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tori_reviews2021-01-01 07:25 pm
jedi_of_urth) wrote in tori_reviews2021-01-01 07:25 pm
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Star Wars: The Clone Wars intro
New Year, new series (I'll get to the 2020 reflections...at some point...probably). Hope all is well and we can enjoy this new adventure together.
Star Wars: The Clone Wars intro
A certain segment of people who have noted my user name might assume that I am a huge Star Wars fan; and therefore be surprised that I'm really not. The name is a combination of two characters I played in my early days of roleplaying (tabletop, it's always what I mean when I say roleplaying), one of which was in a Star Wars game (the Urth part...it would take a long time to explain). I probably shouldn't bore anyone who's actually reading this with roleplaying stories so for now we'll leave it at that.
But I did grow up with the original movies; my mom jokes that I was always going to be a sci-fi fan as I saw Return of the Jedi in-utero (it also says something about my parents and the environment I was raised in that they went to see RotJ when my mom was only a few weeks away from having me). I don't remember the first time I saw the movies, I don't remember a world where I didn't know the Skywalker family relations, or really where there was ever any doubt that everyone around me knew it too.
At the same time while I have an emotional connection/nostalgia for the movies as having always been part of my life, I don't know that I ever emotionally invested in them as a story or a world. In some ways it might be because they were always there and a complete thing, it was a story I could back to at any time, but it never had my investment.
Now, I do remember when the prequels came out (I'm sort of skimming over the re-release in the 90s, it was cool but I don't have a lot to say about it). TPM came out while I was still in high school and the premier was the same night as our end of the year celebration for the speech team, so I had to duck out early because we had tickets to the movie. And people were jealous that we had opening night tickets. And I think I...liked it okay. I didn't like Jar Jar; I thought some of the 'rhyming' moments were a bit forced; and the handmaid switching is just weird when you're more than a little face blind. But because Star Wars was never that big a deal for me, liking it well enough was enough for me. Back when movies lingered in theaters for a while, I remember Dad and I went a second time when mom and sis must have been out of town and we wanted to use the theater air conditioning for the afternoon, and while by then I had heard a lot of critiques of the movie, I still didn't think it was that bad.
And if I'm laying it out there, I still don't think it's all bad. There's a lot that doesn't work, and Jar Jar still exists, but the parts that are good stick in the mind pretty well. To this day I still don't really understand the racism accusations (and don't try and explain it), at most I'd call it a few unfortunate decisions that are no more malicious than making all the Imperials British in the original movies.
I don't really have a lot of memories surrounding AotC; I know I saw it in theaters, maybe even twice, but that was probably the point where my stance that, while I enjoy Star Wars I wouldn't call myself a fan, settled in. I didn't have the ire toward TPM that others did, and I mostly found AotC bland.
However, I do have reflections when it comes to RotS. I may have found the TPM and AotC to be middling or bland, but ep3 had to be about something since it had clear things it had to accomplish. And by that point I had started playing the roleplaying game that remains acknowledged in my username, so I was finding myself more interested in the SW universe than I had been at other points. And I did ultimately mostly like RotS (the rest of the rp group went opening night, but I had to work and go see it by myself the next day), but I was definitely influenced by working the story around the rp backstory, especially since my character's past must have been influenced by it (basically, under different circumstances she could have been one of those younglings Anakin killed...don't bore people with rp stories).
Now there is one thing I left out, the EU. I may have a complicated option about the EU, except that it remains *the* EU; they can call it Legends if they want, but it's *the* EU as far as I'm concerned. I haven't actually read that many of the EU books, and I do feel that it gets very planet-of-hats in building the wider universe, and I know it's a complicated mess to try and fit together; but I felt that was the right way to continue the story of Star Wars. The story basically ended at Endor, but if you wanted to go down the rabbit hole of the EU and what came after it was there.
But with that, I have long had a bit of a question of whether the canon established in the EU ended up negatively impacting the prequels. I'd already read the Thrawn books by the time TPM came out, and at the time I appreciated that the sequel books and prequel movies seemed to exist in the same universe; but at the same time reflecting on it now, Lucas had gotten himself backed into some corners with both sides being explored at the same time. He could have played Palpatine as a surprise, but the books had enough of a following and the internet was accessible enough that anyone interested in who this guy was either knew or could find out, and those in the know didn't consider it a spoiler to warn for; treated more like talking with people looking into Smallville that Lex and Clark were going to end up enemies (I can say this with some certainty because I was following both for a while and they were compared).
This is sort of a backwards way of saying, that I kind of understood it when Disney decided to wipe the EU when it came to charting a course forward. I won't say I liked it, because the Thrawn trilogy was, is, and always will be canon as far as I'm concerned, but I understood the need to start with a clean slate. And I was willing to give them a chance to fill that clean slate with something good; I even liked Force Awaken but there was a caveat to that. It they were going to wipe away as much story as they did from the EU, then they should probably make it clear what they're replacing it with. And while TFA was fun and I enjoyed it the way I did a lot of the SW movies, it took away the universe as it had existed and didn't offer much in return.
Look, I'm not sure why this turned into movie reflections, but think of this me owning my biases going in. I have a few show specific ones, but my views on the verse are probably just as relevant.
Because then The Last Jedi happened. I still had misgivings about wiping away the EU version of things that happened after RotJ, and TFA had left a lot of holes in the story gap between ep6-7, but TLJ took away any hope I had of this taking place in a consistent universe. I may have concerns about the prequels relationship to the EU, but I do still have to give credit for trying to make it a feel like one continuous universe (sometimes, enough for this mostly-casual fan to roll with it). TLJ not only wants to divorce itself from the previous movie, and all the previous movies, but it spends so much time on that that it doesn't establish what it is except it's not those other things (and if they call it a deconstruction that excuses them from having needed to be something of their own).
RoS is just such an obvious attempt to stitch together different things the series was; one movie that was very openly committed to being the popular understanding of the verse, and another that was committed to defining itself as not-that rather than as itself; so I end up faving no real feelings about RoS. It doesn't have much impact on how I feel and it probably will come up the least often of any of the movies. (That said, I still mentally make Ben and Rey into Jacen and Jaina, so I have a hard time seeing them as romantic.)
As for my thoughts going into TCW, probably my biggest hang up is...the format. I've gotten to a point where (obviously) I'm at least interested in checking out what they can do with a SW TV show, but an animated show for kids is something I haven't been able to get past before. I'm sure they can do some good stuff with it, but I have the nagging feeling that for each thing I find interesting there will be three that annoy me, and anything I find interesting in the show will get shoved aside and not explored in enough detail for me. I'd love to be wrong but that's how I feel starting off.
And that's before we get to the animation. I've seen bits of the later seasons, especially the most recent one and that looks doable, but the early stuff tends to look like ass to me. And this created a problem for me the one time I tried to watch it before (I can't remember quite when, early 2010s I think). Animation has a harder time proving itself to me; because whatever the effects on another show are, the characters are performed by real people, so the story is carried by actors (and that's after writing) rather than animation. In an animated show, if the animation looks like ass, I'm going to have a hard time paying attention to the story that rests on it. And I also don't recall (or am lead to believe) that the story in s1 being so strong that I'm likely to overlook that.
That said, I think I gave up after 2-3 episodes that first time, and I prefer to give things at least 5 unless they actually piss me off. And maybe the story is stronger than I thought then, and maybe the animation will be better than I thought too.
On a related note, I know there are some people who have put out chronological viewing orders for the series, and since the first ep was such a problem for me before I gave some thought to the alternate; but ultimately decided not to. I am going to watch the movie this time so I am starting a little differently, and beyond that I think I need to judge it as I would have if I had watched it as it aired.
If I get sucked in and like reviewing this, I will probably also review the rest of the movies and maybe the 2D Clone Wars, but as going in I have to consider I might not make it 10 episodes I'm not going to commit to that.
(Editing note, well I can at this point commit to s1, and probably s2, beyond that is still up in the air.)
Star Wars: The Clone Wars intro
A certain segment of people who have noted my user name might assume that I am a huge Star Wars fan; and therefore be surprised that I'm really not. The name is a combination of two characters I played in my early days of roleplaying (tabletop, it's always what I mean when I say roleplaying), one of which was in a Star Wars game (the Urth part...it would take a long time to explain). I probably shouldn't bore anyone who's actually reading this with roleplaying stories so for now we'll leave it at that.
But I did grow up with the original movies; my mom jokes that I was always going to be a sci-fi fan as I saw Return of the Jedi in-utero (it also says something about my parents and the environment I was raised in that they went to see RotJ when my mom was only a few weeks away from having me). I don't remember the first time I saw the movies, I don't remember a world where I didn't know the Skywalker family relations, or really where there was ever any doubt that everyone around me knew it too.
At the same time while I have an emotional connection/nostalgia for the movies as having always been part of my life, I don't know that I ever emotionally invested in them as a story or a world. In some ways it might be because they were always there and a complete thing, it was a story I could back to at any time, but it never had my investment.
Now, I do remember when the prequels came out (I'm sort of skimming over the re-release in the 90s, it was cool but I don't have a lot to say about it). TPM came out while I was still in high school and the premier was the same night as our end of the year celebration for the speech team, so I had to duck out early because we had tickets to the movie. And people were jealous that we had opening night tickets. And I think I...liked it okay. I didn't like Jar Jar; I thought some of the 'rhyming' moments were a bit forced; and the handmaid switching is just weird when you're more than a little face blind. But because Star Wars was never that big a deal for me, liking it well enough was enough for me. Back when movies lingered in theaters for a while, I remember Dad and I went a second time when mom and sis must have been out of town and we wanted to use the theater air conditioning for the afternoon, and while by then I had heard a lot of critiques of the movie, I still didn't think it was that bad.
And if I'm laying it out there, I still don't think it's all bad. There's a lot that doesn't work, and Jar Jar still exists, but the parts that are good stick in the mind pretty well. To this day I still don't really understand the racism accusations (and don't try and explain it), at most I'd call it a few unfortunate decisions that are no more malicious than making all the Imperials British in the original movies.
I don't really have a lot of memories surrounding AotC; I know I saw it in theaters, maybe even twice, but that was probably the point where my stance that, while I enjoy Star Wars I wouldn't call myself a fan, settled in. I didn't have the ire toward TPM that others did, and I mostly found AotC bland.
However, I do have reflections when it comes to RotS. I may have found the TPM and AotC to be middling or bland, but ep3 had to be about something since it had clear things it had to accomplish. And by that point I had started playing the roleplaying game that remains acknowledged in my username, so I was finding myself more interested in the SW universe than I had been at other points. And I did ultimately mostly like RotS (the rest of the rp group went opening night, but I had to work and go see it by myself the next day), but I was definitely influenced by working the story around the rp backstory, especially since my character's past must have been influenced by it (basically, under different circumstances she could have been one of those younglings Anakin killed...don't bore people with rp stories).
Now there is one thing I left out, the EU. I may have a complicated option about the EU, except that it remains *the* EU; they can call it Legends if they want, but it's *the* EU as far as I'm concerned. I haven't actually read that many of the EU books, and I do feel that it gets very planet-of-hats in building the wider universe, and I know it's a complicated mess to try and fit together; but I felt that was the right way to continue the story of Star Wars. The story basically ended at Endor, but if you wanted to go down the rabbit hole of the EU and what came after it was there.
But with that, I have long had a bit of a question of whether the canon established in the EU ended up negatively impacting the prequels. I'd already read the Thrawn books by the time TPM came out, and at the time I appreciated that the sequel books and prequel movies seemed to exist in the same universe; but at the same time reflecting on it now, Lucas had gotten himself backed into some corners with both sides being explored at the same time. He could have played Palpatine as a surprise, but the books had enough of a following and the internet was accessible enough that anyone interested in who this guy was either knew or could find out, and those in the know didn't consider it a spoiler to warn for; treated more like talking with people looking into Smallville that Lex and Clark were going to end up enemies (I can say this with some certainty because I was following both for a while and they were compared).
This is sort of a backwards way of saying, that I kind of understood it when Disney decided to wipe the EU when it came to charting a course forward. I won't say I liked it, because the Thrawn trilogy was, is, and always will be canon as far as I'm concerned, but I understood the need to start with a clean slate. And I was willing to give them a chance to fill that clean slate with something good; I even liked Force Awaken but there was a caveat to that. It they were going to wipe away as much story as they did from the EU, then they should probably make it clear what they're replacing it with. And while TFA was fun and I enjoyed it the way I did a lot of the SW movies, it took away the universe as it had existed and didn't offer much in return.
Look, I'm not sure why this turned into movie reflections, but think of this me owning my biases going in. I have a few show specific ones, but my views on the verse are probably just as relevant.
Because then The Last Jedi happened. I still had misgivings about wiping away the EU version of things that happened after RotJ, and TFA had left a lot of holes in the story gap between ep6-7, but TLJ took away any hope I had of this taking place in a consistent universe. I may have concerns about the prequels relationship to the EU, but I do still have to give credit for trying to make it a feel like one continuous universe (sometimes, enough for this mostly-casual fan to roll with it). TLJ not only wants to divorce itself from the previous movie, and all the previous movies, but it spends so much time on that that it doesn't establish what it is except it's not those other things (and if they call it a deconstruction that excuses them from having needed to be something of their own).
RoS is just such an obvious attempt to stitch together different things the series was; one movie that was very openly committed to being the popular understanding of the verse, and another that was committed to defining itself as not-that rather than as itself; so I end up faving no real feelings about RoS. It doesn't have much impact on how I feel and it probably will come up the least often of any of the movies. (That said, I still mentally make Ben and Rey into Jacen and Jaina, so I have a hard time seeing them as romantic.)
As for my thoughts going into TCW, probably my biggest hang up is...the format. I've gotten to a point where (obviously) I'm at least interested in checking out what they can do with a SW TV show, but an animated show for kids is something I haven't been able to get past before. I'm sure they can do some good stuff with it, but I have the nagging feeling that for each thing I find interesting there will be three that annoy me, and anything I find interesting in the show will get shoved aside and not explored in enough detail for me. I'd love to be wrong but that's how I feel starting off.
And that's before we get to the animation. I've seen bits of the later seasons, especially the most recent one and that looks doable, but the early stuff tends to look like ass to me. And this created a problem for me the one time I tried to watch it before (I can't remember quite when, early 2010s I think). Animation has a harder time proving itself to me; because whatever the effects on another show are, the characters are performed by real people, so the story is carried by actors (and that's after writing) rather than animation. In an animated show, if the animation looks like ass, I'm going to have a hard time paying attention to the story that rests on it. And I also don't recall (or am lead to believe) that the story in s1 being so strong that I'm likely to overlook that.
That said, I think I gave up after 2-3 episodes that first time, and I prefer to give things at least 5 unless they actually piss me off. And maybe the story is stronger than I thought then, and maybe the animation will be better than I thought too.
On a related note, I know there are some people who have put out chronological viewing orders for the series, and since the first ep was such a problem for me before I gave some thought to the alternate; but ultimately decided not to. I am going to watch the movie this time so I am starting a little differently, and beyond that I think I need to judge it as I would have if I had watched it as it aired.
If I get sucked in and like reviewing this, I will probably also review the rest of the movies and maybe the 2D Clone Wars, but as going in I have to consider I might not make it 10 episodes I'm not going to commit to that.
(Editing note, well I can at this point commit to s1, and probably s2, beyond that is still up in the air.)