Cinema Sins

Wow, that... looks (in terms of visuals) way worse than I remember.

It never looked good, the obvious shortcuts they took are very evident. They did improve in later seasons of the series proper (having jedi wear robes!). It becomes startling when one watches the show next to its follow up Rebels

Also Asoka was annoying af.

I think she was supposed to be.

I mean, if they wanted a character who you would want to punch in the face be one of the main characters of the series, they sure did a damn good job at it.

Considering the number of episode with "Ahsoka knows better than Anakin" as that recurring theme, I'm not sure she was supposed to be annoying.

That said she did improve over several seasons. Even if the series has terrible prequel issues.

Best episodes are the Clone Trooper ones. that's who the show should;ve been about.

edited 15th Dec '16 12:00:34 PM by Ghilz

I think the biggest problem I have with Ahsoka is that she appears out of nowhere and starts talking to the main characters like she's known them for five years, even though she's not just a new character to us, she's a new character to everyone else. Plus, she's a smug Know-Nothing Know-It-All who talks down to everyone even though she's also probably about 14.

Which is weird, because her face makes her look like she's about 34.

That's basically what most dislike about her. As I said she gets better as the series progress.

The other main issue is the total lack of impact she has. She has no lasting effect on Obi Wan or Anakin, coz she can't. They need to be in the same state as they'd be in episode 3.

It's a big issue the show has, making those foregone conclusion episodes. "Yoda tries to figure out who the Sith Lord is" "Geez, can't wait to see how that will be resolved!"

"A clone malfunctions and kills a Jedi! Will the Jedi find out about order 66?" "No. No they won't"

"Will Grievous destroy the cloning facilities?" "Nope.exe."

edited 15th Dec '16 12:42:24 PM by Ghilz

Yeah, there's a lot of lost suspense in that any attempt to unravel the main plot leading up to Episode III is inherently doomed to fail. It's also rather astonishing how much Character Development Anakin loses.

edited 15th Dec '16 12:57:50 PM by Fighteer

And it's not a few episodes, it's a constant recurring theme.

"They've captured the head of the trade federation, but Bounty Hunters have been hired to free him! Can the jedis fend them off!" Well he's with the Separatist and gets killed off by Vader, so guess not?

Grievous is the one that suffers the most from this. He goes from feared general to basically Star Wars' Cobra Commander. To the point where I am sure you can make a montage of General Grievous running away from Obi-Wan. The confrontation between him and Obi-Wan in episode 3 loses a lot of weight when you see it's their 20th, and Grievous has lost all of them and they all ended with him running away with his tail between his leg and often in manners completely lacking dignity..

The clones are the highlight. They each get their own personality (Dee Bradley Baker does an AMAZING job imbuing them with a sense of identity when they all share a voice), and you get to know them among many episodes, and a lot of them die, coz they can coz they aren't bound by the films. Most of Domino Squad dies over various episode.

edited 15th Dec '16 1:07:53 PM by Ghilz

Which is funny because TCW is supposed to show why Grievous is such a threat, for everyone who watched Ep. III without any idea of who he was or why we should care. Dooku gets a similar treatment, since we left Ep. II with him having effortlessly defeated the main heroes, requiring Yoda to save the day. Yet, during TCW, he failed to accomplish a single major objective of the villains, or at least not anything that stuck.

edited 15th Dec '16 1:07:52 PM by Fighteer

This.

General Grievous wasn't much of a threat in Ep III because no one had any context for him and he was just an incompetent asthmatic robot. But then TCW came along and gave him context and that wasn't really for the best.

edited 15th Dec '16 1:07:56 PM by BaconManiac5000

I'm including the original Clone Wars cartoon (the 2D one). Grievous begins as this AMAZING combat god. Taking out an entire group of jedi masters and killing most of them. Only Arc Troopers with a fucking gunship keep him from completing the job. Then TCW happens, and he's a joke. TCW also retcons stuff by giving him his cough, which CW had explained he got while kidnapping the Chancellor (What leads to the opening scene of Episode III) and Mace Windu crushed his chest.

TCW at least tended to have Dooku either win, or at least come out even when he fights (Even if his schemes would always get foiled), he didn't get it as bad as Dooku did.

edited 15th Dec '16 1:13:12 PM by Ghilz

Grievous also killed Jedi Shaggy in Gendy Tartakovsky's Clone Wars shorts.

Actually he survived (in the old EU).

Used to be a running joke how this guy kept being killed and turning back.

Know who I liked? Durge.

Is he canon at all anymore?

edited 15th Dec '16 2:11:47 PM by Larkmarn

The show did succeed in one thing: Making Jar Jar actually useful.

The TCW show had a few kick ass bounty hunter. Cad Bane has AWESOME design (Even if he's a bit of a Villain Sue - Force users constantly forget they can do magic when he's around). There's another whos name escapes me who never talks, uses an armored straw hat the same way captain america wields his shield (And once as a sled!), and uses a wookie bowcaster.

edited 15th Dec '16 3:29:55 PM by Ghilz

His name's Embo and he's a Kyuzo.

And yeah, though the original movie was really bad, the show that followed it got way better as the season went on. There was even going to be an arc at the end that showed Ahsoka becoming a Jedi Knight, getting her own command of clone troopers as the Republic invaded Mandalore to take down the Death Watch, followed by them turning on her and Ahsoka having to escape.

Unfortunately, because of how the show was unceremoniously cancelled instead of being allowed to properly finish, we'll never know what that was like.

Didn't the cancellation happen because Disney bought Star Wars and they wanted to sort shit out?

Yes.

Yeah, which is funny coz you can see the shift in the last few seasons to the new canon (such as the Sith's homeworld changing name from previous EU incarnations).

Mind you, the show was still deeply flawed. Rebels learned a lot from it, such as avoiding the use of movie characters and planets as anything more than supporting roles.

I'd disagree on the quality of the Clone Wars. Yeah the movie's pretty bad, but the cartoon is nothing short of sublime once it picks up steam.

I'd say Ahsoka does have an actual effect in Anakin by the end of the series. Her choice to leave the Order retroactively adds fuel to the fire (on top of a bunch of other stuff the show also explored) to Anakin and the Jedi Council's strained relationship by ROTS and adds to Anakin and Mace Windu's specific bitterness.

The reason that Disney cut the series short, I think, is because the show functioned under George Lucas and the reason it was allowed to be so insanely detailed in its animation is because Lucas was funneling his own money into it. It was a show on Cartoon Network (so its audience was primarily on another channel, causing a Channel Hop to be a risk), with a insanely high budget that Disney would be unwilling to keep up without Lucas, and it was a show by George Lucas, whom Disney is hellbent on basically erasing from the franchise.

From a business perspective and what Disney's aim for the franchise is, Clone Wars just wasn't a good bet. Even period-wise, due moving on to the sequels now Disney wants to focus on the Empire/Empire-Post-Palpatine era. Star Wars: Rebels suits their new approach much more: It's simpler, both plot-wise and animaiton-wise, so more affordable and less ambitious (what with Clone Wars constantly going in Anachronic Order and shifting protagonists every now and then to entirely different corners of the galaxy), it has nothing to do with George Lucas, and it centers on the period they want to talk about (which is, the Rebellion).

YMMV. Seems rather odd that of all the complaints then that Anakin can whine to Obi-Wan about is "They aren't making me a master yet!" and not the much more "Their general dickishness caused a talented Padawan who was like a little sister to me to turn her back on what had been her life when she realized the order gave no shits about her and god only knows where she is now. Has caused like a fuck ton of Jedis to go off their rockers. Bariss Offee, that four arms dude..."

I do think when the Clone Wars wanted to be good, it was amazingly good, but those peaks are filled with valleys made of uninteresting episodes filled with forgone conclusions and boring conflicts that seem to exist only to keep the episode count up. The Straw Pacifist duchess of Mandalore and her flat, boring, chemistry-less romance with Obi-Wan was insufferable. Mandalore got interesting when she finally got gunned down. Some of the characterizations also comes off as fucking awful by parts. Obi-Wan and Anakins' characters in particular seem to vary WILDLY depending on the writer.

I will say, one hilarious side effect of when you binge watch the show, is the borderline hilarious disregard the Jedi have for the clones. Like, Luke has more attachment to R 2 D 2, and shows more concern for him, than the Jedis show to any clone trooper whose name isn't "Rex" or "Cody". Anakin in particular, you wonder how Obi-wan never noticed his Zapp Branigan-esque sociopathic disregard to the poor living souls under his command.

The clones are super tragic.

edited 15th Dec '16 5:35:15 PM by Ghilz