Star Wars: Clone Wars

[washing machine]

Is it leaving Netflix or is this just Doomsday Joey rearing his paranoid head?

[dimejinky99]

Is it leaving Netflix or is this just Doomsday Joey rearing his paranoid head?

Leaving Netflix march 7

[stip]

i havent gotten to that season 6 arc yet

[stip]

Is it leaving Netflix or is this just Doomsday Joey rearing his paranoid head?

march 7th i believe

[epilogue]

The murder mystery at the end of season 5 is great (2 more to go)

Joey, just stay away from the padme/politics episodes. Anything involving bounty hunters or Jedi on Jedi is generally excellent

I've really liked the Padme/politics episodes I've seen so far.

[epilogue]

The episodes at the top of S3 featuring the Clones are excellent. 99 broke my heart.

[stip]

The murder mystery at the end of season 5 is great (2 more to go)

Joey, just stay away from the padme/politics episodes. Anything involving bounty hunters or Jedi on Jedi is generally excellent

I've really liked the Padme/politics episodes I've seen so far.

In that case I'd continue to watch them

My issue is this. The Republic is waging a war against self-determination in the name of democracy. This is nonsense. If they were trying to argue that the seperatists were a coalition of evil warlords conquering planets this might be okay, but the show establishes that this is not the case and systems choose to join of their own free will/desire to not be a part of the Republic. If this was all played as a unscrupulous plot by Republic leadership (the palpetine angle) this would also be fine. But the republic is full of true believers.

It is hard to imagine why the Jedi would be playing a role in this conflict.

The fact that the Republic created a slave race to prosecute this war is monstrous, and the show also wants to have its cake and eat it too. Every now and then there is some half hearted throughline about clones making other choices, but for the most part there is a full throated embrace that to be a clone is to be raised and condition from birth to fight and die for the republic, and there can be no greater honor. That's horrifying. So episodes that revolve around the republic as an institution generally do nothing for me.

[epilogue]

Excellent post, Stip. I totally see what you mean. I have not tried to make the logic of all the political stuff work yet. For me, the Padme stuff, or the stuff I'm thinking of, is good because of her character (really like her) and they way she interacts with others. She's so refreshing compared to the Jedi stuff. She's a nice change of pace. It's also fun seeing her relationship with Anakin fleshed out more.

Also, I'm a big fan of Satine. I'm afraid to skip the political episodes in fear of missing out on more of her story.

But I totally get where you're coming from and I don't disagree with the way this stuff is handled on a big picture scale.

[epilogue]

It is hard to imagine why the Jedi would be playing a role in this conflict.

This is a pretty clear plot point though. The show itself is actively asking this exact same question time and time again.

[dimejinky99]

Just reading about a class action filed against a number of animation studios including Lucas film and Disney where they had a pact among them that disallowed poaching animators. So that enabled them to keep pay down and at a fixed rate. There's been a $200 million settlement or payout.
Strange. It would seem lucasfilm spent a lot more money on clone wars than rebels. I wonder is this part of rebels looking a lot cheaper?

[washing machine]

Is it leaving Netflix or is this just Doomsday Joey rearing his paranoid head?

march 7th i believe

Thanks Trump.

[epilogue]

Is it leaving Netflix or is this just Doomsday Joey rearing his paranoid head?

march 7th i believe

Thanks Trump.

[stip]

It is hard to imagine why the Jedi would be playing a role in this conflict.

This is a pretty clear plot point though. The show itself is actively asking this exact same question time and time again.

I don't know. It feels like an afterthought. There is a great arc at the end of season 5 that gets to it a little bit, but there don't really seem to be consequences. It's like 'oh lets do an episode on why this is difficult for the jedi' and then forget about it for the next 10 episodes until they come back to it again. I wish it was a brighter thread running through the series.

I guess that is, in some ways, a weakness with the show. It is highly serialized in the most disposable sense of the word. With a few exceptions (and the exceptions are often the best the episodes and arcs) actions from one episode don't carry into the next in any meaningful way. This wouldn't be a problem if this was a show where the focus on each episode is on what fun situation or challenge the characters had to overcome, but it feels like the series wants to grapple with larger meta ideas and long arcs and doesn't do so effectively. The fact that you could mostly turn on any episode at any point and not need to know what happened before speaks to that. There is no geography, no stakes, no chronology, just an endless series of interchangable battles (which are almost always a blast) on interchangeable planets.

I wish this show had a map where you tracked the progression of the war. There is an episode about whether or not the war will bankrupt the republic. It's too bad this isn't a tension running through the show - things getting worse and the republic feeling the strain. A gradual decline in trust in the jedi (or doubts within the jedi) rather than something turned on or off as the particular story of the week requires.

That's something that has really helped Rebels. Even though the time is still a bit hazy (since we don't know how close we are to A New Hope) there is still a sense of chronology and one event building on the next. The characters are much more dynamic, even though, in one shot installments, I like a lot of the clone wars characters better.

It's too bad, since a lot of clone wars has been great. The animation is incredible. The fight choreography is magnificent (you can see its influence in something like Rogue One). There are a number of really intriguing jedi. The bounty hunter universe is great. Many (most) of the individual arcs are really compelling.

I just want the pieces to fit, and they don't. And it's the more 'political' episodes about the larger architecture of the republic and the war where this really stands out to me.

[stip]

Some of it is also probably just a product of my background and interests and training. So stories about politics, if they are front and center, make me more aware of inconsistency and things I would otherwise just ignore. In the same way that the doctors and lawyers I know often hate medical shows and legal procedurals.

[dimejinky99]

All excellent points. And if you had posted in that depth and length about rebels I would have quickly reminded you that rebels is a kids cartoon show.

But I think Clone Wars is more than able to deal with that level of thought and it's a credit to it and to for seeing all that and seeing the gaps in logic contained within.

So, fair play.


Now shit up. You're ruinin Star Wars!

[stip]

hey, I really like clone wars. I think it's probably better than Rebels.

[dimejinky99]

hey, I really like clone wars. I think it's probably better than Rebels.

I'm pretty sure I enjoyed clone wars more overall too.
Need to watch it again soon.

[epilogue]

It is hard to imagine why the Jedi would be playing a role in this conflict.

This is a pretty clear plot point though. The show itself is actively asking this exact same question time and time again.

I don't know. It feels like an afterthought. There is a great arc at the end of season 5 that gets to it a little bit, but there don't really seem to be consequences. It's like 'oh lets do an episode on why this is difficult for the jedi' and then forget about it for the next 10 episodes until they come back to it again. I wish it was a brighter thread running through the series.

I guess that is, in some ways, a weakness with the show. It is highly serialized in the most disposable sense of the word. With a few exceptions (and the exceptions are often the best the episodes and arcs) actions from one episode don't carry into the next in any meaningful way. This wouldn't be a problem if this was a show where the focus on each episode is on what fun situation or challenge the characters had to overcome, but it feels like the series wants to grapple with larger meta ideas and long arcs and doesn't do so effectively. The fact that you could mostly turn on any episode at any point and not need to know what happened before speaks to that. There is no geography, no stakes, no chronology, just an endless series of interchangable battles (which are almost always a blast) on interchangeable planets.

I wish this show had a map where you tracked the progression of the war. There is an episode about whether or not the war will bankrupt the republic. It's too bad this isn't a tension running through the show - things getting worse and the republic feeling the strain. A gradual decline in trust in the jedi (or doubts within the jedi) rather than something turned on or off as the particular story of the week requires.

That's something that has really helped Rebels. Even though the time is still a bit hazy (since we don't know how close we are to A New Hope) there is still a sense of chronology and one event building on the next. The characters are much more dynamic, even though, in one shot installments, I like a lot of the clone wars characters better.

It's too bad, since a lot of clone wars has been great. The animation is incredible. The fight choreography is magnificent (you can see its influence in something like Rogue One). There are a number of really intriguing jedi. The bounty hunter universe is great. Many (most) of the individual arcs are really compelling.

I just want the pieces to fit, and they don't. And it's the more 'political' episodes about the larger architecture of the republic and the war where this really stands out to me.

I haven't read this entire post, Stip, because I'm still in Season 3 and can't speak to what happens later. But up until Season 3, there have been a number of episodes that are directly asking why the Jedi are involved in this struggle/fight. I'll bookmark this post and revisit once I've seen the entire series.

[epilogue]

I mean, that song the cabaret singers are singing in S3E9 is CLEARLY 'Anything Goes.' Which is CLEARLY a reference to Indian Jones and the Temple of Doom. So... that's funny.

[dimejinky99]

I mean, that song the cabaret singers are singing in S3E9 is CLEARLY 'Anything Goes.' Which is CLEARLY a reference to Indian Jones and the Temple of Doom. So... that's funny.

There's tons of references to Indy throughout clone wars and rebels as far as I know.