Sorry about the delayed responses. I finished NJO a few weeks ago, and have decided to get my ass in gear and start on the Dark Nest Trilogy. I hear the ride from here on out is a...polarizing one.
But it'll be creative and different, which is more than the current canon is. That's always the silver lining when it comes to pioneering into the EU.
For my money, the best depiction of Anakin was Genndy's CW when he goes through the trial to rescue those alien natives who were kidnapped and enslaved by the Separatists. What made it work so well is that you could plainly see Anakin was doing a good thing (rescuing slaves) but something was wrong with how he was doing it. At the end, you can see a moment where he pulls back from the dark side - and it's easy to see how he would would fail another time in the future. George should have capitalized on that and shown in RotS not a nightmare of Padme's fate bothering Anakin, but a war-weary man who just wants to bring peace to the galaxy - even if he has to do so on a pile of bodies.
Agreed. I really like the Gennedy Wars and Dark Horse comics depictions of Anakin. You really see the war take a toll on him, especially right around the threshold of Episode III.
One thing I love about the 2d CW is that they really feel like a galaxy wide conflict. You see battles at random-ass planets with maybe 1 named character in them and the climaxes of every season are those moments where TWO named characters happen to intersect and do battle.
Unless it's changed in later seasons, what I've seen of 3d CW and Rebels gives me the opposite impression. A galaxy-wide conflict SHOULD give a writer plenty of room to run stories without screwing up canon. But no, almost every time there's an episode, several major figures of one side or the other show up; like you could never have battles at 3 different planets simultaneously.
The timeline of events in TCW was always a bit screwy, at least in terms of how much time passes between episodes (weeks, months, etc), so the scale of the war was never really diminished for me in that respect. Someone out there took an insane amount of time to put together a timeline in which the 2D CW, TCW, and Multimedia Project are combined to form one really long, convoluted timeline of events.
It's not perfect, and the merge of a lot of events creates inconsistencies and plot holes, but I'm a fan of the general story and characters for all three projects, so I allow myself a little bit of personal autism in making exceptions so that it can all blend together in my mind.
I can 100% sympathize picking one version of the Clone Wars over the other.
Likewise the Rebels characters can't be helping out the rebellion in remote spots - they always seem to run into Thrawn, or Vader, or Inquisitors. Do they ever have just a random, mid-ranked Imperial officer pursue them for several episodes? Does a random bureaucrat ever give them a challenge?
Well, the difference I can accept between TCW and Rebels is that in Rebels, characters like the Inquisitors are actively looking for the main heroes after they start hindering their operations. Not to mention that throughout the OT, you have numerous battles where Luke/Han/Leia and Vader are on opposite sides in spite of the size of the conflict. I suppose you could trace that back to the franchise's roots as a space opera, in which the focus is on a small set of characters and the drama that unfolds between them.
Rebels was made to feel more like that than TCW was, in many areas. It's not a perfect excuse, and shows a deficiency in the narrative competence of the story, but it allows for a lot of neat scenarios between the characters...something that, at the time I was watching Rebels, I wasn't getting from the ST movies.
Those films break logic and immersion just like Rebels does, and the characters and scenarios at the center of them aren't even fucking good enough to warrant the compromise.
I will say, however, that there are lower-ranked characters like Agent Callus, Minister Tua, and Governor Pryce that give chase later on, but they aren't used anywhere near as much as they should be. And that's a crying shame, since original characters allow for more creative freedom and story immersion than shoving Vader or Thrawn up the protagonists' ass for the 8th time.
I mean fucking Durge is a badass that gives Kenobi a serious challenge in the 2D show - and he's just on a planet protecting a bunch of BANKERS! From what I understand, the closest equivalent the other shows ever gave us were Cad Bane (the bounty hunter?) and that pirate (hondo?) - and they were nearly jokes.
All TCW had was Cade Bane, who I thought was a cool homage to Lee Van Cleef (but that is abject bias from a mouth-breathing Spaghetti Western fan), but he lacked Durge's cool factor in spades. Durge in the Dark Horse comics is especally cool, and he even popped up in the Clone Wars-era Boba Fett Junior Novels, if I'm not mistaken.
You are completely correct, Ahsoka should have died in Rebels as a hero that saved Kanan and Ezra as she was cut down by her former master. Plain and simple. Give us the ending we waited for and give her a hero's death. That would have been best for the character and a pay off to 8 seasons (6 of CW, 2 of Rebels) worth of build up.
I understand why Filoni doesn't want to kill her. She is his greatest contribution to Star Wars, and I can understand the attachment there, but Zahn's greatest contributions to Star Wars were Thrawn and Mara Jade, and, well, yeah.
Beloved characters can retain their integrity and nuance even if they die. In fact, their death can
add to that nuance and integrity, even if it isn't a hero's death or a blaze of glory. One of my favorite characters in the entire New Jedi Order story arc is Nen Yim. And let me tell you, I got really attached to this character and wanted desperately for her to survive the story, which only made the outcome of her storyline all the harder: her death is gut-wrenching, barbaric, cruel and degrading, all made worse by how much of an endearing and sympathetic character she was. But I would never call that death a disservice, especially because of the rage it inspires in other characters. She earned that sad death by virtue of her character, and the emotional response it netted from me was 100% earned by nature of her story. And I would much rather have her stay dead and her sacrifice undefiled than have her be paraded in stories she has no place in, a la Filoni with Ahsoka.
You are completely correct, Ahsoka being around during the OT makes no sense and just like the other countless force user characters they put into the Rebels show, diminishes the stakes in the OT and certainly dimenishes the importance of Luke (which appears to be the goal of everything Disney does now). It's irresponsible and selfish story telling and now they will force these same characters into the Mandalorian. It just really annoys me.
I'm able to denounce all actions with Ahsoka past Season 6 as non-canon anyway, since the Expanded Universe is the only continuity I take seriously (of which TCW is a part of), and Ahsoka's fate remains unknown in that continuity. Remember that Ahsoka is Lucas' character at the end of the day, not Filoni's, and any action taken with her past that point, past Lucas' intentions, is no more legitimate than Rian's efforts with Luke Skywalker.
The creator had nothing to do with it, and didn't even consent to it like the Expanded Universe, therefore rendering it the glorified fanfic efforts of other creators.