#sw animation
I think people who constantly compare the three Star Wars shows fail to appreciate just how unique they all are from each other.
Clone Wars was a show that took place in the middle of a huge intergalactic war. Since it was a passion project from Lucas himself, it had by far the biggest budget of the three shows and as such was able to regularly show huge, epic, cinematic battles, giving the show a massive, grand scale. It explored themes of corrupt governments and how war forces good people to give up their morals for what they believe to be the greater good, begging the question of “what’s the point in winning a war if we can’t live with ourselves afterwards?”.
Rebels was a show that, like the OT, centered around a team of underdogs against a tyrannical Empire, but unlike the OT, which took place during open warfare, Rebels takes place BEFORE open warfare has been officially declared, as the many rebel cells don’t officially come together until towards the end of the show. As such, there’s only two huge battles, once in the season 3 finale and again in the series finale, while most other episodes show missions that involve recruiting people or stealing supplies that they need, essentially showing the Rebel Alliance slowly being built from the ground up. While the previous show explored the fall of democracy, this show explores a group of unlikely heroes laying the foundation for people to rise up to restore democracy.
And Resistance in particular was a pleasant surprise in how unique it is from its older siblings. Considering how the sequel trilogy went out of its way to hit the reset button on everything in an attempt to recreate the rebels vs empire story all over again, I was kind of expecting Resistance to be a carbon copy of Rebels, but, while they have similar titles and follow similar story structures, they’re very different. Resistance explores how war affects average citizens who have been living in an age of relative peace until now, and uses a Battlestar Galactica-esque premise as the framing device for this. Only a handful of the recurring protagonists have any actual military training, while the rest are just normal people who were thrust into this conflict against their will and are essentially refugees now, and the main heroes have to keep them safe. Obviously Clone Wars and Rebels both had episodes focused on civilians as well, but it wasn’t really a MAIN theme like it is with Resistance.
And the fact that all three of these shows are made by the same people just makes it even more impressive that they all have their own distinct thing to set them apart from one another. The Star Wars animation team has range and aren’t afraid to try new things, and they understand Star Wars enough that they can tell multiple types of stories in the universe and give each of these stories having their own identity while still feeling true to Star Wars, and people really need to appreciate that more.
