2. Strong Female Characters
This has always been a failing of the Star War movies. I love Leia, but Cracked convinced me she was a bad character with this
Why Star Wars is Secretly Terrifying for Women.
In the prequels, the only notable female characters are Shmi Skywalker and Padme Amidala. Shmi is a complete non-actor, whose only importance to the plot is that she encourages Anakin to go, and then dies and becomes important to his fall to the dark side. Not exactly a role model for little girls. And Padme seems pretty cool for a while: shes the leader of her planet (even if she is easily manipulated by Palpatine), she fights, shes the arbitrator in her relationship with Anakin. For a politician she doesnt seem to do much politicking, but whatever. Then we come to the final movie, where she does basically nothing but sit around looking pregnant and crying over her husbands deteriorating condition. She doesnt actually DO anything except go after Anakin to ask for an explanation, unwittingly bringing Obi-Wan to him. Then she dies because she lost the will to live, her identity so consumed by loving her husband that she wont even hang on for the kids.
But Clone Wars has FANTASTIC female characters. The first thing they did was add a bunch. Theres Lumiara Unduli and her padawan Barriss Offee. Theres Dookus sort-of apprentice Asajj Ventress (who constantly flirts with Obi-Wan for inscrutable reasons). Duchess Satine is the pacifist leader of her conflict-riddled planet, a conscientious objector to the Clone War, and a powerful force. And theres Anakins padawan Ahsoka Tano, a complicated and conflicted character with all the depth you could hope for. Even Padme gets some solid character expansion, making friends with other ladies, working for her own agenda, and even rescuing herself at least once. I cant tell you why the ladies are so much better in Clone Wars. Maybe its because the executive producer was named Catherine Winder. Maybe its because there were many episodes written by women, or there were an unusual proportion of women in the crew. Or maybe its because someone finally noticed that Mr. Lucas was barely and badly representing half the human race.