The best steward of the Star Wars banner during the time between the Original Trilogy and the Sequel Trilogy turned out to be Star Wars: Clone Wars. I certainly will grant the Prequels their moments and love Episode III, but as a whole they don’t match the body of work Dave Filoni and his team did in fleshing out The Clone Wars into the conflict we’d always wanted to see. It was a shame it couldn’t have one more season (season six was painfully truncated) to finish out storylines, but they are addressing them in their subsequent ongoing series Star Wars: Rebels
One of the best and most interesting storylines over the course of the show was the return of Darth Maul. Maul was the villain who should’ve gotten the screentime and films that it seems Kylo Ren will in the Sequel Trilogy. There’s no arguing that his epic duel with Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon in The Phantom Menace is one of the best moments in the saga, but cutting him in half at the end wasted a lot of potential for future encounters that The Clone Wars was happy to resurrect.
Outfitted with cybernetic legs and with his brother, Savage Opress (least subtle Star Wars name ever), Maul is faced with his former master, who is not terribly pleased his horned apprentice has been meddling in his affairs. What follows is one of the best duels of the series and pure Sith on Sith awesomeness.
Maul should have survived TPM. His death hurts because there is no clear central villain for most of the prequels. But if one big thing had been different, his quick exit from the saga would have been OK.
The one big thing is this: the movies should have been upfront about Palpatine being Sidious. If Palps had been the dynamic central villain in all three films, the political stuff would have been infinitely more interesting, and there could have been even more of it. The ONLY reason the trade dispute in TPM is remotely interesting is that we know it it’s manufactured by Palpatine (Machiavellian psychopath and secret Sith Lord) as he begins his rise to power. But because that info is kept secret until Episode III, all that is left for the audience to latch onto is the trade dispute. Sure it’s easy to tell that Palps and Sidious are one. But half the point of the prequels is to show the Republic turning into the Empire. Why hide the true nature of the man who is destined to crown himself emperor? Instead Sidious is kept in the shadows, and most of the intrigue happens offscreen. This leaves a serious lacuna at the center of the prequels, and makes them seem emptier than they are.
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I agree. They could have bumped Grievous up a film and used him more also. There were great baddies but they were put to poor use and given little screen time.
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