Star Wars: The Clone Wars Arc 7.1
Aug. 18th, 2021 11:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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tori_reviewsStar Wars: The Clone Wars Arc 7.1 (ep 1-4)
My opinion of this arc is bouncing in a dozen different directions, I think it averages out to fine but it’s got a lot of good and bad in it.
One of my more thought out points of this arc is that it feels somewhat…or a lot, corporate. Hey wouldn’t you like to see more of these new characters? Look at these new marketable potential toys. Doesn’t this part look good, wouldn’t you like to play a video game like this? That kind of thing. I sort of suspected going in that this arc would feel like the back-door pilot that it is and it lived up to it, but was somehow more that than I expected.
And I’m not sold on these new characters. I like that they’re each distinct, one of my problems with investing in most of the clone characters is that they all kind of blend together. But as I said above, their distinctiveness feels like it’s there to sell them either for the next show or as toys. You can’t just pretend that your Fives action figure is Hunter for example, because Hunter is different.
But at the same time, I do feel like there is potential in this concept being given its own story. If it is a proper ensemble show that follows a consistent group of characters. You would want them to have distinct personalities then so that they’re not all going to have the same reactions and people watching can identify who is who. So as cynical as I think this is, I don’t necessarily think it’s bad.
What I will not forgive is the animation, which is bad. It should be quite a bit better. It’s been as long since the show previously ended to now as it was from when it started to when it ended, and the animation largely got better over those years, so it should have shown equal improvement, instead of being worse.
This is actually tied in with my view of what the show is doing with the Bad Batch, because they (and by extension the clones in general) look like there was extra money spent on their character models, because they’re more important going forward. Basically everyone else looks like a video game character from a few console generations ago.
I hope that doesn’t remain a problem, but I’m not sure why they would animate the show’s main characters so weirdly in one arc if it wasn’t the character model they were using for this season. If I’m holding out hope, it’s that the Bad Batch was already in the works when they got the go ahead on s7 of this show; and the old character models for some reason weren’t compatible so this arc is a little rushed. I don’t quite believe that unless it does get better from here, but it’s a slight possibility.
Also, still kind of on the back-door pilot aspect, this episode seemed very preoccupied with being cool and hip with the youth. After making a bunch of edgy clones that go against the spirit of clones, the previously mentioned video game action scenes were the biggest indicator of that. Then again, I always found the action on this show to be bland, so maybe I’m overly critical.
But it also seemed to be shouting about ‘we’re going to get the canon lined up, we promise.’ Mostly with regard to Anakin and Padme, because they never really do explain why Cody was with this team at the start since he works with Obi-wan usually and Kenobi wasn’t there yet. It’s just making a point of ‘look we’ve had Anakin and Padme apart for an extended period of time, and do you notice how Padme looks pregnant, especially if you know she should be at this point.’ And I don’t hate them doing that, but it’s so inconsistent with the way the show has been handled, and I didn’t have years’ worth for time to wait between seasons to lose track.
And while it’s definitely not continuity-breaking that Obi-wan and Rex clearly know what’s up with Anakin and Padme, it also kind of comes out of nowhere. Ahsoka’s comment that, yeah she knows why Anakin would want to leave the Order, mostly worked for me when it happened. But this felt a little too…cheerful of Obi-wan to just tease Anakin about it; the talk they had last season where Obi-wan tried not to admit that he’s always known about the pair worked a lot better than this.
Though hey, finally Anakin gets back to the point in his arc he was already at in season 2. He uses extreme measures, and it works for him, he even gets praised for his results. This should have happened more often seasons ago, but it’s not bad to see it back.
I still haven’t made up my mind how to describe the writing in this episode. I want to say it’s a good idea (apart for the cynical creation), but the writing (especially in the first couple episodes) didn’t flow right. I wish the reveal of Echo being alive had come as a complete surprise, but Rex had already kind of thought of it so his eventual realization doesn’t pack the punch it could have.
I really wanted there to be a cost to this adventure, but there wasn’t. I sort of expected that the rescue-Echo mission would end up getting Echo killed to save the people who came to rescue him; like he had to stay hacked into the computers to keep their escape route safe. And then we’re told how dangerous the mission at the end is, but it never feels like it. And when it’s the new characters that have god tier prowess it doesn’t establish them as well rounded characters. I won’t quite call them Gary Stu characters, I’m not even sure they’re well established enough to call them that, but so far I don’t feel any…internal life from these guys.
As seems to happen often with this show (so they haven’t changed that much in the off-years) is that the last part of the arc feels like it should be part of a different arc. Have a two or three episode arc about finding and rescuing Echo, then a separate two episode arc focused on Echo and about how he comes back. The mistrust of him comes out of nowhere and isn’t much explored at all. After the show took the time in the first episode to have Rex angsting over the old picture, and about the fallen, it could have come back into play. Echo learning that Fives is dead; Echo coming to terms with the fact that his mind got a lot of clones killed even if he didn’t mean to; Echo in the end needing to go on a different path in order to figure out where he fits after what he’s been through. Some of that is hinted at, but there’s no time or space given to it, so it’s not really part of the story as far as I’m concerned.
Like I said, this basically averages out to fine, but there’s a lot of various points that are taken in to get that average.
My opinion of this arc is bouncing in a dozen different directions, I think it averages out to fine but it’s got a lot of good and bad in it.
One of my more thought out points of this arc is that it feels somewhat…or a lot, corporate. Hey wouldn’t you like to see more of these new characters? Look at these new marketable potential toys. Doesn’t this part look good, wouldn’t you like to play a video game like this? That kind of thing. I sort of suspected going in that this arc would feel like the back-door pilot that it is and it lived up to it, but was somehow more that than I expected.
And I’m not sold on these new characters. I like that they’re each distinct, one of my problems with investing in most of the clone characters is that they all kind of blend together. But as I said above, their distinctiveness feels like it’s there to sell them either for the next show or as toys. You can’t just pretend that your Fives action figure is Hunter for example, because Hunter is different.
But at the same time, I do feel like there is potential in this concept being given its own story. If it is a proper ensemble show that follows a consistent group of characters. You would want them to have distinct personalities then so that they’re not all going to have the same reactions and people watching can identify who is who. So as cynical as I think this is, I don’t necessarily think it’s bad.
What I will not forgive is the animation, which is bad. It should be quite a bit better. It’s been as long since the show previously ended to now as it was from when it started to when it ended, and the animation largely got better over those years, so it should have shown equal improvement, instead of being worse.
This is actually tied in with my view of what the show is doing with the Bad Batch, because they (and by extension the clones in general) look like there was extra money spent on their character models, because they’re more important going forward. Basically everyone else looks like a video game character from a few console generations ago.
I hope that doesn’t remain a problem, but I’m not sure why they would animate the show’s main characters so weirdly in one arc if it wasn’t the character model they were using for this season. If I’m holding out hope, it’s that the Bad Batch was already in the works when they got the go ahead on s7 of this show; and the old character models for some reason weren’t compatible so this arc is a little rushed. I don’t quite believe that unless it does get better from here, but it’s a slight possibility.
Also, still kind of on the back-door pilot aspect, this episode seemed very preoccupied with being cool and hip with the youth. After making a bunch of edgy clones that go against the spirit of clones, the previously mentioned video game action scenes were the biggest indicator of that. Then again, I always found the action on this show to be bland, so maybe I’m overly critical.
But it also seemed to be shouting about ‘we’re going to get the canon lined up, we promise.’ Mostly with regard to Anakin and Padme, because they never really do explain why Cody was with this team at the start since he works with Obi-wan usually and Kenobi wasn’t there yet. It’s just making a point of ‘look we’ve had Anakin and Padme apart for an extended period of time, and do you notice how Padme looks pregnant, especially if you know she should be at this point.’ And I don’t hate them doing that, but it’s so inconsistent with the way the show has been handled, and I didn’t have years’ worth for time to wait between seasons to lose track.
And while it’s definitely not continuity-breaking that Obi-wan and Rex clearly know what’s up with Anakin and Padme, it also kind of comes out of nowhere. Ahsoka’s comment that, yeah she knows why Anakin would want to leave the Order, mostly worked for me when it happened. But this felt a little too…cheerful of Obi-wan to just tease Anakin about it; the talk they had last season where Obi-wan tried not to admit that he’s always known about the pair worked a lot better than this.
Though hey, finally Anakin gets back to the point in his arc he was already at in season 2. He uses extreme measures, and it works for him, he even gets praised for his results. This should have happened more often seasons ago, but it’s not bad to see it back.
I still haven’t made up my mind how to describe the writing in this episode. I want to say it’s a good idea (apart for the cynical creation), but the writing (especially in the first couple episodes) didn’t flow right. I wish the reveal of Echo being alive had come as a complete surprise, but Rex had already kind of thought of it so his eventual realization doesn’t pack the punch it could have.
I really wanted there to be a cost to this adventure, but there wasn’t. I sort of expected that the rescue-Echo mission would end up getting Echo killed to save the people who came to rescue him; like he had to stay hacked into the computers to keep their escape route safe. And then we’re told how dangerous the mission at the end is, but it never feels like it. And when it’s the new characters that have god tier prowess it doesn’t establish them as well rounded characters. I won’t quite call them Gary Stu characters, I’m not even sure they’re well established enough to call them that, but so far I don’t feel any…internal life from these guys.
As seems to happen often with this show (so they haven’t changed that much in the off-years) is that the last part of the arc feels like it should be part of a different arc. Have a two or three episode arc about finding and rescuing Echo, then a separate two episode arc focused on Echo and about how he comes back. The mistrust of him comes out of nowhere and isn’t much explored at all. After the show took the time in the first episode to have Rex angsting over the old picture, and about the fallen, it could have come back into play. Echo learning that Fives is dead; Echo coming to terms with the fact that his mind got a lot of clones killed even if he didn’t mean to; Echo in the end needing to go on a different path in order to figure out where he fits after what he’s been through. Some of that is hinted at, but there’s no time or space given to it, so it’s not really part of the story as far as I’m concerned.
Like I said, this basically averages out to fine, but there’s a lot of various points that are taken in to get that average.
