy.}}

Fine. For all that the Clone Wars did right, there are at least a dozen things they did wrong. One of the most obvious of these is Grievous. Now for context, in the Original Clone Wars, Grievous was a killing machine who cut through Jedi like a power sword through a Fire Warrior; his initial reveal had him bulldoze four Jedi Masters in a four-on-one duel (all without revealing his second pair of arms), to the point where Mace Windu himself was only able to stop him by using a Dark Side technique to ''crush Grievous' organs''. He was genuinely terrifying, and Revenge of the Sith had a (sadly deleted) scene where he killed a Jedi to show how strong he was. But in this Clone Wars, he was a tactically incompetent Saturday morning cartoon villain, right down to killing his flunkies for bringing him bad news, being completely unable to win, and generally being used as a beatstick for the hero of the week. Granted, Grievous did have his victories, but they were too few and far between to make up for the initial five seasons worth of [[Fail]]. When he can't even kill a Padawan in his second to last appearance in Season One, you know something is wrong.

Another problem with this show was that unlike Avatar, the production quality could be all over the place. In fact, what many fans agree to be the worst arc in the series are in the fifth season, and many tend to think the second worst is in the seventh. This can be applied in some capacity to every season, and though it doesn't detract from the overall quality, we wouldn't be proper fans if we didn't [[Neckbeard|criticize absolutely everything]]!

There are also some more minor gripes like terrible aim (so bad at times that it makes stormtroopers in A New Hope look like [[Vindicare|Vindicare Assassins]] by comparison), the existence of shields being ignored constantly, people punching and kicking droids and people wearing armour [[derp|(even though Obi-Wan tried that in Revenge of the Sith and hurt his shin as a result)]], [[what|B1 battledroids head apparently being so poorly attached to the body that you can rip it off with your bare hands]] and LAATs not using their massive arsenal of weapons ([[FAIL|there is even a scene where troopers inside the ship fire their weapons instead of the LAAT using its own weapons]]). Thankfully as with most issues in the series, these got less prevalent as the series went on.

Finally there is the thing that although the Clone Wars was a relatively morally gray conflict in the [[fluff]], where the Separatists became Separatists because they were tired of the corruption and ineffectiveness of the Republic, in the series the Republic side is almost always portrayed as heroic while the separatists are sometimes portrayed as moustache-twirling villains. In the first season, we have Grievous and Ventress killing their allies when they feel like it, an incendiary weapon which completely destroys everything that lives while sparing anything that doesn't (highly effective for an army composed primarily of droids) being taken for a test run on a pacifist village who wish to remain neutral, and a mad scientist who redevelops an exterminated virus (he even says the virus was 'murdered' despite his apathy for other people's lives) and develops it further into an airborne bioweapon. Even the attempt in season 3 to try and humanize the Separatists falls a little flat when you see the war crimes the Separatists regularly commit. Thankfully, this issue becomes less common as the series progresses and is almost non-existent towards the end of the series.

They also dropped Ventress's arc even though it was in the plans, forcing them to eventually finish it as a novel. Still a shame and most would certainly preferred a conclusion for that over Ahsoka's arc in Season 7.

Also "Jedi Cruiser" was always a dumb term for a ship but hearing characters actually say it in universe is just so much worse.

{{Star Wars}}

Fire Warrior

2022-03-31T05:38:04Z

2607:FB90:3883:1966:E01A:22F1:B033:7B84: /* 9th */

[[File:TauEmpire8.jpg|400px|thumb|right|Yeah, [[Warhammer 40,000|"There is only war"]] and all that... But sometimes, you just got to stop and smell the flowers.]]

''Not to be confused with the video game [[Warhammer 40,000: Fire Warrior]].''

The '''Fire Warrior''' (''Shas'la'') in a '''Strike Team''' is the [[Tau Empire]]'s basic infantry unit. Armed with the mighty [[pulse rifle]], a set of [[Combat Armour]] and a fuckload of other gadgets to help them survive the galaxy better than most other factions' unfortunate grunts, these Tau go out to claim territory and bring the galaxy into the fold of the Empire. These are basic infantry, and like [[Imperial Guard|certain other armies]], the Tau Empire has a whole fuckload of them.

While comparable to Guardsmen in most respects, their equipment is far superior to what most other factions in the galaxy can muster — not just because it's objectively better (although it generally is), but because their tech synchronizes with other elements of the Tau military to turn a good weapon into a devastating weapon. For example, when used correctly as part of a combined-arms formation, (Something the Imperium in theory knows but can some times struggle to put in practice) Fire Warriors can dial their accuracy up to eleven and disintegrate anything caught in their weapons' range. Their primary means of doing this is by networking with [[Tau Pathfinder|Pathfinders]] (who are also Fire Warriors) of their [[Tau Cadre|cadre]], who designate targets for them to shoot. This enhances the accuracy of each individual Strike Team member to a frightening level.

According to the [[Imperial Infantryman's Uplifting Primer]] (which, as you may know, is a wonderfully reliable source of objective truth), Fire Warriors are physically weak, have poor eyesight, and cannot hit the broad side of a space-barn. In reality, they are just fine at shooting, being somewhat hyperopic (farsighted) compared to humans. On the other hand, compared to humans they actually do have slightly inferior reflexes, and they are also slightly inferior to humans in terms of physical capability, which on top of doctrine means they are less capable in melee.

== Training and Wargear ==

Every single Tau who is born into the Fire caste will be trained and raised to be a soldier. Fire Warrior training thus begins from an early age, and from that moment onwards, the Fire Warrior is put into a squad of soldiers who will fight together for the rest of their lives. Therefore, many of them perform the ritual of the Ta'lissera, which is like a Nordic blood bond and makes them all battle brothers. This bonding ritual is a widely accepted practice among the Fire Caste, as it strengthens the Warriors' morale greatly under fire.

The vast majority of Fire Warriors will die in some gruesome, nameless battle somewhere among the stars. A scant few inevitably manage to survive where all their fellows have fallen, and by dint of their skill such hardened warriors may eventually rise to the rank of Shas'o. If a warrior is ''truly'' lucky enough to survive many years of warfare and command, he or she may even be granted the option to retire.

Most notable among the Fire Warriors' wargear is the pulse rifle, a plasma-based battle rifle with terrifying range and damage. These are especially deadly when combined with targeting computers in the Warriors' helmets and the support of [[markerlight]]s. When properly supported, Fire Warriors rarely miss and can mow down opposing troops with extreme efficiency. Warriors may also be seen carrying [[pulse carbine]]s, a shorter-range, automatic version of the rifle, or a [[Pulse Blaster|pulse blaster]], the [[shotgun]] equivalent of the rifle that has better armor penetration at close range. For protection, the Fire Warrior is equipped with a set of [[Combat Armour]], which is made of a combination of nano-mesh and other technobabble. This includes the iconic asymmetrical pauldron designed to face towards any enemy that would be firing at the Warrior as it takes aim. They are also equipped with photon grenades, which emit a blinding flash of multi-spectral light and a sonic burst that disorients any enemies that get too close to the squad (in other words, a fancy flashbang). For anti-tank purposes, some Warriors carry EMP grenades, though these are not standard equipment. Fire Warriors may also carry Pulse Pistols, which means that Fire Warriors not only get the second best standard rifle in the game, they also get the best standard pistol. This may be a consideration if you're concerned about close combat, as these S5 hand cannons kick just as hard as their two-handed analogues and are about the closest thing that Fire Warriors have to a melee enhancer.

Fire Warrior Combat Armor is made up of something called Fio'tak, apparently, with protection equivalent to or greater than Carapace Armor. It also features a wide suite of electronics, such as targeters, aim assisters, comm gear, and other tech that would make any Tech-Priest jealous. Combat armor is resistant to autoguns, largely immune to stubbers, and pretty good against lasguns. Given half a chance it might even deflect a Bolter shell, or at least prevent its user from being killed outright.

== On the Tabletop (7th Edition and earlier) ==
[[File:2013-07-12 13.37.14.png|thumb|200px|left|Funny thing is, that [[Killa Kan]] is in more pain than the Fire Warrior.]]

Costing slightly more than two Guardsmen per model, Fire Warriors sport a 4+ Armour Save that makes them twice as survivable against basic (S4, AP5) guns compared to Guardsmen, and are outfitted with arguably the best basic infantry weapon in the game—the S5, AP5, Range 30", [[Rage|RAPID FIRE]] pulse rifle, which makes them two to five times killier depending on what they're shooting at. Mathammer-wise they trade evenly in a firefight with an equal points worth of tactical [[Space Marines|Marines]] when unsupported. But there is a LOT of support available for them—Buffmander can grant them twin-linked, Ignores Cover and Tank/Monster Hunter (and remember, S5 can glance [[Rhino|METAL BOXES]]!), Ethereals and Fireblades grant extra shots, and markerlights can boost their accuracy to potentially goofy levels. With proper support, things within that ever-nifty 30" of your Fire Warriors are gonna die and die fast. So all in all, unless you have taken them only to fill your mandatory Troops slots (in which case you might consider taking some [[Kroot]] instead, or going [[Farsight|Enclaves]]), it's highly advisable to actually support your Fire Warriors.

One Fire Warrior in a squad can and probably ''should'' be upgraded to Shas'ui, not only because it grants +1 Leadership, but also for the wargear, specifically the cheap blacksun filter (night vision) and markerlight/target lock combo. The last one allows your little blue sergeant not only to spot targets for other units, but also to man (Tau?) fortification gun emplacements without compromising the squad's targeting.

There is a common belief that Fire Warriors immediately disintegrate like wet newspaper the moment they come into base-to-base contact with the enemy, and like many common beliefs, this one is wrong, at least as far as combat with other basic infantry (they have been known to kill the likes of [[Necron Warrior]]s [[What|in close combat]]). See, WS2 actually doesn't matter much against the common WS3 or 4 (they'll still need a 4+ to hit; the only difference is that enemies only need a 3+ to hit them), and they have average Strength (3) for basic infantry along with a solid 4+ Armor Save. Plus, with photon grenades, charging enemies will have to take an Initiative test or go Blind, reducing their WS to 1 and turning the 3+/4+ thing the other way around the first turn. The only effective disadvantage they're at is their piss-poor Initiative (2). Before the assault even starts, though, you can potentially get a ton of supporting fire that guarantees at least a few enemies won't make it to base-to-base contact due to a massive multiple-squad Overwatch. Don't get me wrong — they're eventually going to die in close combat with pretty much anything, but it could take a turn or two, or even three, and Fire Warriors have a decent chance to take at least a few enemy models with them. And hey, if they do break and flee, and they don't get run down by a Sweeping Advance (unlikely, unless they are fighting other low-inititive enemies, terminators, or slow and purposeful), you can just blast the shit out of the enemy squad next turn with all your other [[shooty|shootiness]] and save the survivors.

If equipped with EMP grenades Fire Warriors could actually be a scary force in melee, at least against vehicles, including walkers. A squad of Fire Warriors can wreck a Dreadnought in one turn of combat, losing only three or four members, and things like Killa Kans, Tomb Stalkers or Sentinels would go down even easier. Hell, they could have a fighting chance against Imperial Knights or even Titans. Unfortunately, as they lack any assault delivery system (unlike other haywire grenade users in the game), this upgrade is rarely taken, as it could only be useful if your opponent is stupid enough to move his mech units near your Fire Warriors. Then again, just knowing that your Fire Warriors have EMP grenades might be enough to suppress your opponent's walker or force them into a bad position.

*Alternate Assessment: Fire warriors trade evenly with marines if and only if the marines don't have ranged chapter tactics and it assumes that neither squad breaks, which Fire Warriors are more likely to do. In melee, against MEQs you're not just being hit on 3's but wounded on 3's, as well, and the enemy is generally likely to have a melee-weapon serge that will wound better and/or ignore your armour. Fire Warriors aren't stubborn and losing combat by even a small margin puts them at serious risk of being wiped out by sweeping advances. Moreover, you want to die in a single round against an enemy charge for the greater good. Holding up for one turn only allows the enemy to break you in your own melee phase, thus letting them charge again in theirs.

*Furthermore, their armour and toughness is precisely where heavy bolters and heavy flamers (and the guns of [[Necron Immortal]]s, who refute your claim for strongest basic infantry gun) want it to be. Thus, you can get killed very quickly, even at range, if you choose their foes poorly.
*Stay in cover, keep your head down, choose your firefights well, get support, and never assume you can hold for a round in combat.

== 8th/9th Edition ==
===8th===
Now, EMP grenades are a stratagem-only weapon that replaces the Photon Grenade. They are still useful, minus the fact that you still have to get into 12" to use them, and they can only be used by 3 Infantry units in your army (these being Pathfinders and Fire Warriors, the latter of which are now subdivided into Strike Team and Breacher Team variants.) Additionally, Pulse Rifles maintain their stats for the most part, minus the AP.

Keep in mind that the Pulse Rifle is still better than the Bolter, and can even semi-reliably wound T8 targets if you shoot it enough. Strike Teams are tough buggers, and as a result tend to fare better in ranged combat than Pathfinders, if only because of their superior armor save (4+ instead of a 5+) and access to the MV36 shield drones, which grant 6+ invuln saves, which means you possibly can save a few guys in a squad if a thunderfire opens up on them. They also come with the option of taking a DS8 turret with either a Smart Missile System or Missile Pods. As a final note, there are a few points worth reiterating: stay in cover, choose your firefights well, and avoid close combat.

===9th===
As of 9th, the strike team has the best rifle in the game, with a whopping 36" S5 AP-1, In contrast to previous edition, Strike Teams taking MV36 Guardian Drones now cannot be wounded on twos, making assault cannons utterly useless in that regard, as well as shield drones for use as a flying storm shield.

Breachers have received a soft nerf, with the Pulse Blaster being far more difficult to use, though they now work brilliantly when given a Devilfish to jump out of turn one and liquefy a very important infantry unit/anything in range. Similarly, Breachers can take some drones to provide some light support firepower/damage reduction.

== Gallery ==

<gallery>
File:EatingFireWarrior.jpg|Small blue man and woman eating small-blue-men-rations...Which look kinda like tacos. Mmmm Space Tacos...
File:TauRailrifle.jpg|No, they don't get Rail Rifles. No, their armour doesn't look that cool in official artwork. No, I'm not bitter. <s>No, they don't get them because those are actually Pathfinders</s>
</gallery>

[[Category: Warhammer 40,000]]

[[Category: Xenos]]

[[Category: Tau]]

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