Hello I'm Going To Watch All of Star Wars

[Loktar]

I like how in the Lego Star Wars: The Freemaker Adventures cartoon it was a kyber saber made of smaller kyber crystals.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lego_Star_Wars:_The_Freemaker_Adventures

 

[The Tomtrek]

Episode 618 - The Bad Batch

The best defense is a strong offense.

The battle for Anaxes! The home of the Republic shipyards is under attack from Admiral Trench's Separatist forces. Jedi Generals Mace Windu and Anakin Skywalker lead a two-pronged attack on the ground and in the air.​

But after weeks of heated battle and mounting losses, the Republic's grip on Anaxes begins to slip away....

Hey General Trench is back! He's cool! The episode opens with (what would have been) a giant battle across the planet of Anaxes which, in typical Clone Wars style, would probably have looked awesome.

It turns out that General Trench is winning the battle because he has access to a special algorithm Captain Rex had created to help with his tactics. Only two other people apart from Rex had access to it: Fives (dead - killed at the start of this season) and Echo (also dead - killed during the Citadel episodes). They figure they must have got it from Echo's body, and they need a super cool kick-ass cool unit of cool Clones to go in like cool people and get it back!

A team made out of four genetically altered clones - Clone Force 99:

Let's look at who we have!

We have Ranger! He's the leader and has excellent tracking and perception skills! He also has Rambo hair.

There's Wrecker! He's the strong angry one!

Look, it's Crosshair! He's the quiet sniper one!

And here comes Tech! He's the... tech... one...

OK, so they're not exactly the most original archetypes or names, but I do like their designs. While they all look different, and even have different skin tones (FINALLY SOME WHITE CLONES AMIRIGHT??) they do all look like they could possibly still all be Jango clones. It also helps that Dee Bradley Baker voices them all still, so they sound Cloney at least.

The Bad Batch, Cody, Rex and two other Clones who's names I forget (Jesse and Kix, I think?) go on a mission to the Separatist Cyber Centre and we see that the Bad Batch have some ~crazy tactics~ that the normal Clones would never use! They're renagades! They think outside the box! They're loose cannons!

That, I think, is the main problem with the Bad Batch: They're all just a bunch of clichés. But the episode is still enjoyable because A) the episode seems to know they're cliché's and is OK with it, and B) being a cliché doesn't necessarily mean it's bad.

Cody gets injured, meaning that with a power vacuum we get a nice bit of friction between the Bad Batch and the "Regs", although that doesn't last long as they soon realise that Rex is just as crazy in a fight as they are.

They assault the Cyber Centre, find the algorithm... but it's coming from a live source! It's Echo! Echo's alive! Not all of Domino squad is dead! Fives wasn't a total failure!

For an action-heavy episode, this is pretty good. Even with the limited animation available here the action comes across as fun. It helps that action scenes like the ones in this episodes are primarily made up of large, bold movements, which is exactly what the story reel animation shows. It doesn't work as well when it's a lot of talking scenes like in the previous arc.

Although The Bad Batch are unoriginal, they're still fun, and they show another way of how the Republic is experimenting in new ways of winning the war. And Echo's alive! That's good!


Episode 619 - A Distant Echo

Wars are not won with superior weapons, but with superior strategy.​

Conspiracy! After repeated setbacks on the planet Anaxes, an elite clone squad is deployed to investigate the Separatist tactical advantage. Led by Commander Cody and Captain Rex, this special unit, called the Bad Batch, infiltrates Admiral Trench's cyber center to steal a strategic algorithm capable of predicting the Republic's every move.

What our heroes found was a live signal from the ARC trooper known as Echo, a clone long believed to be dead....

Anakin, Rex and the Bad Batch prepare to launch a mission to rescue Echo... only to be told by Obi-Wan that the council never approved the mission and that it sounds like a bad idea anyway. It totally makes sense for the Jedi Council at this point to disapprove of a mission that's only going to rescue one Clone, but Rex justifies it by saying that they need Echo's algorithm as well, and Obi-Wan seems happy with that.

Hunter suggests that they use The Bad Batch's special super cool and slick ship which is way better than the normal Republic ships! Only when Anakin boards the ship, he notices the nose art...

Anakin: Hey, what's with the nose art...?
Hunter: Ah! That's our girl, the Naboo senator! We check her out on the holo-scans...
Wrecker: Yeah! She can negotiate with me any time! HA HA!
Rex: Uhm... l-let's get aboard...
Anakin That is not staying there.

It's pretty great because it shows that, yeah, other people have noticed that that one Senator from that planet is totally hot and look like Natalie Portman, and Anakin can't say "UH HEY ACTUALLY THAT'S MY WIFE, GUYS, NOT COOL" because it's all in secret.

As the team lands on the planet, General Trench warns the base's commander that the Clones are coming, and it's... WAT TAMBOR? But... but... the last time we saw Wat Tambor he was in prison! On Coruscant! How did he escape? When did that happen? WHAT? TAMBOR?

I can't complain too much because Wat Tambor is awesome and has been severely underused in this show, but it's a bit of a gap!

As soon as Anakin and the Clones land Anakin gets captured by one of the natives on the planet, riding on a large flying beast. This whole sequence is 100% filler and it 100% feels like it. There are scenes of Tech using his Tech Goggles to translate the native's language and speak to them, so that's cool, but otherwise I'm not sure why the episode has an entire set-piece about rescuing Anakin when it's very much not what this episode is about!

We do get a nice scene where they discuss the possibility that Echo has actually turned over to the Separatists and given the algorithm willingly, which Rex refuses to believe.

When they eventually get into the Separatist base they fight some cool new droids and they search for Echo. Wat Tambor reveals that actually all of what they did was predicted by the algorithm and actually they've just fallen into his trap which is to invade the Techno Union station on a neutral planet thus breaking the neutrality and that's bad because something something something? Look the whole "the Techno Union are neutral or something" bit isn't very well explained and doesn't actually seem to matter but it does have Wat Tambor gloating and that's pretty great.

They finally rescue Echo! And, oh no, he's a crazy cyborg now!

What will they do?

This episode is fine, I guess. There's a bit too much filler, there's all that stuff about neutrality that comes out of nowhere, but it does have the return of Wat Tambor and that counts for a lot.


Episode 620 - On the Wings of Keeradaks

In war there is no such thing as neutrality.​

On an unsanctioned mission to rescue ARC trooper Echo, General Skywalker, Captain Rex, and the Bad Batch travel to Skako Minor, headquarters of the Techno Union.

After a harrowing encounter with the natives, our heroes infiltrate the city of Purkell, only to find themselves surrounded by Wat Tambor's forces....

Anakin, Rex and the Bad Batch have to escape with Echo, but he's still plugged into the system! They have to hold off the Techno Union droids, which gives Wat Tambor a chance to show off his new weapon: the Organic Decimator. It's basically a floating ball that finds organic things and kills them. I thought they already had something that did that?

We also get more about the whole neutrality thing - I guess the Techno Union were declared neutral in the war (which is why Tambor was released... maybe??) so the Republic attacking them makes it look like they're attacking neutral people. This would be easier to get if it wasn't for the fact that the last time we saw Wat Tambor and the Techno Union they were obviously working with the Separatists and Wat Tambor was arrested for being a Separatist leader! I guess all of the neutrality stuff happened off-screen.

Luckily Echo now has the plans for the entire city in his cyborg brain (because he's a cyborg) and so is able to help Anakin and Clones escape by taking them through the computer's cooling system and out on to some pipes outside. Luckily Tech had recorded the sounds the natives had used to call their flying creatures last episode and replays it to call them to rescue them (these are the titular Keeradaks). So the Eagles Keeradaks rescue Gandalf Anakin and the Hobbits Clones and carry them to safety...

It's actually quite a fun little sequence, and we get to see Echo start to remember how to be a clone. But as it turns out, the droids can fly too, and follow them back to the native's village.

With the knowledge that the droid army will soon come, the Clones convince the natives to join forces with them. Rex actually goes on about how the Techno Union "aren't really neutral at all!" in the war... although I'm not sure why these natives in a little village would even care about that. Considering that a lot of the villages die in the following battle, it does seem kind of fucked up that Anakin and the Clones not only bring the droids directly to their village but then guilt the villagers into fighting next to them - had they not even been there it's possible no one would have died at all!

The final battle is, again, pretty cool but hampered by the limited animation. There's not really much more to say, other than the episode ends with Wat Tambor mad at the loss of Echo and Echo thanking Rex for rescuing him. This... seems... like the end of the story? But there's still an episode to go!


Episode 621 - Unfinished Business

Learn from the past, but live for the future. ​

War rages on! With ARC trooper Echo rescued from the Techno Union, the Republic returns its attention to the battle for Anaxes, where without Echo's strategic intel, Admiral Trench and the Separatists have lost the upper hand.

But the question remains: can Echo's newfound ability to access Separatist computers help the Republic regain control of their vital shipyards?

Oh, okay, Anaxes. We're back on Anaxes. The Republic still need to defeat Admiral Trench, and Echo has an idea - he and the Bad Batch will go up to the Separatist command ship and feed the Admiral fake intel, while Obi-Wan, Mace and the rest of the Clones retake the shipyards.

Once again we're in full-on action scene episode territory, with the Clone attack on the shipyards actually having quite an impressive scale to it, even for a story reel.

Echo's now sporting full "action gear" and sadly seems to have lost his robot legs.

Echo's plan works - he lures all of the droids into the same place, and then immobilises them all with some sort of electrical pulse somehow(?). BUT Admiral Trench, being a good Admiral, has a back-up plan: A giant bomb that will destroy the planet. As you do.

I do like Trench. Since his first appearance back at the start of the series he's always been able to walk the fine line between an over-the-top cartoon villain (he is a giant spider after all) and an actual credible threat. He's even better now he has robot spider arms and seems to think the best thing to do when you're losing is to just destroy everything.

Echo tries to give Mace the code to disarm the bomb, but gets his brain fried by Trench before he can do it all (he's okay, though!), so Anakin has to confront Trench directly to get the code - first cutting off his robot arms, and then killing him once he has the code. Because Anakin has a temper.

Then everything blows up (the Separatist ships, not the planet) and Rex, Echo and the Bad Batch get medals.

These episodes are very straightforward in what they do - action-heavy episodes of an elite squad with different talents. Considering we already had a squad of clones with different talents in the show already (Domino squad), the Bad Batch had to do something more to set themselves apart. They do it by being walking action movie clichés, and that's fine because these are relatively simpler and lighter episodes - all of the actual deep plot gets left for things like the Yoda arc.

I do feel like this once again didn't really need to be a four-parter, you probably could have condensed parts two and three into one episode and not lost too much (and maybe cut down on the amount of villagers who died in the process!) but overall they're fun episodes. They do suffer from having the burden of being the last fully-voiced episodes of the Clone Wars that were released, and as (somewhat of) an end to the series they are a bit lacking. Having watched everything in order now, the Yoda arc is the much more logical way to end the series. If this is the end to the series...

 

[CaptainWacky]

FINALLY EPISODE 3...

*checks opening post*

OH...

 

[The Tomtrek]

Almost... almost...

 

[The Tomtrek]

But not quite.

Dark Disciple - Part 1

For years, the galaxy-wide conflict known as the Clone Wars has raged. The struggle between the rightful government of the Galactic Republic and the Confederacy of Independent Systems has claimed the lives of untold billions.

The Force-wielding Jedi, for millennia the guardians of peace in the galaxy, have been thwarted at nearly every turn by the Separatists and their leader, the Sith Lord Count Dooku.

With the war showing no signs of ending, and the casualties mounting each day, the Jedi must consider every possible means of defeating their cunning foe. Whether some means are too unthinkable—and some allies too untrustworthy—has yet to be revealed...​

Wait wait wait wait wait, I'm supposed to be watching Star Wars, and this is a book! You don't watch a book!

Well, I'm including this and Darth Maul: Son of Dathomir for three main reasons:

1. They were both directly adapted from scripts that would have been made into episodes had the series continued.
2. They both contain very important plot and character beats that both finish arcs that were started years ago, and set the stage for later events.
3. I did say in the first post that I would be following this guide to the Clone Wars chronological order and both this book and the Darth Maul comics are on it! It's also why I'm just looking at the first half of the book, as the Maul comics go before part 2.

So anyway, what's Dark Disciple all about? Dark Disciple is the adaptation of two four-part story arcs that would have been shown as part of the shows 6th and (probably) 7th season, continuing the Asajj Ventress arc that started in season 3 in a major way. All of the episode scripts were written by Katie Lucas and they were adapted into a novel by Christie Golden.

The basic plot is that the Jedi realise that in order to end the war they need to kill Count Dooku, but in order to do so they need help from Asajj Ventress, who has already tried to kill him twice. They send Quinlan Vos (the super-cocky Jedi only seen way back in "Hunt for Ziro") to go undercover and 'convince' her to try again. However, the two become close as they work together, and Vos soon starts to fall to the dark side in her presence...

The first half of the book covers what would have been four episodes ("Lethal Alliance", "The Mission", "Conspirators" and "Dark Disciple") and because of this the story is pretty obviously split into four separate parts:

The Jedi send Vos to meet Asajj and they become Bounty Hunter partners ("Lethal Alliance").
The two rescue the family of the Pyke leader from the Black Sun ("The Mission").
Asajj trains Vos in the dark side on Dathomir ("Conspirators").
Asajj and Vos go to Raxus (the main Separatist planet as seen in "Heroes on Both Sides") to assassinate Dooku ("Dark Disciple").

The first thing the book does is have the Jedi decide that killing Dooku is the only way to end the war. While there are obviously a lot of reasons why this is important, the fact that this comes after they now know that he was the one who ordered the Clone Army makes it even more important to them (this isn't actually mentioned directly in the book, it's just something that becomes obvious when reading after the Yoda episodes). It's important because it's one of the first times the Jedi, especially Yoda, actually acknowledge that the thing they're going to do is wrong and very much not the Jedi way. It's another step down the path to the Dark Side that the Clone Wars have forced the Jedi down, but at least now they're aware that they're doing it. In the typical Jedi way, they decide to do it through Ventress' actions, essentially killing Dooku but also keeping their hands clean.

The last time we saw Ventress she was in the lower levels of Coruscant yelling at Anakin for being a shitty master to Ahsoka. Now she's moved up in the world - she's taking bounties across the galaxy, with her Nightsister bow (as Barriss stole her lightsabers), cool goggles and HAIR?

What's great about the fact that this is now a book is that it lets us see Asajj's perspective in a way we've never really been able to before. It actually keeps the really delicate balance (that Kaite Lucas has always been good at keeping) of making her a likable and sympathetic character while at the same time not making her a truly good character. Throughout this first part of the novel, you get plenty of instances where you see her be genuinely ruthless about people - not caring that the bounties she's hunting have families, and only in it for the money. But at the same time, through her interactions with Vos you see that she does have those feelings somewhere deep down and that it's only because of her years of loss (losing the Nightsisters, losing her Jedi Master) that she's become so cruel and heartless. It could have been very easy at any point after she left Dooku to have her just renounce the Dark Side and become good, but that wouldn't have felt true to the character. Instead we get a character who still very much embraces the Dark Side, but controls it and as such becomes a much more interesting character. This episode also takes the effort to fully canonise how Asajj and Dooku met, matching it up with what we saw waaaaaaaaaay back in Chapter Six of the Tartakovsky series.

Although a fairly major Expanded Universe character, Quinlan Vos' only canon appearances until now had been that one episode of Clone Wars, a mention in Revenge of the Sith and a retconned appearance in The Phantom Menace. So this is really the first time we've actually been able to spend some proper time with the character. Like Asajj, he also has a new appearance:

In "Hunt for Ziro" Vos was shown as a laid back chillax bro Jedi who probably smokes a lot of weed outside of the Jedi Temple, and a lot of people who were familiar with the character from EU (which admittedly I'm not) weren't too happy with that as it didn't fit in with the dark and brooding character that they already know. This book tones that down somewhat, with him very definitely being a cocky smartass like he was with Obi-Wan, but because we can see into his though processes, we get a glimpse into a much more complex character than we would have seen in the show. Someone who is not actually sure about who he is outside of being a Jedi, and someone who very much starts to take steps down the Dark Path during his interactions with Asajj.

In contrast to the show, the novel is very much aimed at a more adult audience, and that's most obvious when it comes to the relationship between Asajj and Vos. At what would have probably been the end of the second episode, Vos reveals to Asajj that he is a Jedi and was sent by the council to help her assassinate Dooku (she'd already figured that out of course). After this reveal they also admit that they've both developed feelings for each other, and start an actual relationship. I'm not sure exactly how this would have been handled in the show, as a lot of the emotional journey Asajj goes through with this relationship - she has a lot of trust issues after everything she's been through - may have been a bit too much for a Cartoon Network show. It's not like the novel goes into graphic detail about them boning or anything (although there are a lot of mentions of Vos staring at various parts of her body!) but it's still a level above anything the show ever did in terms of showing a relationship. Also it always looked odd whenever two CGI people would kiss.

As part of the preparations to fight Dooku, Asajj takes Vos to Dathomir which is still in ruins after Grievous' attack. Here, Asajj teaches Vos into using the Dark Side to make him more powerful (you might say he's her ~Dark Disciple~) and we see that even though they're actually in a relationship with her, she's still pretty damn cold with him when it comes to getting him to embrace his anger and rage against Dooku - even to the point of telling him that it was Dooku who killed his former master. This mix of Asajj being someone who obviously cares for Vos, but still willing to not pull any punches when pushing him to the Dark Side is another great example of how this character is still very evil in a lot of ways, but not so much that she becomes totally unsympathetic. Vos, too, now embraces a lot of the Dark Side, allowing his character to touch on darker elements that were key to his EU appearances.

So, the book goes into more details about the Nightsisters, and in one case directly contradicts (or at least confuses) stuff we've already seen. Namely that the Nightsisters do use the Dark Side of the force (as well as 'magicks', with a 'k'), even though we just saw Mother Talzin say that she didn't back in "The Disappeared". Since the Nightsisters always seemed to be Force users anyway, I'd rather say it was "The Disappeared" that was inconsistent about them, rather than this book. It also makes it pretty damn clear that they're basically just the Bene Gesserit as Vos has to "awaken" an ancient creature called "The Sleeper" so that he can drink the "Water of Life".

After completing his training, Vos and Asajj head to Raxus to finally kill Dooku. So far during this story there have been a lot of great moments that would have been really cool to see as part of proper episodes. But really, the biggest crime about these episodes never being made, the biggest disappointment about the entire thing, is that we never got to see Asajj Ventress in her awesome evening dress:

They're infiltrating a fancy party, of which Dooku is the guest of honour, which is why they wear the fancy get-up. This is also what she would have been wearing as she and Vos fight Dooku, which would have been something to see!

After all the build up, all their training, Vos and Ventress finally confront Dooku... and they totally fuck it up. But it's done in a way that's believable, that shows that it's not that these characters are weak but that Dooku is really strong. It ends with Asajj being separated from Vos and on the run, while Dooku takes Vos away as a captive, seeing the Dark Side potential within him.

I've made no secret about how much I love the character of Asajj Ventress, but even though I think these four episodes would have been easily as good as the previous Asajj Ventress episodes we had from Katie Lucas (which is to say, very good). Had they been made they would have been a worthy continuation of her story, and an excellent return for Quinlan Vos. Even though we only get this story in a novel format now, it at least lets us get into the character's heads more than we would have, and the dialogue is still obviously written by someone who knows these characters very well (you can easily hear Nika Futterman's voice when you read Asajj's lines), it's still not quite as good as having proper episodes.

You know, when I started writing this review I had no idea how I would write enough for it to be worthwhile. Fuck.

 

[The Tomtrek]

Darth Maul - Son of Dathomir, part 1
Adapted from "The Enemy of My Enemy"

Into the abyss! Darth Maul has constructed a vast criminal syndicate known as the Shadow Collective, gathering the galaxy's most feared crime lords. The Black Sun, the Pykes, and even the mighty Hutts have all fallen in line behind the dark warrior.​

Building a base of operations on the corrupt planet of Mandalore, Maul plotted revenge against his many enemies. But Maul's lust for power and conquest has drawn a great enemy upon him — his former master, Darth Sidious.

Judging Maul a threat to his own designs, Sidious defeated his former apprentice, ruthlessly murdering Maul's brother Savage Opress and leaving Maul beaten but, curiously, still alive…

OK, here we are in comic-land now, and luckily this adaptation of what would have been another four-parter is split into four individual issues, so it's easily to talk about each one on their own.

Picking up where "The Lawless" left off, we find Maul a prisoner on Stygeon Prime, where he is visited by both Dooku and Sidious. Sidious realises that the true power behind Maul - Mother Talzin - must still be alive somewhere, and decides to use Maul to lure her out.

But not before Maul is rescued by some of his Mandolorian pals! I guess there are still a whole bunch of Mandolorians (and Pykes and Black Sun) still loyal to Maul... although I'm not really sure why. I guess it doesn't matter, they still think the angry guy with the cool tattoos will give them power, I guess, which is why they also all dress in red armour!

Their leader is a guy named "Gar Saxon" who I'm sure we'll see again somehow.

Grievous follows Maul and the Mandos to their base, which Grievous then promptly invades. We do get a nice duel between Grievous and Maul (which means that Grievous has fought pretty much everyone except Anakin at this point!), the Mandolorian forces get almost wiped out, and Maul retreats, likely to run to find Mother Talzin. This, of course, was the plan - to get Maul to run to Talzin so that Sidious can lure her out and destroy her.

And that's it. That's the whole issue. Adapting this as a comic rather than a novel makes sense, as (for this episode at least) it's pretty much pure action from start to finish, so obviously needed a more visual medium to be told well. It does mean that you lose pretty much any sense of what a character is thinking, though, which is a bit of a jump from reading Dark Disciple.

I wonder just how much this episode was simplified from the original script during the adaptation, as it does pretty much go from action scene to action scene with not much actual dialogue. Had this been a full episode of the show they might have got away with it, because by this point the action in the show is of a general high level that you can watch it for 25 minutes and not get bored. As a single issue of a comic, though, it's a bit thin.

Like most part-one's of a four-parter, this issue is basically just setting up where all our characters are: Maul is free, he has the Darksaber, and Sidious is following him to Talzin.


Darth Maul - Son of Dathomir, part 2
Adapted from "A Tale of Two Apprentices"

Conspiracy of evil! Darth Sidious captured and interrogated his former apprentice Maul — and learned that the witch Mother Talzin was behind his resurrection. Aware of Talzin's growing power as a formidable adversary, Sidious devised a plan to use Maul to lure her out into the open, where he can destroy her.

Freed by his allies, Maul rejoined his Mandalorian army on Zanbar, but soon fell under an attack by General Grievous, who routed Maul's forces after an intense ground battle.

Now on the run, Maul attempts to regroup before Sidious, Grievous, and Count Dooku can close ranks around him…

Maul seeks guidance from Mother Talzin, who once again appears in a cloud of green mist.

Instead of going straight to her, Talzin suggests he go to Ord Mantell to regroup with the Mandolorians, Pykes and Black Sun, and lure Dooku into a trap.

It's quite interesting having Mother Talzin pitted directly against Sidious. Previously we've only seen her again Dooku, and indirectly against Grievous and Mace Windu. But both Sidious and Talzin are master game-players, so we get instances like this, where Sidious tries to trick Maul into doing something, only Talzin sees through it and instead tries to trick Sidious.

A ship of Nightbrothers arrives from Dathomir, both to aid in the fight, and to make Dooku think that Talzin is on Ord Mantell. What then follows is a Separatist invasion of Ord Mantell, with Dooku fighting the Nightbrothers on the ground, and Grievous commanding the space battle. It's a great action sequence that's pretty good in comic form. Unfortunately it's hard to enjoy the big action scenes in a comic like this because all you can think is "Man, this would probably be really great as a proper episode!".

Eventually Maul reveals his true plan: To board the Separatist command ship to capture Grievous and shut down the droids on the planet, so that the rest of his forces can capture Dooku. And he does it! After just having read about Asajj and Vos utterly failing to kill Dooku, now Maul tries and actually does it (okay, I suppose he only captures him, but it's something!).

Like the previous episode, the whole plot feels very simple. It's not bad, the action is good and Maul's plan is interesting to read, but you do have to wonder how much more there would have been in the episode if it had been animated.


Darth Maul - Son of Dathomir, part 3
Adapted from "Proxy War"

Duel of the dark side! Suspecting that Mother Talzin had come out of hiding to aid her son Darth Maul, Count Dooku and General Grievous unleashed a full-scale assault against Maul's criminal syndicate on Ord Mantell.

Anticipating the attack, Talzin sent Maul a detachment of Nightbrothers, elite warriors from Dathomir, and devised a plan which ended in the capture of both Dooku and Grievous.

Now having won a major victory against his enemies, Maul advances his plan for the final destruction of his former master, Darth Sidious…​

Hey finally some actual plot happens. The Jedi learn of the attack against Ord Mantell, and Obi-Wan and Tiplee (the red Jedi with the flowly head tentacles whose sister got shot by Tup) go off to investigate. Tiplee comments that maybe Obi-Wan isn't that objective a person to send, what with Mail killing Satine right in front of him, but Obi-Wan says he can handle it...

Maul tries to get Dooku to join him against Sidious, even having Mother Talzin's spooky smoke ghost pop out of his chest and talk to him. We actually get some Darth Maul backstory here: Talzin and Sidious were once allies, as Sidious wanted to combine the Dark Side force with her Magicks, but once Sidious saw Maul (HER SON, DUN DUN DUN) he took him instead and left Talzin with nothing. She says to Dooku that this is exactly what will happen with him.

Like the scene of Dooku trying to turn Obi-Wan in Attack of the Clones, it's interesting because everything Maul and Talzin is telling Dooku is actually true. Sidious is planning to get rid of Dooku when someone better comes along (and does so!), but Dooku won't be convinced, and frees General Grievous as the Jedi attack.

Dooku temporarily teams up with Maul to fight the Jedi, which causes the Jedi to believe that Dooku is the Sith Master they are searching for, and Maul is his apprentice. It's Mace Windu that sees this, and comes to that conclusion, although we know that at least Yoda would know that to be false as he saw Sidious and Dooku together during one of his visions. I guess he just never told anyone, or this episode was written to come before those episodes (it doesn't any more though!).

Sadly, during the battle, Dooku kills Master Tiplee.

Those sisters really can't catch a break!

This issue works a lot better, simply because it has a much better mix of plot and action. The story actually progresses in interesting ways instead of it just being "action scene - Maul runs away" and we get some good development (and death) of some of the characters. This is much more like an actual episode of Clone Wars.


Darth Maul - Son of Dathomir, part 4
Adapted from "Showdown on Dathomir"

Evil alliances! Darth Maul operates from the shadows, carrying out Mother Talzin's plan for revenge against Darth Sidious.​

After capturing general grievous and Count Dooku, Maul threatens to render Sidious's droid army leaderless and ineffective. As this power struggle gains the Republic's attention, the Jedi—led by Obi-Wan Kenobi—boldly attempt to capture all of their enemies at once and end the Clone Wars.

As the Jedi attack, Dooku frees Grievous and joins forces with Maul. Together they escape capture and chart their course for Dathomir, where Talzin awaits them…

Maul takes Dooku to Dathomir, while also taking calls from his Black Sun and Pyke friends who basically want to leave now that he's just going on a vendetta against Sidious and not actually making any money for them (it's about time!).

Maul takes Dooku into the Nightsister caverns (which, I guess, Vos and Asajj would have been using very recently!) so that Talzin can use Dooku's force energy to take physical form again. This is basically what she tried to do in "The Disappeared", I guess.

Grievous and Sidious arrive on Dathomir - I think this is the first time we've actually seen Sidious and Grievous directly interact with each other, it's definitely the first time we've ever seen them in the same room as each other! - to stand off against Maul and, as it turns out, a possessed Dooku.

They fight... it probably would be a cool fight scene in motion? I mean when Sidious fought Maul before it was good, so this would have been too! Mother Talzin finally regains corporeal form and engages in a cool wizards duel with Dooku and Sidious.

Obvious Talzin is very powerful, being able to hold off both of them AND telling Maul to run while she's doing it (Maul runs away a lot...), but she's not so powerful that she can stop Grievous from sticking two lightsabers right through her.

Talzin getting killed by Grievous is a bit underwhelming for a character like her, but in a way that sort of works? For all her Magicks and power, she couldn't stop a half robot dude from walking up to her and stabbing her to death. And I guess she is actually properly canonically dead now, right?

So Maul escapes (WITH THE DARKSABER. WE LAST SAW THE DARKSABER WITH MAUL - REMEMBER THAT) and Dathomir is under control of the Separartists. My memory of the second part of Dark Disciple is a bit fuzzy (I'll read it tomorrow!) but I seem to remember people visiting Dathomir there and it being fine... We'll find out!

Again, this issue does feel like it's been cut down from a full episode. In fact, this really just feels like the last climactic showdown at the end of an episode, with the rest of the episode missing.

And that's pretty much how the whole adaptation feels, really, with the exception of issue 3. I guess it was the best way to tell this story - again, it wouldn't have worked as a novel - and it was worthwhile doing it as it does explain why Maul is now free and what happened to Talzin, but overall it does feel very short and a bit rushed.

It's hard to say if it would have worked better as full episodes, but if the previous Nightsister and Maul episodes are any indication then it probably would have been pretty good!

 

[SAUSAGEMAN]

star wars has a lot of canon eh

 

[CaptainWacky]

I remember finding the Maul comic a bit disappointing because nothing much actually happened in it (and at the time I thought maybe that would be the last we saw of Maul.) Sure Talzin died but I was sure she'd already died a couple of times before that anyway. But it's good that Grievous got to kill her for good. He's a sexy half bot.

 

[The Tomtrek]

star wars has a lot of canon eh

YOU HAVE NO IDEA.

 

[The Tomtrek]

Dark Disciple - Part 2

The second half of Dark Disciple is based off four episodes that probably would have aired during the show's seventh season. As in part 1, the story itself is pretty obviously divided into the four different parts, so it's pretty obvious to tell what would have been in each:

Asajj Ventress enlists the help of Boba Fett and his fellow Bounty Hunters to recuse Vos on Serenno, only to find that Vos has fallen to the Dark Side and does not want to go. ("Saving Vos, Part I")
As Vos starts to actively work for the Separatists, Obi-Wan and Anakin enlist Ventress to try and capture Vos from a Separatist cruiser, which they do. Although it looks like Vos was actually never turned, Ventress doesn't believe it. ("Saving Vos, Part II")
Vos starts to work for the Jedi again, but the missions he is a part of all seem to fail mysteriously, leading the Jedi to believe he may be leaking information to Dooku. ("Traitor")
The Jedi assign Vos to try to kill Dooku again, as a test of his loyalty. However Vos instead tries to get Dooku to bring him to Sidious - either so that he could replace Dooku or so that he could kill both of the Sith at once. This leads to a confronation between Him, Dooku, Ventress and the Jedi on Christophsis. ("The Path").

Unlike the first part of the book, which was very much focused on Asajj, the second half splits the narrative pretty equally between both Asajj and Vos. This allows us to see first hand his fall to the Dark Side, as well as conflicting feelings between Dooku, Ventress and the Jedi.

The first two parts, the "Rescuing Vos" story, are told very much from Asajj's perspective. She enlists the help of Boba's whole gang, many of whom return from the "Bounty" episode where she worked with them. That includes Boba himself, the droid Highsliger, Latts Razzi, Bossk and Embo (no Dengar though!). At the same time, we also see Vos being tortured by Dooku as a way of turning him to the Dark Side. I wonder how much of this torture, which is pretty explicit (although not very graphic) in the book would have actually been shown on screen. The main turning point for him would have at least been included, which is when Dooku hands Vos the lightsaber of his old master and Vos uses his power of psychometry to discover that it was Ventress who killed him, not Dooku as he was told.

Ventress finding him in his cell, but him having turned evil (complete with yellow evil eyes!) would have been a great cliffhanger to the episode - it's pretty great in the book, too!

Throughout the second half of the book it's always kept ambiguous whether or not Vos has actually fallen to the Dark Side. After the Jedi enlist Ventress to help capture Vos - who by then has openly lead several battles for the Separatists - they find out that actually he never turned and Dooku was just using his image to break the Jedi's moral... but Ventress still feels like he has gone over to the dark side... which he actually had... but not all the way... but he was still bad... until the end when he was good. It does get a bit convoluted, not only through the ambiguity of his allegiance, but with everyone constantly changing their minds about whether he's good or not. Asajj first thinks he's evil, but then she changes her mind. The Jedi first think he's good, but then they change their minds. It doesn't hamper the plot too much, especially since most of it is spread over what would have been the episode "Traitor".

But what's more interesting is that once Vos is back with the Jedi he now has to choose between his relationship with Ventress and the Jedi code - this is when the narrative really passes over to Vos, and basically stays with him until the end. This is obviously set up to be directly compared with the Anakin/Padmé romance. Padmé's only appearance in this book is in a scene with Anakin where they compare what Vos is going through with their own relationship, stating that what they have is totally different because they're ~in love~. What's interesting is that Vos makes the same choice that Anakin did, picking Ventress over the Jedi, although he does do it in the most stupid way possible.

After several missions he goes on go wrong, the Jedi start to believe that Vos is still working for Dooku somehow, and so send him on a mission to kill him again (with Anakin and Obi-Wan secretly following him) as a test of his loyalty. Vos drags Ventress along with him, saying that if he can kill Dooku then finally they can be free and be together, although leaves her out of the actual confrontation with Dooku. But then when Vos has Dooku at a point where he's about to be killed... he asks him to set up a meeting with Sidious instead.

See, Vos' plan was actually to use Dooku to get the Sidious, either so he could learn the identity of the Sith Lord, or even kill him. Which is fine, and not a terrible plan, only he never tells anyone this. So to Anakin and Obi-Wan it looks like he's still evil, to Ventress it looks like he's keeping Dooku (who she hates!) alive for no reason, and no one is happy! I guess the reason why Vos didn't tell anyone was because he himself was not sure about what he actually wanted to do, which makes sense I guess but does make it very frustration to read/watch.

What makes it worse is that all of these decisions lead to Ventress, Vos and Dooku crashing together on Christophsis, and Dooku attempts to kill Vos, only for Ventress to jump in the way to save him. Which kills her. She dies in this book.

I have several problems with this. Firstly, her dying at a point where the narrative had switched to Vos' point of view means that we only really see her death from his perspective, which is kind of a disappointment after having so much of the books and several episodes of the show being about her and what she feels about things. It means we don't really see her death as part of her character's arc, but rather we just see the effects it has on Vos' character. Secondly, it's a shame because there's still so much more this character could have done. Every time we've seen her from season 3 onwards she's grown and become more complex, and it seems like such a shame to end her story now when it was just getting so interesting. Seeing her work with Ahsoka in Season 5 and the Jedi in this book is really fun, and I wish we could have explored that more.

Even though I don't like the concept of her death, I have to say that the execution was still done very well. She gets a last conversion with Dooku, which pretty much confirms just how much she hates in still, and her death does at least inspire both Vos and the Jedi to reevaluate themselves and take a look at what they've done. Obi-Wan pretty much calls out the Jedi Council for trying to assassinate Dooku in the first place, saying that if even Asajj Ventress can sacrifice her life to save another, surely the Jedi don't have to resort to things like murder. It does also mean that Vos is now 100% back to being a proper Jedi, which I guess had to be done if only to keep continuity with Revenge of the Sith...

We do also get a final scene on Dathomir (with no Separatists in sight!), where Obi-Wan and Vos - the two people who liked her the most! - return her to her sisters. It's a nice scene, and a good way to end the book.

The second half is not as good as the first. I think the shift in focus from Asajj to Vos hurts it, and her death certainly does. I'm sure they still would have made some very entertaining episodes, though.

BUT YEAH, it feels dumb that she died in a situation that could have easily have been written of as 'severe injuries' with pretty much the same effect. I have to wonder if her death was actually in the original script for the episodes... I'm not sure it would have been, honestly. It very much feels like they've looked at the 'new canon' they were starting to create, realised there wasn't a place in it for this character, and killed her off as soon as they could.

In conclusion:

 

[CaptainWacky]

She could have come back as a sexy ghost!

 

[The Tomtrek]

Ugh it's all gone 2D.

Star Wars: Clone Wars

Chapter Twenty-Two

Okay, so, we're back in Tartakovsky land, but thankfully most of the Filoni-Clone-Wars characters (like Ahsoka) were out of the picture when that series finished, so it does actually lead into this series quite nicely. We have Anakin and Obi-Wan fighting the Clone Wars, Commander Cody is there, they act pretty much like they were acting by the end of The Clone Wars... it's not too bad. Obi-Wan sounds like himself (in that he sounds like James Arnold Taylor) but Anakin is now about 70% whinier, and the Clones all sound American now for some reason.

We get a brief little sequence of Anakin and Obi-Wan infiltrating a Separatist stronghold to lower it's shield, which is pretty much there to show us what the Anakin/Obi-Wan dynamic is now. It's short but fun.

There's a quick sequence set on Kashyyyk - the first time we've seen the Wookiee planet! Two Wookiees are out and about hunting only to find a Separatist army invading! I can't actually remember if this gets any payoff during this series or if it's just there to quickly set up Revenge of the Sith...

We also get something that during all 6 seasons of The Clone Wars we never actually got to see: Dooku directly training Grievous in lightsaber combat:

It's a pretty cool thing to see, especially as it means that now, should Grievous wish to, he can tell a Jedi that Dooku once trained him, possibly calling him a fool at the same time. If he wanted to. You can tell that they still had no idea what Grievous would sound like when they were making this, as not only does he sound different from Matt Wood's voice in The Clone Wars, but he also sounds different from the very first time we saw him in this series! He's more stoic general here, rather than moustache twirling "TIME TO ABANDON SHIP!!!".

There's also a short sequence of the Separatists invading various planets across the galaxy, which I only mention because one of the planets of Orto and you see some scared Ortolans and I love Ortolans.

YOU NEVER SEE IF THEY HAVE FEET SO I'LL JUST ASSUME THEY DON'T

Anyway, the actual story, as in the thing we'll be spending most of the remaining chapters on, doesn't actually start until the very end of the chapter. Obi-Wan and Anakin get sent to the planet Nelvan to find General Grievous, where they are promptly attacked by a giant creature, which Anakin kills. This causes a group of Nelvanian natives to be very mad with him. That's it. That's the end of the chapter.

Overall it was easier to go from The Clone Wars back into this series, as The Clone Wars did a pretty good job of getting things roughly to where they were in Revenge of the Sith, making it easy for this show to pick up where it left off.


Chapter Twenty-Three

The episode starts with Yoda looking out of the window only to see literally hundreds of Separatist ships invading Coruscant. Nice early warning systems you guys have!

So this is the start of the invasion of Coruscant, and in true Tartakovsky style it's both over the top and giant in it's scale. Where the films or The Clone Wars would have, say, ten ships attack the planet, this has hundreds. Where they would have five Clones fight with Saesee Tiin, there's now about 50.

Considering this is supposed to be the big battle of the Clone Wars, and involves the invasion of a giant planet like Coruscant, the extra scale makes a lot of difference.

The battle is split into three parts: Saesee Tiin leads the battle in space, Mace Windu leads the battle in the air (his ship is purple, because he's Mace Windu), and Yoda leads on the ground; and all three have their own little set-pieces. That includes Saesee Tiin leaping through space to invade a Separatist cruiser, to Mace Windu leaping on top of a Vulture Droid and controlling it by pulling on it's wires (OK that part's a bit over the top). Action is very much where this series excels, and there's a lot of good stuff here.

The Anakin and Obi-Wan plot is comparatively boring. They talk to the Nelvanan villagers who tell them that Anakin is actually someone foretold in their legends called "Ghost Hand" (because of Anakin's robot hand) and he must go out and destroy a great evil etc, etc. It's compared to the Coruscant stuff this is positively sedate. Anakin leaves the village to go out on this quest, which Obi-Wan tells him would be his last trial for the Jedi (as Anakin didn't actually go through the trials before he became a Jedi, like everyone else did).

The chapter ends with Shaak Ti and two other Jedi (Roron Corobb and Foul Moudama, ok?) rushing into the chancellor's room trying to get him to safety, which he refuses. But then who should appear on the side of the building but GENERAL GRIEVOUS? OH NO!

 

[The Tomtrek]

Chapter Twenty-Four

Grievous stands face-to-face with Palpatine, who is pretty blasé about the whole thing. It's actually pretty great, because of course we know that Palpatine isn't scared of Grievous at all because he's the one who ordered him there in the first place, but to Shaak Ti and the Jedi it just looks like Palpatine doesn't understand how deadly Grievous is.

Grievous chases the Jedi and Palpatine down an elevator shaft (by running along the wall next to it...

...which is pretty great) and across the rooftops and walkways of Coruscant, eventually joined by his MagnaGuards. It's a pretty great sequence that once again benefits from Tartakovsky's over-the-top style. I don't know if we would have ever seen these events in The Clone Wars, had it got that far, but it most likely would not have been as grand or dynamic as this (it would probably still have been amazing though).

The end up all fighting in a Coruscant train station, fighting amongst speeding trains. Shaak Ti eventually gets rid of Grievous by using the force to tie his cloak to a departing train, another reason why everyone should love Shaak Ti.

Meanwhile, Anakin is off on his quest thing and sees a vision in a cave - the tale of the Ghost Hand. It's basically the tale of a Nelvanan warrior who while fighting evil got corrupted by it. Although he tried to use the power given to him by the corruption to help his village, it ended up consuming him and killing his loved ones. The episode is not subtle about what it's trying to foreshadow.

The whole sequence is done in a really nice cave painting style, and is yet another vision of Anakin's eventual fate (after the one he had on Mortis, which was more explicit and drove him mad).

Going further into the cave he descovers a Techno Union facility, where a whole bunch of Wat Tambor types have been experienmenting on Nelvanan warriors, turning them into deformed cyborg warriors. Just as Anakin tries to free a warrior who is being converted, the Techno Union unleash the cyborgs against him!

Chapter Twenty-Five

Anakin tries to free the mutated Nelvans, but luckily the warrior who was only partially converted manages to break free and shows Anakin how to remove the control harnesses on the rest of the warriors. They all escape while Anakin goes to destroy the power generator. The generator has a crystal in the centre of it (probably a kyber crystal, not that it matters) and in destroying it Anakin loses his robot arm. This sends him into a rage, and he brutally murders the Techo Union officers before they can escape.

He leads the mutated Nelvans back to their village, where they are eventually accepted back by their wives and children. There's an obvious mirror between the Nelvan warriors and what will eventually happen to Anakin, right down to the idea that beneath all of their corruption and cybernetics they are all good people who could even be forgiven. Unfortunately, it will take Anakin several decades to learn this lesson for himself.

On Coruscant, Palpatine goes down to his bunker with Roron Corobb and Foul Moudama, while Shaak Ti stays to fend of the MagnaGuards. Which she does, and it's awesome.

I wonder if Shaak Ti got such a big part in this second half of the series because she was so popular from her fight with Grievous in the first half.

Unfortunately, Grievous was already waiting for Palpatine in his bunker, and easily takes out the Jedi with the use of his extra arms (that probably would have been a cool reveal if he hadn't already seen him use them all the time in The Clone Wars!).

By the time Shaak Ti arrives, Grievous easily incapacitates her (but doesn't kill her, because she was already going to be in Revenge of the Sith!) and escapes with the Chancellor. Just before he leaves, Mace Windu arrives and crushes his chest, giving him a nasty cough! I've always thought it was weird that Grievous' cough was something they felt needed such a clear explanation, rather than it just being a by-product of the fact that he's a cyborg. Here it's supposed to explain why he's coughing in Revenge of the Sith, but didn't during the this series (when they didn't know he would be coughing), but of course this explanation goes out the window when we see him coughing and spluttering all throughout The Clone Wars.

The episode ends with the battle continuing to rage on Coruscant, and Obi-Wan and Anakin (with a new hand!) getting orders to join the fight...


The Coruscant parts of this series are excellent, and really show the scope of the battle. As usually the action is slickly done and really fun to watch. The Anakin storyline is... It was better when this series was viewed only in it's own context. But now The Clone Wars has already done these types of foreshadowing stories a lot better than this, it doesn't look as good in comparison. It also doesn't help that the Anakin we get here is in no way as cool as the cool Matt Lanter Anakin in The Clone Wars.

It should be noted that the entire Anakin plot would have been totally overwritten had The Clone Wars continued. We would have instead had a story arc about Ahsoka learning that Maul was back on Mandalore, and calling in Anakin and Obi-Wan to help. Anakin and Obi-Wan have to leave during the fight (to rescue the chancellor) but Anakin leaves Rex and a bunch of clones to help Ahsoka. This explains where both Rex and Ahsoka were during Revenge of the Sith!

Speaking of Revenge of the Sith...

 

[The Tomtrek]

Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...

War! The Republic is crumbling under attacks by the ruthless Sith Lord, Count Dooku. There are heroes on both sides. Evil is everywhere.

In a stunning move, the fiendish droid leader, General Grievous, has swept into the Republic capital and kidnapped Chancellor Palpatine, leader of the Galactic Senate.

As the Separatist Droid Army attempts to flee the besieged capital with their valuable hostage, two Jedi Knights lead a desperate mission to rescue the captive Chancellor....​

IT'S BEEN ALMOST SIX MONTHS SINCE I'VE WATCHED LIVE ACTION STAR WARS.

Right, where to begin?

Watching this film now, after having gone through six seasons of TV show is a very very different experience than it was going right from Attack of the Clones (even via the Tartakovsky series). There's a lot of people, places and character interactions that are new since Attack of the Clones, which on it's own this film doesn't necessarily provide enough context for. But now pretty much all of those holes are filled. We know how close Anakin and Obi-Wan are now. We know that Anakin's been getting closer and closer to the dark side and losing faith in the Jedi. We know that the Clones have become individuals in their own right, and have worked alongside the Jedi for years now. We know who General Grievous is, and exactly how he figures into the war. We know a lot more about almost all of the Jedi council.

As such, coming into this film now, especially as it leads so directly in from the end of the Tartakovsky series, it feels (mostly) very natural. This is just the continuation of the events we've already been watching for seasons. In some ways, Revenge of the Sith now feels like a very extended series finale to The Clone Wars (I do not mean this in a negative way).

Take, for example, the death of Count Dooku. In the film, Christopher Lee gets all of five minutes of screentime before he dies. On it's own, this isn't very good, as killing off the principal villain of the previous film in the first five minutes - especially when we didn't really get to see him do that much in Attack of the Clones - feels like a bit of a waste. This is made worse by the fact that he's replaced by General Grievous, a character who would have been totally knew to most audiences. But now we know Dooku very, very well. We've seen him be evil, and we've seen the way he manipulates the Separatists into thinking they're fighting for a just cause. So his death at Anakin's hands no longer feels like a waste of a character (although it does still feel like a bit of a waste of Christopher Lee), rather just the natural end to that character's arc (one that even got prefigured late in the show!).

Now when we see Dooku's shocked face when Palpatine orders his death - which is amazing, by the way - we have the context of his relationship with Sidious to know how much of a shock that really is to him.

The sequence where this has the most effect is easily the Order 66 sequence. Before it was just the clones killing those cool background Jedi we saw in Attack of the Clones. But now we know those characters; we know Ki-Adi-Mundi, Aayla Secura and Plo Koon (IT'S REALLY SAD WHEN PLO KOON DIES NOW I CAN'T STRESS THAT ENOUGH), and we also know the clones that are killing them, and how close they are. It makes the whole scene so much more tragic because of that connection.

Yoda's story also gets improved a lot. Because of the events of the last Yoda arc, we know that Yoda does have some knowledge both of Qui-Gon's existence in the Force, and of the fact that the Jedi might not have long left. This makes his decision after losing to Sidious more understandable - he realises there's no way he can beat him, so his only choice is to go into exile and wait for A New Hope to arise instead, just as the priestesses said. When he then tells Obi-Wan that he's been talking to Qui-Gon, we know exactly what that means, and it no longer comes out of literally nowhere.

The Clone Wars spent a lot of time patching up the holes in both Attack of the Clones and this film, and it was definitely worth it. That doesn't excuse this film of having holes, which it does, but it does make it a much more enjoyable experience.

There is one major area where watching The Clone Wars actually makes this film look bad - the anchor around this film's neck: Hayden Christensen. To be fair to Hayden he has improved a fair amount since Attack of the Clones... but he's not Matt Lanter. We've now had six seasons of what I consider the definitive Anakin: heroic, brave and intelligent, but still cocky, insecure and very prone to lose his temper. Clone Wars gave us an Anakin that it made sense that people actually liked, and made sense that someone like Padmé would fall in love with. It's really hard to go back to Christensen after that. Even in the moments where he does pull of a line rather well, there's still the thought in the back of my mind saying that Matt Lanter would probably have done it better. Now, it's easy to say "Well, the script was the problem, not Hayden's acting!" but I don't think that's true. While I was watching the film I couldn't really point out any dialogue that would sound out of place coming out of Clone Wars Anakin's mouth, it's just Christensen's awkward and stilted delivery that kills it.

There's also a couple of smaller things that get changed viewing this in the context of The Clone Wars: Anakin tells Dooku that "My powers have more than doubled since we last met, Count.". Originally, it was reasonable to assume that their last meeting was the last time we saw them together - on Geonosis during Attack of the Clones. Then, it makes sense that Anakin is bragging about how much he's changed in the last three years. Now the last time they fought each other would have been during the events of Dark Disciple, which couldn't have been more than a couple of months before this!

And of course there's Anakin's line of "General Grievous. You're shorter than I expected." - one line that meant that Anakin and Grievous could never actually meet during The Clone Wars.

But enough about how the film looks in context, how is it actually as a film? Well, it's good? The general opinion of Revenge of the Sith is that it's the best of the prequels, and that's totally fair. Let's look at what I really like about this film.

I think a lot of this film looks amazing from a cinematography level, and a lot of the CGI has held up remarkably well, especially compared to Attack of the Clones. It's strange to think this film is over 10 years old now, because I don't think it's aged nearly as badly as some other films from that year.

Ewan McGregor has been pretty damn solid through his stint on Star Wars (unlike Anakin, going from James Arnold Taylor to Ewan McGregor was practically seamless), even though he didn't really get that much to do in The Phantom Menace. Not only is he playing a pretty damn pitch-perfect young Alex Guinness, but he also manages to show a lighter side to Obi-Wan during the first half of the film, something we never really saw later. He even manages to pull up some of the Hayden Christensen's slack in making the Anakin/Obi-Wan relationship something that feels like a genuine friendship.

Ian McDiarmid manages to play many shades of Palpatine in the same film, and is great at all of them. From the "You're no match for him, he's a Sith Lord!!" clueless Palpatine, to the "The Dark Side of the Force is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be... unnatural." creepy/seductive Palpatine, to the "UNLIMITED POOWWWWWEERRR!!!" over the top Emperor. He knows when to play it subtle, and he knows when to bite huge chunks out of the scenery. Considering this film is his time to shine, he really knocks it out of the park. His entire performance during the opera scene, for example.

I'd also like to highlight Frank Oz, who's performance as Yoda I feel often gets overlooked, especially in the prequels. His war-weary Yoda here is actually a very subtle performance, and distinctly different to the Yoda we saw in either of the previous films. Not that Oz would have done it intentionally, but his weariness very much works with the extra knowledge we now know Yoda to have.

I really like the opening sequence, with the space battle and the rescue of Palpatine. It's a nice way to start us right in the middle of the action, there's some actual good rapport between Obi-Wan and Anakin, the Dooku duel is well done, and the crash landing is fun too. The space battle is still very impressive, being totally chaotic (in a way which matches up well with what we saw of it in the Tartakovsky series!) while still making it easy for us to follow Anakin and Obi-Wan through it.

Likewise the entire second half of the film, where we see the Republic slowly turn into the Empire, is really well done on the whole (there are some specific scenes that maybe don't work). That includes stuff like Order 66, the "This is how liberty dies" scene, as well as the general panic and confusion that Yoda, Obi-Wan and Bail Organa show as they try and find out what's going on. This might be another part that's more effective in context of the Clone Wars, though, as we've basically had 6 seasons of the status quo being radically changed by a character we've come to like.

John Williams, as he does literally every time, produces an amazing score. Easily the darkest Star Wars score, he somehow manages to make The Emperor's Theme even more dark and mysterious, and wrote the amazing "Battle of the Heroes" theme for Obi-Wan and Anakin's duel. Aside from some slight cupcakeling problems that literally only I would care about (THIS WAS THE ONLY CHANCE TO USE THE AMAZING LUKE & LEIA THEME AND YOU MISSED IT) it's basically perfect for this film. The music editing, however, is terrible. But that's a long rant no one cares about.

And there's a lot of other good things too. General Grievous is great, he continues to be the amazing Saturday Morning cartoon villain robot that he is - but now he has a giant wheel thing (it's great!). Jimmy Smits is there!

I do like this film. I do. Especially after Clone Wars. But that's not to say it doesn't have some glaring problems.

Apart from Hayden Christensen's acting, which is the #1 problem with this entire film and I think we all know why the second biggest problem this film has is Padmé. Throughout The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones and The Clone Wars, Padmé Amidala has always been a very active character. She's the one who plans the attack on Theed in The Phantom Menace. She's the one who encourages Anakin to go to Geonosis to rescue Obi-Wan in Attack of the Clones. But here she literally. does. nothing.

To be fair, she did have her own subplot. She was going to join together with other senators such as Bail Organa and Mon Mothma to form a committee dedicated to reducing the amount of powers the Chancellor had - something that would have been implied to also be very start of the Rebel Alliance. But the whole thing was cut out to focus the film on Anakin's story. I totally understand that decision - the film is long enough as it is, so a plot like that is the logical thing to cut. But it leaves Padmé as someone who doesn't really do anything except sit around her apartment all day being pregnant and saying trite romantic dialogue to Anakin. She becomes the thing Anakin needs to save, rather than a character in her own right. It's such a shame because it's not like Natalie Portman isn't capable of doing more, but she's given nothing to do, and it totally destroys the character that's been built up. The whole thing is made so much worse with the reveal that she died because "she lost the will to live". Why? Why suddenly turn her into a character who lets herself die because the man she loved is evil - she's stronger than that! She has kids now! They could have so easily had it be that Anakin's attack killed her, which would have been so much better.

TO BE CONTINUED IN THE NEXT POST

 

[The Tomtrek]

I also hate that they reveal both Luke and Leia's names. The prequels by design spoil the biggest plot twist of the original trilogy - that Darth Vader is Luke's father. That's fine, it's totally unavoidable. But they didn't have to identify both babies as Luke and Leia, as that now ruins what is the only other plot twist in those films! They could have just left the other baby unnamed and it probably would have worked: We know she goes off to Alderaan, but the planet's name is never actually mentioned in the film. Coupled with the fact that we never hear Leia's father's name or see the surface of Alderaan in Star Wars, there wouldn't be a lot to give it away that she's the same person. But now we know that from the start, so we know that they're brother and sister when they kiss! Which they do!

The last part of the first act is really kind of a drag. It's just about the fact that Anakin has been made a part of the council, but not made a master. It all hangs on Christensen's performance, which isn't very good! It's not until Obi-Wan goes off to Utapau that the story picks back up.

The Palpatine/Mace Windu fight is easily the weakest one of the film. In the few times we saw Palpatine fight in The Clone Wars he had this amazing unnatural fluid movement, that still felt like something the character would actually do. This fight is far more awkward, as it clumsily cuts from close-ups of Ian McDiarmid, to a stunt double with his face CGI'd on, to a really bad fully CGI Palpatine flipping and whirling around. It doesn't work at all.

On a similar note, I really don't like the Emperor's make-up in this film, and how they transform him into it. Back in Attack of the Clones they did a really nice subtle make up job on Ian McDiarmid to give him some elements of the Emperor's appearance, so suggest that his transformation was a long and subtle one that happened over his many years of using the dark side.

For this film, not only did they not use that aging make-up (so he looks younger here than he did in Attack of the Clones), but they then decided to have it be a sudden change, brought about as a combination of damage from the lightning and the reveal of his darker self.

I don't like it.

While I do like both final duels (Anakin/Obi-Wan and Palpatine/Yoda), I don't like the fact that they inter-cut them. The Anakin/Obi-Wan duel is one of the most important things to ever happen in the Star Wars saga, so I feel like it does deserve to be shown without cutting away to something else, especially as the entire film has been building up to it at this point. I will also say that Obi/Anakin duel does go a bit over the top at the end, though.

On the whole though... this film works. It works as a mid-point in the entire saga and it works as an end-point for The Clone Wars series. It doesn't quite work as a direct sequel to Attack of the Clones, though, and it definitely doesn't work as a showcase for Hayden Christensen's acting skills.

I want to finish this review with some screengrabs of some of my favourite shots in the film, as I feel that George Lucas gets a lot of shit as a director, when he does have a really distinctive (and visually impressive) visual style.

 

[CaptainWacky]

Revenge of the Sith is PROBABLY my third favourite Star Wars movie so I like it quite a lot! I like how big and sprawling it is. I like that it goes to so many planets to tell its epic story of an intergalctic war andt he fall of the republic. And how great it all looks. (Remember when me and Menty got angry it didn't got nominated for a special effects Oscar lol.) I feel like it offers a lot of what Episode 1 and 2 lacked and I like that it's so different from the original films.

I need to defend General Grievous here because some people still say "HE KEPT RUNNING AWAY HE WASN'T AN ULTIMATE BADASS LIKE THE CARTOONS." Okay, but he isn't realy supposed to be an ultimate badass. He's not really the in charge of the CIS army, he's a distraction, a red herring. He's a big ridiculous bombastic scary boogeyman who twirls lightsabers and says "YOU FOOL!" while the real villain is pretending to be a kindly old man. AND I LOVE HIM.

Hayden is still not that great but he's much better with Ewan than in the romance scenes.

I agree about Padme and as someone who really loves Natalie Portman it hurts that she's so wasted here (though she does have that one really good line!) I just have to ignore the "lost the will to live" line because when it's cutting between Vader being saved and Padme dying I can imagine that Palpatine is manipulating the Dark Side to artificially extend Vader's life (like Plagius could do) and that disturbance in the force is what causes Padme to die so it's happening at the same time. Or something. It makes more sense than losing the will to live okay.

Kit Fisto dying so fast was bullshit.

They should have made it clearer that Yoda fled after the fight with Sidious because the Clone Troopers were arriving and he knew he wouldn't have a chance to kill Sidious then because I've seen loads of people online post "WHY DID YODA STOP FIGHTING."

Not enough Nute Gunray.

 

[The Tomtrek]

I need to defend General Grievous here because some people still say "HE KEPT RUNNING AWAY HE WASN'T AN ULTIMATE BADASS LIKE THE CARTOONS." Okay, but he isn't realy supposed to be an ultimate badass.

Yeah, really that's a mistake of the Tartakovsky series. A lot of the details about Grievous didn't get finalised until very late in production of Revenge of the Sith, which meant all they really had to go on was an early design and that the killed Jedi.

I do prefer the "MUWA HA HA HA"ing Grievous to the 'badass' one, as I feel it fits Star Wars more. You're more likely to find someone like RotS/Clone Wars Grievous in an episode of Flash Gordon than you are the Tartakovsky one.

Not enough Nute Gunray.

He just wanted peace!

 

[The Tomtrek]

Star Wars: Rebels

Prelude Shorts

The Machine in The Ghost
Hey, we're back in Star Wars land! There's a large freighter type ship fighting against two imperial ships! It seems to be piloted by a cool green Twi'Lek lady! There's a guy with a beard in the turret! There's also a sassy droid with arms who gets bossed around all the time!

This is a pretty good short that sets up both Hera and Kanan's relationship (they really seem like a couple here which has been toned down as of late) and also Chopper's there and he's great. The animation looks good, but there's an obvious lack in detail compared to what we saw in Clone Wars.


Art Attack
There's a cool pink Mandolorian girl! She seems to be working with Kanan! She does graffiti on the side of the TIE fighter! She gets chased by a bunch of Stormtroopers (who look like Clone Troopes I guess!), but they can';t seem to hit anything! She blows everything up in a big paint explosion! She seems to like blowing things up and paint!

Another cool little short that tells us the basics about Sabine quickly and easily: Mandolorian, painter, explosions. Sabine is generally pretty great and this introduction is no different! Those Stormtroopers sure are bad shots!


Entanglement
There's a big furry alien guy! We've never seen his species before! He also seems to be working for Kanan! He starts to beat up some Stormtroopers who were hassling people! He has a staff that's kind of like the staffs General Grievous' MagnaGuards had! He blows up a TIE fighter!

This short is fine, although it's literally just a scene of Zeb beating people up which isn't that interesting really. But we learn that Zeb is the big strong and slightly cocky one (he's the Jayne).

Property of Ezra Bridger
There's a young kid watching a dogfight between the Ghost and a TIE Fighter! He looks like Aladdin! He's basically just Aladdin! The TIE Fighter crashes and he tricks the pilot into letting him steal some technical parts and his helment! He has a dorky little stun slightshot thing!

Yeah this one's OK too, I guess. We get introduced to Ezra and he's your basic "scrappy street kid" who outfits the dumb imperials with street-smarts and fast talking and all that other stuff. It's OK I guess.


Episode 100 - Spark of Rebellion

So this probably the biggest jump in narrative that we've in narrative so far. Not only is there the biggest time jump yet (14 years, compared to 10 years between The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones) but for the first time we're following a totally new set of characters.

Jumping straight from the end of Revenge of the Sith to this is a bit of a leap, especially as this show does generally work on the expectation that you're at least familiar with the original trilogy. But there are actually quite a few bits of information we get in this episode that help tie things together: It starts with Darth Vader (this is only the second time we've heard him talk!) telling The Inquisitor that although most of the Jedi have been killed, there are still a few survivors. We actually get to see first-hand why the Empire is bad, and why people would want to fight against it. We see familiar Jedi articfacts such as lightsabers and holocrons. We even get to see the holo-message Obi-Wan Kenobi recorded during Revenge of the Sith (with James Arnold Taylor reprising the role in a quick cameo). Overall, the jump in time is actually handled pretty well.

While Clone Wars did have the odd episode based around secondary characters, both the show and all three films have generally been about the same main characters: Anakin, Obi-Wan and Padmé. But now Anakin's evil, Obi-Wan's in hiding and Padmé's dead, so we have a new set of main characters. Following on from the introduction shorts, this episode does do a good job of setting up who they are, and how they interact.

All of the character's are pretty good, actually. I like that Hera generally seems to be the one in charge, and the one with the best idea about what they're actually doing most of the time. It's also nice to see a Twi'Lek who's actually fully clothed for once! Kanan's good as the cocky-but-with-a-secret-past ex-Jedi. Sabine's great as the 'alternative' teenager who really likes to blow things up. Zeb's a bit two-dimensional at the moment, he's basically just the Angry Strong One. And Ezra's just... kind of... annoying?

Ezra's easily the weakest character, which is a shame because the entire episode is told from his point of view. The problem with Ezra is that he's a bit too sci-fi whizz-kid. He outsmarts the dumb grown ups, he makes stupid mistakes that turn out OK for no real reason, everyone seems to like him despite the fact that he straight up keeps stealing form them and getting in their way, and he's a potential Jedi because of course he is. He's not quite as bad as, say, The Phantom Menace Anakin, but Ezra Bridger is no Ahsoka Tano. However, like Ahsoka, this is merely a starting point for the character so it's important to see how Ezra changes and grows throughout the series. After all, Season 1 Ahsoka could get pretty annoying sometimes, but she quickly became one of the best Star Wars characters out there.

So the episode itself... it's pretty good? There's some nice action, including a speeder bike chase and a showdown on the planet Kessel, it sets the characters up well, and there's even a good villain. I like Agent Kallus, he's a threatening villain, but one that works on the smaller scale this show operates on. It wouldn't make sense for, say, Darth Vader to be the show's main antagonist - both because we know he'll survive anyway, and because the scope of the show isn't so big that he would be involved. Kallus just feels like the head Imperial Security Bureau Agent for this area who just has to hunt down this group of pesky rebels. Even if he does have questionable facial hair.

Everything does feel a bit restrained, especially coming from both Clone Wars and Revenge of the Sith. Instead of dealing with a galaxy-wide war, featuring hundreds of Clones fighting hundreds of Battle Droids, we're now only talking about a small group of characters, and a story that only goes across two planets. Instead of the giant and complex battle scenes we got in Clone Wars - even in episodes where they weren't the focus of the episodes - the climactic battle at the end of this episode is just Kallus and a handful of Stormtroopers against the crew of the Ghost and a handful of Wookiees. But Wookiees are great, so it's not too bad.

Overall I'd say Spark of Rebellion does a good job setting up the show and it's characters. I'd rank it above, say, The Clone Wars Movie. The lower budget next to Clone Wars is very very obvious but it's not hurting the show too much at the moment. It nicely sets up the Empire as a continuing threat, and also introduces the approaching threat of The Inquisitor, who only has a new scenes in the episode.

 

[CaptainWacky]

Those were some ugly Wookiees though.

 

[The Tomtrek]

Episode 101 - Droids in Distress

As with many spin-off shows like this, a good way to get new viewers interested is to have crossover characters that we already know make a brief cameo appearance. And in this case, it's none other than R2-D2 and C3PO! They're the right choice of characters at this point, both because they're characters who don't really change at all during all of Star Wars, so you can include them at any point of the timeline and you'll still get the characters you're expecting, and because they've always been the "storyteller" characters for the Star Wars saga: the characters who are generally there at pretty much all major events. Anthony Daniels voices 3PO again because he needs the work.

The episode itself is pretty straightforward - the Rebels are intercepting a shipment of illegal distruptors from the Empire, and planning to sell them on to their contact Vizago. However, along the way they pick up R2-D2 and C3PO, and R2 claims to be on a 'secret mission'. While the story itself is simple, it does allow us to get in a bit of character backstory for Zeb. We learn not only that he's one of the last remaining members of his species - the Lasat - but that the disruptors were what the Empire used to wipe out his people. We even learn that Agent Callus was one of the people directly responsible for killing the Lasat, to the point where he keeps a bo-rifle similar to Zeb's as a trophy. It's a nice bit of backstory that gives Agent Kallus a more personal attachment to the group.

We also get a bit of development of Ezra's force powers, with him pushing Zeb out of the way of Kallus' attack at the last moment. This causes Kanan to agree to start proper Jedi training. This would be fine if Ezra also didn't spend the entire episode whining about not training to be a Jedi.

There's a nice scene of Hera being space-mom, basically telling Ezra that he should give his brother Zeb some space because he's going through some things right now, and being annoyed with lazy space-dad Kanan. We also get more Sabine blowing stuff up, which is always good. I think what makes Sabine more tolerable as a character than Ezra at the moment, even though we've had a lot more information about him compared to her, is that she actually seems happy to be there. She's happy just blowing stuff up and sticking it to the Empire, whereas Ezra can't stop whining.

We even end the episode with a nice little cameo from Bail Organa, looking nothing like his Clone Wars version or Jimmy Smits in the Rebels art style. Oh well.

For a second episode, this is fine. It's nothing special, but it has a nice story that weaves character backstory and development in with it in a way that doesn't seem forced. The droids are a nice cameo and help tie us in with the Star Wars galaxy at large, and also set up some involvement with a larger rebellion.


Episode 102 - Fighter Flight

Ezra and Zeb are, at the moment, probably the two weakest members of the Ghost crew, so an episode with them both in central roles will either help develop them as characters and make them better, or will be terrible as it's just the same characters doing what they do. Unfortunately, this episode is mostly the latter.

Ezra and Zeb are sent out to go shopping by Hera because they keep fighting and Hera needs JUST ONE DAMN MINUTE without all these kids getting in her hair lekku. This episode really plays up the "space family" thing, as it's basically about two brothers who need to stop fighting and work together. It's not exactly subtle about it, either - Kanan literally refers to Ezra and Zeb as "the kids".

Unfortunately, while the characters do learn to work together the episode doesn't actually develop them to the point where they become better characters. Ezra stays as the slightly annoying good-at-everything smarter-than-the-grown-ups Aladdin character he's always been. The only sort of development he kind of gets is that he shows a romantic interest in Sabine, which doesn't because A) they're space-family, that's weird, and B) Sabine is, like, the gayest Star Wars character ever.

Zeb actually gets worse in this episode than he has been before. He's always been headstrong and a bit brash before, but he always acted at least somewhat like an adult, especially during his confrontations with Kallus in the previous episode. Now he's literally just a teenager who gets mad at his little brother, and he's a worse character because of it.

All the stuff of them stealing a TIE Fighter doesn't work because of this, the characters just feel annoying. You have to wonder if we're supposed to find them annoying and empathise with Hera... but then they don't really change at the end of the episode, so that doesn't work either.

There's a subplot about Lothal farmers being kicked off their farms by the Empire and Zeb and Ezra rescuing them but... it's hard to care? The thing about Lothal is, it's a really really generic planet. There's nothing particularly interesting about it, or the people who live on it. They set up that this farmer guy knew Ezra's parents as a way to make us care about him but... he's just some farmer guy. Apparently they thought the character was so memorable that they brought him back in this week's most recent episode and expected everyone to remember who he was for some reason.

Sabine spends the episode paining a mural in Zeb and Ezra's room, which is fun.

Yeah this episode is weak. It had a chance to do something interesting with two of the worst (although neither character is actually bad, really) characters, and totally fails at it. It's a light episode that doesn't really do anything.


Episode 103 - Rise of the Old Masters

Ah, yes, this is it. This is the episode where things get good. It's this episode. This episode does a lot of things, and it does most of them pretty well.

We get the first look at Kanan's training of Ezra, but more importantly we see how Kanan feels like he's not up to the task of training him. This makes sense, as Kanan would have been only a Padawan when Order 66 happened, and so would not have been able to complete his training himself. This is shown clearly by the use of Yoda's famous phrase "Do, or do not. There is no try.". Kanan admits at the start of the episode that he really never understood what that meant, but still says it to Ezra as he thinks that's something a Jedi master ought to say. By the end of the episode he's not only discovered the meaning of the phrase - that if you set out only to to "try" and do something, you have no faith in your ability to do it - but realises that he can train Ezra in his own way. This aspect of doubt in Kanan's character is what makes him different from, say, Obi-Wan in Star Wars - a trained Jedi Master who would have had no problems training Luke.

The episode hinges on the idea that Jedi Master Luminara is actually alive and well, and being held prisoner in the imperial Prison named "The Spire" (this is the same facility that Darth Maul escaped from in the "Son of Dathomir" comics). Using a Jedi like Luminara was a very clever idea, as those who would have watched Clone Wars would have been very familiar with the character, and she was a nice Jedi! She was always nice to Ahsoka, and to Barris, so it's exciting to introduce the idea that she might return. When we finally see her decayed corpse, it's actually quite shocking because we knew the character, and it's a very definitive way of telling both the characters in the show and the audience that the Jedi as we knew them are all gone, and there's no hope (THAT WE KNOW OF) of them ever coming back.

The episode also gives The Inquisitor his proper introduction, and he's great. He comes across as a very creepy, calm and collected assassin - knowing all about Kanan and correctly guessing who his master was just by analysing his fighting style. His spinny lightsaber might be a bit silly, but it all works as he's slowly and calmly walking behind our heroes who are desperate to escape him, while his awesome music plays.

This episode really raises the stakes for the entire show. Now they're no longer just a bunch of scrappy Rebels getting in the way of Agent Kallus, but they're being hunted by a professional Jedi killer. The death of Luminara is a great way to both tie this show back in with the prequels (and the Clone Wars!), and also make a clear and definitive separation from them.

With the past few episodes set on boring Lothal, this episode makes a nice change. I guess it helped that most of the design work for The Spire was already done for the unfinished Darth Maul episodes of Clone Wars, so it was easier for them to include it here with Rebel's smaller budget.

In many ways, this episode feels like Rebels' "Landing at Point Rain" - it expands the scope of the show and clearly shows what the show is capable of, both from a story and from a visual perspective (although I want to stress that while this episode is good, it's in no way as good as "Landing at Point Rain"!). Plus, this is only the fourth episode of the show, which is much better than going through a whole season like with Clone Wars!

This is easily the best episode so far, and adds a much needed extra element to the show beyond them being a plucky group of Rebels.