Month: September 2022

Hey everybody,
Well, what a summer of Star Wars it has been! It’s been a little over five months since I started my great re-read of the prequel era stories, starting with Darth Plagueis back in April. Since then, I’ve read quite a few novels and comics, although not everything that has been published in this timeframe – I’m not that much of a masochist. There have been ups and downs, for sure, and there’s a part of me that does still think I should perhaps have read everything, as I doubt I’ll be reading the odd Clone Wars graphic novel just for the sake of it, you know? But I’d still be on this re-read project in twelve months’ time, if I were to do that to myself…

On the whole, it has been a lot of fun. There were some short stories in here that I’d not read before, and there were a few books that I’ve only ever read once before, so it was nice to have the opportunity to read them again, and reacquaint myself with them. Especially because I read these things when they first came out, 20-odd years ago. Of course, when reading these things as one continuous story, cracks do appear, and it’s these cracks that I kinda want to explore a bit today.

So let’s take a moment to reflect back on the last five months of reading…

The Clone Wars
A common theme throughout my rambling “reviews” of these things is that I have been a bit disappointed by how the Clone Wars turned out. I’d be lying if I said I was fascinated by the idea of what the Clone Wars were since watching the original trilogy as a child – I had always just thought of it as a piece of history, there to give depth but nothing more. Knowing that the galaxy is now in a post-war period is all part of the setting, I didn’t have a thirst to know precisely what those clones were up to that caused a war.

Having the clones be the “good guys” was definitely a reversal that I don’t think many people had seen coming. Ever since Timothy Zahn’s Thrawn trilogy from the early 90s, we had the suspicion that the clones were the bad guys, and were led by evil “clone masters”. The threat of another clone wars was something that hung over a lot of the decisions being made by the New Republic, alongside the ethical battle of growing people specifically as soldiers.

The execution, though, does feel more than a bit slapdash. I mean, I struggle to think of this as a cohesive war, which is probably a problem of the galactic scale. The only common theme is that the clone troopers are fighting droids, but they do so on a variety of battlegrounds with seemingly no thought to strategy whatsoever – the end result is almost like galactic whack-a-mole, as the clones are deployed to a planet maybe because it wants to secede from the Republic, nothing is ever really explained as to what is going on, it’s just “here’s a battle! Here’s another!”. There’s talk of “Separatist space” as if there are borders, but this honestly isn’t the feel that we get from the various storylines, either in novels or comics (and certainly not the films, because they don’t show the actual war, after all). We never learn if it is better to live under the Separatists rather than the Republic, we don’t see much of the little people as the war goes on. There are “insurgents” and “freedom fighters” but we don’t really get any explanation of what the hell is going on. It’s like we just have to take it on faith that there’s a war happening because reasons.

Is that really the best we can expect?

The villain of the piece is Count Dooku and his Separatist Movement, something introduced in the middle of the second film of the trilogy. His name is just thrown out of nowhere, and we’re left a bit bewildered as to what on earth is going on. But the movies do look awfully good.

I’m not about to launch into some kind of “if I were in charge…” moment here, but I think the prequel trilogy would have made more coherent sense if we had significant plot points from the first two movies shuffled round. It’s almost to the point of episode two becomes episode one, where we could have Count Dooku deployed as part of the diplomatic mission to Naboo, he sees the political stagnation and, possibly, Qui-Gon’s death, and he decides to leave the Jedi. Given his influence, many worlds begin to think similarly and he begins the Separatist movement before the end of the film. Episode Two then becomes a war film, basically depicting the push-and-pull of the clone wars as we see the Jedi trying to diplomatically stop worlds from seceding from the Republic, while the Separatists actively invade others – possibly a retaliatory strike on Naboo where Anakin’s heroism can be shown, and provide a more credible love interest for Padme (but I’ll get to that later). One of the big let-downs of the trilogy, I think, is how we basically get the start of the war towards the end of one movie, then the end of the war near the start of the next, and there’s just not enough meat on the bones to allow it to make sense.

In many of the novels from this period, we get comments that tell us the Jedi were never supposed to be fighting the war, the war is going against everything the Jedi stand for, etc. Depa Billaba makes the point quite beautifully in Shatterpoint. It’s interesting how the war is almost designed to make the Jedi into something else, but again this is something that isn’t really delved into within the movies. It really makes it clear how the war is a fabrication, intended to break the back of the Jedi and pave the way for the resurgence of the Sith, but it’s unfortunate that more of this couldn’t be explored in the films, due to the massively condensed timeframe Lucas was working with.

I think if more explanation were given for why the clones are actually fighting, what brought about the actual conflict rather than a nebulous situation where planets want to leave the Republic but the Republic won’t let them, it would maybe make more sense. In some ways, the clone wars could have simply been a series of events like The Approaching Storm, where the planet Ansion tries to leave the Republic so the Jedi are deployed to mediate. What I want to know is, why did mediation get replaced with warfare? Were the Separatists forcing planets to secede? Doesn’t fit with the ideology. Were the Republic forcing planets to stay in the fold? Kinda proves the Separatists’ point. It’s just never explained why the clones are fighting. If the clone wars are actually nothing more than local disputes using the Separatist crisis as an excuse, like we see on Haruun Kal in Shatterpoint, then that’s a bit rubbish, though at least we’d get more of an explanation.

In Shatterpoint, there is the sense that both sides are arming opposing local factions to better-fight their own, local war. But why? The Separatists are trying to cause chaos, and perhaps make the Republic look bad by not being able to defend planets. But this is never properly explained, and it’s a bit of a rubbish take on things if that is the case. The other main problem with this, of course, is that it isn’t explained in the films.

I also think Lucas kinda wrote himself into the corner by calling A New Hope episode four – he has a maximum of three films to give the backstory, and it’s just not enough. It tries to cover too much ground, and in the end we have everything without enough justice done to it.

“…he was a good friend”
Obi-Wan fondly remembers Anakin when he’s telling Luke about their exploits. There’s an element of shielding Luke from the worst of it, for sure, but at the same time, you can tell that Alec Guinness has genuine warmth in his performance. When we get to see them together, the two of them are bickering, between Anakin’s petulant outbursts of “it’s not fair”. We spend so much time with him as a child in episode one, establishing that he’s basically the nicest kid ever, that the rest of the arc is rushed as we have the ever-present “he’s gonna turn into Vader, look!” kind of overshadowing.

Episode Two really misses a trick when they split up, and Anakin is given the task of having picnics and fireside chats while Obi-Wan is tracking down bounty hunters and uncovering mysterious plots. Now, I get it, Lucas wanted them together so they fall in love, but really Anakin should have been with his master. This is kinda where we get back to the idea of episode two being episode one, though – where it could well have been the case that Anakin and Obi-Wan were on a mission to track down bounty hunters and uncovering devious plots together, which leads to the clone wars breaking out. Then in the new episode two, when Anakin is tasked with defending Padme while Obi-Wan is leading the defense of Naboo, they have the time together to fall in love, once Anakin has a name for himself as something other than the winner of one podrace.

Unfortunately, there are only two, probably three scenes in the entire prequel trilogy where Anakin and Obi-Wan come across as actual friends. Which makes Obi-Wan’s remark in episode four a little out of the blue, much like how Count Dooku must be behind the plot to assassinate Padme when we have no idea who he is or why he’d be trying to kill senators.

The Rise of Darth Vader
George Lucas’ main objective with the prequel trilogy was to show how Anakin Skywalker became Darth Vader, and to give that whole family saga arc to his six films. We start off with him as a small child, then leap forward ten years and miss out a great deal of his life. Rather than having the whole slave issue and tying everything back to Tatooine, I would have preferred it if we had begun with Anakin as a padawan learner, and we follow him on his adventures much like we end up following Obi-Wan. I mean, there’s a case to be made that the prequel films have a better storyline in making the saga about him, rather than Anakin. I know that Lucas had intended the six films to be about Anakin, but the original trilogy’s focus on Luke didn’t need to start with him as a little boy, so I think it would have been equally valid to start with an older Anakin.

I wish we’d had Anakin as a padawan in episode one, but as a generally good guy. Maybe he breaks the rules to get the job done, but he’s generally good. Then in episode two we get to see how good a war leader he is, and maybe he gets a taste for the power that comes from being in command of an army. He grows closer to Padme, and becomes enraged at the thought of losing her. When Palpatine plays into the possibility that he may well lose her, he goes over the edge and ends up in the black suit.

It’s an unpopular opinion, but I also think the old plot device of Palpatine stoking Anakin’s jealousy, making him think Padme and Obi-Wan are a couple, would be what comes between the two friends. It’s no doubt cliché, but then wasn’t the whole original trilogy?

As it is, I have no idea why Padme is interested in Anakin. His “it’s not fair” tantrums must be what get her going. Either that, or Palpatine is clouding her judgment too. Padme’s whole story arc is unfortunate though, as presented through the films. I have read some great fan theories online that try to explain things to us so that we get a different slant on her death, but sometimes you do need to squint and/or use some huge leaps of logic to understand them. As it is performed on screen, Padme goes from a teenage queen with a spine of iron to a battered wife who has nothing to live for, her twin babies notwithstanding.

The constant need to foreshadow Anakin’s fall to the dark side becomes an intrusive distraction within the expanded universe material, also. Yes, we all know he will turn into Darth Vader; even his costume in episode two is meant to foreshadow the black suit of the original trilogy. I think we end up with too much of this sort of brow-beating, and the story actually suffers for it. He’s never allowed to be a nice guy because the authors of these stories always have to show the simmering rage under his surface. It’s a comparison I’ve probably made before, but I’m continually drawn back to comparing Anakin with Horus, of the Horus Heresy series. In the first book, Horus Rising, Horus Lupercal is a genuinely nice guy, beloved of his legion and favoured son of the Emperor. His brother primarchs think highly of him, and he’s generally just a good man. He then gets injured in the next book, and falls into the hands of the wrong ‘un, Erebus, who takes him for some cult healing on Davin where he has his eyes opened to the Ruinous Powers, and he falls to Chaos, launching a crusade of violence against his brothers and father. Unless you count the schmaltzy kid bits of episode one, we never have nice-guy Anakin, and it’s to the detriment of the saga. I’m not suggesting the prequels should have been 54 movies long, but we need at least some good in there before it all goes to hell.

This blog is now getting slightly unwieldy though, and I’m thinking I might be on the way to a 54-volume critique of the prequels, myself!

More random thoughts
As it stands, we have a lot of interesting things going on here. I think it’s possible to make something more coherent out of what we have, just shuffling stuff around here and there. Lucas has obviously stayed true to his own vision, and while they’re enjoyable enough (at times!) I do think something is lost when you try to watch them as part of a coherent storyline. You could make similar comments about how we never really see “the rebellion” in the original trilogy, but rather there is a family saga unfolding with the rebellion as a backdrop, but it is nevertheless much better than the same saga’s origins being told against the backdrop of the clone wars. I have nothing against Jake Lloyd, but I do think it was a mistake to have child Anakin in episode one. Going back that far has caused too much of a time jump within the trilogy and it causes quite a bit of friction with the story.

When he was writing the initial drafts, Lucas said he split the story into chunks (quarters, then thirds) and made the middle bit first, because the first bit was more of an intrigue/noir story and he felt it wasn’t exciting enough for the time. I think it’s really only Obi-Wan’s storyline in episode two that comes close to that, but again I’m thinking of the missed opportunity for showing how worlds secede from the Republic, and how the Jedi could be leading covert ops into Separatist heartlands as part of the main war story for the Clone Wars.

But that circles around to the problem of what the clone wars turned out to be. A disparate series of nebulous conflicts, with no real clarity. Was that the point? It’s not like the rebellion, which is clearly a band of freedom fighters going against the oppression of the Empire. Most of the time, it is unclear why the clones need to be deployed to a battleground, or how a particular conflict seems to have escalated. In the EU material, we see Dooku leading worlds such as Tibrin to secede from the Republic, which is all fine and good. Would the Republic seriously throw a clone battalion at the Ishi Tib and bring them back by force? Surely that’s proving the Separatists’ point? As I said earlier, I guess I just don’t understand why a Separatist movement has caused so much actual physical conflict, because it is never spelled out for us. We’re just told to accept that some worlds want to leave the Republic, and now there are clones shooting the place up. Enjoy the lightshow!

I sound like I really hate the prequels, don’t I? I don’t, honestly. I think there is a great political storyline in there, which is why I enjoy novels like Cloak of Deception so much. I love seeing the machinations of the Sith, and the intricacies of their schemes. Following Palpatine’s plan through the various media is often a real joy, as we see just how many contingencies and how far reaching he actually thought. There are many missed opportunities for political thriller type stories, I think because in general there was a backlash to the politics as presented in episode one. In many respects, it has fallen to James Luceno to attempt to stitch everything together with the political narrative through his novels Darth Plagueis, Cloak of Deception and Labyrinth of Evil. There are so many moments that I enjoy from those books where there is almost that eureka moment, “ah, so that’s how it happened…” and the like. I still love the way Luceno shows how Valorum was discredited through Cloak of Deception, tying in beautifully to The Phantom Menace and making the whole thing just make so much sense. Labyrinth of Evil is similarly required reading for Revenge of the Sith, although I do feel like the balance is slightly off in the later book, and he was probably more constrained by writing a book that was published before the movie was released. Cloak is able to delve quite freely into so much more than Labyrinth is able to show, principally, I suppose, in the need to avoid spoilers. I think if it too had come out after the movie, then we could have had much more in terms of the tie-ins, perhaps more made of Bail Organa and Mon Mothma (with correspondingly more given to Padme than simply a disappointing meeting with the chancellor and then watching in horror as Coruscant is invaded). But that’s a minor point in the scheme of things.

I do have issues with how the Jedi have been turned into some kind of corporate entity, with Yoda as chairman of the board of directors (Jedi Council). It’s never stated one way or another in the original trilogy, of course, so there’s no actual case for saying “that’s not how it was supposed to be!” However, I do like the Jedi that we see in the Tales of the Jedi comics, where there are roving teachers who have a small group of students/followers/disciples, all learning at the feet of the master. I suppose it’s that image of Yoda teaching five or six students who have crossed the galaxy to learn from him, that has been in my mind prior to episode one. I’m sure there are old references to the Jedi being akin to wandering samurai or something (I’m not really up on that lore), so having them as a centralized organization just seems to fly in the face of its mysticism. But then, that’s nothing in relation to the midi-chlorians… For all that I dislike the direction taken with the Jedi Order, I nevertheless enjoy reading about what they get up to, especially in the pre-Clone War days.

During my re-read, I incorporated a lot of stuff that I would ordinarily not have read as part of “my personal canon”, to lend a phrase from goodreads. Stuff like Outbound Flight and Shatterpoint were included because it has been so long since I read them, but ordinarily I would confine myself to just a small handful of novels and then most of the Republic comics. In retrospect, I probably could have shaved a couple of months off this re-read if I had stuck to what I wanted to read! But anyway, it has been fun to go through these stories again, even if I am berating them for their lack of coherency, or the fact they aren’t showing the war, etc!

However, this blog has now rambled on for far too long, and I’m not sure anybody is even that interested in all this nonsense!

After three years of fighting, the Clone Wars have taken a dramatic turn when Coruscant itself is under siege, and the leader of the droid army, General Grievous, has kidnapped Supreme Chancellor Palpatine. He has been prevented from leaving the system by a massive clone trooper response, and during the pitched battle, Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi are able to fight their way onto Grievous’ flagship, the Invisible Hand, and locate the Chancellor thanks to his personal tracker. However, once they have found him, it seems to have been part of a trap, as Count Dooku arrives to duel with the two Jedi.

Dooku is able to incapacitate Obi-Wan, but Anakin manages to overpower the Sith Lord, and urged on by Palpatine, he beheads Dooku. Palpatine urges Anakin to leave Obi-Wan as well, but Anakin is determined all three of them will escape the ship. At this point, however, the flagship receives a concerted attack from Republic ships, and the droids are able to capture the fleeing Jedi. They are brought before Grievous but manage to escape their bonds, destroying the droids on the bridge. Grievous escapes, and jettisons all the escape pods while fleeing to a nearby Trade Federation vessel. Unfortunately, the amount of damage sustained during the Republic attack causes the ship to break apart, and Anakin is barely able to land the remaining portion on the surface.

With the loss of Count Dooku, Grievous becomes the de facto leader of the Separatists, and retreats to their current base of operations on Utapau. There, he is instructed by Darth Sidious to move the Separatist Council to Mustafar. Sidious also expresses his confidence that he will soon have a better replacement for Dooku.

On Coruscant, Anakin is reunited with Padme, who tells him that she is pregnant. Soon after, Anakin begins to have prophetic dreams similar to those he had about his mother, which suggest Padme will die in childbirth. Anakin meets with the Chancellor, who tells him that he is being appointed as the Chancellor’s personal representative on the Jedi Council. Anakin, who already mistrusts the Masters, is irritated when they refuse to grant him the rank of Jedi Master, leading to further friction. The Council agrees to send Yoda to Kashyyyk to assist the Wookiees in their battle against the droid army, and privately Mace Windu expresses his distrust of Anakin to both Yoda and Obi-Wan. Privately, Obi-Wan tells Anakin that the Council has asked that he report on the Chancellor’s dealings.

At the Galaxies Opera House, Palpatine meets with Anakin and tells him that clone intelligence has discovered Grievous is hiding in the Utapau system, and later learns that the Council has asked Anakin to spy on him. Palpatine further sows seeds of mistrust, suggesting the Jedi Masters are holding Anakin back, and goes on to tell of the story of a Sith Lord, Darth Plagueis, who was rumoured to be able to keep people from dying. Anakin reports to the Council and tells them that the Chancellor has recommended him for the mission, but Mace Windu overrides that decision and the Council votes to send Obi-Wan instead.

Obi-Wan arrives on Utapau and makes contact with the chairman of Pau City, Tion Medon, who informs him that the population is being held hostage by Grievous and the droids. Obi-Wan sends his ship back into orbit, aware that Grievous’ spies will be watching him, then begins his search of the city. He finds Grievous just as the Separatist Council is leaving the world, and the two engage in a lightsaber duel, Grievous having been trained in combat by Count Dooku. At that moment, Obi-Wan’s clone trooper escort arrives, led by Commander Cody, and a fierce battle ensues. Grievous flees, with Obi-Wan in close pursuit, however he loses his lightsaber in the process.

On Coruscant, Anakin tells Palpatine that Obi-Wan has engaged Grievous, and in their ensuing conversation, Palpatine reveals himself to have knowledge of the Dark Side. Anakin realises that the Chancellor is the Sith Lord that Count Dooku told them about. Despite the fact Palpatine represents Anakin’s best hope of saving Padme’s life, he decides to turn him over to the Jedi Council. He informs Mace Windu, who tells Anakin to stay in the Temple while he gathers a team of Masters to confront the Sith Lord – Agen Kolar, Saesee Tiin and Kit Fisto. The four Jedi arrive at the Chancellor’s office, and Sidious attacks them, dispatching Kolar, Tiin and Fisto quickly. Anakin is unable to remain at the Jedi Temple, however, and returns to the Chancellor’s office as Mace Windu overcomes Sidious. However, when Anakin prevents Mace from killing Sidious by cutting off his sword hand, Sidious unleashes a barrage of Force lightning that pushes the Jedi Master out of the window. Anakin is distraught at what he has done, but Sidious twists the events to show that the Jedi were plotting all along to take over the Republic. He accepts Anakin as his new apprentice, dubbing him Darth Vader, and sends him to the Jedi Temple to consolidate their position by killing any Jedi still on Coruscant.

Obi-Wan is able to kill Grievous, and reunites with his clone troopers, Cody returning his lightsaber. Within minutes, however, all clone commanders begin to receive communications directly from the Chancellor, telling them to enact Order 66 – the Jedi are traitors to the Republic and must be killed. As Jedi across the galaxy are cut down by their clone troopers, Yoda feels the disturbance in the Force and is on guard when Commander Gree attempts to enact the order, Yoda killing him before he is able to execute it. Yoda escapes Kashyyyk with the help of Tarfful and Chewbacca, and while Obi-Wan is initially attacked by Cody and his clone troopers, he is able to escape Utapau in General Grievous’ personal starfighter. Both Jedi Masters are picked up by Bail Organa, who had witnessed the clone troopers killing Jedi at the Temple, and determined to search for survivors elsewhere in the galaxy. Upon learning of a coded message to all Jedi informing them the war is over and to return to the Temple, Obi-Wan determines to return there to re-calibrate the message, warning any Jedi survivors away.

Following the attack on the Jedi Temple, Anakin returns to Padme and tells her that he has helped the Chancellor to thwart a Jedi plot to overthrow the Republic. He informs her that he is heading to the Mustafar system to end the war, and once there he systematically kills the Separatist Council. The Chancellor holds a special session of the Senate, for which Bail Organa returns to the capitol, allowing Obi-Wan and Yoda the opportunity to slip into the Temple and re-calibrate the message. There, the two check the security footage and realise that Anakin is responsible for leading the attack on his fellow Jedi. Yoda determines to confront Darth Sidious, while Obi-Wan is sent to find Anakin. He visits Padme, who refuses to believe Anakin could have done anything so brutal. Obi-Wan stows away aboard her ship when she decides to follow her husband to Mustafar to learn the truth.

Palpatine informs the Senate of the Jedi plot, and declares the foundation of the Galactic Empire, to general approval. Later, in his office, he is surprised to learn that Yoda survived, and the two engage in a titanic battle that moves into the Senate chamber itself, Sidious flinging the pods around in an attempt to kill the Jedi Grand Master. Yoda, realising he cannot defeat the Sith Lord, flees the building with Bail Organa’s help.

On Mustafar, Padme confronts Anakin and cannot believe the path he has begun to follow. When he catches sight of Obi-Wan, he leaps to the conclusion that they are conspiring against him, and Force chokes his wife, only letting her go when Obi-Wan intervenes. The two erstwhile friends clash, and their lightsaber duel takes them across the mining facility and into the lavafields, ending when Obi-Wan dismembers Vader, watching as the lava sets his body alight. He leaves, C-3PO having already begun to administer medical help to Padme, shortly before Sidious, having felt through the Force the danger that Vader was in, arrives and is able to keep his apprentice barely alive for transport back to Coruscant.

Obi-Wan and Padme arrive at the asteroid field of Polis Massa, and reunite with Bail Organa and Yoda. There, Padme gives birth to twins, Luke and Leia, but dies after seemingly losing the will to live. Yoda determines the twins should be split up, until the time is right, and Bail Organa offers to adopt Leia as his own. Obi-Wan volunteers to take Luke to the Lars family on Tatooine, and watch over him – Yoda tells him that his old master, Qui-Gon Jinn, has discovered the secret to immortality, and will train him while in exile, too.

Darth Vader is reconstructed on Coruscant with replacement limbs, and given a mechanical suit to keep him alive. Sidious tells him that it was Vader who killed Padme, which causes him to further give way to his anger. Later, the two Sith Lords are seen on the bridge of a Star Destroyer with Governor Tarkin, overlooking the construction site of the Death Star.

Padme’s funeral is held on Naboo, her body made up to look like she was still pregnant at the time of death. Bail Organa returns to Alderaan with Leia, and Obi-Wan delivers Luke to his family on Tatooine before heading into the desert.

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This is a very busy film! Lucas had a lot of ground to cover, and it really shows with the massive synopsis there! There was a lot to do with the film, and as such many things were cut, unfortunately a significant portion of Padme’s role. I think this is one of the things that annoys me the most about this film, because Padme’s character arc goes from such a strong female lead in Episode I, to just a casualty of Anakin’s fall in Episode III. Originally, she was to have a small handful of scenes that showed the formation of the Rebellion, in broad terms, as Padme was part of a group of senators that included Bail Organa and Mon Mothma who were opposed to the ongoing war and Palpatine’s never-ending term as Chancellor.

We’re left with some fairly stilted “romance” dialogue and awkward moments, which makes the unlikely romance all the more suspicious – did Palpatine really engineer all of this? Possibly. Many people have complained about the wooden acting from Hayden Christensen, which I won’t reiterate, but suffice it to say, Anakin does not come across as a sympathetic character here. He’s whining about the Council not making him a Master (in the Legends continuity, Ki-Adi-Mundi was not a Master during Episode I, at least), which does grate on me. I mean, there’s a moment after the rescue of the Chancellor when you think, yes – that’s the sort of thing that may have drawn the attentions of Senator Amidala.

For all that, though, I do like the film. I think it’s interesting to see how the story develops and serves to link the two trilogies, as it starts out still in-keeping with the pomp and splendour of the art-deco style established in the first two films, but shifts ever-so-subtly into the more austere tone that we know from the original trilogy as the story focuses down on Anakin and Obi-Wan, Yoda and Palpatine. The fact that most of the new characters are dead by the time the film is over is perhaps a help here. Certainly by the time we get to the view of the Death Star from the bridge of that star destroyer, it does feel like a very smooth transition into the original movies.

While Count Dooku was criminally under-used, General Grievous is an interesting villain for the film, and one that I think we could benefit from discovering more about. We did get some further insights in the Clone Wars cartoon series, but it is something of a shame that he just pops into the movie with very little explanation. For such a significant part of the Prequel trilogy, we don’t yet have much in the way of canon media for him, either, which is quite a glaring hole really, but I suppose it’s only with the recent TV shows that Disney seems to have begun to embrace the Prequel era further.

It’s perhaps a casualty of the fact that the film covers so much ground, but I do find myself wanting to learn more about a lot of the stuff that we see on screen. For example, Mustafar is a planet that has begun to be heavily developed in the canon lore, being the site of Vader’s castle etc, but its only purpose here is to serve as the backdrop to the climactic duel. Utapau, a name from the very earliest drafts of Star Wars, is a fascinating world that particularly intrigues me when we see the clones rounding up the natives during Obi-Wan’s escape from the planet. The Order 66 montage has since been explored, with worlds such as Cato Neimoidia and Felucia receiving attention in The Force Unleashed series. Interestingly, the dialogue has a lot more throw-away lines that tie it back to the expanded universe than we have otherwise seen, with mention of Saleucami (also seen in the Order 66 montage) and “Master Vos” – Quinlan Vos is of course a huge figure from the Dark Horse Republic series. It’s something that really surprised me when I first saw the movie, I suppose it’s along the lines of the bounty hunter on Ord Mantell.

The novelization of Episode III is one of the most-lauded of all those books based on the movies. Written by Matthew Stover, who had by this time written a some really stand-out books for the expanded universe, it is renowned for including a lot of additional material that manages to round out the story much more than we’ve seen previously.

So there we have it! The final movie in the Prequel trilogy caps off the clone wars, in what must have been a decidedly odd move for people who only watch the films – it starts in the last third of episode two, and it finished in the first half of episode three. Is that it? We should definitely have had a movie that dealt with the major story beats, I feel. Constraining himself to the character drama of Anakin’s fall to the dark side, Lucas has made a major plot point into nothing but backdrop, really. But I’ll have more to ramble on about this when I finally finish my Great Prequel Re-Read of 2022, so stay tuned! The end is in sight!