I honestly think the Clone Wars era is ripe with possibilities. The Original Trilogy era wasn't really much of a war. It was mostly full of episodes which featured the Empire searching out hidden rebel bases, and maybe small rebel strike groups performing hit and run attacks against the Empire. Any large scale battles took place on screen in the movies. There isn't much left to work with in that erah as far as depicting a full scale war goes. I wasn't too satisfied with most of the conflicts that the Extended Universe books were able to portray after
ROTJ. I liked the
Grand Admiral Thrawn Trilogy, and I liked the
Rogue Squadron series.
The Jedi Academy Trilogy was ok. I wasn't thrilled by
the New Jedi Order or
the Corelian Trilogy, or
the Black Fleet Crisis.
I just think it is a very difficult thing to come up with interesting villains and conflicts that weren't first established by George Lucas. Not that I think he is perfect, but a lot of the post
ROTJ stuff seems counterfiet, and reads like soap operas
.
The Clone Wars are altogether different though. The prequels didn't focus much on actually showing what went on in the battle field. But they did show enough so that the audience knew it was a full scale war on multiple fronts, so there are endless full scale battle scenarios that our heroes can encounter in the show.
I think the show drops the ball in one critical regard. The heroes seem to turn up victorious at the end of almost every campaign. I think that is hurting the suspense factor a lot. General Grievous was supposed to be a military genuis, who almost never lost a battle, save for when the Sith Lords set him up to loose. This cartoon doesn't really depict him in that light.
Many of the comic books were far more dire than this cartoon. The Republic didn't always win, and they weren't always made out to look like the good guys. Sometimes they were forced to settle for complete failure as in the
Star Wars Republic series titled
the Battle of Jabiim