Star Wars: The Clone Wars – 1x01-02
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tori_reviewsStar Wars: The Clone Wars – 1x01: "Ambush"
This one is...odd. It's objectively well structured and I can tell it basically does everything it wants to do more or less as it wants to. I can also see why I didn't respond to it when I was considering watching the show several years ago; as I still end up thinking it makes some pretty bad choices.
Let's start with the bad choices as a first episode...kind of. The first episode of the show proper should have a goal of setting a tone for the series that will follow it and if this is doing that then I'm put off the show. It should not have been a mini adventure with Yoda; we either should have followed Obi-wan and Anakin, or the show should have specifically focused on the clones and showing us how they work and why they're worth following. It's too focused on Yoda, but also not focused enough to be a story about him. He's basically a Gary Stu; he can do basically anything, outmatch a thousand droids and yet oh he's so humble and kind to the clones as lesser beings. He's not shown to have flaws, either relevant to this story or something it's going to take time for him to work through.
And yet oddly, I don't hate him in this. It hit me at the end of the episode, that this would have worked much better as a short film rather than part of a series, much less the first proper episode of a series. I still hate the way he's animated though; that hasn't changed.
But I also think this should have been our introduction to Ventriss, have her as mysterious figure the Jedi keep running into in this series as Dooku's second, instead of introducing her with an already established rivalry with Obi-wan. It would also keep them from having to keep using Dooku like they did in the movie, since I would have thought from the movies that Anakin and Dooku met rarely if ever between ep2&3.
I didn't take the time to go into it in the movie, but it's actually more relevant here, I don't like what they're doing with the droids. They have too much personality and too little value. Making the villains comic relief is not a great move. Maybe, considering this was playing to a young audience, the writers didn't want the droids to be very scary; but the more funny and dumb they are the less heroic the heroes seem for defeating any number of them. What a noble effort to defeat an army of simpletons who were never given any choice in fighting and also apparently not given very good programming for it either.
Also, the politics here is a mess for me. Yes Yoda showed that a Jedi could take on a battalion of droids, but that doesn't really speak to the respective strength of the two sides of the war. Ventriss got down there without an invitation and stood next to the king for all that time and Yoda wasn't around, she could have killed him, the droids with her could have killed him. The Jedi can't be everywhere while there are plenty of battalions of droids.
Plus, the tail end confuses me; were the negotiations about joining the Republic or allowing a Republic base on the planet? These are not the same asks; either option does put some target on the planet, but they're different scales. Plus, it makes a difference on if the Republic rents space or the locals pay taxes to the Republic.
I'm going to save my early thoughts on the clones until they've had a little more time to gain traction. I can tell the series is going somewhere with the clones being individuals, but this ep didn't do a lot to make them people. So we'll come back to it.
Star Wars: The Clone Wars – 1x02: "Rising Malevolence"
I'm giving this one a slightly different stamp than I did the last one; because this one is not so much odd as bipolar. When it comes to practical, technical things, the nuts and bolts of how this story is presented, it is distractingly bad and poorly thought out. But it does manage to provide me with some interesting things to talk about, one good and one mixed bag.
There was almost no scene in the episode where I wasn't questioning something about how things worked or how dumb the writers are. Why are they flying so close to the sun? Why are they running artificial gravity if they're running on silent power? How did they launch the escape pods if they had just been hit with a weapon that knocked out all power? How did the escape pods have any power after that? Trooper helmets are useful in the vacuum of space, since when? Why are they hanging out on the outside of the ship? Why did no one reach out through the Force earlier in order to check for survivors? On and on and on, I could never take the episode fully seriously because nothing about it made sense.
But I do continue to find the dynamic between Anakin and Ahsoka charming; and I like what's being done with how alike they are and how that energy feeds on itself when they're together. So far it's been a good thing, but it might not always be, and it no doubt will get them into trouble with the Council.
Which is kind of my biggest thinky thought. I suspect this is going to be an ongoing thing in the series, but the Council kind of misses the trees for the forest in these stories. They're very big picture focused and not worried about individuals and small victories. Yes, Anakin can and will end up missing the forest for the trees, only concerned with the effects on those he cares about, but I already feel like the Jedi are not in the right. Though more to the point, I feel that this highlights why the Jedi shouldn't have been military commanders (and really, why are they?); they're supposed to be protectors of the peace, not warriors (again, what do the Separatists want?), so of course they lose their way when they go to war.
And so you have another episode that raises the issue of clone rights. Because they are treated as disposable cannon fodder by the Republic; and for all Plo Koon, like Yoda last episode, may talk about seeing them as important people, the policies of the war will continue to treat them as little more than droids. Even Anakin and Ahsoka, with all their noble talk this episode put value of the Jedi life over the clones. They don't turn away from the clones they can save, but no one really mourns them either. It probably doesn't help that the narrative makes them the only survivors, therefore feeling like this is the only ship that matters, and it's because it happens to have a Jedi on board.
It actually occurs to me with this episode if by the end of this series (assuming I get there) I'll just find Anakin super pitiable. The movies frame his fall to the dark side as about Padme and a desire for power but here I'm also taking in that he's a young man who has enormous responsibility on his shoulders and by the time we get to RotS he's seen so much death, been the cause of it either directly or indirectly, and lost so many people that of course he comes out of this frelled up. He probably has PTSD and survivor's guilt, which makes a lot of sense why he'd then cling so tightly to Padme when it looks like she could die. Of course none of that comes through in the movie, but it's a seed planted in my head now.
This one is...odd. It's objectively well structured and I can tell it basically does everything it wants to do more or less as it wants to. I can also see why I didn't respond to it when I was considering watching the show several years ago; as I still end up thinking it makes some pretty bad choices.
Let's start with the bad choices as a first episode...kind of. The first episode of the show proper should have a goal of setting a tone for the series that will follow it and if this is doing that then I'm put off the show. It should not have been a mini adventure with Yoda; we either should have followed Obi-wan and Anakin, or the show should have specifically focused on the clones and showing us how they work and why they're worth following. It's too focused on Yoda, but also not focused enough to be a story about him. He's basically a Gary Stu; he can do basically anything, outmatch a thousand droids and yet oh he's so humble and kind to the clones as lesser beings. He's not shown to have flaws, either relevant to this story or something it's going to take time for him to work through.
And yet oddly, I don't hate him in this. It hit me at the end of the episode, that this would have worked much better as a short film rather than part of a series, much less the first proper episode of a series. I still hate the way he's animated though; that hasn't changed.
But I also think this should have been our introduction to Ventriss, have her as mysterious figure the Jedi keep running into in this series as Dooku's second, instead of introducing her with an already established rivalry with Obi-wan. It would also keep them from having to keep using Dooku like they did in the movie, since I would have thought from the movies that Anakin and Dooku met rarely if ever between ep2&3.
I didn't take the time to go into it in the movie, but it's actually more relevant here, I don't like what they're doing with the droids. They have too much personality and too little value. Making the villains comic relief is not a great move. Maybe, considering this was playing to a young audience, the writers didn't want the droids to be very scary; but the more funny and dumb they are the less heroic the heroes seem for defeating any number of them. What a noble effort to defeat an army of simpletons who were never given any choice in fighting and also apparently not given very good programming for it either.
Also, the politics here is a mess for me. Yes Yoda showed that a Jedi could take on a battalion of droids, but that doesn't really speak to the respective strength of the two sides of the war. Ventriss got down there without an invitation and stood next to the king for all that time and Yoda wasn't around, she could have killed him, the droids with her could have killed him. The Jedi can't be everywhere while there are plenty of battalions of droids.
Plus, the tail end confuses me; were the negotiations about joining the Republic or allowing a Republic base on the planet? These are not the same asks; either option does put some target on the planet, but they're different scales. Plus, it makes a difference on if the Republic rents space or the locals pay taxes to the Republic.
I'm going to save my early thoughts on the clones until they've had a little more time to gain traction. I can tell the series is going somewhere with the clones being individuals, but this ep didn't do a lot to make them people. So we'll come back to it.
Star Wars: The Clone Wars – 1x02: "Rising Malevolence"
I'm giving this one a slightly different stamp than I did the last one; because this one is not so much odd as bipolar. When it comes to practical, technical things, the nuts and bolts of how this story is presented, it is distractingly bad and poorly thought out. But it does manage to provide me with some interesting things to talk about, one good and one mixed bag.
There was almost no scene in the episode where I wasn't questioning something about how things worked or how dumb the writers are. Why are they flying so close to the sun? Why are they running artificial gravity if they're running on silent power? How did they launch the escape pods if they had just been hit with a weapon that knocked out all power? How did the escape pods have any power after that? Trooper helmets are useful in the vacuum of space, since when? Why are they hanging out on the outside of the ship? Why did no one reach out through the Force earlier in order to check for survivors? On and on and on, I could never take the episode fully seriously because nothing about it made sense.
But I do continue to find the dynamic between Anakin and Ahsoka charming; and I like what's being done with how alike they are and how that energy feeds on itself when they're together. So far it's been a good thing, but it might not always be, and it no doubt will get them into trouble with the Council.
Which is kind of my biggest thinky thought. I suspect this is going to be an ongoing thing in the series, but the Council kind of misses the trees for the forest in these stories. They're very big picture focused and not worried about individuals and small victories. Yes, Anakin can and will end up missing the forest for the trees, only concerned with the effects on those he cares about, but I already feel like the Jedi are not in the right. Though more to the point, I feel that this highlights why the Jedi shouldn't have been military commanders (and really, why are they?); they're supposed to be protectors of the peace, not warriors (again, what do the Separatists want?), so of course they lose their way when they go to war.
And so you have another episode that raises the issue of clone rights. Because they are treated as disposable cannon fodder by the Republic; and for all Plo Koon, like Yoda last episode, may talk about seeing them as important people, the policies of the war will continue to treat them as little more than droids. Even Anakin and Ahsoka, with all their noble talk this episode put value of the Jedi life over the clones. They don't turn away from the clones they can save, but no one really mourns them either. It probably doesn't help that the narrative makes them the only survivors, therefore feeling like this is the only ship that matters, and it's because it happens to have a Jedi on board.
It actually occurs to me with this episode if by the end of this series (assuming I get there) I'll just find Anakin super pitiable. The movies frame his fall to the dark side as about Padme and a desire for power but here I'm also taking in that he's a young man who has enormous responsibility on his shoulders and by the time we get to RotS he's seen so much death, been the cause of it either directly or indirectly, and lost so many people that of course he comes out of this frelled up. He probably has PTSD and survivor's guilt, which makes a lot of sense why he'd then cling so tightly to Padme when it looks like she could die. Of course none of that comes through in the movie, but it's a seed planted in my head now.
