Star Wars: The Clone Wars – Part 3
Jul. 9th, 2021 09:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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tori_reviewsStar Wars: The Clone Wars – Part 3: 5x06-5x09
Well, with the last arc I came away thinking that I probably would have thought it was mostly good whichever way I watched it, this time, my opinion gets a pretty big boost by watching it as one story. In that I will say that on balance the story was…fine. Not good, but doing it this way I get to the point where I think that I’m glad I watched it once, but I have no desire or expectation of ever wanting to watch it again.
Annoyingly, since each episode is so different, I kind of have to review this in pieces anyway. At least a little bit, because I do have issues with the arc as a whole, but I need to get some episode specific notes out of the way.
-So the introduction in the first part did nothing to convince me that the Jedi aren’t a cult. Nor did anything else that episode. So much needless child endangerment.
-Is it just me, or do all these child characters just look like mini-versions of other characters?
-This episode and event are called The Gathering, shouldn’t it be about teamwork? No, I guess.
-Why isn’t R2 with Anakin? They really should have given Ahsoka her own robot sidekick. Also, where did Yoda go?
-Really, why do people like Hando? I don’t get it.
-Is Ahsoka’s plan as bad as I think it is? Yes, yes it is. Brave, but stupid.
-Damn it, I wanted a big Cody centered episode where he had to babysit Jedi kids.
-Those all looked like blue crystals, why are some of the lightsabers green? Or is the question why there aren’t any other colors besides blue and green?
-I literally started yawning every time they would cut back to the Grievous fight in 5x08. Pretty to look at, but I basically can’t care any less about pew pew fights like that.
-Dear god, these plans are stupid, prove that you can get someone into the ship before you form a barrel of monkeys chain.
-As the story went on, the fact that they had basically just substituted the new droid in for Threepio became more and more obvious.
-You can’t just lampshade the fact that Hando changed character midway through the story, that’s not the same as earning it.
Okay, so those few quick bits out of the way, let’s talk about the more far reaching issues (although some of those quick points are still quite relevant).
The biggest and broadest one being that I don’t like any of these kids. I don’t remember any of these names, and as I don’t know what some of the species are called I can’t even call them that. Nor did any of them have a defined character trait besides maybe nervous girl and asshole boy. Then there’s the Wookie, mini-Kit, I guess one was a Rhodian, and…the other one.
This show has an, admittedly understandably, recurring idea that bringing in a group of kids for an episode/arc is going to be interesting. Maybe it does work for the show’s younger audience, but it generally pisses me off. Or at least makes my eyes and brain glaze over and I just don’t care. In some ways I’m glad we at least got a little more with them over the whole arc (unlike say, the Mando kids); but in others, they’re all so bland and forgettable that I don’t like that we spent so much time with them.
I will be quite curious if, when we get to the RotS stuff, the show actually has the guts to populate Anakin’s murder spree with kid Jedi we’ve met.
Also, the voice acting on the kids is not very good. I thought the kind of stuffed up sounds were intentional in the first part since they were on an ice planet, but it didn’t go away. I didn’t like it even when I thought there was a reason, I really didn’t like it once it was clear there wasn’t.
Though, on a similar front, I really wanted Grievous to kill asshole boy. The kid talked earlier in the story about how he wanted to kill Grievous, so it would have been dramatic irony for him to be killed by Grievous. Also, I still have the same wish I had early in the show, that they would show the Jedi kills that Grievous took his lightsabers from. I just think that would have been a really well-thought thing to do, which I guess is why they didn’t do it, because I don’t really believe this show is well thought out.
It has good stories, even more good moments, but halfway through s5 it’s not going to convince me it had a well thought out plan for how the story unfolds. How far are we supposed to be from RotS now? When was the last time they did anything to develop Anakin towards the choice he’s going to make in RotS?
Ahsoka does remain the bright spot of the series, and is here too; even if it’s pretty contrived that she would have been on this mission. Would it kill them to do something that says after the last adventure, she’s taking some down time to reconnect with Jedi ways? If the show had a better (or any) track record with those kind of things I could probably assume it, but as is it feels like I’d be making things up to compensate for the absence in the story. Also, it might help if this story was about her instead of the dumb kids, wouldn’t it be a novelty if a main character on the show was actually the main focus of a story (last arc was better at it, but still very situation based).
So since I’ve been reviewing HDM I kind of realize what I hate about Yoda; he’s Aslan; and as I’ve said a few times in those reviews I flipping hate Aslan. He’s supposed to be this wise mentor/sagely character, but all I see is an asshole who’s managed to impose his view of the Force on hundreds of years of Jedi when his shouldn’t be the only way to be a Jedi.
Which is sort of connected with a problem in the first episode of this arc, that lingers over the other episodes. What little characterization the kids are given in that first episode doesn’t inform their actions in the next episodes. Either to show that they’ve overcome their established flaw (which are pretty inconsistent) or show that it’s characterization because character flaws aren’t fixed by one little quest narrative.
While I maintain that viewing this in arcs rather than episodes is helping my opinion of this arc, it does make a lot of my thoughts blur together/blur each other out. I know had more I could have said, it’s flitted away.
The story remains…fine.
Well, with the last arc I came away thinking that I probably would have thought it was mostly good whichever way I watched it, this time, my opinion gets a pretty big boost by watching it as one story. In that I will say that on balance the story was…fine. Not good, but doing it this way I get to the point where I think that I’m glad I watched it once, but I have no desire or expectation of ever wanting to watch it again.
Annoyingly, since each episode is so different, I kind of have to review this in pieces anyway. At least a little bit, because I do have issues with the arc as a whole, but I need to get some episode specific notes out of the way.
-So the introduction in the first part did nothing to convince me that the Jedi aren’t a cult. Nor did anything else that episode. So much needless child endangerment.
-Is it just me, or do all these child characters just look like mini-versions of other characters?
-This episode and event are called The Gathering, shouldn’t it be about teamwork? No, I guess.
-Why isn’t R2 with Anakin? They really should have given Ahsoka her own robot sidekick. Also, where did Yoda go?
-Really, why do people like Hando? I don’t get it.
-Is Ahsoka’s plan as bad as I think it is? Yes, yes it is. Brave, but stupid.
-Damn it, I wanted a big Cody centered episode where he had to babysit Jedi kids.
-Those all looked like blue crystals, why are some of the lightsabers green? Or is the question why there aren’t any other colors besides blue and green?
-I literally started yawning every time they would cut back to the Grievous fight in 5x08. Pretty to look at, but I basically can’t care any less about pew pew fights like that.
-Dear god, these plans are stupid, prove that you can get someone into the ship before you form a barrel of monkeys chain.
-As the story went on, the fact that they had basically just substituted the new droid in for Threepio became more and more obvious.
-You can’t just lampshade the fact that Hando changed character midway through the story, that’s not the same as earning it.
Okay, so those few quick bits out of the way, let’s talk about the more far reaching issues (although some of those quick points are still quite relevant).
The biggest and broadest one being that I don’t like any of these kids. I don’t remember any of these names, and as I don’t know what some of the species are called I can’t even call them that. Nor did any of them have a defined character trait besides maybe nervous girl and asshole boy. Then there’s the Wookie, mini-Kit, I guess one was a Rhodian, and…the other one.
This show has an, admittedly understandably, recurring idea that bringing in a group of kids for an episode/arc is going to be interesting. Maybe it does work for the show’s younger audience, but it generally pisses me off. Or at least makes my eyes and brain glaze over and I just don’t care. In some ways I’m glad we at least got a little more with them over the whole arc (unlike say, the Mando kids); but in others, they’re all so bland and forgettable that I don’t like that we spent so much time with them.
I will be quite curious if, when we get to the RotS stuff, the show actually has the guts to populate Anakin’s murder spree with kid Jedi we’ve met.
Also, the voice acting on the kids is not very good. I thought the kind of stuffed up sounds were intentional in the first part since they were on an ice planet, but it didn’t go away. I didn’t like it even when I thought there was a reason, I really didn’t like it once it was clear there wasn’t.
Though, on a similar front, I really wanted Grievous to kill asshole boy. The kid talked earlier in the story about how he wanted to kill Grievous, so it would have been dramatic irony for him to be killed by Grievous. Also, I still have the same wish I had early in the show, that they would show the Jedi kills that Grievous took his lightsabers from. I just think that would have been a really well-thought thing to do, which I guess is why they didn’t do it, because I don’t really believe this show is well thought out.
It has good stories, even more good moments, but halfway through s5 it’s not going to convince me it had a well thought out plan for how the story unfolds. How far are we supposed to be from RotS now? When was the last time they did anything to develop Anakin towards the choice he’s going to make in RotS?
Ahsoka does remain the bright spot of the series, and is here too; even if it’s pretty contrived that she would have been on this mission. Would it kill them to do something that says after the last adventure, she’s taking some down time to reconnect with Jedi ways? If the show had a better (or any) track record with those kind of things I could probably assume it, but as is it feels like I’d be making things up to compensate for the absence in the story. Also, it might help if this story was about her instead of the dumb kids, wouldn’t it be a novelty if a main character on the show was actually the main focus of a story (last arc was better at it, but still very situation based).
So since I’ve been reviewing HDM I kind of realize what I hate about Yoda; he’s Aslan; and as I’ve said a few times in those reviews I flipping hate Aslan. He’s supposed to be this wise mentor/sagely character, but all I see is an asshole who’s managed to impose his view of the Force on hundreds of years of Jedi when his shouldn’t be the only way to be a Jedi.
Which is sort of connected with a problem in the first episode of this arc, that lingers over the other episodes. What little characterization the kids are given in that first episode doesn’t inform their actions in the next episodes. Either to show that they’ve overcome their established flaw (which are pretty inconsistent) or show that it’s characterization because character flaws aren’t fixed by one little quest narrative.
While I maintain that viewing this in arcs rather than episodes is helping my opinion of this arc, it does make a lot of my thoughts blur together/blur each other out. I know had more I could have said, it’s flitted away.
The story remains…fine.
