Clone Wars is NOT A KIDS SHOW... but did that make it better or worse?

I agree because the movies don't have genocide, suicide, marital abuse (the only way I can describe how Anakin treats Padme with Clovis around), beheadings, political terrorism, and a long list of others.

 

It is a kids show, more specifically one directed at teenagers I would say, but that doesn't mean it can't have some darker and emotional stuff.

 

Of course it has darker themes than a exclusively for kids show but it is really good.

 

As someone who first watched TCW as a teenager, I completely agree.

 

An add on to my first post. Star Wars is meant for kids 8-14ish. The PG-13 ratings these days we’ll no parent really listens to them. And at least from my experience the PG-13 rating has moved in on the PG rating while also moving in on the R rating. I don’t know how to fix it but it doesn’t matter. Star Wars is meant for young people. Kids or teenagers. Adults also like it and I think Disney is just fine with that. That’s what people need to remember the future of the franchise isn’t us. We are old news it’s the younger kids. What brought the 20 somethings into Star Wars? It was TCW. I whole heartedly think it’s a kids show, doesn’t mean I don’t love it. I do. But you gotta recognize that the money for this franchise is with the kids. A vast majority of adult Star Wars fans are like me. We buy books, but that’s where our Star Wars merchandise stops. Most of the people getting the toys and what have you are the kids and teenagers.

Why do you think one of the Main leads for TCW was a 14 year old? Cause that’s the high end of the demographic the show was aiming for. Why do you think most Star Wars protagonists are young adults usually 19? Because Star Wars is about change and growing up. And what better way to show it then showing the change from a teenager to adult. Kids don’t look up to other kids so it helps with role models.

TLDR. Look at the main themes of Star Wars. Hell if you don’t want to do that just remember George Lucas himself said the movies were made for kids. So I think that sums up who TCW was made for

 

Definitely for the better. I once read that if you write something for children and it only appeals to children, then you've failed. One of things that bothers me about the kid TV shows of today is that they treat children like they are...dumb? They don't think a child can stay 22 minutes in front of the TV, remember the plot of a show and so on. They don't go into some dark places like Avatar, TCW or Teen Titans to name a few. They managed to balance humor and randomness in some moments and the sheer darkness created through adding some pieces like Maul (his entrance into the show was full of madness), not going into the rabbit hole of making war fun (sometimes I feel like violence is shown as fun on TV, omitting the consequences of it) and presenting valuable and yet simple lessons (Sinube teaching Ahsoka patience - one of my favorite episodes). The Clone Wars, without being "not only for kids" would just be another generic show without anything important to teach and show their audience. As someone who began watching TCW back when I was 9-10 I believe that shows like this are good for children. Certainly much better than what I see as 15 minutes of random and meaningless TV that is shown today.

 

Perhaps I wouldn't go as far as to say "braindead" (just cause I'd word it differently) but...yeah. Sometimes I felt like Rebels tried to stay away from the darkness when it could have embraced it - at least for a few minutes (or an episode). It's like they were holding back. One of the things that bothers me about Rebels is that they threw Ezra's potential darkness into our heads and just as quickly threw it out of the window.

But The Clone Wars had it all, just as you said. Lessons on what can be described simply as morality: stuff like Assaj Ventress finding out what cargo is she helping transport, Boba learning that he is not an immoral killer - things like that make us see that in a world where an army is pulling the trigger without hesitation there are moments when people need to step back, think for a while and make a decision. Akin to Avatar: what do WE want, not what others want. I believe that to be a powerful message for kids.

 

Oh definitely. When I read your post I straight away thought of Hondo's pig-friend that flew into the sky due to an explosion AND SURVIVED. Things like this break the immersion. TCW had you immersed in the world you were seeing on the screen through, sometimes to a scary degree, how real (how adequate it was for a world in the Star Wars universe) it appeared. You could see the pain and happiness - it felt real. Rebels lacked it.

 

That's not the case. Terba died in that explosion. (The three ugnaughts showing up later are different dudes).

And I don't know which SW:Rebels you guys have been watching, but it is DEFINITELY not lighthearted and "kiddie". They kill people all the time in this show (I'm rewatching it atm) and it goes quite dark indeed. I found TCW a lot more childish and lighthearted, with its countless purposeless action scenes (only color and movement and no actual content in those scenes), ridiculous romances (which are a lot more subtle and believable in SW:R), and fart jokes etc.


The Ghost crew are all tormented people, some even more so than Anakin, and all more so than Ahsoka, Kenobi, the clones, etc. And in Rebels, people get tortured and murdered all the time, with threats and challenges always being personal rather than just the combat obstacle of the week for super-Jedi to slice their way through (i.e. in TCW). In Rebels, every victory comes at a cost (at least from mid-season 1 onwards), a loss of something the Specters can't do without (have y'all noticed how quickly the Specter fighter pilots die off?), whereas in TCW, every failure (of which there are few) comes at no real cost at all, and there's always the Republic Fleet to come swooping in, deus ex machina, to save the heroes in the final act.

TCW is a lot more kiddie a show than SW:R, although the latter is more of a family show, for sure.

 

You're right Rebels does have some dark moments, I mean it's obviously nowhere near as gritty and hard-hitting as TCW but I think it was held back in that regard because it was made for the Disney channel and it had to fit their "guidelines".

--- Double Post Merged, May 12, 2021, Original Post Date: May 12, 2021 ---

Anyway...

*Language warning*

 

I mean, at least TCW didn't have helicopter-sabers...

Rebels hit hard at times, but I also felt like it really pulled it's punches too, and not just in the graphic department. Maul and Ezra's arc is very much a tease for something that it feels like was never going to happen, but even this was a microcosm of small things that I feel like TCW would have dealt with differently.
Maul, Saw Gerrera, Kallus' turn to the light, etc, these are things that didn't feel fully fleshed out when compared to what TCW did.

For example, back to Maul and Ezra, if this was TCW, I have no doubt that Maul may have ended up corrupting Ezra, and if Ezra redeemed himself, he'd had a long struggle back towards the Light.* If Rebels was like TCW or even closer in tone to Rogue One** then Saw Gerrera would have absolutely smashed that egg on Geonosis, and the rest of the crew would have to wrestle with the fact that he's still an ally that they may need because he gets results. Let Ezra struggle with the whole "it's not just when we fight, but how we fight" side of things.
And Kallus' turn was very much a "oops, I recruited him, sorry," without any rhyme or reason. Again, I know why they revealed the story in that way, and I know why they couldn't go back to see how it came to be - Rebels wasn't an anthology show in the same vein as TCW. But there was a lot missing for that story to work as impactfully as it did - look at Asajj Ventress' turn against the Sith. Homegirl had at least four episodes dedicated to that arc. Kallus got two episodes that worked, but not as well as I think they could have.

Lastly is the main characters. I think TCW gets a lot more credit than it may deserve in this because while only two characters really changed (Anakin and Ahsoka), the show did a PHENOMENAL job of making Anakin likeable, actually showing the progression of his friendship with Obi-Wan, and overall showing everything ROTS's opening scroll told us. Ahsoka was a big factor as well, since she grew from that annoying kid no one really liked into the strong, confidant, self-respecting young woman we see at the end of the show.

Ezra...Ezra doesn't really change too much. He's still the same street kid at the beginning of the show as he is at the end. This isn't bad per se, but it's not great, especially when Kanan has such a good arc.*** Zeb also gets flak for having two episodes at most and very little overall development or interesting dynamics (outside of what he has with Kallus. Which is great, but never explored in as much detail as it could be).

Overall, I won't say that Rebels didn't go dark or gritty, but I believe it's focus on "family" and family entertainment actually turned it into something that fans feel is a little more...child-friendly, than what it meant to be. Or what @MandoChip said.



*Which, Star Wars as a whole frankly hates showing. Any Dark Side character that comes back to the Light Side, or finds the Light Side, almost immediately ends up dying. There is one exception, and his fate is uncertain right now, so even he's a solid "maybe." Star Wars loves "Redemption Equals Death" but it hates the idea of atonement and repentance. I've found more complex arcs like that in other "for all ages" stories, like Rurouni Kenshin, Avatar: The Last Airbender, and My Hero Academia (which is currently handling it the best and with the most complexity).

I understand that Rebels was going for a "kid falling under the wrong type of influence" story, but what happens when a kid under the influence does something they can't take back? How do you build up hope for THOSE kids?

**Where Saw was willing to torture potential turn-coats and lose vital information on the chance they could be a spy. He's an extremist here, and while Rebels clearly tried to show how rough Saw was becoming, I find it hard to believe that he wasn't mostly there by the time he met the Rebels crew.

***Speaking of Kanan, I have some issues with his relationship with Hera.

Spoiler: Season 4 Spoilers

I remember my friends and I watching Season 4 and being annoyed at the Big Kiss and Jacen at the end, not because we didn't see it coming (although to be fair, we didn't see it coming), but because we had assumed since the beginning Kanan and Hera had been sleeping together or - or at least in some sort of intimate relationship - and keeping it as low-key as they could. In the first episode Kanan walks out of Hera's room in order to confront Ezra. Hera calls Kanan pet-names, and knows his real name. Kanan was also heavily flirting with her in A New Dawn, so to me it felt almost natural that they'd have a relationship by the time Rebels came around. If the characters had said "yeah we're married," I don't think anyone would have bat an eye. (Other than hardcore canon freaks or gatekeeping fans, who would be mad that a Jedi was married...but if it was after the Order was destroyed and rebuilt, and during the time Kanan didn't proclaim himself to be a Jedi, then it would have been fine. Their whole relationship lent itself towards a maturity of modern relationships that I'm not sure TCW would have addressed, but then Season 4's Big Kiss (and the subsequent Rebels Recon breakdown) really backtracked on all of that.