Okay. Going through the Umbaran arc now.
... is it weird that the single biggest Crowning Moment Of Awesome that's sent shivers down my spine in the entire series was Rex running through a battlefield to stop people from fighting, removing his helmet to try to halt the bloodshed? I don't know exactly why but that resonated with me more than any other war heroics or Jedi yadda-yadda we've seen.
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I'm not surprised. There's more danger running onto a battle field without any intent to pick up a weapon, exposing yourself in full view
I don't see why it wouldn't. It's something that can happen in real life unlike every other sci-fi or science fantasy thing in the series.
Edited by VeryMelon on Nov 18th 2020 at 7:34:58 AM
Umbara is one of the best arcs in the series, imo, and should be a model for how extended war/battle stories in the franchise should be handled in the future.
"The difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to make sense." - Tom Clancy, paraphrasing Mark Twain.
The Umbaran Arc is when the creators had honed in on telling genre stories through a Star Wars sci-fi lens, rather than trying to imitate a Star Wars story. That's the reason The Mandalorian is doing so well, while the movies have floundered.
There is a lot of weird and alien things going on, but the insanity of battle and the moral dilemma the Clones have to deal with are very compelling.
I'm not entirely sure how I feel about The Reveal that Krell was Evil All Along. On one hand, it made sense because all his decisions were comically bad so it's nice that it's justified... to be honest, if he weren't evil then the arc wouldn't have made sense because he's just so incredibly stupid. On the other hand, I like the idea of the clones butting heads with a general who just saw them as resources to be used up.
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I've always thought Pong Krell being Evil All Along was a Debate and Switch that diminished the rest of the arc. The idea of the clones fighting under a ruthlessly efficient Jedi who simply didn't have any consideration for them as living beings was more interesting as kind of a commentary on the clones themselves, and what the war was doing to the Jedi.
Pong then being all "I want to be the Sith Lord's apprentice muhuhuhahaha, that's why I was so mean!" throws all that interesting stuff out the window at the 11th hour, and is the only blemish on an otherwise fantastic arc.
Edited by KnownUnknown on Nov 19th 2020 at 9:31:43 AM
"The difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to make sense." - Tom Clancy, paraphrasing Mark Twain.
The Head of the Hydra
I wonder if the High Republic will have more knight templar Jedi like Krell.
"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."
I think issues with Krell was the limitations of the pulp setting and serial format. Having a more nuanced take with an incompetent Jedi leader also makes the clones dilemma less clear, poor decisions made in combat are an expected part of warfare and rebelling against that makes the clones seem incompetent too. Instead they had Krell give obviously bad orders and the Clones somehow make it work because they are skilled soldiers. When they learn Krell is evil, they then had to debate amongst each other how to proceed BECAUSE they are good soldiers and the concept of mutiny is difficult to grasp.
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Except they did something similar with Bariss. She actively sabotages the Jedi (and the Republic) without being in cahoots (implied or overt) with Dooku or the Separatists.
They could have just removed Pong Krell's desire to align with the Sith and have him simply fall because the war has warped him.
If he had just been a General Ripper who thinks of clones as tools, that would have been enough.
Edited by DrunkenNordmann on Nov 19th 2020 at 7:11:08 PM
Welcome to Estalia, gentlemen.
Lies and Violence!
How much does Krell feature in Expanded Universe works? (Barely at all, that I know of.) For all we know, he very well could have snapped during the war, and just decided that he'd ally with the Sith because "Fuck it, why not!"
Though I do agree that the arc would have been better without that.
Edited by EmeraldEmperor on Nov 19th 2020 at 10:30:36 AM
Barris was still an overt Face–Heel Turn, actively causing harm to her own friends. Even if Krell didn't have that Motive Rant about joining the Sith, he needed to be evil otherwise the Clones would be turning against a sympathetic character. A General Ripper is usually competent enough to provide his troops the necessary resources to accomplish the mission, and wouldn't berate them for getting the job done.
I mean, you could have it end without the Clones turning on him, just having to deal with the fact that Jedi like him exist. Maybe even have them suspect he's actively sabotaging them and be proven wrong.
The thing is, that wouldn't work because of how comically incompetent he was. He was making such cartoonishly bad decisions that it would only make sense if he's actively undermining the operation. It's kind of a Catch-22 in that regard. You can't have him be as incompetent as he was if he wasn't evil, but and if he's more competent than he was there would be less reason to dislike him.
Edited by Larkmarn on Nov 19th 2020 at 2:57:49 PM
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The most interesting thing about Krell was imo that he was racist against clones. Like, that's an idea that makes a lot of sense, is a great thing to focus on in a show about the clones that otherwise had so much focus on Cloning Blues, and the shock value that you would think that a Jedi would be above that - but on further thought, why would they? - made him one of the most interesting antagonists the series had.
That Krell represented the whole conflict with the clones that the war treated them as disposable and less than human was great. While he remained racist, it turning out that he was sacrificing clones not because of that racism but specifically because he wanted to the throw the game to impress Dooku or Sidious undercuts that too much. It becomes a typical "heroes vs dark sider" story that takes point over the "clones assert their humanity (so to speak)" story it was setting up.
Edited by KnownUnknown on Nov 19th 2020 at 12:01:49 PM
"The difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to make sense." - Tom Clancy, paraphrasing Mark Twain.
Would that it were so simple.
It might be interesting to have a Jedi Master who has firmly good intentions, but is compulsively manipulative in that he feels everyone around him is inherently incompetent and/or untrustworthy and have to be moved around like chessmen in order for a good outcome to result. Like, someone who straddles the gap between the Knight Templar Jedi and the Good Shepherd Jedi.
Pong Krell would have been more interesting if he was simply Unfit for Greatness and a bad general. A lot of Jedi end up being caring and competent commanders; these clones drew the short straw and are stuck with the General Failure.
Edited by CrimsonZephyr on Nov 19th 2020 at 3:23:53 PM
"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."
I don't mind Krell being Evil All Along. It doesn't diminish anything I found fun to watch about that arc or Krell as an antagonist.
At a certain point trying to rewrite the script so that Krell is less Obviously Evil starts to rewrite the script so that all the themes of the episode are substituted for something else entirely. Clones being expendable is a different plotline than overt racism against clones. The metaphor than changes from We Have Reserves to its own form of mustache twirling ethnic genocide.
A separate story altogether of a Jedi who is incompetent and leads entire clone battalions to meaningless deaths would be interesting, as it's brought up a few times that many Jedi were uncomfortable with the new military leadership they were drafted into. The whole story would then have to change from the Clones trying to figure out what the endgame of their leader is and more trying to relay their incompetence to someone who can relieve them of command.
In retrospect, Krell is essentially a mini-Palpatine case study. A leader who pits his forces against one another to weaken them and enjoying the results as well. The Clone Wars overall is the Umbara arc on a galactic scale... except there's no easy visage to alert all the fighters that they were played for fools.
It's also where we see the clones take their own initiative of doing an "Order 66" protocol... and end up revealing that they could have done a nonlethal approach to stopping a rogue Jedi. Despite the blatant proof that Krell is evil and a traitor to the Republic, the clones prefer to put him on court martial. And even when the sentence is death, Rex is hesitant to pull the trigger.
Which necessitate the need of the biochip conspiracy because this kind of protocol would have saved numerous Jedi lives, and Sheev doesn't want that.
It's also an in-universe point, I think, that Krell is considered a successful general where tactics are concerned because he always gets what he angles for, just with severe loss of life that naturally he doesn't give a shit about because he doesn't perceive the clones as actual people like some other Jedi do.
He's effectively the "and nothing of value was lost" General Ripper who only cares about the ends, and internalizes We Have Reserves, in a world where he technically really could have infinite reserves.
The weirder thing about him is why he comes highly recommended. That would imply that within the Republic's military administration and even within the Jedi, there are enough people who think like him to agree with his methods.
Edited by KnownUnknown on Nov 19th 2020 at 2:30:08 AM
"The difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to make sense." - Tom Clancy, paraphrasing Mark Twain.
It could be that this was an opportunity where he had limited oversight and could freely enact his plans for implosion of Republic forces. Making deliberately bad decisions also involves knowing what the good decisions would be, and he likely had efficient strategies that kept his intentions beneath suspicion.
Didn't he also imply he had a vision of clones turning against the Jedi?
Gently wrap up this world like the night sky.
Alan Dean Foster, known for writing significant Star Wars tie-ins like Splinter of the Mind's Eye and The Force Awakens novelization, is urging a social media campaign
over Disney not paying him royalties as contracted.
So basically before Umbara, Krell was General Chekhov.
Reformists often are.
"All you Fascists bound to lose."