Along with the Clone Troopers themselves, the Separatist Droid Army never reached its creative potential in the Star Wars prequels. The prequels sought to take advantage of the rapid advancements in CGI effects at the time, which meant focusing on the surface details without bothering to flesh out the concepts beyond that. So while the antagonists had a strong visual appeal, they lacked any real character. However, the Star Wars: The Clone Wars animated series dug deeper into what the Separatist Droid Army could be and took the time to bring what it found to life.

The Star Wars Prequels' Droids Were Comic Relief

Battle droids confront the Jedi

The Separatist Droid Army's look on the vast CGI battlefields of the prequels provided a nice visual contrast to the Jedi and their Clone Troopers, as well as giving the Jedi plenty of targets to kill without harming the PG rating. However, otherwise, they were comic relief intended to evoke a quick laugh in between more consequential fights. This ended up diminishing the force's threat potential.

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In many ways, the prequel droids were just re-skinned versions of the original Star Wars trilogy's Stormtroopers. While George Lucas' version of those baddies wasn't especially funny, pop culture did eventually start poking fun at them, giving them more weight and depth in the process.

Efforts like 1997’s short Troops and the animated series Robot Chicken depicted these previously anonymous foot soldiers as hapless working Joes punching a clock. Suddenly, they had more of a soul. They were funny, yes, but they also had more weight and depth -- there were people under that armor. So in lampooning Star Wars, Robot Chicken and other satires showed The Clone Wars exactly what the Droid Army needed.

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Star Wars: The Clone Wars Made Its Droid Army Funny & Dangerous

Battle Droids Star Wars Clone Wars

While the original Star Wars trilogy did a good job of humanizing droids, starting with R2-D2 and C-3P0, there was comparatively little time in the prequels dedicated to exploring the Separatist Droid Army and its characters. The Clone Wars, though, needed to fill numerous episodes with the Droid Army and have its members do more than just die at the end of a lightsaber. That meant making the droids funnier, while simultaneously enhancing their potential as a threat. The audience had to feel they were a danger to the Jedi without losing the entertainment value of watching them go down like dominoes.

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Making the Separatist Droid Army funnier required taking a page straight from the Troops playbook by having them screw up and the audience then watching the consequences. In the 90-minute pilot movie for The Clone Wars, a pair of B-1s bicker over the sector number they’re supposed to be shooting at, which leads to one of them plummeting to his doom like Wile E. Coyote. It's a short moment in a much larger movie, but it evoked bigger laughs than anything the Droid Army did in the prequels.

However, The Clone Wars also quickly made its Droid Army more menacing, giving them a cruel streak and showing them actually enjoying the suffering they inflicted. The Jedi were placed under further duress when confronting them, and the danger made both for more creative fight scenes, and an increased bite to the humor as the mean-spirited B1s inevitably met their comeuppance.

While the show didn't flesh out them out as much as the Clone Troopers, The Clone Wars added more to the Separatist Droid Army. That effort went a long way to turning the Droid Army's soldiers into more beloved (if still comic) figures in the Star Wars universe after the prequels failed to take them seriously.

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