Star Wars is a multi-media franchise started by George Lucas with the release of the first film, then called ‘Star Wars’.
Currently, it is owned and painfully mismanaged by Disney.

I don’t recognize anything that was created by Disney to be canon. As far as I’m concerned, the old Expanded Universe (or ‘Legends’) is canon. For this reason…I’m just not really gonna talk about it at all.

This also applies to The Clone Wars – the 3D animated show – which I don’t recognize as canon either. Disney’s canon is built entirely around that show and, well, it ended up breaking everything when it came out.

My perspective is that Disney canon (and The Clone Wars) should be eliminated from canon, with the original EU being used as a foundation for new content instead.

If you’re interested in my reasonings why, I’ll link a few relevant videos here. But for a channel that has proper Star Wars lore, focused around the EU, go to Manda-LORE.

Relevant Videos

All of these videos are concerned with The Clone Wars. The first four are created by Manda-LORE and are focused around how it doesn’t fit into the EU/Legends, or are just focused on EU-related stuff.
The latter two videos are just a retrospective/review of The Clone Wars and are, generally, of a lower quality. There is (or will be at some point) a section in Speculah concerned with an argument from the second video.

• The Truth About the Expanded Universe and the Expanded Universe Movement
• Why "The Clone Wars" Doesn't Fit In Legends
• Why "Star Wars: The Clone Wars" Doesn't Fit In Legends | Part 2
• No, Sorry, The Controversy Was Not "Overblown"
• Star Wars: The Clone Wars Doesn't Hold Up
• Star Wars: The Clone Wars Still Doesn't Hold Up^A)

I’ll keep it mostly barebones for now.

The franchise overall is very good, I’d say. Though with notable hiccups.

I think that the original trilogy is…good, though not as good as it’s often made out to be.

Episode VI is obviously the weakest and the least sensical, though it’s debatable just how bad it is.

I really don’t have that much to say, honestly.

Re-watching this recently, it was pretty good. What else can I really say?

I liked the portrayal of the Empire; they came across as very competent and spooky.

I thought this one was competently put together as well, with the Empire remaining quite competent and spooky.

I think this one does the Empire a little dirty by having them lose to the freaking Ewoks, but otherwise the film is pretty solid. There is no reason given for why Han was suddenly promoted to General though, seeing as he had been frozen in carbonyte since the last film.

The thing I would like to focus on (before I re-write this entire article of course) is that the Jabba the Hutt sequence of events is not actually that stupid. For those unaware, a lot of internet critics (particularly those associated with the EFAP crew, though not exclusively) seem to think that Luke’s plan in Jabba’s palace is completely nonsensical and breaks the film. After re-watching the film, I don’t think this is the case. It only seems to break down if you assume that Luke’s plan was perfectly thought up from beginning to end, but I don’t think so. I think that, instead, Luke simply positioned a few pieces all in one place with the intent of breaking Han out, but he didn’t perfectly plan everything from beginning to end. It was more like Luke had several ideas in mind and he wasn’t sure exactly which one would end up working. The biggest issue with this plan is that Luke couldn’t have known for sure what would happen to everyone involved. My guess is that the actual initial plan was to have Leia break Han out, and then from there break everyone else out from the palace, which failed, forcing Luke to intervene directly.

I’ll re-write this all eventually to be a bit easier to understand of course.

Having grown up watching these films, I have a slight bias towards them. However…I do think that much of the frequently-levied criticism towards these films is not valid.

A lot of strange decisions were made during the production of these films, but it’s also clear that a lot of thought went into it as well.

Among the things that I’d say were good:

• The fact the Jedi Order is not really that great and, in fact, kinda bad.
• The fact the Republic was corrupt, which allowed the Clone Wars to happen and the consequent rise of the Empire.
• The political intrigue, though…meh.

Among the things that I’d say were bad:

• The acting is really weird, though to what extent this is bad is debatable. There are times when you could argue it’s intentional and kinda good.
• The Clone Wars lasting just a few short years is unusual.
• Palpatine’s plan is convoluted and pretty weird all things considered.
• Darth JarJar being abandoned.
• The tech level between the Prequels and Originals possibly being in discord.

But that’s all I’ll say for now. I have a preference for the Clone Wars era, however.

I recently re-watched the film, so I’m thinking of revisiting this article. We’ll see!

The above statement still applies, but for now I’ll just write a few of my thoughts down.

While I was watching the film, I felt engaged almost constantly. I was enjoying myself and didn’t really have the urge to do other things to be honest. There were a few moments where I rolled my eyes (a lot of the JarJar comedy was just bad, though I did almost laugh at one moment; Anakin was a little off sometimes), but otherwise I didn’t think it was bad at all. I was even surprised to find that the acting was good.^B)

The visuals were pretty good too. Naboo is actually beautiful.

After a recent re-watch, this is where I started wondering why people think these films are bad. Seriously not terrible.

More to be written later.

Same re-watch situation, except one comment I have for now is that the fights (especially the Palpatine/Yoda and Obi-Wan/Anakin fights) were really engaging, to the point I was completely silent during those fights.

More to be written later.

• Honestly? No clue what I’d link here.