PT PT vs TCW

Does anybody else think TCW deviated from the PT films quite a bit? Here is the list of things TCW did that contradicts the films. If any of you can think of more please share them.

Making Anakin nicer and more likable.
Giving him an apprentice who never appears or is mentioned in the films.
Changing Obi-Wan's personality.
Giving Obi-Wan love interests that he flirts with.
Making Yoda aware that something bad is going to happen to the Jedi order.
Making the clones much more individualistic than in the films.
Changing the clones from being engineered docile to obey orders to needing override chips because the are too individualistic.
Changing the low attitude gunships into spaceships.
Making the war more black and white than in the film.
Turning Count Dooku into a one dimensional villain in the show.
Bring Darth Maul back to life after he died in TPM.
Changing crab droids from 6 legs to 4.
Many models of battle droids not used in ROTS.
Many models of ships and craft not used in ROTS.
Having both the Trade Federation and the Banking Clan still in the Republic Senate despite being at war with them.
Having the Jedi aware that Dooku ordered the clone army.
The CIS council in TCW being very different and much larger than the one we see in ROTS.
Instead of having Dooku ordering the army using Sifo-Dyas name, the show has Dooku influencing Sifo-Dyas to order the army.

 

TCW is definitely weird. I personally love it. I can see why some people can't get on board with it though and I wouldn't hold it against them (some of your points I don't 100% agree with -- I feel like Obi-Wan is, mostly, his usual delightful, pompous-ass self in TCW, for one. That said, I do agree they tried to flesh out Anakin a little bit more so he comes off a bit differently, for one, though.)

My kid adores Ahsoka, and I've had to watch so much TCW lately it's kind of hard for me to be impartial anymore (I may have Star Wars Cartoon Stockholm Syndrome, take my commentary with a grain of salt. )

 

No, I don't think they did. No one denies the existence of these things in the Episode III, how do you know that all these things actually didn't happen. You just can't know. Episode III wasn't a summary for the Clone Wars, it was the latest event of the Clone Wars, you're talking about a three years long event here. Surely a lot of things happened.

 

IIRC The micro-series (which IMO matches up much better) was the thing originally created to to bridge the gap between 2 and 3

 

Just to be clear I don't consider either the films or the show as being more or less correct or incorrect, just different takes or views of the same myth. I do agree TCW did maintain Obi-Wan's pompous characteristics.

 

Yeah, it's why I was never able to buy TCW as a Canon extension of the six movies...Everyone is just so out of character I feel like I'm watching OCs have their own adventures in the SW universe. They completely wreck Obi-Wan's character and reduce Anakin as a one-dimensional guy. I'm also unable to follow the logic behind a lot of decisions-Anakin having his own Padawan being the example that comes to mind.

 

I fail to see how Anakin in the clone wars is one dimensional, but Anakin in the films isn't also one dimensional. There's far more complexity to him, and to his relationships, in the Clone Wars.

I personally can't watch the PT without TCW. They're fun films, but some of those details really are needed to add the actual depth George wanted in the first place. The PT is a saga in and of itself. It could have been its own 6-9 film series, and it would have been better for it.

 

I'm really interested in hearing more from the people who thought we got an Alternate Universe Kenobi in TCW. I'm not at all saying you're wrong (how could you be, it's all nonsense, hahaha); just curious about what specifically you thought was off about him in TCW. Was it the existence of Satine? I will admit, fully, to having an enormous, embarrassing soft spot for the Mandalore arcs, such that I no longer even question it anymore. They're both kinda irritating, and stubborn, and against all my better judgement I...kind of love them. It's my own problem, though, so ignore me: tell me what you felt was off, for you.

 

I personally didn't think anything was off with Obi-Wan. He was still the same kind, smart mouthed, pompous attitude Jedi that is my favorite character in the saga. The arc with him and Satine only served to parallel Anakin and Padme. Two people who had feelings for each other, but both decided to stay where they belonged. The Jedi were allowed to love. To have Obi-Wan admit that he at one point wanted to leave for love only humanized him and the other Jedi, and showed that they really did have to make sacrifices. They weren't Mary Sues, to borrow the new favorite statement of the Internet. It also makes Anakins selfishness even more apparent when you realize the other Jedi are just people, who had similar wants and desires, but didn't cave in.

 

I get you; I love him too. Obi-Wan is one of my all-time saga favorites, and I personally felt like he seemed pretty much in line with what I've always thought of him as -- kind of dorky Boy Scout, bossy, snotty, smart (and a smartass). Like you, I thought Mandalore Season 2 made him much more of a whole person with feelings, and Mandalore Season 5 made him the Saddest Person in the Whole Damn Saga, hahahaha, which...I guess isn't inconsistent with what his story was like already.

That's why I'm so interested to hear from people who took something else away from it. Yes, I am a grown woman asking to pick apart a Star Wars cartoon. What? Let's do it, people.

 

Comparing TCW to PT doesn't make sense. One is a cartoon which is lighter and is more so fan fiction.

Its funny because Lucas has stated in many of these problems is that he would NEVER do something like this in the SW lore. Especially bringing Maul back which he didn't like that idea even though the fans wanted him too.

All of these points contradict the movie. I don't them but I'm glad this wasn't considered cannon(looks at TFA)

 

In truth, I don't. I'm sure others do.

No, Anakin's depiction in TCW is just a rearward extension of his depiction in the first act of ROTS. This may be subjective, but to me he's not lacking in niceness or likeability in that part of ROTS, and TCW (understandably, given that it's a serialised TV show) emphasised that side of him. In the later seasons, it drew attention to the other sides of him in addition to that.

Is there any reason to mention her in ROTS? There is an argument to be made that there is. There is another argument to be made that there isn't, based on how inauspicious the circumstances surrounding her departure are. This seems to be entirely subjective, based on how compelling someone finds either argument.

From what I saw, TCW simply expanded on Obi-Wan's characterisation.

This is debatable. He demonstrates a certain level of attachment to Asajj Ventress, naturally, as part of the inevitable Sith motive to overthrow his master.

He also appears as a benevolent face of the Confederacy in multiple episodes, so he retains that aspect of his characterisation from AOTC. Not that I disagree with the idea that he should have displayed this more often, but it would be wrong to say he didn't do so at all.

Yes, TCW introduced another level of individualism into the clones beyond what ROTS had already done with the introduction of individualised armour and personalities. TCW also depicted clones as aggressive, often bloodthirsty, sometimes racist, authoritarian through indoctrination, loyal to the point of fanaticism, and subject to an extremely draconian military justice system.

That in addition to their various quirks, which you'd expect to see for protagonist characters in a TV show aimed at children. Or even one aimed at adults. People remember the Viper pilots of BSG and the team members of Stargate for their distinctive personalities.

Seems to me that TCW's depiction of the clones was perfectly in keeping with the themes relating to the clone troopers and the rise of the Empire.

Override chips grown out of their own brain tissue, so they're still genetically engineered to be as docile as is humanly possible when it comes to the most important order of all.

It's reasonable to take issue with how TCW portrayed the Jedi as more knowledgeable than previously assumed. However, in many cases, there seem to be differences from what was assumed before but without distinction. These can be interpreted to not materially affect the AOTC-to-ROTS story. They're by no means direct contradictions. They can be read into the films.

Again, another subjective/debatable point.

Another subjective/debatable point, not a direct contradiction.

No, the LAATs were not changed into spaceships.

Spaceflight-capable LAATs were introduced for some orbital insertions. Regular LAATs are still depicted being deployed from Acclamator- and Venator-class vessels within atmospheres.

Is the CIS Army obliged to field crab droids with the same number of legs in every battle?

Are the armed forces of the Republic and Confederacy obliged to field every piece of hardware they have in ROTS?

I'll put it another way. Is the Empire obliged to field every piece of hardware it has ever used, including the Republic holdovers, in ANH? Really, it seems that you're taking issue with the very idea of prequel entries (which TCW is with respect to ROTS) introducing anything new.

A bit weird, but it's explained in the show. The justification is that these entities are too important to the Galactic economy for the Republic to sideline them right away, even though they slant their corporate policies in the Confederacy's favour, but sideline them the Republic eventually does.

That was not the CIS Council. That was the CIS Senate, based out of the legitimate capital of the Confederacy on Raxus Prime. It passes laws and has the power to negotiate an end to hostilities, which it exercises twice in the show. It even collaborates productively with the Republic Senate despite no end to hostilities (historically authentic, that) on economic issues. The fact that it does so against the interests of the Sith is a dead giveaway.

How? By introducing the CIS Senate?

The CIS was not exactly a benevolent entity in ROTS or even AOTC. TCW simply built on the initial depiction of the Separatists in AOTC as composed of good-intentioned star systems, fed up with the corruption and gridlock of the Republic and only turning to the various heavily armed cartels out of self-preservation, by introducing the first real depiction of its legitimate government. TCW depicted the Confederacy as a constitutional liberal democracy, much like the Galactic Republic, for the first time in any Star Wars medium. In the episode which introduced this government, an explicit reference was made to the husband of a sympathetic Separatist politician being killed by clone troopers.

The implications of the existence of such a legitimate civilian government are immense for the Clone Wars, and TCW explores them repeatedly. Really, with that one episode and what follows from it, TCW did far more to blur the line between good and evil during the Clone Wars era than any Expanded Universe content had up to that point.

*

In short, embellishment is not contradiction. Many of these points are just disputes with minor, completely expected and damn near necessary embellishments.

There are some points where TCW has been claimed to have diverged from the spirit of the films - or more often how some personally interpret the films; the same old story - but it has pretty much never contradicted them.

 

Ah, Obi-Wan - TCW emphasized his more pompous pronouncements and set him up for a lot of beat-downs. That was the main "divergence" - it was a wonder he survived as long as he did. He talked a lot, but didn't do a lot.

Additionally, he was often relegated to a minor supporting role (often! not always) in order to let new show star Ahsoka, and often Ahsoka and Anakin shine.

Sometimes his "smart-ass" remarks came off as a bit more censorious rather than sarcastically funny.

As to some of the other stuff: yeah, the clones were developed into individuals with various personalities (so much for the raised to be alike), and the Council was too often portrayed as out of touch and "ol' meanies" to showcase how the little padawan was far more mature and skilled than her elders. Honestly, she should have been elevated to Grand Master and made (the right decisions for the Order.

yeah...snark. I loved TCW when it was good (often) but I don't hesitate to criticize it, either, when it fell short of what it could have been.

 

I LOVE LOVE LOVE TCW but...PT no contest.

Edit: Whoops, thought this was a versus thread. I thought TCW expanded on rather than contradicted the PT.

 

Fan= PT

Not A Fan= TCW

for the reasons mentioned in the OP.

Also: As I've mentioned, I can't comprehend live action actors suddenly becoming cartoon characters, especially since they act differently as characters. My brain just doesn't compute it.

 

TCW fixed the PT enough for me to start down the long road to appreciating the story of the PT via fan edits.

 

It's been a while since I've watched TCW. Only watched it once, from start to end sometime last year. Didn't like it. And certainly never watching it again. Cartoons aren't my thing anyway so no big loss for me.

But I remember seeing TCW Anakin as a generic happy-go-lucky emotional guy that happens to choke people occasionally. It felt like it missed PT Anakin's whiny, melancholy, inner-turmoil, prickly complicated dual-nature for the sake of making him 'likeable' to fans. It left out the underlying darkness present in his everyday behaviour(think aotc) yet at the same time it made him use the dark side too soon(choking). That just ruins his movie development to me. It makes his rebirth as Darth Vader in ROTS feel cheap. It chopped all of that off along with his bad-poetry-AOTC romantic style. I'm sure no one else missed that as that was a rather unpopular aspect of his character, but to me it just seemed like Anakin suddenly became romantically sophisticated à la James Bond with Padmé. For consistency's sake he should have started as his AOTC self and then eased into his ROTS self by the end.

I'm afraid that's all the details I can give at the moment since I remember more my impressions of the show than actual specific events to pinpoint to. I felt the absence of Hayden C. from this show. In a bad way.

Yes, it was mostly Satine. The Mandalore arcs make me loose all respect for TCW Obi-Wan. I could buy/accept PT Obi-Wan as a misguided individual striving to do the right thing and become the best Jedi he can be, too much entrenched with the Jedi Code to see how some aspects are just wrong. I could accept him failing to notice his own attachments(Qui-Gon, Anakin) and believing he has 'become one' with the Jedi ways and attempting to make Anakin follow rules too.

What I cannot buy is him admitting to himself that he feels attachment in TCW, let alone act on those. Mr Follow the rules would just never have considered leaving the order for a love interest. The way I see it, Obi-Wan only admitted to himself that he felt love/attachment to others in ROTS when Anakin turned to the dark side. 'I cannot kill Anakin, he is like my brother' when he speaks to Yoda is his first self-admission that he DOES love Anakin. His first familial attachment confession to the recipient of said attachment(Anakin, of course) comes in the fires of Mustafar when Anakin burns with hate. Obi-Wan's PT movie arc, from TPM to ROTS is simply beautiful and gave him a spot in my top 5 SW characters. TCW just ruins that arc and presents him as an 'on-and-off' person that becomes enlightened and unenlightened.

One of the tragic things about Obi-Wan and Anakin's heartbreaking bromance is that despite caring a lot for each other in complicated ways, they never truly understood each other. You'd think, then, in light of TCW's Obi's 'indiscretions', he'd have gained an understanding of Anakin between that arc and ROTS and would have known how to deal with him at the end before everything went to hell. It just does not make sense that he would remain blind as he is in the start of ROTS. Worst, it makes him an hypocrite. Telling off Anakin for his feelings for Padmé and not following the code, then doing the same himself??? I never saw Obi-Wan as an intentional hypocrite. Not at all. And I won't have too since I am dismissing TCW from my personal Canon

Where Obi-Wan is concerned, it's more that his actions don't match his character, as opposed to having an external behavioural shift like in the case of TWC Anakin.

Other people have mentioned this parallel concept before and I am afraid that I regard it as a cheap one. We must have very different interpretations of Jedi rules because I have always been under the impression that love of any kind, be it familial or romantic, is frowned upon and not allowed. I don't believe any sacrifice should ever be made in one's romantic status for work, not in real life or fiction. The idea that Obi-Wan would bow to a discriminatory rule in order to keep his status as a Jedi Master and because he felt he had committed a Jedi Code 'crime' just makes me shake my head sadly.

Anakin's decision to pursue a relationship with Padmé is not selfish. No one should have to decide between their calling and the ones they love. It's called family life and work balance, a thing most individuals enjoy and without repercussions. His fall to the dark side happened because, in his selfishness, he decided that his wife living was more important than keeping his morals. Because he could not let go of the idea of her dying. Because he was willing to commit atrocities to save her. Something that could have potentially happened had they never continued their relationship so his relationship status is very much irrelevant. He could have been driven to go to the dark side for Obi-Wan in an alternate universe where he got visions of Obi-Wan dying in combat or whatever. Being in a relationship of any kind does not automatically drive individuals to do horrid things or to be unable to accept each other's deaths. Plenty do. Anakin, with his complicated background and traumatic experience with Shmi's death, gained an unnatural urge to prevent other people from dying. Had things been different even in the slightest of ways, he could have gained an acceptance of the ways of life and the inevitable cycle of death. He was not doomed to choose poorly as he did after cutting off Mace's hand because of 'getting too far in a relationship'.

If what you are referring to was the parallel intended, I am afraid all I got out of it was feel pity for Obi-Wan's unneeded 'sacrifice' and further repulsion at the PT Jedi ways. TCW Obi-Wan's Satine-related choice makes him not a better person or Jedi for discontinuing the relationship, but rather not enlightened enough to see that an organization forcing romantic abstinence on their members had some core problems.

So yeah, that's why I do not care for TCW. I dislike TCW Anakin and TCW Obi-Wan. If I must give something positive to show, I'll say that I liked how Mace was portrayed. It gave him a softness I had intuited from the movies but never got to really see on-screen. Such a welcoming difference than the popular Snape-Mace that pops out in lots of fanfiction...Contrary to a lot of people, I never saw Mace as a bully or a one-dimensional rigid guy(though I do think he was rigid). And I liked that TCW gave Jedi Councilmen/women personalities. They just could not have been more underwritten in the movies(I believe outside of Obi, Anakin, Yoda and Mace, only Mundi has a few lines here and there?).

 

I have a feeling this thread won't end well as most VS threads do, but anyway I love them both equally with maybe TCW winning out by a bit because i have not seen any Star Wars film since 2011.

 

Why?

 

Because All my DVDs of them are completely unplayable except ROTJ and I remembered them well enough, but now because of christmas I got the complete saga so it shall soon be time to watch again.

 

Aw gotcha. I was just curious as I've also had SW dry spells over the years. Sometimes I'll go years and not see one. Not now though. I got all caught back up preTFA.

 

In my view, there are no real discrepancies. TCW broadens and deepens our knowledge and understanding of the war and its participants. There are many aspects to it that are never brought up in the movies because there's really no room - or need - for it. Those aspects are still reality, though.

I also think the show captured the spirit of the war, as portrayed at the end of AOTC and the beginning of ROTS, to a tee.

 

To address some of QuangoFett ' s points.

TCW gunships are very different from the movie versions. In the films they are open air cabins, with a door less archway and single aft doors that don't fully seal. In TCW we see gunships with fully closing double doors with no archways. We don't see the movie versions in the show or vise versa.

TCW clones display alot more individuality than in ROTS. In that film the only clones with personalized armor are the commanders to denote their rank. The regular phase 2 clones did not have any personalized armor and still behaved uniformly. In the film you don't see wildly individualized clones like in the show.

In AOTC, it was stated the clones were modified on the genetic level to make them obey any order, no need for bio chips which the show states were inserted. Plus it raises alot of questions, once the chips are active do they stay active? If they are turn off would the clones feel remorse and regret or would they not remember? Filoni stated the chips were his idea since he didn't like Sids plans to be unstoppable and needed weak links, which I find nonsensical of him. This illustrates a problem I have with the show, moat of the time when it tries to fix or expand on details from the films it ends up making issues worse, or even turning non issues into problems like with order 66.

You would think the CIS would use the more advanced units in the ROTS battles that they had earlier in the war such as commando droids and flying super battle droids.

The crab droid leg thing is probably just lazy animation.

Shatterpoint, makes a great point about Obi-Wan's characterization in TCW. I would add that warriors were expected to be free of attachments so they can't be used against the warrior. Also if a warrior does become attached to someone, they put a target on that person's back and endanger them. A person who choose the warrior path accepted they could not have a normal life. Though the films show this line of thinking to be flawed.

 

I am in the 'expansion not contradiction camp' and for what it's worth, the times the show DID contradict the films... I generally preferred the show's version anyway. TCW Anakin is the Anakin I had always expected to see, not just ''generic happy-go-lucky emotional guy that happens to choke people occasionally'' but a heroic and courageous Jedi with far too much pride and some serious anger issues. If you watch it beginning to end then he gets appreciably grimmer and more vengeful as it progresses. Early on, he kills the Mandalorian traitor but stays pretty upbeat because it saved the day. By the end of the show he's so twisted up he tries to beat a man to death out of pure jealousy.

Obi-Wan on the other hand is still an officious wiseass, same as he always was. The fact that maybe the Council weren't completely correct in their 'no attachments, EVER' stance was pretty prominent and grew moreso. They were consistently portrayed as well meaning but flawed or outright wrong (if anything, it was the 'well-meaning' bit that got forgotten too often for me) and that Obi-Wan chose the Order over Satine was his choice to make. He could have left the Order if he wanted to but he chose (of his own free will) otherwise.

 

The more advanced droids (commando droids, flying B2 battledroids) weren't used all the time in TCW, they don't appear in every battle.The flying b2 battledroids only appears in two episodes, jedi crash and the first episode of the order 66 arc.

The commando droids maybe can come across as a problem seeing as TCW did seem to overuse them at points, but it doesn't really bother me. Either they were all destroyed before RotS, or we simply just didn't see them on screen.

The crab droids is a silly complaint IMO, it appears on screen for a couple of seconds, does it really matter that it had 6 legs? It has never bothered me.