Star Wars: The Clone Wars – 3x21 - 22
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tori_reviewsStar Wars: The Clone Wars – 3x21: “Padawan Lost”
I find myself in another odd situation with this episode, though I am hoping the next episode will help me sort it out somewhat. It's not bad, not by a long way, but it never quite gets good enough to overcome the fact that it started bad.
Between the opening quote (which I rarely comment on, I know, but sometimes it does matter), and the way they wrote Ahsoka in the early scenes, I had a bad feeling they were doing an over-confident Ahsoka story. And we really haven't had one of those in a long time, because as they sorted out her character, the realized she really isn't an over-confident character. Confident yes, arrogant no; possibly bordering on over-confident in the abilities of her and Anakin combined, but for just herself no. In fact we have had more recent stories about how her confidence is definitely shakable, than eps where she got too big for her britches.
And the odd tone of those first few scenes ends up clashing with what we see when the story settles into what it's actually about. It still isn't about humbling Ashoka, because she didn't need to be humbled. She's not arrogant compared to the younglings; at most she's putting on a front because she feels that her slightly higher rank makes her responsible in a way the 'kids' don't have to be. She's not instantly shown to be out of her element once you take her lightsaber away, which would have been a possible way to approach this story I feared they would do. Yeah, she'd be better with her lightsabers; but she isn't, not does she feel, incapable of fighting back without them. While her views are different than the kids who had been there longer, she doesn't have any trouble taking their advice and her problem is that her morals conflict with their practical lessons.
In short, Ahsoka is not a 'courage without humility' character here. But no one else is either. The younglings don't pretend to be brave, Plo falls back into kind of an asshole mode, and Anakin...he does lack humility, but the story isn't about his courage. If anything, it's his lack of courage to either reconsider his options, or to have the strength of his convictions and say that no, his mission now is to find Ahsoka, wherever that takes things.
These people seem like terrible investigators. Do they not have any leads that say there was a ship that left the planet and they might want to look into that? Honestly I think it would make more sense to show Anakin having a clue, but it's slim and impractical to go chasing it down, and that's Plo's objection to what Anakin would risk to go after her on such a narrow lead. Instead, we have a situation where a Jedi was taken out by unknown forces and just disappeared in the middle of a battle. Especially considering how often I feel like this show shows the Jedi as caring for their own above any thought they might spare others, having Plo be all 'nah, it's not important,' doesn't make sense.
Weirdly, at least when it comes to the Jedi Order, this seems to zig everywhere the last set of eps zagged, and ends up painting the Jedi in just as bad a light. That or Plo's just decided that Ahsoka is more trouble than she's worth, and considering his clear disdain for Anakin I'd believe that, but it still pisses me off. And it doesn't let the Order off the hook for apparently not caring about even their own members unless they're useful generals in the war; kids don't seem to matter.
There were a couple points in this episode where a thought of different things about the series that...not bugs me, but has been a niggle in the back of my mind for a while, that has only recently started to form into a thought. But I think I'll leave it for now until I can better express it. It's kind of rp related anyway.
Star Wars: The Clone Wars – 3x22: “Wookiee Hunt”
Well, while not the thought I was having, this episode did make me pretty convinced that this arc was written as The Hunger Games was getting popular. It manages to pretty clearly evoke The Hunger Games without really being that much like it, as there's never any conflict among the people being hunted; the closest we get to something like that being that the kids in the first part didn't really care what happened to anyone else as long as they survived.
I'm also sort of torn on how I feel about Chewie being here. I don't hate it, but it does make the galaxy feel a bit small since there's no reason the Wookie in question ought to be Chewie. I sort of think they do an okay job with his character, but at other times I feel like the kids show element is holding the story back from showing us powerful warrior Chewie.
Oddly, a complaint I might have about this specific episode will dovetail in the bigger point I teased in the last review. Why weren't any of the younglings interested in scavenging from the downed ship? They might have things like food, or pointed sticks you could use the next time you want to attack these people; or electronics equipment. Even if they didn't know where they were and so didn't think they could build something powerful enough to contact anyone, maybe they could have found something that would give them some shielding or proximity detectors or any of a thousand things they could do with a little imagination.
Which is the larger point I'm building to. What I was thinking last time, is that this show has kind of opposite problem to the sequel movies; because the Jedi characters are too stupid powerful and don't seem subject to the laws of physics in every move they make. They move like cartoon characters, and yet these abilities are supposed to circle back to making sense in a known live action universe (this is one of my problems with larger universes trying to exist in both live action and animation). And yet the Force itself sometimes seems really small and doesn't do anything. But I think what I really mean is that no one using the Force has any imagination. The Force therefore seems like it's all about fighting, about jumping and pushing and running and showing how strong you are.
I'm not even the most into the mystical side of the Force, I find Force visions questionable and definitely think the sequel trilogy did things that are not how the Force works. But we also never see anyone with a unique take on the Force, how they relate to it or are able to use it as an extension of who they are. And this is where the the roleplaying aspect comes in (I'll do more at the end), because through the couple years of the campaign we had between two and four people who could use the Force, but we were different people with different backgrounds and we thought of different ways of using it.
But this episode also didn't end the way I thought it would; and not in a good way. Surprise can be good; subverting expectations, for all it has kind of a bad rep in SW fandom right now, is not a bad thing. The problem here is that it didn't conform to my expectation by instead not mattering or doing anything interesting.
While it hadn't been set up even five minutes earlier, the way we see Ahsoka fighting in the final fight is very...aggressive, very skirting the edge of the Dark Side in my opinion. And even though that was only a few minutes of the story, I did consider that maybe this arc had been trying to show Ahsoka going down a dark path, and just not telling it very well. The Mortis arc introduced the idea that if Ahsoka keeps following Anakin she's not going to go down a good path, and this arc could have been a turning point in that. Either starting to show that the vision was right, or having her realize that she needed to start finding herself a bit more away from her master (whether or not she recognized that his influence was encouraging that darker part of her).
But the tone of the final scene, with the triumphant John Williams movie music and all, is completely wrong if that's what we're supposed to take away from this. Yoda's look as Anakin and Ahsoka walk away is pretty inscrutable, but the music is saying that it should be pride and respect, which would make his look something like thinking it might be time for Ahsoka to face the Trials to become a Jedi Knight. Which would also be supported by her lines leading up to it, as if she had already passed some kind of test by being able to face this desperate situation on her own (for certain values of on her own). And, admittedly, supported by a lot of what she does in these episodes, showing her becoming a leader and her adaptability and her resilience. But that's not the vibe of the scenes before, or at least didn't seem to be to me. Look at Ahsoka as she forces the Trandoshan out the door and over the railing, surveying his dead body on the deck. In that scene I don't care what the music says, I don't think she's in a good place, especially since she still seems pretty angry.
And I could certainly make an argument that she is justified in being angry, and the script bends over backwards to make it so her hand is forced when it comes to killing, but there's no regret in the end either. And if you're going to go to that much trouble to make is so she mostly comes out looking good, it makes the places where you don't put in the effort stand out all the more. So I'm not sure where I am exactly with this, but it's not sitting right with me.
~~~~
And for anyone who might care some rp based thoughts.
I think part of why, inherently, Force wielders in our rp game would be more creative in how they used the Force, is a couple fold. For one, we would tend to view characters as still being bound by real world physics. The occasional Force Jump or Force Speed could be rare instances, but not completely up-end how the world worked. We, and a lot of rp groups, could also get hung up on whether something was possible; be it in reality or under game mechanics.
Tied in with that is that in roleplaying, there's always the possibility of failure. The dice may not be on your side, but if you're convinced the GM that what you have in mind sounds like a good/cool idea you're more likely to get some leeway. And I think that may lurk in the back of my brain when I watch this, yeah they can make six massive Force Jumps, but how are the dice going to land if you don't do something that lets you use a different skill?
And for those few who might care about really personally focused stuff, we'll talk rp Force users.
At the least important we have the GM's sometimes character who was a more or less properly trained Jedi, who was very much the warrior monk; he was good to have around in a fight, but also big into meditation and communing with the Force. But he was also creative; the type that would pull a Force trick in the distance to distract guards instead of needing to go in with aggressive negotiations as the first option.
Then we have the less properly trained young Jedi; brought up fairly wild and could sometimes get close to the Dark Side (the one I was comparing to Ventriss not so long ago). He could be sneaky (as in stealth, not politics, he would be bad at politics), because he certainly sometimes had to be in the conditions he came from, but wasn't particularly shy about pulling out the lightsaber as needed. Though he was just as likely to use it to cut down a suspended TIE fighter and crush people instead of taking them on in a fight. Again, having a different way of thinking through the problems when the direct approach (that seems all they have in the show) might not be the best option.
Then you have my mechanic, very junior Jedi. Not at all trained and didn't really believe in the same Light/Dark side split, so much as she believed in the power of love and compassion and that there always had to be a way to help people (she and Yoda might have each thought the other incredibly dangerous; since he thinks one needs to deny personal connection and attachment, and she thinks that's the kind of thing a cold-hearted monster would say). And when she did have to kill a Stormtrooper here or there, and no matter how much her hand was forced, it haunted her because she did see them as people. Preferred to use the Force to avoid conflict wherever possible and as a means of connecting with people, when she could use it at all, so she had to be creative in her use of it.
Then we had a non-Jedi, what the game would call 'alien student of the Force,' who would use the Force to fight, but did so in very different way. No lightsabers for him, and would sue for peace where possible, but was more a direct energy wielder; putting him, as far as powers go, closer to the Dark Side from certain views. He was also just kind of weird, but it worked in character because he approached the whole thing differently.
We didn't come with the same skills or stats or ways of thinking, so we had different ways in which the Force acted in harmony one or all of those. And maybe I want a little more of that in a show with this many actual Jedi; though maybe you can't have that when they are all actual Jedi.
I find myself in another odd situation with this episode, though I am hoping the next episode will help me sort it out somewhat. It's not bad, not by a long way, but it never quite gets good enough to overcome the fact that it started bad.
Between the opening quote (which I rarely comment on, I know, but sometimes it does matter), and the way they wrote Ahsoka in the early scenes, I had a bad feeling they were doing an over-confident Ahsoka story. And we really haven't had one of those in a long time, because as they sorted out her character, the realized she really isn't an over-confident character. Confident yes, arrogant no; possibly bordering on over-confident in the abilities of her and Anakin combined, but for just herself no. In fact we have had more recent stories about how her confidence is definitely shakable, than eps where she got too big for her britches.
And the odd tone of those first few scenes ends up clashing with what we see when the story settles into what it's actually about. It still isn't about humbling Ashoka, because she didn't need to be humbled. She's not arrogant compared to the younglings; at most she's putting on a front because she feels that her slightly higher rank makes her responsible in a way the 'kids' don't have to be. She's not instantly shown to be out of her element once you take her lightsaber away, which would have been a possible way to approach this story I feared they would do. Yeah, she'd be better with her lightsabers; but she isn't, not does she feel, incapable of fighting back without them. While her views are different than the kids who had been there longer, she doesn't have any trouble taking their advice and her problem is that her morals conflict with their practical lessons.
In short, Ahsoka is not a 'courage without humility' character here. But no one else is either. The younglings don't pretend to be brave, Plo falls back into kind of an asshole mode, and Anakin...he does lack humility, but the story isn't about his courage. If anything, it's his lack of courage to either reconsider his options, or to have the strength of his convictions and say that no, his mission now is to find Ahsoka, wherever that takes things.
These people seem like terrible investigators. Do they not have any leads that say there was a ship that left the planet and they might want to look into that? Honestly I think it would make more sense to show Anakin having a clue, but it's slim and impractical to go chasing it down, and that's Plo's objection to what Anakin would risk to go after her on such a narrow lead. Instead, we have a situation where a Jedi was taken out by unknown forces and just disappeared in the middle of a battle. Especially considering how often I feel like this show shows the Jedi as caring for their own above any thought they might spare others, having Plo be all 'nah, it's not important,' doesn't make sense.
Weirdly, at least when it comes to the Jedi Order, this seems to zig everywhere the last set of eps zagged, and ends up painting the Jedi in just as bad a light. That or Plo's just decided that Ahsoka is more trouble than she's worth, and considering his clear disdain for Anakin I'd believe that, but it still pisses me off. And it doesn't let the Order off the hook for apparently not caring about even their own members unless they're useful generals in the war; kids don't seem to matter.
There were a couple points in this episode where a thought of different things about the series that...not bugs me, but has been a niggle in the back of my mind for a while, that has only recently started to form into a thought. But I think I'll leave it for now until I can better express it. It's kind of rp related anyway.
Star Wars: The Clone Wars – 3x22: “Wookiee Hunt”
Well, while not the thought I was having, this episode did make me pretty convinced that this arc was written as The Hunger Games was getting popular. It manages to pretty clearly evoke The Hunger Games without really being that much like it, as there's never any conflict among the people being hunted; the closest we get to something like that being that the kids in the first part didn't really care what happened to anyone else as long as they survived.
I'm also sort of torn on how I feel about Chewie being here. I don't hate it, but it does make the galaxy feel a bit small since there's no reason the Wookie in question ought to be Chewie. I sort of think they do an okay job with his character, but at other times I feel like the kids show element is holding the story back from showing us powerful warrior Chewie.
Oddly, a complaint I might have about this specific episode will dovetail in the bigger point I teased in the last review. Why weren't any of the younglings interested in scavenging from the downed ship? They might have things like food, or pointed sticks you could use the next time you want to attack these people; or electronics equipment. Even if they didn't know where they were and so didn't think they could build something powerful enough to contact anyone, maybe they could have found something that would give them some shielding or proximity detectors or any of a thousand things they could do with a little imagination.
Which is the larger point I'm building to. What I was thinking last time, is that this show has kind of opposite problem to the sequel movies; because the Jedi characters are too stupid powerful and don't seem subject to the laws of physics in every move they make. They move like cartoon characters, and yet these abilities are supposed to circle back to making sense in a known live action universe (this is one of my problems with larger universes trying to exist in both live action and animation). And yet the Force itself sometimes seems really small and doesn't do anything. But I think what I really mean is that no one using the Force has any imagination. The Force therefore seems like it's all about fighting, about jumping and pushing and running and showing how strong you are.
I'm not even the most into the mystical side of the Force, I find Force visions questionable and definitely think the sequel trilogy did things that are not how the Force works. But we also never see anyone with a unique take on the Force, how they relate to it or are able to use it as an extension of who they are. And this is where the the roleplaying aspect comes in (I'll do more at the end), because through the couple years of the campaign we had between two and four people who could use the Force, but we were different people with different backgrounds and we thought of different ways of using it.
But this episode also didn't end the way I thought it would; and not in a good way. Surprise can be good; subverting expectations, for all it has kind of a bad rep in SW fandom right now, is not a bad thing. The problem here is that it didn't conform to my expectation by instead not mattering or doing anything interesting.
While it hadn't been set up even five minutes earlier, the way we see Ahsoka fighting in the final fight is very...aggressive, very skirting the edge of the Dark Side in my opinion. And even though that was only a few minutes of the story, I did consider that maybe this arc had been trying to show Ahsoka going down a dark path, and just not telling it very well. The Mortis arc introduced the idea that if Ahsoka keeps following Anakin she's not going to go down a good path, and this arc could have been a turning point in that. Either starting to show that the vision was right, or having her realize that she needed to start finding herself a bit more away from her master (whether or not she recognized that his influence was encouraging that darker part of her).
But the tone of the final scene, with the triumphant John Williams movie music and all, is completely wrong if that's what we're supposed to take away from this. Yoda's look as Anakin and Ahsoka walk away is pretty inscrutable, but the music is saying that it should be pride and respect, which would make his look something like thinking it might be time for Ahsoka to face the Trials to become a Jedi Knight. Which would also be supported by her lines leading up to it, as if she had already passed some kind of test by being able to face this desperate situation on her own (for certain values of on her own). And, admittedly, supported by a lot of what she does in these episodes, showing her becoming a leader and her adaptability and her resilience. But that's not the vibe of the scenes before, or at least didn't seem to be to me. Look at Ahsoka as she forces the Trandoshan out the door and over the railing, surveying his dead body on the deck. In that scene I don't care what the music says, I don't think she's in a good place, especially since she still seems pretty angry.
And I could certainly make an argument that she is justified in being angry, and the script bends over backwards to make it so her hand is forced when it comes to killing, but there's no regret in the end either. And if you're going to go to that much trouble to make is so she mostly comes out looking good, it makes the places where you don't put in the effort stand out all the more. So I'm not sure where I am exactly with this, but it's not sitting right with me.
~~~~
And for anyone who might care some rp based thoughts.
I think part of why, inherently, Force wielders in our rp game would be more creative in how they used the Force, is a couple fold. For one, we would tend to view characters as still being bound by real world physics. The occasional Force Jump or Force Speed could be rare instances, but not completely up-end how the world worked. We, and a lot of rp groups, could also get hung up on whether something was possible; be it in reality or under game mechanics.
Tied in with that is that in roleplaying, there's always the possibility of failure. The dice may not be on your side, but if you're convinced the GM that what you have in mind sounds like a good/cool idea you're more likely to get some leeway. And I think that may lurk in the back of my brain when I watch this, yeah they can make six massive Force Jumps, but how are the dice going to land if you don't do something that lets you use a different skill?
And for those few who might care about really personally focused stuff, we'll talk rp Force users.
At the least important we have the GM's sometimes character who was a more or less properly trained Jedi, who was very much the warrior monk; he was good to have around in a fight, but also big into meditation and communing with the Force. But he was also creative; the type that would pull a Force trick in the distance to distract guards instead of needing to go in with aggressive negotiations as the first option.
Then we have the less properly trained young Jedi; brought up fairly wild and could sometimes get close to the Dark Side (the one I was comparing to Ventriss not so long ago). He could be sneaky (as in stealth, not politics, he would be bad at politics), because he certainly sometimes had to be in the conditions he came from, but wasn't particularly shy about pulling out the lightsaber as needed. Though he was just as likely to use it to cut down a suspended TIE fighter and crush people instead of taking them on in a fight. Again, having a different way of thinking through the problems when the direct approach (that seems all they have in the show) might not be the best option.
Then you have my mechanic, very junior Jedi. Not at all trained and didn't really believe in the same Light/Dark side split, so much as she believed in the power of love and compassion and that there always had to be a way to help people (she and Yoda might have each thought the other incredibly dangerous; since he thinks one needs to deny personal connection and attachment, and she thinks that's the kind of thing a cold-hearted monster would say). And when she did have to kill a Stormtrooper here or there, and no matter how much her hand was forced, it haunted her because she did see them as people. Preferred to use the Force to avoid conflict wherever possible and as a means of connecting with people, when she could use it at all, so she had to be creative in her use of it.
Then we had a non-Jedi, what the game would call 'alien student of the Force,' who would use the Force to fight, but did so in very different way. No lightsabers for him, and would sue for peace where possible, but was more a direct energy wielder; putting him, as far as powers go, closer to the Dark Side from certain views. He was also just kind of weird, but it worked in character because he approached the whole thing differently.
We didn't come with the same skills or stats or ways of thinking, so we had different ways in which the Force acted in harmony one or all of those. And maybe I want a little more of that in a show with this many actual Jedi; though maybe you can't have that when they are all actual Jedi.
