#why you make them fight the whole time filoni

[ravenhairedwaywanderer]

Man part 5 fucked me up

[david-talks-sw]

When 'Star Wars' dilutes the impact of a "Kurosawa samurai standoff"...

It's no secret that one of the major inspirations for Star Wars was Akira Kurosawa movies. The Hidden Fortress influenced the basic structure of the first film, was a basis for Lucas' character archetypes and his use of narrative POVs.

But, really, all of Kurosawa's films were an influence on the making of Star Wars. Including the duels seen in his and other samurai films from the 60s.

Dunno if you've seen a kendo fight, but they're pretty similar.

The duelists size each other up, and there's a lot of mind games going on before the strike actually happens.

If you hold your sword this way, the other guy adjusts his stance.

You move your foot that way, the adversary responds accordingly.

Cinematically, this process allows you to play with a whole treasure trove of elements to build up the drama and suspense. We see this slow-yet-tense approach to dueling reflected all over the Original Trilogy. And we've seen it again in recent Disney-released content.

The perfect and first real example of this in Star Wars is the fight between Ben Kenobi and Maul, in Rebels.

The tension increases more...

... and more until the two fighters move, the music swells...

... and then it reaches its climax.

Beautifully executed.

Dave Filoni's done his homework, it shows, and while it's an awesome homage, narratively it also holds weight. There's a reason why this fight is so quick:

This time, Obi-Wan isn't fighting to avenge the death of his master, he's not fighting to save his own life... he's fighting to protect Luke's. And that means there's no time to fuck about. He'll end the conflict swiftly and decisively, he won't let it come to a prolonged acrobatic fight. So he lures Maul in by making him think he's taking Qui-Gon's form, and strikes true when Maul, increasingly consumed by his own rage to the point of blindness, falls for it.

Again: a wonderful fight and an excellent homage.

Then we get to Luke's stand-off with Kylo on Crait, in The Last Jedi.

An interesting take on the trope, also with meaningful narrative impact. As Rian Johnson writes in the TLJ screenplay:

"This is not like a saber fight. This like an old-fashioned samurai duel."

Here too, the tension gets built up...

... and every time we're close to getting that climax, Luke dodges.

It leaves a feeling of dissatisfaction, which is exactly what Kylo is feeling as he boils with rage.

Suddenly, we do get the climax...

... and a twist. Luke was never actually there. Boom. Those inserts during the build-up phase? If you look at them again they're clues (Luke doesn't leave a mark on the ground, salt doesn't land on his clothes, etc). Luke wasn't engaging because he wasn't actually there, he was buying time for the Resistance to escape.

Okay. Cool.

Next time we see a "Kurosawa" duel... it's here, in The Mandalorian.

Again, a lot of posing, slow movements and patience, as is expected from the trope.

But we know nothing about the opponent Ahsoka is fighting other than her name is Morgan... so no emotional impact, there.

At some point, Ahsoka loses a lightsaber. The apprentice to the Chosen One is struggling against some rando.

We find out later on that Morgan is a Nightsister from Dathomir, and that's cool... but we already know how Jedi-trained folks fare against the Dathomiri.

If you ask me, it feels like manufactured stakes. But that's beside the point. In fact, y'know what? It's fine.

Though the impact of this duel isn't as great as its predecessors, the whole episode is filled with visual homages to Kurosawa's work.

It makes sense that the duel would be too. Also it's the first time we're seeing Ahsoka in live action, in a lightsaber duel, the hype is real. Let's cut 'em some slack.

So we come to the series Ahsoka... where almost every duel in the the show has the Kurosawa posturing and tip-toeing and... I dunno. I was bored?

Like, the primary purpose of this approach to duels is that it's meant to be suspenseful and intense... and now it's not.

Because we know Ahsoka is gonna beat the crap outta these droids...

... so why even bother faking some semblance of "what's her next move gonna be?" suspense? There's a hole right behind her, gee, I truly wonder.

Oh, you think putting her against an Inquisitor's gonna make us fear for her life, wonder if she's gonna get outta this situation unscathed?

She was wiping the floor with two of them at the same time, a decade prior. At 17, she was killing Inquisitors while disarmed.

Do you really expect your audience to fear for her life in a fight against Marrok?

So we get to the fight with Baylan, and the posturing and studying opponent's next move would be welcome here (two Order 66 survivors, knew Anakin, both well-trained former Jedi)...

... if we hadn't literally seen that same dynamic with Marrok who, again, we knew was gonna die.

No tension was built in either moment, the only thing it achieved was me pressing >> on my keyboard.

It's not captivating anymore, it's just slow and un-dynamic.

Bottom line:

Tributes to Kurosawa are nice. They're part of what makes Star Wars what it is. But c'mon, we get it already.

Lightsaber duelists don't need to tiptoe around each other and change poses at every fight. Because when the actually meaningful duels come up (like the one with Baylan), the impact will be lessened.

The "Kurosawa samurai duel" is artistic and interesting, but it should be used sparingly in order to maintain its charm and not get old and trope-y. AKA too much of a good thing becomes a bad thing.

[girlfriendsofthegalaxy]

tuesday again 6/25/2024

i played a game that is not genshin impact!

listening

paige kennedy's lingerie model. the line "cause i'm a little rat boy in the body of a lingerie model" startled a laugh out of me. off the discover weekly playlist.

-

reading

thank you philip.

Johnny Guitar by Roy Chanslor, on interlibrary loan bc i was hoping reading the book would kickstart my long-planned fic based on the movie. surprise! wildly different book i read in one sitting! the locations, most of the characters (except most of them are much younger) and who's on what sides are essentially the same, but everything else is different!

there are five whole women in this thing, which is a staggering number for a western. i don't know that i have a clear idea of what this book is trying to say about Women in general or specific. i've just been kind of rolling it around in my head for a while. once i figure out what i want to say about this book everyone better watch out

-

watching

borrowed my best friend's husband and their disney plus account to watch a lot of star wars. we certainly had a lot of thoughts about the show Ahsoka but none of them were particularly complimentary. it's dave filoni playing the fucking hits. would you like some wolves and some owls and people having bad feelings and recreating the training session on the millennium falcon from ANH? would you like some fairly lackluster lightsaber battles? would you like the least interesting concept of a waiting room/purgatory/underworld you've ever seen? this is a show where we meet Anakin again and TRAVEL TO A DIFFERENT FUCKING GALAXY, the BIRTHPLACE of some WITCHES. can we be a little bit excited about new things please??? please?????? we are so very bogged down in cutting back and forth, bc god forbid everyone be in the same place at the same time, that we get only the tiniest glimpses of fun new places. show me the places. stop giving me medium shots of people yapping. easily three quarters of this show is filmed from the waist up or closer. what fucking gives. if i really really wanted to scratch the itch of a worrisome legacy and lost love and slightly weird student/teacher dynamics i would go read a contemporary literary novel. show me the interesting parts of star wars and not just the fanservicey callback parts please thanks

we did have a lot of fun with The Acolyte, which genuinely does feel like a breath of fresh air. most of the dialogue is extremely bad, which is sort of par for the course for a star war, but the gleeful jumping with both feet into some real melodramatic weekly serial/space opera tropes!!! much more interested in playing with a heightened narrative/playing with narrative at all, unlike ahsoka which is more focused on filling in a little blank spot!!! witches here also!!! the GOOD TWIN and the EVIL TWIN, several inventive assassinations, the CLEARING of one's NAME, a cursed planet, some fights that feel like they're playing with samurai movies and westerns in a fun new way instead of reminding me of a better thing i could be watching. thank you im eating this with a spoon. many people are very mad about it bc the protagonist is black and perhaps not perfectly straight. the public says this star wars is bad, bc of woke and bc of cliffhangers. i think this one is fun actually so far!!!

-

playing

Freshly Frosted (2022, Quantum Astrophysics Guild). free on Epic rn and quite honestly this should be a self-care/old people brain plasticity phone game. why it is NOT on mobile is beyond me. why it is on SWITCH is also beyond me.

it did make me miss a novelty doughnut and coffee mini local chain in the five college area that has long since gone under. one of my therapists used to have an office above one of their stores and i used to go to a class at smith on wednesdays, go to therapy, and then jog for the half hour bus back to umass, reward doughnut in hand.

it opens with a soft-voiced woman telling you about how she likes to decompress by laying in a field and imagining a donut factory in the sky. she gives encouraging little tips and "hey! be nice to yourself!" throughout the game, but mostly at the beginnings of levels and introducing new mechanics. there are, perhaps, overly plentiful achievements.

there are a dozen dozen levels and i played through the first three dozen, or the first three boxes (normie don't draw over your line, multi track drifting, merging paths). i once had a level correct and then hit undo out of indecision and the tutorial lady told me "“You had it, click the undo button in the top right to undo”. which i don't believe i've ever seen in a game.

i stopped at the third box bc there’s a universal order to ingredients (always frosting then sprinkles then whipped cream then etc) but it does not ever tutorialize that it will only put the next ingredient on if the previous ones are fulfilled. like this was the level i figured this out on.

on further levels in this box i was not thinking super hard about what the actual order was and i couldn't really tell you how i solved a particular level except for making sure every possible path existed. maybe this gets super wild in later levels idk but three dozen levels was enough of a novelty for me. if i may be a little mean to a perfectly fine game, it feels like a coding bootcamp project in the way it steps through its logic and introduces new mechanics.

-

making

cross stitch update. i don't believe this will be done by my brother's birthday

[mrfandomwars]

Got frustrated with Ahsoka today so have two things I would do to make her more interesting, feel free to take them an make fics and aus as long as credit is given:

Darksider Ahsoka - Consider that the whole warning during the Mortis arc is actually used and Ahsoka Falls, and she becomes a Terrifying opponent because she was trained by Vader, even if in his Anakin's era.

[More under cut]

She is a Menace as a Darksider, maybe keeping in the shadows and making every New Republic secret network Unsafe because she helped set them up as Fulcrum. Worried about the Sequels? No problem! Secret Darksider Ahsoka! Everyone top level of the New Republic knows and is trying to Stop Her but Ahsoka was the Fulcrum, which meant Spying and staying undetected, she could totally do that to the New Republic where they can't do Anything to stop her You could even bring Original Trilogy Group (Han Solo, Lando Clarissian, Luke Skywalker, Leia Organa, Chewbacca) back to act as the main heroes! Want the Rebels back too? Have them as one of the people that Ahsoka is Playing and them slowly learning it and joining sides with the OT Group! Also way to fix the live action lekku problem - too long would be impratical? Ahsoka VS Luke lightsaber fight, Luke LOSING Badly and someone grabs a saber - maybe Luke lost his or something - and cuts off Ahsoka's lekku's - saving Luke and resolving the problem. You can have her Come Back to the light side but haver her Choices haunt her after Mando contacts her because he needs help from a Jedi and he lost Luke's Number? She gives him Luke's number because She Can't help him, she doesn't consider herself a jedi even more and the republic won't allow her into any more battles in fear she will turn on them AGAIN

Maybe she is in fucking jail or Can't be put in a jail for whatever reason (maybe she came out as a Jedi survivor and explained everything she did to help the Rebellion to trap the New Republic Even More so they couldn't Act against her in public) so she is watched 24/7 - maybe by the Rebel Crew or Sabine for some reason (hence giving Sabine a reason to be with her and a whole nother stress for finding Ezra! because Ahsoka Can Not Leave Republic Space Or Enter Battles) and is trying to get back to being a Jedi, to clinging to the Lighside/Balance and trying to remember every single Jedi Philosophy she was taught

And also come to turns that Anakin wasn't the best Master for her, that he taught her somethings wrong that she will have to unlearn Alone and try to figure out how the Jedi taught it, what was the correct way to learn.

Because there are no more Prequel Jedi around to help her

Semi-Immortal Ahsoka - we all know that Star Wars media won't let people age - main example being the whole mess with Bo-Katan - and we know Filoni won't let Ahsoka die.

So! Since we know that, how about we take it and run with it?

Ahsoka who became semi-immortal because of being brought back by the Daughter so now she ages MUCH slower and will outlive EVERYONE SHE HAS LEFT THAT SHE CARES ABOUT, who will live to millions

If she doesn't die again that is

Because I'm thinking of like. A timer. That resets every time she dies

(you can take this further and say that she ends up back to the age of when the Daughter rescued her every time shed dies and maybe or not it takes longer every time for her to age past that age)

Ahsoka who learned the hard way how to be The Fulcrum via A Lot Of Deaths that earned her the rumour that she fakes her death A Lot to avoid taxes/jk

Ahsoka who grows afraid of getting the same attachment (as George Lucas Defined Attachment, not the common misconception you fools) problems as Anakin and adding in the fact that no matter what she does she will outlive people so she Stays Away from everyone even more because she doesn't want to go through the pain of losing people

so why get close in the first place?

[gavfleetout]

How i’d re-write Tales of the Empire

I’m only doing the barriss episodes because I don’t care about Morgan elsbeth and this show did little to change my mind.

This stemmed from a want to know why Barriss betrayed the Jedi and it kinda snow balled in there. But I firmly believe you should be able to watch and star wars media without having a ton of backstory, and hearing “former jedi in prison after accusing other Jedi of treason” and seeing that there are others likeminded makes me want to know more about that than seeing shots of Vader that mean nothing (though it was cool, did not need to be there)

Still three episodes though, around 15 minutes each, we still have the same constraints they did)

Episode 1 (or 4 I guess)

Skip the inquisitor stuff, let’s flashback to before, when barriss bombs the temple, and have her be human about it. Show her, a gifted healer and skilled padawan, and her discomfort surrounding the Jedi and the war, have her meet Lyn and others disenfranchised by the war. Maybe Lyn’s an older padawan who leaves the order in protest and anger, or maybe she fails her trials because of her anger and is thrown out. Have Barriss have an idea to make a statement and let the Jedi understand how it feels to have your home destroyed in violence, and while we don’t see her carry out the plan, have her hatred of the Jedi allow her to be able to stomach framing Ahsoka. Then at the end, flash forward to a scene basically the same as the one that originally began this episode, where Lyn comes to visit Barriss in prison and offers her a second chance.

Episode 2(5)

Skip the inquisitor training, doesn’t really offer much as the last ep established that she was on a path to evil. Now have her and Lyn go on the mission, basically the same as before, and this one honestly goes the same, but with Barriss comparing the inquisitors to her view of the Jedi from the last episode, and how she’s become worse than what she had fought against, and ends the same, with her knocking Lyn off the cliff and rejecting her identity as an inquisitor.

Episode 3(6)

Barriss is older now, and is traveling with the kid that she protected the last episode (implying she went back to check on him, but we don’t really need to show it happening) She’s training him in the ways of healing, and they travel across and between worlds helping people. Barriss sets herself up and the tag along kid tells people that the healer has arrived. Only this time another Jedi is in the village, speaks to the kid. The kid goes back to tell Barriss he found another Jedi, and describes her and says her name is Ashla/something Ahsoka adjacent. Barriss immediately wants to pack up because she feels guilty and doesn’t want to confront her former friend, but Ahsoka shows up and thinks she’s trying to lure people in and hurt them or something, and then Lyn shows up and Ahsoka thinks she called Lyn and it’s a whole deal. Barriss tries to keep Ahsoka from attacking Lyn, telling her to get the civilians to safety, and she refuses, but trusting Barriss to be tricking her. Barriss says fine and sends the tag along kid away to help. Barriss then tries to convince Lyn to not fight, to stop in her ways, and when that doesn’t work Barriss and Ahsoka fight her. They work in tandem and complete each others moves, being perfectly in sync , but when more imperials alive Barriss now convinces Ahsoka to leave and she does, helping the escape, while Barriss fights Lyn and the same as in the show, convinces her to change her ways.

Honestly it could be either Ahsoka or Luminara in the last episode, I’m not sure which would be more impactful but they’d function basically the same. Though I figure if filoni had had Ahsoka in it he’d have made her the star of the show, but I think either could be interesting.

[oh-three]

Mando S3E5:

- Boy is this recap long. Something's going down this episode. - "Pirates?" WHY ARE YOU CONFUSED, YOU KNOW THEY HAVE A PROBLEM WITH YOU. - Gorian Shard still sounds like the guy from Santa Claus Is Coming To Town. - Oh shit, he's opening fire. - This planet the New Republic base is on? Looks like Scarif. - DID I JUST SEE DAVE FILONI 

- IS THAT FUCKING ZEB?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! - HOLY SHIT. - IT SOUNDS LIKE HIM. VOICE AND CHARACTERIZATION. - WELCOME BACK ZEB!!!!!!!!!! - REBELS FANS, WE WON!!!

- Oh, Elia Kane's back already. What's she up to now?? - "Sounds like a rather Imperial way of thinking." Oh, you have no idea, Teva. But that would be a great insult to use on literally anyone else. - Hmm, Karga almost looks like his old self. - It hurts to see how few survived the pirate bombardment. Oh wait, there's a few still hanging about - Lmao Teva's going for Din. How does he know where he is anyway? There's like a thousand planets in the GFFA. - lmfao - R5. - And here I got excited he meant Sabine. I still can't believe they gave us Zeb back. - hello, March of the Resistance - Dude, you just did them a favor. They need to relocate Lmao. Thanks for forcing them to. - There's something really funny about Din having to hold the Armorer's hammer to speak before the rest. Paz, too. Reminds me of stuff out of elementary school. - Ah, that makes sense. Using Karga's offer for the covert. I like it. It's perfect. - Paz still has a lot of resentment for what happened to the covert. I can't blame him, though. A lot of Mandalorians died. - Oh shit, he's actually agreeing. Didn't see that coming. - Paz, I see your chin - "You lived there once, hiding in the sewers. But now you can be heroes." TMNT VIBES. 😂 - Oh hey, Vane. What makes you think you'll survive a third time? - "They've got you outnumbered ten to one." / "I like those odds." / "I bet you do." THE NOSTALGIA, MAN. And these two use to be enemies. - Something about Din distracting the pirate's cruiser reminds me of the whole fight with the krayt dragon in S2E1. - Also, the Mandalorian's going down through the streets of Nevarro reminds me of the flashbacks of Din getting taken in. - TOOK YOU LONG ENOUGH, PAZ. - THE MUSIC. - THE MUSIC. - Paz, don't die. - Jesus, this whole thing went wrong very fast. - "He's above you!........He's below you!" Vane, this guy's so fast your callouts don't even matter. - Lmfao that Trandoshan gunner was so oblivious. - VANE YOU COWARD. - Ooh, puffer pig reference. - THE TOWN. NO. Oh, I think it missed. Phew. - Aww, I love how Karga welcomed the Mandalorians. He's changed so much, I love him. - Reminiscing, are we? - "Remove your helmet." What? She can ask them to do that???????? - Wait, are you telling me. Is the covert giving up their helmet rule? The Armorer is slipping from her strict hand. - Oh, she believed her. - Damn, so Bo-Katan is to be Manda'lor (or however the hell you spell it) - "It is time to retake Mandalore." AYYY. - Teva...? - WHOA, I DIDN'T KNOW R-SERIES COULD DO THAT. - Shit, Gideon is free. Great... - And Mandalorians did it?? Huh..

ALSO, HOLY SHIT THE LASAT WAS ZEB. I AM LOSING MY FUCKING MIND RIGHT NOW, I CAN'T BELIEVE IT.

[clonewarsarchives]

IT’S CAT VERSUS JAT! (#123, FEB 2011)

Padmé Amidala’s voice in The Clone Wars, Catherine Taber (CAT!), negotiates aggressively with voice of Obi-wan Kenobi, James Arnold Taylor (JAT!) in our exclusvei interview!

CAT: If you were a Jedi Knight, what color lightsaber would you wield?

JAT: Nobody’s ever asked me that. Everybody always wants to know about Obi-Wan. Blue is pretty good. I like blue; my car is blue, my eyes are blue. I look good in blue. Maybe I would change it just a shade darker. Gunmetal blue.

JAT: If you could be anyone in the Star Wars universe at all, who would you be?

CAT: I’d say Padmé is very much like me in a lot of ways. People think she’s wimpy and a pacifist—no she’s not! She has decorum, but when the time comes for it, she will fight. I played her daughter, Leia [in Star Wars: The Force Unleashed], who would be another great choice. I want to play Jaina Solo as well! Padmé has the greatest clothes, though—let’s just get that out there!

JAT: It’d take the whole day to get that headdress on!

CAT: She’s got them lined up in the closet, ready to go. Or maybe she just has a really good hair and makeup person? I would only like to be her for a day, since I know what ends up happening [in Revenge of the Sith]. I would really like to be Jaina, because she’s also a Jedi! With Padmé I don’t get to wield a lightsaber, unless I steal it from someone else.

CAT: If you had the Force in real life, how would you use it?

JAT: What do you mean, “if?” [In Obi-Wan voice] Well, I’d use it for good and never evil. [JAT voice] On the show, I wonder, Why didn’t they use the Force there, why didn’t they use it there? I think the coolest thing is when Obi-Wan walks into a room and makes the chair spin around, then sits down—that type of stuff is simple. That’s what I’d use it for. Those simple things.

CAT: Would you use the Jedi mind trick?

JAT: Well, see, now that you say that, it does sound tempting. Actually, just to help somebody along? [Obi-Wan voice] You want more Obi-Wan in this episode. [JAT voice] But that won’t work on Dave [Filoni, supervising director of The Clone Wars], he’s completely immune!

JAT: What would Padmé’s ringtone be?

CAT: It would probably be the Naboo National Anthem. She’s definitely proud of her home world.

CAT: If you could visit any Star Wars planet on vacation, which one would it be and why?

JAT: Oh, man. [Obi-Wan voice] Well, I certainly won’t want to go to Mandalore. [JAT voice] Let’s see, that is a great question. There’s no beachfront properties, though. I’m a beach guy.

JAT: What’s the best thing about Star Wars fans?

CAT: Hmmm, their enthusiasm is so great for the whole universe, that it causes them to be just so appreciative. When you meet someone at a convention, they’re so happy to meet you. Talk about having a good day!

CAT: In real life you drive pretty much the coolest car in the world: a custom-made Testa. What mode of transportation would you choose in the Star Wars universe? I actually have four choices for you: a) a luxurious Imperial cruiser; b) a sporty TIE fighter or X-wing; c) the Millennium Falcon; or d) a tauntaun or dewback?

AT: Yeah, I would go for a dewback! No, Obi-Wan is not going to be choosing any space travel. I would go for the greener route: A tauntaun. I know they smell bad.

JAT: OK, here’s a classic question, but given a Star Wars slant. If you could have dinner with anyone in the Star Wars universe—not just characters, but people like George Lucas and Ben Burtt—who would you have dinner with?

CAT: If I could have dinner with a character, it would certainly be Yoda because of the way he teaches. If it was a real person, I think we would all love to have dinner with George—that goes without saying! I would also love to have dinner with John Williams, because the music is such a major part of Star Wars. It would be really interesting to see what his process was like.

JAT: This is a silly one: Han or Anakin?

CAT: You know, that’s funny because that has changed throughout my life. I really liked Luke when I was younger, and then I suddenly one day went, “I like Han.” Now, with Anakin, the way he’s portrayed by Matt [Lanter], he’s so heroic, and he’s cocky. I do like the scoundrel part of Han.

CAT: You voice many characters in The Clone Wars, but which one were you the most nervous to tackle and why?

JAT: Oh, Obi-Wan Kenobi. Not for the reason people would think—the main reason was because this character is so beloved. I had to do this justice. I really wanted to keep the role. When I started doing this it was for the micro-series, and then the videogames, and I thought, I hope something else comes of this. There were always rumors that they would do this show—I wanted to be able to be attached to this character for the long term, because of my love for it, and the privilege to do it.

JAT: How is it that Obi-Wan and Padmé end up being as close as they are in Revenge of the Sith, where she trusts him? In Episode I and II, he doesn’t trust her—something has happened during this time and we don’t know what that is. I think that’s a great opportunity for a story. It would be fun to explore that because we generally don’t get to exchange lines that often.

CAT: Obi-Wan often comments on my wonderful shooting skills. JAT: It would be a great storyline that could have some action in it, so Padmé’s not just stuck behind a desk, so to speak, and you know I like my gunplay!

[padawanlost]

did you notice how people seem to exclude obi-wan from the council even though he is on the council? Like for example when Ashoka was exiled. He didn’t say anything and was unusually quiet during that time. Some fans even say things like “obi wan would never agree to that” or “leave obi wan out of this” do we know what obi-wan’s decision was in her trial? Or is it unknown?

We don’t know for sure how he voted, all we know is that he didn’t ACT to help Ahsoka. and that was the whole point of the character, he’s there to show how compromised the Jedi Order had become.

All we know is what Dave Filoni told us about the arc and, unfortunately, none of it support the fandom idea that Obi-wan fought hard for Ahsoka.

Then at the beginning of the last arc [of Season Five], she basically saves Anakin the way Anakin would’ve always saved her in the past. And Anakin’s unconscious, he’s like, “What happened?” She says, “I saved your life, don’t worry about it.” It’s fun and he laughs about it then, and he’s not embarrassed by it. They’re a team. So we get them to that moment and then we put a ton of pressure on it. 

And through the whole trial, Anakin is the only one that stays 100 percent in her court.

I think Plo Koon stays 75-80 percent of the way in her court because he says, “I don’t believe she could’ve fallen so low.” 

In Obi-Wan we really see the Jedi because he is compromised. Obi-Wan doesn’t believe Ahsoka is guilty of these crimes, but he has a very hard time arguing politically that the Jedi Council shouldn’t do what they do to her. He trusts in the Force, which is what they love to say when they don’t know what they’re doing, and they expel her. He can’t argue the logic. He doesn’t like Tarkin’s logic [but he can’t argue] that they can’t try her within the Jedi because the public, which we show in this episode arc, who are losing faith in the Jedi, would cry foul ball. “How can you put her on trial? Of course you’ll find her innocent. She’s a Jedi and you’re a Jedi.” So they expose themselves, and we see how they’re exposed. 

All of these things that are wrapped up in Ahsoka’s story, which ultimately make her realize what the audience realizes. “I love the Jedi Order. They’re very important to me, I’ve always respected them. But there’s something wrong here, and I need to walk away from it to assess it.” It all feeds into Revenge of the Sith when the chancellor says, “The Jedi have just made an attempt on my life.” When you see these four episodes, I think you have a better understanding of how he gets away with all of that, because you see how compromised the Jedi Council is. And these episodes aren’t just meant to get Ahsoka on her way, but they’re meant to explain in more detail the scene [in Revenge of the Sith] where Yoda, Mace, and Ki-Adi-Mundi are discussing arresting the chancellor, and what a gamble that’s going to be for them. Because you see that to the average Coruscant citizen who’s not impressed with this war or the Jedi anymore, they’ll see it as treason. It’s probably the arc that connects to the movies the most and has the most impact. I think that’s why it works on so many levels for me and is one of my favorite arcs, because it’s such a companion piece to the films. – Dave Filoni

Unfortunately, not every Obi-wan fan is willing to admit he wasn’t 100% perfect, that sometimes he made mistakes. I’ve already talked about this so I won’t get into it down but the gist is that there’s a large part of the fandom that woobyfies Obi-wan. It got to point he’s barely a character. According to them he never makes mistakes, he’s always perfect, always right and, more importantly, always the victim. He exists to suffer everyone’s mistakes and bad decisions, never his own (because he *never* makes bad decisions).

Filoni makes pretty clear that no one, other than Anakin, is 100% on Ahsoka’s side. So the fact Obi-wan looked upset, or that decision to expel wasn’t unanimous, doesn’t mean he fought as hard as he could (or should) for her innocence and freedom. And that’s NOT A BAD THING. This is good writing. It’s building up the situation and the characters for what comes next. 

It’s like the ‘Only a sith deals in absolutes’ line. It’s not bad wrting. It’s GL showing the audience that Obi-wan is not thinking clearly either. that both of them are emotionally distress. it fuels the energy and emotion we see in their fight. 

[canonicallysoulmates]

Some thoughts on the Disney Gallery: The Book of Bobba Fett episode.

Temuera Morrison doing the keldabe kiss with Boba’s helmet was so freaking cute.

I don’t know anything about the dude but he seems pretty cool, and I love how much he loves the character, and that he even did research to develop Boba’s fighting style.

It’s nice that Robert Rodriguez bonds with his actors.

It’s clear that there were some really passionate people involved in this project. 

Ming-Na Wen’s excitement is adorable.

Favreau said that TBOBF is like The Addam’s Family version of The Mandalorian. I had to hear that like 3 times because I did not believe my ears. Sir, you know nothing about the Addam's Family.

I have made it no secret that for me the best part of TBOBF was Din yet even I was side eyeing Filoni and Favreau when they were talking about him being in the show. Filoni literally says that they both like Mando and they felt it would be difficult for them to go a whole season without seeing him. It isn't his show though! This was supposed to be about Boba Fett. And then he says, that it makes sense to bring Din back into the story because he's Boba's friend, okay sure but y'all could have just brought him in at the end.

And then Favreau basically says TBOBF comes into the timeline and lets everything settle allowing for time to pass and meet Din after he has taken his helmet off and no longer has Grogu. At that point just say it man! TBOBF was a placeholder/sneak preview for The Mandalorian s3. We all know it and so do you just own up to it.

They also talk about Luke and that moment from ep 6. The way Filoni puts it is that they wanted to make the audience question wether or not Grogu being back with his dad is the right thing or if he's better with Luke. And he doesn't think Luke was presenting an argument either way, that he thinks Luke of any Jedi in the galaxy understands what it would be like to be with the person you care about most, to be with your father figure. So he thinks Luke is a really good mentor for Grogu. I'm slightly paraphrasing. I understand what he's saying, but I don't understand WHY THEY DIDN'T DO A BETTER JOB SHOWING IT ON THE SHOW!

[david-talks-sw]

The fact that Dave Filoni called Anakin “the greatest Jedi ever” is proof that he’s bias AF. His anti-Jedi rhetoric is bupkis.

I wonder if he means "the greatest" in terms of in-universe fame...?

Dunno if this is the case in Canon (then again Dave Filoni blatantly ignores any *non-motion* transmedia elements in Canon so meh), but in Legends he's:

"Anakin Skywalker, the Hero with no Fear™, handsome, dashing, the face of the Republic's army during the Clone War, the only Jedi who tried to resist the nefarious Order's coup and was treacherously murdered for it".

And I seem to remember that, in Canon, he's like the Jedi Temple's superstar anyway, every Jedi recognizes him on sight. I mean, that line from Baylon about "Anakin speaking highly of Ahsoka" must have some meaning beyond artificial personal stakes.

So from a fame and a "power level" standpoint... sure.

He's the greatest.

I'm giving Filoni the benefit of the doubt.

While I've talked about why Filoni's entire headcanon about the Jedi doesn't track with what George Lucas' intended narrative, I think it's worth acknowledging that Filoni's bias comes from part of his duties while directing The Clone Wars was.

One of the goals of TCW was humanizing Anakin, expanding upon his character make him go from "a character whose only purposes is to embody the themes presented in three movies based on the matinee serial format" to a relatable person, a good man, the hero Ben mentions to Luke in A New Hope.

I think it's normal that he'll see Anakin in a more positive light.

Also (and full disclosure this is just me theorizing I am no authority on any of this so if turns out I'm wrong just come right out and say so)...

I'm pretty sure that Filoni, Lesley Headland and most of the recent Star Wars authors are all Gen X, raised by baby boomers forced to conform to society, obey authority and have proper decorum (boys don't cry!) all of which they strove to rebel against. Add to that the corruption they witnessed growing up and coming out of high school, and you see a kind of jadedness emerge. "The rules aren't as black and white, the world is grey."

So while most of them and the boomers despised the Prequels upon release, a few of them projected a more individualistic headcanon onto those movies that fit with where their head was, at the time.

As such: Anakin isn't interpreted by them as a cautionary tale about what happens when you're greedy. He's a misunderstood rebel, a non-conformist who has his flaws but is ultimately good at heart. Which isn't entirely inaccurate, but it is very clearly an embellishment of a character who will one day become a space nazi.

The fact is... the Prequels were made by a boomer. One with very liberal values and who was himself a rebel, but a boomer all the same. The whole point of his story is...

"we all must come together and fight as one, if push comes to shove; we must all be compassionate and selfless if we are to survive; don't be greedy, let people go when it's their time to leave".

And then he makes the Jedi say that, making them beacons of truth and good and compassion in his fairy tale, now aimed at Gen Z kids.

Gen X-ers hear/read that and project all the boomer BS they had been told onto the Jedi...

"oh, so the Jedi are saying you shouldn't love yourself, you shouldn't be yourself, you should give up on what makes you an individual to fit in, you shouldn't feel any emotions"

Because nobody is that good, realistically, right?

This happened in other mediums. The one that comes to mind on the spot is the relationship between Mufasa and Scar.

In The Lion King, Mufasa is strong and noble, Scar is weak and conniving. Simple enough. Around that same time, in A Tale of Two Brothers, young Mufasa is shown to be pretty nice with Taka (Scar), who is framed as a spoiled brat to begin with.

Skip to the 2019 remake, and it's hinted Mufasa gave Scar his wound, and in The Lion Guard they explain that Scar got his nickname from Mufasa mocking him for a misadventure.

He went from being a noble king to a bully who had it coming, Scar is an underdog who got picked on. Because again: nobody is that pure, right? Fairytales be-damned.

Nothing is black and white, it's all grey.

So yeah, long story short I do think that Filoni being part of the generation that wasn't the target demographic but was old enough to retcon the crap out of the Prequels also plays a role into his view of Anakin.

[princessbatears]

I'm a storyteller both by trade and by hobby, and I understand a lot about how effective television storytelling works, in particular. My background has given me a different perspective than most people with regards to the finale, particularly what happens between Din and Grogu. Normally, I don’t get involved in fandom discussions, but I was encouraged to share my take on this. Spoilers below the cut in case I miss some tags, lol.

When I watched the episode this morning, I wasn't prepared for what happened. Like many of us, I expected a terrible cliffhanger or a neat conclusion like we got in the last season. Instead, Din encouraged his son to become a Jedi, leaving himself (and the rest of us) more than a little devastated. It was brutal. But also brilliant. Din and Grogu's individual and family arcs in this season came to a close in a way more beautiful than I could have expected. At the beginning of the season, Din kept Grogu at his side and protected him, but he was determined to pass him off to a Jedi. In part, this was because he believed it was Grogu's own good, but also because he wasn't ready to accept his fatherhood. We see this in the episode with Ahsoka. Even though he didn't want to say goodbye, he was willing to thrust Grogu upon her. When Ahsoka refused, Din was genuinely relieved and finally admitted to himself that he loved him and wanted him to stay a part of his life. That was further confirmed by the lengths he went to in order to get him back from Gideon.

Meanwhile, Grogu's gone through his own arc. We learned from Ahsoka that he hid his powers out of fear. We also learned that he's very afraid of being separated from Din, who he sees as his family. It's completely understandable. He's young and been through a lot. But that fear also makes it harder for him to train, so Ahsoka rejects him. Grogu himself continues to be a little reluctant to use his powers, needing encouragement from Din (unless it's to steal cookies). When he's captured, he fights the best he can to get away, but that fighting doesn't end up doing him much good because he can't control himself. It's my impression that, by the end of the season, Grogu's realized that he needs to be able to master his powers, not just to protect himself, but to protect Din, too. He's finally ready to step into his strength and become all that he can be, which is why he decides to go with Luke.

Din did not want Grogu to go. Everything in his being screamed that. He even say to Luke, "He doesn't want to go with you." However, when Luke explains what's going on, Din realizes that he must put Grogu's needs before his own. It's in Grogu's best interest to be nurtured in the ways of the Force, as he's always suspected, but now letting Grogu looks different than it did before. It wasn't Din rejecting his love for his son or pushing the responsibility of him onto someone else. He even did several things differently from when he tried to give Grogu to Ahsoka. First, he promises they'll see each other again. Personally, I don't think this is the end of them being together, even though Din says Grogu belongs with Luke (also more on that soon). Second, Din tells him not to be afraid. He wants Grogu to become confident in himself and all he can be. Third, he takes off his helmet to show his boy his face and let him touch him. While this is a huge sacrifice on his part because others also see his face, it is proof to Grogu that they are family and that they will always be family. Fourth, Din sets Grogu down on the floor and lets him walk to Luke. This is vitally important. In the past, he's tried to physically hand him over. This time, he lets Grogu make his own decision once and for all. Grogu walks over to look and asks to be picked up, indicating he truly wants to be trained. Din recognized him as an autonomous being with his own will, and respected and encouraged that, like a good father does. Was it easy? Absolutely not, but it was the right thing to do.

I'm not sure what Season 3 will look like as far as Din and Grogu's relationship goes. Maybe Grogu won't feature as prominently, maybe there will be a time jump, maybe something will happen and Luke will bring him back? I have no idea. None of us do. However, what I do know is that heart of the show is the relationship between Din and Grogu. I believe Filoni and Favreau know this, as does Disney. Grogu has made Disney actually relevant again, he's made them an insane amount of money, and I don't think they're going to let that cash cow go any time soon. So, everybody, please don't despair. It's going to be okay! ❤️

I'd also like to take a moment to discuss Luke. My feelings on this have evolved as I'm processed the episode over the last few hours. Initially, I wasn't very happy. I felt like a lot of people do. Why does it always have to be Skywalkers? Why couldn't it be somebody—anybody—else? Why did that have to do that weird CGI thing with his face that wigs me out? (That, admittedly, I'm still not a fan of, lol.) But with some time, I've realized that Luke makes sense. There's the inescapable fact that Star Wars is about the Skywalkers. They're the central characters of this universe. If Movies 6-9 hadn't been as godawful as they were, I think many of us wouldn't resent this fact so much. We're jaded, understandably. However, I don't believe it's fair to judge The Mandalorian's choice to include him based on other creators screwing him up in a future timeline. So far, Favreau and Filoni have been nothing but respectful of the Star Wars universe and its characters, and I'm choosing to trust them with this. But that aside, Luke is likely the only Jedi in the whole galaxy who would take Grogu as an Apprentice. Ahsoka didn't want him, too scarred by her own experiences and traumas. She also comes with the baggage the Temple placed upon its students, which was, if you have any "dark" qualities, you're untrainable. Meanwhile, in the original trilogy, Luke learned how to become a Jedi even though his legacy was those "dark" qualities. He overcame his own anger and fear and started new Jedi traditions. He's the perfect person at this point in his life to teach Grogu how to master his powers. He is obviously aware of how important Grogu is to Din and he'll take good care of him until the family can be reunited.

Personally, I loved this finale, especially the last few minutes. They absolutely destroyed me on a human level, but excited me as a writer and storyteller. By shaking the show up like this, it keeps the audience on their toes and reminds us that anything can happen. Din and Grogu's relationship is why people are so invested and throwing this huge kink that creates a massive conflict that the audience is desperate to have resolved. Aside from one of them actually dying (which would have me throw the show in the garbage), very little else could create such a reaction, which is the whole point. I can't wait to see what the creatives throw at us next year! 😃

[sabugabr]

Why the Clone problem in Star Wars animated media is also a Mandalorian problem, and why we have to talk about it (PART 2)

Hi! I finally finished wrapping this up, so here’s part 2 of what has already become a mini article (you can find Part 1 here, if you like!)

And for this part, it won’t be as much as a critic as part 1 was, but instead I’d like to focus more on what I consider to be a wasted potential regarding the representation of the Clones in the Star Wars animated media, from the first season of The Clone Wars till now, and why I believe it to be an extension of the Mandalorian problem I discussed in part 1 —  the good old colonialism.

Sources used, as always, will be linked at the end of this post!

PART 2: THE CLONES

Cody will never know peace

So I’d like to state that I won’t focus as much on the blatantly whitewashing aspect, for I believe it to be very clear by now. If you aren’t familiar with it, I highly recommend you search around tumblr and the internet, there are a lot of interesting articles and posts about it that explain things very didactically and in detail. The only thing you need to know to get this started is that even at the first seasons of Clone Wars (when the troopers still had this somewhat darker skin complexion and all) they were still a whitewashed version of Temuera Morrison (Jango’s actor). And from then, as we all know, they only got whiter and whiter till we get where we are now, in rage.

Look at this very ambiguously non-white but still westernized men fiercely guarding their pin-up space poster

Now look at this still westernized but slightly (sarcasm) whiter men who for some reason now have different tanning levels among them (See how Rex now has a lighter skin tone? WHEN THE HELL DID THAT HAPPEN KKKKKKK) Anyway you got the idea. So without further ado...

2.1 THE FANTASY METAPHOR

As I mentioned before in Part 1, one thing that has to be very clear if you want to follow my train of thought is that it’s impossible to consume something without attributing cultural meanings to it, or without making cultural associations. This things will naturally happen and it often can improve our connection to certain narratives, especially fantastic ones. Even if a story takes place in a fantastic/sci fi universe, with all fictional species and people and worlds and cultures, they never come from nowhere, and almost always they have some or a lot of basing in real people and cultures. And when done properly, this can help making these stories resonate in a very beautifull, meaningfull way. I actually believe this intrisic cultural associations are the things that make these stories work at all. As the brilliant american speculative/science fiction author Ursula K. Le Guin says in the introduction (added in 1976) of her novel The Left Hand of Darkness, and that I was not able to chopp much because it’s absolutely genious and i’ll be leaving the link to the full text right here,

“The purpose of a thought-experiment, as the term was used by Schrodinger and other physicists, is not to predict the future — indeed Schrodinger's most famous thought-experiment goes to show that the ‘future,’ on the quantum level, cannot be predicted — but to describe reality, the present world.

Science fiction is not predictive; it is descriptive.”

[...] “Fiction writers, at least in their braver moments, do desire the truth: to know it, speak it, serve it. But they go about it in a peculiar and devious way, which consists in inventing persons, places, and events which never did and never will exist or occur, and telling about these fictions in detail and at length and with a great deal of emotion, and then when they are done writing down this pack of lies, they say, There! That's the truth!

They may use all kinds of facts to support their tissue of lies. They may describe the Marshalsea Prison, which was a real place, or the battle of Borodino, which really was fought, or the process of cloning, which really takes place in laboratories, or the deterioration of a personality, which is described in real textbooks of psychology; and so on. This weight of verifiable place-event-phenomenon-behavior makes the reader forget that he is reading a pure invention, a history that never took place anywhere but in that unlocalisable region, the author's mind. In fact, while we read a novel, we are insane —bonkers. We believe in the existence of people who aren't there, we hear their voices, we watch the battle of Borodino with  them, we may even become Napoleon. Sanity returns (in most cases) when the book is closed.”

[...] “ In reading a novel, any novel, we have to know perfectly well that the whole thing is nonsense, and then, while reading, believe every word of it. Finally, when we're done with it, we may find — if it's a good novel — that we're a bit different from what we were before we read it, that we have been changed a little, as if by having met a new face, crossed a street we never crossed before. But it's very hard to say just what we learned, how we were changed.

The artist deals with what cannot be said in words.

The artist whose medium is fiction does this within words. The novelist says in words what cannot be said in words. Words can be used thus paradoxically because they have, along with a semiotic usage, a symbolic or metaphoric usage. [...]  All fiction is metaphor. Science fiction is metaphor. What sets it apart from older forms of fiction seems to be its use of new metaphors, drawn from certain great dominants of our contemporary life — science, all the sciences, and technology, and the relativistic and the historical outlook, among them. Space travel is one of these metaphors; so is an alternative society, an alternative biology; the future is another. The future, in fiction, is a metaphor.

A metaphor for what?” [1]

A metaphor for what indeed. I won’t be going into what Star Wars as a whole is a metaphor for, because I am certain that it varies from person to person, and everyone can and has the total right to take whatever they want from this story, and understand it as they see fit. That’s why it’s called the modern myth. And therefore, all I’ll be saying here is playinly my take not only on what I understand the Clones to be, but what I believe they could have meant.

2.2 SO, BOBA IS A CLONE

I don’t want to get too repetitive, but I wanted to adress it because even though I by no means intend to put Boba and the Clones in the same bag, there is one aspect about them that I find very similar and interesting, that is the persue of individuality. While the Clones have this very intrinsically connected to their narratives, in Boba’s case this appears more in his concept design. As I mentioned in Part 1, one of the things the CW staff had in mind while designing the mandalorians is that they wanted to make Boba seem unique and distinguishable from them, and honestly even in the original trilogy he stands out a lot. He is unique and memorable and that’s one of the things that draws us to him.

And as we all know, both Boba and Jango and the Clones are played by Temuera Morrison — and occasionally by the wonderful Bodie Taylor and Daniel Logan. And Temuera Morrison comes from the Maori people. And differently from the mandalorian case, where we were talking about a whole planet, in this situation we’re talking about portraying one single person, so there’s nowhere to go around his appearance and phenotypes, right? I mean, you are literally representing an actual individual, so there’s no way you could alter their looks, right?

(hahahaha wrong)

And besides that, I think that is in situations like that (when we are talking about individuals) that the actor’s perspective could really have a place to shine (just the same as how Lea was mostly written by Carrie Fisher). In this very heart-warming interview for The New York Times (which you can read full signing up for their 5-free-articles-per-month policy), Temuera Morrison talks a little bit about how he incorporated his cultural background to Boba Fett in The Mandalorian:

“I come from the Maori nation of New Zealand, the Indigenous people — we’re the Down Under Polynesians — and I wanted to bring that kind of spirit and energy, which we call wairua. I’ve been trained in my cultural dance, which we call the haka. I’ve also been trained in some of our weapons, so that’s how I was able to manipulate some of the weapons in my fight scenes and work with the gaffi stick, which my character has.” [2]

The Gaffi stick (or Gaderffii), btw, is the weapon used by the Tusken Raiders on Tatooine, and according to oceanic art expert Bruno Claessens it’s design was inspired by wooden Fijian war clubs called totokia. [3]

And I think is very clear how this background can influence one’s performance and approach to a character, and majorly how much more alive this character will feel like. Beyond that, having an actor from your culture to play and add elements to a character will higly improve your sense of connection with them (besides all the impact of seeying yourself on screen, and seeying yourself portrayed with respect). It would only make sense if the cultural elements that the actor brought when giving life to a fictional individual would’ve been kept and even deepened while expanding this role. And if you’re familiar with Star Wars Legends you’ll probably rememeber that in Legends Jango would train and raise all Clone troopers in the Mandalorian culture, so that the Clones would sing traditional war chants before battles, be fluent in Mando’a (Mandalore’s language) and some would proudly take mandalorian names for themselves. So why didn’t Filoni Inc. take that into account when they went to delve into the clones in The Clone Wars?

2.3 THE WHITE MINORITY

First of all I’d like to state that all this is 100% me conjecturing, and by no means at all I’m saying that this is what really happened. But while I was re-watching CW before The Bad Batch premiere, something came to my mind regarding the whitewashing of the Clones, and I’d like to leave that on the table.

So, you know this kind of recent movies and series that depicted like, fairies in this fictional world where fairies were very opressed, but there would be a lot of fairies played by white actors? Just like Bright and Carnival Row. If you’ve watched some of these and have some racial conscience, you’ll probably know where I’m going here. And the issue with it is that often this medias will portray real situations of racism and opression and prejudice, but all applied to white people. Like in Carnival Row, when going to work as a maid in a rich human house, our girl Cara Delevingne had to fight not to have her braids (which held a lot of significance in her culture) cut by her intolerant human mistress, because the braids were not “appropriate”. Got it? hahahaha what a joy

Look at her ethnic braids!!!

One of the reasons this happens might be to relieve a white audience of the burden of watching these stories and feeling what I like to call “white guilt”. Because, as we all know, white people were never very oppressed.  Historically speaking, white people have always been in privileged social positions, and in an exploitative relationship between two ethnic groups, white people very usually would be the exploiters  —  the opressors. So while watching situations (that every minority would know to be very real) of opression in fiction, if these situations were lived by a white actor, there would be no real-life associations, because we have no historical parameter to associate this situation with anything in real life — if you are white. Thus, there is less chance that, when consuming one of these narratives, whoever is watching will question the "truthfulness" of these situations (because it's not "real racism", see, "they're just fairies"). It's easier for a person to watch without having to step out of their comfort zone, or confront the reality of real people who actually go through things like that. There's even a chance that this might diminish empathy for these people.

Once again, not saying this is specifically the case of the Clones, majorly because one of the main feelings you have when watching CW is exactly empathy for the troopers (at least for me, honestly, the galaxy could explode, I just wanted those poor men to be happy for God’s sake). But I’ll talk more about it later.

The thing is, the whole thing with the Clones, if you think about it, it’s not pretty. If you step on little tiny bit outside the bubble of “fictional fantasy”, the concept is very outrageous. They are kept in conditions analogous to slavery, to say the least. To say the more, they were literally made in an on-demand lab to serve a purpose they are personally not a part of, for which they will neither receive any reward nor share any part of the gains. On the contrary, as we saw in The Bad Batch, as soon as the war was over and the clones were no longer useful as cannonballs, they were discarded. In the (wonderful) episode 6 of the third season of (the almost flawless) Rebels, “The Last Battle”, we're even personally introduced to the analogy that there really wasn't much difference in value between clones and droids, something that was pretty clear in Clone Wars but hadn't been said explicitly yet.

In fact, technically the Separatists can be considered to be more human than the Republic. But that's just my opinion.

So, you had this whole army of pretty much slaves. I know this is a heavy term, but these were people who were originally stripped of any sense of humanity or individuality, made literally to go to war and die in it, doing so purely in exchange for food and lodging, under the false pretense that they belonged to a glorious purpose (yes, Loki me taught that term, that was the only thing I absorbed from this series). Doing all this under extremely precarious conditions from which they had no chance of getting out, actually, getting out was tantamount to the death penalty. They were slaves. In milder terms, an oppressed minority. And again, I don't know if that was the case, but I can understand why Filoni Inc would be apprehensive about representing phenotically indigenous people in this situation. Especially since we in theory should see Anakin and Obi-Wan as the good guys.

(and here I’d like to leave a little disclaimer that I believe the whole Anakin-was-a-slave-once plot was HUGELY misused (and honestly just badly done) both in the prequels and in the animeted series  — maybe for the best, since he was, you know, white and all that, and I don’t know how the writers would have handled it, but ANYWAY — I believe this could have been further explored, particularly regarding his relationship with the Clones, and how it could have influenced his revolt against the Jedi, and manipulated to add to his anger and all that. I mean, we already HAD the fact that Anakin shared a deeper conection with his troopers than usual)

Yes, Rex, you have common trauma experiences to share. But anyway, backing to my track

As I was saying, we are to see them as good guys, and maybe that could’ve been tricky if we saw them hooping up on slavery practices. Like, idk, a “nice” sugar plantation owner? (I don’t know the correct word for it in english, but in portuguese they were called senhores de engenho) Like this guy from 12 Years a Slave?

You know, the slave owner who was “nice”. IDK, anyway  

No one will ever watch Clone Wars and make this association (I believe not, at least), of course not. But if we were to see how CW deepened the clone arcs, and see them as phenotypically indigenous, subjected to certain situations that occur in CW (yes, like Umbara), maybe some kind of association would’ve been easier to make.

I mean, come onnnn I can’t be the only one seeing it

You see, maybe not the whole 12 Years a Slave association one, but I don’t think it’s hard to see there was something there. And maybe this could’ve been even more evident if they looked non-white. Because historically, both black peoples and indigenous peoples went through processes of slavery, from which we as a society are still impacted today. And to slave a people, the first thing you have to do is strip them from their humanity. So it might be easier to see this situation and apply it to real life. And maybe that could lead to a whole lot of other questions regarding the Clones, the Republic, the Jedi, and even how chill Obi-Wan was about all this. We might come out of it, as lady Ursula Le Guin stated in the fragment above, a bit different from what we were before we watch it.

Maybe even unconsciously, Filoni Inc thought we would be more confortable watching if they just looked white (and because of colonialism and all that, but I’m adding thoughts here).

And of course I don’t like the idea of, idk, looking at Obi-Wan and thinking about Benedict Cumberbatch in 12 Years a Slave or something like that. Of course that, if the Clones were to play the same role as they did in the prequels, to obediently serve the Jedi and quietly die for them, that would have been bad, and hurtfull, and pejorative if added to all that I said here. But the thing is that Clone Wars, consciously or not, already solved that. At least to my point of view, they already managed to approach this situation in an incredible competent way, that is giving them agency.

2.4 AGENCY AND INDIVIDUALITY

So, one of the things I love most in Clone Wars is how it really feels like it’s about the Clones. Like, we have the bigger scene of Palpatine taking over, Ahsoka’s growth arc, Anakin’s turn to The Dark Side, the dawn of the Jedi and rise of the Empire and all that, but it also has this idk, vibe, of there’s actually something going on that no one in scene is talking about? And this something is the Clones. We have these episodes spread throughout the seasons, even out of chronological order, which when watched together tell a parallel story to the war, to everything I mentioned. Which is a story about individuals. Clone Wars manages to, in a (at least to me) very touching way, make the Clones be the heros. 

Can you really look me in the eye and say that Five’s story didn’t CRASH you like a full-speed train???? He may not have the same amount of screen-time as the protagonists, but his story is just as important as theirs (and to me, it might be the most meaningful one). Because he is the first to break free from the opression cicle all the Clones were trapped into. 

His story can be divided into 6 phases.

1 - First, the construction of his individuality, in other words, the reclaiming of his humanity. 

2 - Then the assimilation of understanding yourself as an individual of value, and then extending this to all his brothers, not as a unit, but as a set of individuals collectively having this same newly discovered value.

3 - This makes him realize that in the situation they find themselves in, they are not being recognized as such. This makes him question the reality of their situation.

4 - Freed from the illusion of his state, he seeks the truth about it.

5 - This then leads him to seek liberation not just for himself, but for all the Clones (it's basically Plato's Cave, and I'm not exaggerating here).

6 - And finally, precisely because he has assimilated his individuality and sought freedom for himself and his brothers, he is punished for it.

His story is all about agency. Agency, according to the Wikipedia page that is the first to appear if you type “agency” on Google, is that agency is “the abstract principle that autonomous beings, agents, are capable of acting by themselves” [4], and this abstract principle can be dissected in 7 segments:

Law - a person acting on behalf of another person

Religious -  "the privilege of choice... introduced by God"

Moral -  capacity for making moral judgments

Philosophical -  the capacity of an autonomous agent to act, relating to action theory in philosophy

Psychological -  the ability to recognize or attribute agency in humans and non-human animals

Sociological -  the ability of social actors to make independent choices, relating to action theory in sociology

Structural - ability of an individual to organize future situations and resource distribution

All of them apply here. And this is just the story of one Clone. We know there are many others throughout the series. 

Agency is what can make the world of a difference when you are telling a story about an opressed minority. Because opressed minorities do exist, and opression exists, and if you are insecure about consuming a fictional media about opressed minorities, see if they have agency might be a good place to start. So that’s why I think that everything I said before in 2.3 falls short. Because the solution already existed, and was indeed done. Honestly, making the non-agency representation of the Clones (the one we see in the prequels) to be the one played by Temuera Morrison, and then giving them agency in the version where they appear to be white, just leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.

And honestly, if they were to make the Clones look like Temuera Morrison, and by that mean, take more inspiration in the Māori culture, maybe they wouldn’t even have to change much of their representation besides their facial features. As I said in part 1, I am not by any means an expert in polynesian cultures, but there was something that really got me while I was researching about it. And is the facial tattoos. More precisely, the tā moko. 

2.5  TĀ MOKO

Once again I’ll be using the Te Ara: The Encyclopedia of New Zealand as source, and you can find the articles used linked at the end of this post. 

Etymologically speaking,

“The term moko traditionally applied to male facial tattooing, while kauae referred to moko on the chins of women. There were other specific terms for tattooing on other parts of the body. Eventually ‘moko’ came to be used for Māori tattooing in general.” [5]

So moko is the correct name for the characteristic tattoos we often see when we look for Māori culture. 

These ones ^. Please also look this book up, it’s beautiful. It’s written by  Ngahuia Te Awekotuku, a New Zealand academic specialising in Māori cultural issues and a lesbian activist. She’s wonderful. 

According to the Tourism NewZealand website, 

“In Māori culture, it [moko] reflects the individual's whakapapa (ancestry) and personal history. In earlier times it was an important signifier of social rank, knowledge, skill and eligibility to marry.”

“Traditionally men received moko on their faces, buttocks and thighs. Māori face tattoos are the ultimate expression of Māori identity. Māori believe the head is the most sacred part of the body, so facial tattoos have special significance.”

[...] “The main lines in a Māori tattoo are called manawa, which is the Māori word for heart.” [6]

Therefore, in the Māori culture, there’s this incredibly deep meaning attributed to the (specific of their culture) tattooing of the face. The act of tattooing the body, any part of the body, is incredibly powerful in many cultures around the globe. The adornment of the body can have different meanings for these different cultures, but all of which I've come into contact with do mean a lot. It’s one of the oldest and most beautiful human expressions of individuality and identity. 

And in the Star Wars universe, the Clones are the group that has the deeper connection to, and the best narrative regarding, tattoos. In fact, besides Hera’s father, Cham Syndulla, the Clones are the only individuals to have tattooed skin, at least that I can recall of. And they do share a deep connection to it. 

For the Clones, the tattoos (added to hairstyles) are the most meaningful way in which they can express themselves. Is what makes them distinguishable from each other to other people. Tattoos are one of the things that represent them as individuals.

And I’m not BY ANY MEANS sayin that the Clones facial tattoos = Moko. That’s not my point. But that’s one of the things I meant when I said earlier about the wasted potential of the representation of the Clones (in my point of view). Because maybe if it were their intention to base the culture of the clones after the polynesian culture, maybe if it were their intention to make the Clones actually look like Temuera Morrison, this could have meant a whole deal. More than it’d appear looking to it from outside this culture. Maybe if there were actual polynesian people in the team that designed the Clones and wrote them (or at least indigenous people, something), who knows what we could’ve had. 

Even in Hunter’s design, I noticed that if you take for example this frame of Temuera from the movie River Queen (2005), where we can have a closer look at the design of his tā moko

Speaking purely plastically (because I don’t want to get into the movie itself, just using it as example because then I can use Temuera himself as a comparison), see the lines around the contours of his mouth? Now look at Hunter’s. 

I find it interesting that they choose to design this lines coming from around his nose like that. But at this point I am stretching A LOT into plastic and semiotics, so this comparison is just a little thing that got my attention. I know that his tattoo is a skull and etc etc, I’m just poiting this out. And it even makes me a little frustrated, because they could have taken so many interesting paths in the Bad Batch designs. But instead they choose to pay homage to Rambo. And I mean, I like Rambo, I think he’s cool and all that.

Look at him doing Filipino martial arts

But then, as we say in Brasil, they had the knife and the cheese in their hands (all they had to do was cut the cheese, but they didn’t). Istead, it seems like in order to make Hunter look like Rambo, they made him even whiter??? 

2.6 SO...

Look, I love The Clone Wars. I’m crazy about it. I love the Clones, I love their stories and plots. They are great characters and one of the greatest addings ever made in the Star Wars universe. They even have, in my opinion, the best soundtrack piece to feature in a Star Wars media since John Williams’ wonderful score. It just feels to me as if their narrative core is full of bagage, and meanings, and associations that were just wiped under the carpet when they suddenly became white. It just feels to me as if, once again, they were trying to erase the person behing the trooper mask, and the people they were to represent, and the history they should evoke.

I don’t know why they were whitewashed. Maybe it was just the old due racism and colonialism. Maybe it was meant for us to not question the Jedi, or our good guys, or the real morality of this fictional universe where we were immersed. But then, was it meant for what?

The Clones were a metaphor for what? 

(spoiler: the answer still contains colonialism)

Thank you so much for reading !!!! (and congratulations for getting this far, you are a true hero)

SOURCES USED IN THIS:

[1] Ursulla K. Le Guin, 'The Left Hand of Darkness', 14th ACE print run of June, 1977

[2] Dave Itzkoff, 'Being Boba Fett: Temuera Morrison Discusses ‘The Mandalorian’', The New York Times, published Dec. 7, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/07/arts/television/the-mandalorian-boba-fett-temuera-morrison.html (accessed 15 September 2021)

[3] Bruno Claessens, 'George Lucas' "Star Wars" and Oceanic art' , Archived from the original on December 5, 2020, https://web.archive.org/web/20201205114353/http://brunoclaessens.com/2015/07/george-lucas-star-wars-and-oceanic-art/#.YEiJ-p37RhF (accessed 15 September 2021)

[4]  Wikipedia contributors, "Agency," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Agency&oldid=1037924611 (accessed September 17, 2021)

[5] Rawinia Higgins, 'Tā moko – Māori tattooing - Origins of tā moko', Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/ta-moko-maori-tattooing/page-1 (accessed 17 September 2021)

[6] Tourism New Zealand, ‘The meaning of tā moko, traditional Māori tattoos’,  The Tourism New Zealand website, https://www.newzealand.com/us/feature/ta-moko-maori-tattoo/ (accessed 17 September 2021)

[thatgirlinskullz]

SPOILER THOUGHTS after Episode 6 of The Book of Boba Fett.. and i mean it, ***SPOILERS***

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HOLY FUCK THAT EPISODE WRECKED ME. HOLY SHIT 😭😭😭

UGH

i don't even know where to start....

this is gonna be a whole lot of random ramblings, so my apologies if i don't make sense sometimes...

holy shit

okay

the entire bit of Mando going to see Grogu... the planet, the beautiful scenery, the Japanese inspirations in both visuals and the music.. and the clothes, omg the clothes!!

the ant-droids building a Jedi temple?!!! that is likely the one where Luke taught Ben?! omg..

just R2 being R2. i love him. will forever love him. 💖

AHSOKA FKIN TANO SHOWING UP SO CASUALLY LOOKING GORGEOUS AS EVER HELLO?!! and um.. AHSOKA HAVING MET LUKE?!!! so are we actually gonna see her meet Luke and talk about Anakin in her own show? please and thank you. i need to be emotionally destroyed by Luke telling Ahsoka that Anakin came back to the light before he passed. I NEED TO SEE IT. I NEED TO HEAR IT. the fanart of it is not enough. i want to see that conversation.. i need to have my heart pulled out by it and chopped into a million pieces. please!! 😭😭😭

okay...

the whole Mando-Ahsoka dynamic is amazing. i love them.

I LOVE how Rosario Dawson is using so much of animated Ahsoka's mannerisms, like in her movements, and the way she talks. she really is live action Ahsoka 😭😭😭 (regardless of what you think of her)

Mando deciding he's being selfish and he needs to let Grogu be, and decide for himself. oh my heart 😭

Luke's training montage with Grogu!!! OH MY FKIN GOD!! it made me ugly sob so much. the montage. exactly like with Yoda. AND HE EVEN MENTIONS YODA. aaaaaaaaaaa i cannot take this. *edit: EVEN YODA'S LIGHTSABER?! OMG!!! i did not know Luke had it. i have no idea how he has it. didn't Yoda lose that in the fight against Palpatine?! did he make a new one on Dagobah? did he somehow recover the old saber? it does look like his old saber. omg my heart.. and now it may be Grogu's new saber?!!! (tho i was kinda looking forward to a live action saber-building-through-the-force scene but oh well)

Grogu being adorable and learning to jump, and focus, and takes out the training droid. aaaahhh.

and um.. FILONI NEVER MISSES A CHANCE TO TRAUMATIZE US WITH DIFFERENT VERSIONS OF ORDER 66 DOES HE?!!! ohmygod i wanted to see that but i sooo DID NOT want to see that. poor baby. the trauma. aaahhh.. no wonder he blocked it out.. 😭😭😭💔💔💔

i still kinda wanna know how Grogu actually got out. who got him out?!

i'm sorry but Luke giving Grogu THE CHOICE is just mean.. he just barely begun his training, why are you doing this to him?!!! he is but a babe. do not do this! also, Luke, you should know better. making people choose is not a good thing about the Jedi. aaahhh

but what really broke me?! WHAT DESTROYED ME?! 💔

AHSOKA TELLING LUKE HE'S SO MUCH LIKE HIS FATHER 😭😭😭 dead. destroyed. broken. shattered. emotionally completely done. i am not okay.

that single line "So much like your father" MADE ME CRYYYY it broke me 😭😭😭😭😭

okay okay. get a grip..

*sigh

Cobb Vanth is back. i love him. he is great.

Madam Garsa and the beautiful Twi'leks are.. well.. 😭😭😭 should have seen it coming. it was too good to be true. they were too beautiful.

aaaand of coursee. Cad fkin Bane. OF COURSE. i knew he would appear. just didn't know on which side.. honestly, love it. i have a love/hate thing for Bane, he is super cool and slick and just an amazing character, but i also hate him cuz he's an asshole most of the time.

also i am not super in love with his live action looks..? like he's just.. so pale? something is missing. i think he should be darker blue. but oh well. the voice was top notch. the movements and the eyes and the everything was great. it's just the color i think.

*edit: that standoff between Cobb and Bane?! the western-style standoff and shootout?! omg it IS a space western! i love it so much, and i am not even a fan of westerns xD

anyway.. i am still a wreck after that one..

i am hopeful for the final episode, hoping they don't rush it with the "all out war" thing. hope they take their time.

i'm also 99% certain we get another season so we might actually not see the war next episode. maybe some scheming and preparations and then a big cliffhanger? not sure.

also i feel like we'll only find out Grogu's decision in Mando S3. which i am fine with.

*sigh.. this episode was a rollercoaster of emotions for me. excitement and fun mixed with a lot of pain and just love for this show, this galaxy, these characters..

i love star wars so much. 💖💖💖

and i know it's a meme at this point to thank Filoni for everything, but like.. he IS a HUGE part of why it's the way it is. yes, Favreau is another HUGE part, along with a bunch of others who we don't give credit to, but like.

THANK YOU FILONI. 💖

THANK YOU FAVREAU. 💖

THANK YOU EVERYONE WORKING IN STAR WARS. 💖💖💖

thank you for making it what it is. for giving me more Star Wars to fangirl over.

i cannot wait for what's next. 💖

[readbythestarlight]

BoBF chapter 7: In The Name of Honor

Oh god here we go

A whole hour huh

I totally forgot the cantina blew up

Hiiiii Boba and Fennec nice to see you again!!

Din standing up for Mos Pelgo ;~;

B: “you are confident he will come”

D: “I am”

Me: *cries because the TRUST*

Also tho god please let Cobb be okay enough show up Din believes in him

Y’all best not get most of Mos Pelgo killed tho

A showdown in a blown up cantina feels a little Mando s1 finale doesn’t it

Also I still don’t like the street kids not sorry

You can’t protect anybody from a blown out husk make it make sense

Fuck off Bane

I’m so worried about Cobb

Oh wow, they killed them. I’m shocked. (Not lol)

Wait

An X-Wing

IS IT LUKE DID GROGU CHOOSE IS HE BRINGING OUR BOY HOME???

BABY

HE CHOSE DIN

I’m gonna cry

God if anything happens to Grogu if he gets out in even the SLIGHTEST danger I will kill

IM GONNA CRY

HE CHOSE DIIIIIIIN

Omg of the little mail shirt saves him at any point I’ll weep and sob

Ah, exposition

They keep saying “when Cobb/the people of Freetown show up” which makes me think they’re not going to. Or like the show wants me to think they’re not going to.

Oh fuck okay

Just shoot him Boba

I hope Din doesn’t find out Bane shot Cobb here it’ll hurt me

You tell him Boba

FUCK

FUCK FUCK FUCK

“You should have never left him without his armor” FUCK

Oh

Bane, what’s your play here??

Telling him that??

Boba honey be smart

No baby don’t we al know Filoni won’t let you kill his OC

Boba listen to Fennec

“He killed Vanth” NO HE DIDNT

RIP the biker kids and the Wookie I guess

Wow he got betrayed I’m shocked again (nottttt)

Oh and the Gamoreans too

RIP everyone but Boba and Fennec and Din I guess

Why does all the tension seemed so forced and why am I supposed to care about these street call kids we’ve spent no time with

YEAHHHH FENNEC

But yeah anyway this has such weird s1 finale of Mando vibes

Oh shit this exchange

“I suppose you’ll be heading out.”

“I’m not.”

“You should.”

“It’s against the Creed. I have you my word. I’m with you until we both fall.”

“You really buy into that bantha fodder?”

“I do.”

“Good.”

Din

“We’ll both die in the name of honor.”

Din. Din your son is here Din you can’t.

Din you can’t sign up for a suicide mission

Twi’lek man is going to die

Oh no Boba what did you write

Boba you’re gonna get him shot

Damn Boba that’s poetic

YEAHHHHHH FUCK EM UP BOYS

JET PACKS HELL YEAH

oh this is everything I love this

BOBA

knee missile lol

Okay Din and Boba fighting side by side is so badass. Boba covering Din while he’s down.

WHISTLING BIRDS

Finally some delicious fucking food

Okay so this is where Freetown comes in to save the day right

YEAHHHHH

WEEQUAY

…okay Cobb tho?

Where?

“I’m sorry about the Marshal.”

“Gunned him down in cold blood.”

STOP TRYING TO MAKE ME THINK HE’S DEAD

These low speed speeders are so dumb still I hate them

JO

Yay Wookie

So actually that was a fake out and no one is dead huh

Except he might actually die

RIP Wookie friend

Oh wait no Boba’s gonna save him

And Din

What a team

Oh dear

I’ll take more Boba and Din fighting together but otherwise I feel like no stakes in this fight

DARKSABER YEAH

Oh my god

Boba gonna go get the Tuskens!!

DIN BE CAREFUL YOUR SON IS HERE

PELI NOW IS NOT THE TIME

At least I don’t see Grogu thank god

GEOGU HUG GROGU HUG GROGU HUG

y’all I’m crying

“Hey that’s the shirt. You got the shirt.” Y’all I’m literally weeping.

Din football catching Grogu is adorable

What…

OH HE WENT FOR THE RANCOR

Wait

The baby rancor is suddenly combat ready??

If the rancor dies I will actually care way more than I would if any of the street punks die

YEAHHHH DAEKSABER

Fuck it up Grogu save ur dad

HES SAVING DIN AGAIN

YEAHHHHH BABY

Boba on the rancor is ridiculous and badass all at once lol

I’d say Jo/Punk Girl Whose Name I Don’t Know but I already have Jo with an OC so

lol Peli joining the fight

“Peli’s for you covered” I adore her

SOMEONE KILL THIS BLUE FUCK FOR ME I BEG

Where is Fennec

Kill him Boba do it

I hate this blue fuck seriously

Honestly though I’d like to see more of him as an antagonist to Boba

Fuck you Bane

YEAHHHH FUCK HIM UP WKTH YOUR GAFFI STICK THAT REPRESENTS THE FAMILY YOU FOUND THAT HELPED YOU BECOME SOMEONE OTHER THAN WHO YOU USED TO BE

Holy shit they let him kill him

VINDICAAAAATIIIOOOOOON

Uh stop shooting Boba’s rancor what

Tho is this King Kong scene necessary

He gave Grogu the ball I’m weeping

DIN

Definitely gonna need some recovery time and TLC

Grogu will tame the savage beast

Nappy time awwww

Oh please fuck then up Boba

I still wanna know where Fennec is

OH
there she is

Fennec shouldn’t you have let Boba do that?? Why did she get to kill the head Pyke??

If he leaves Tatooine to the punk kids

Grogu in his little bubble 😭

“lmaoooo Grogu wants the zoomies!!”

OH MY GOD

COBB IS IN THE BACTA THANK RIGHT

HE IS

METAL

ARM

COBB??

He had better have consented to that because modifying him without his consent when they could have just healed him first (he was shot in the right shoulder no way was he going to die once they got him in bacta) and then checked.

Also in general I don’t like the mods.

But y’all i’m SCREAMING

Din and Grogu!

And this probably means more Cobb in future?? I’m so torn about how I feel about him being modified tho I hope he looks better than the current “mods” do. Something natural and understated like Fennec.

Also tho Boba should have gotten to kill the head Pyke and avenge his tribe.

And I have no idea where they’ll take Boba and Fennec from here.

[nov4-rocket5]

I find the whole, “Was RWBY better in the earlier volumes?” argument less about whether the show was ‘better’ on a writing level and more on how satisfied the viewer was with the experience

I like to compare it to Genndy Clone Wars and Filoni Clone Wars.

Genndy Clone Wars… isn’t all that complex or deep of a show. Like, at all. It’s a very straightforward microseries that relies mostly on the action that makes it’s occasional ‘smarter’ storytelling stand out, even when… not much is actually happening.

People don’t have such fond memories for Genndy Wars because it was necessarily a ‘deep’ show, it just knew what it was good at and excelled at it, so the viewing experience is generally going to always be a good time.

Filoni Clone Wars is much different because it wants to add more to the Prequels and expand on ideas they kinda barely did anything with, and the results are often mixed. Filoni Wars can certainly reach Genndy Wars in terms of viewing experience, and even the more focus on storytelling can even surpass Genndy Wars at points,

Heavy emphasis on points, however. For every Umbara Arc, Maul, or Fives’ Death, you also have Jar Jar arcs and Padme going, “Let’s defund troops in the middle of a war! Surely that will make the Separatists like us!” The final season is a perfect example, we have the straightforward Bad Batch arc, Ahsoka hanging out with… kinda annoying characters not really doing anything, and then we get to the good shit with the Siege of Mandalore.

Of course, you can always just skip the crummier arcs given Filoni Wars is an anthology, but the point still stands that for all of Filoni Wars’ highs, you also have it’s lows that detracts from a lot of people’s viewing experience. Rebels has this same problem but worse given it’s not an anthology like Clone Wars is.

I feel it’s similar for the Beacon Era of RWBY. RWBY’s storytelling has never really been anything special, and yes, people have always been kinda dissatisfied with it given the trailers painted a drastically different show, but even in the Beacon Era, RWBY generally knew what it’s big appeal was; the crazy fights and how creative they could get. Shit like the Dance Arc and Jaune Bullying Arc are annoying, but we usually had some good fights in between and during them to tide people over.

Go on and on about how “Beacon was always going to fall!” all you want, it doesn’t change the fact that people generally liked the Beacon Era’s more straightforward presentation that, for all of it’s falters, could deliver on what people wanted, action.

Then Monty died and the fights changed, CRWBY had to learn an entirely new animation engine, and M&K were left with a workaholic’s notes on where to take the story from Beacon. With the shift put more on actual storytelling, we reach the same problem Filoni Wars has. Yeah, it has it’s highs, but how willing are you to put up with it’s lows to get to them? Is it worth slogging through the absolute boredom of Volume 5 and the disaster that is the Haven fight just to have some context for Volume 6’s pretty good moments? Is Ironwood’s really interesting back and forth in Volume 7 worth following when he just becomes a stark-raving pure evil lunatic that isn’t even a quarter as interesting to watch in the end?

Of course, the answers to these questions is always going to vary depending on the viewer, but my point still stands; you can either know what your good at, excel at it and give viewers a good time, or you can experiment and take the story in more ‘interesting’ directions that you don’t really know how people will react to. There’s nothing wrong with either.

This is actually kind of why people have such fond things to say about Chibi. It’s not trying anything in terms of storytelling, it just knows people like comedy and does comedy pretty damn well. Whether Chibi is the ‘better’ show or not is irrelevant, you just know that you’re in for a good chuckle when Chibi’s on, and that’s all the appeal it needs.

A show doesn’t have to necessarily be good, it just has to know what it’s good at.

[clonewarsarchives]

BRINGING BACK THE BOUNTY! (#114, JANUARY 2010)

Supervising Director Dave Filoni how Season 2 of Star Wars: The Clone Wars is bigger, bolder and better! Words: Jonathan Wilkins

Star Wars Insider: The first season of Star Wars: The Clone Wars was a massive hit that defied everybody's expectations. Did that help you with Season Two, or did that add pressure?

Dave Filoni: I think that the main thing for me was I knew that we would have an audience, and I just wanted to find a way with my team to meet that audience’s expectations. I think that’s the hard part.

I know Star Wars is going to grow a new audience in addition to the fans that it already has, and that makes it difficult because we’re serving these two different groups. I think the entire audience likes all the action, adventure, drama, and characters that Star Wars has presented fans with for over 30 years. It wasn’t going to be a problem; it was just meeting the expectations and maintaining the quality. I think that as a crew we had our own expectations having grown up with Star Wars, and we wanted to push things. And really, because we work so far ahead, by the time we saw the first audience reactions we were well on the way with Season Two. It was validating because people were talking about things that they might like us to do better or that they were confused by and we were already improving that stuff, so we knew we were on the right track going into Season Two.

Was there a lot in Season Two that you couldn’t have done in Season One?

Technically and story-wise, absolutely. Mainly because we have more action figures—so to speak—at this point [laughs]!

You know, when they released the original set of action figures, you had Luke, Han, Leia, a stormtrooper, Darth Vader, C-3P0, R2-D2 and maybe Chewbacca. Actually, it was kind of exotic as a kid if you even had Chewbacca! You could only do certain types of stories. When the TIE fighter pilot came out I almost fell over! It’s been the same working on this show. For a while all we had were clones and battle droids for the most part. While getting a whole cast of individual characters like Cad Bane or Robonino into one episode was a really big challenge, it opened up tons of possibilities for us story-wise, tons of possibilities for us in the environments, and it’s really improved a lot of things we can do.

Why did you choose the theme of bounty hunters for Season Two?

It was the main element that we really didn’t have in Season One. Season One was very focused on good guy/bad guy, Republic/Separatists, battle droids vs. clones, with the Jedi in the mix. I think that the bounty hunters are such a stand-out, that when you say “bounty hunter” everybody goes “Boba Fett,” “IG-88,” “Bossk,” “4-LOM,” “Zuckuss,” “Dengar.” We all knew them by name and they didn’t do anything in the movies, so it was really exciting to include the bounty hunters and say, “We’re going to do a whole episode with these guys and they’re going to do a whole lot more than you ever saw them do before!” This is one way of illustrating the big difference in Season Two. And they’re nasty customers, too! There are some pretty intense storylines in Season Two.

Was it fun to make the IG-88 robots more agile than the audience anticipated when they showed up in Season One’s “Downfall of a Droid”?

Oh yeah, that was brilliant! The animators just went to town. They’re droids, so they should be able to do things people couldn’t do. Their ambidextrous nature as they were fighting and their front-to-back orientation worked really well. It’s always fun to expand that, but then you always have to be careful with the expectations, too. Bossk has been in a lot of the press coming out. I know there’s a whole fever built around Bossk, which is incredible for a character that basically just wiggles his toes! You start to get a little worried about those expectations. It’s the same thing as when we developed Plo Koon and Kit Fisto. The first thing is always the voice and what that’s going to sound like. That’s a huge expectation right there, but you just have to hope you make as many people happy as possible. It’s a challenge, but it sure is a fun challenge.

How many variations on the voice of Plo Koon, for example, did you go through before you arrived at what you wanted?

With Plo Koon, we basically wrote him three different ways before we settled on a final version of how he would speak. For a while our natural inclination was that he was going to speak an alien language. The problem there was that we weren’t going to subtitle a major character for a whole series, and he had to have a lot of intelligent stuff to say, just like Obi-Wan Kenobi in A New Hope. So, it became clear that he was going to have to speak Basic, or English. For a while, he was very abrupt and a bit more samurai in his delivery. And then eventually I just realized that I wanted him to be more like Gandalf the Grey, and that’s where the Ian McKellen inspiration came in. I think I had two different people try out as Plo Koon before we got James Arnold Taylor, and it was just all experimenting. I had some of my different stable of actors try stuff because I was searching for a voice. I was probably pretty extreme with Plo Koon, especially because he’s obviously an important character to me, but that being said I still wanted to get something that I thought would universally be liked by fans, not just my own preconceived notion.

With Kit Fisto I went to George a lot more for his advice. He has an input on all the Jedi voices and I always ask him about it to make sure I’m on the right track. We had some ideas for the character and he said to go in a different direction with Kit Fisto. With Plo Koon he kind of left me alone on that one [laughs]. He gave me some suggestions and then I think he was pretty happy with whatever I came up with. I don’t think he wanted to listen to me complain if I didn’t like it!

So I guess that George knows that Plo Koon is your favorite?

Well, insofar as I like to bring up things about the character. I guess it’s at the point that if I really didn’t like something George would maybe listen to me. It depends on his sense of humor that day. He might just keep going on something I didn’t like just to mess with me! He’s got a good sense of humor, so ifs hard to predict.

Obi-Wan's character is developed quite a bit more this season. Why did you think this is necessary?

It was one thing that a lot of people asked questions about in the first season. We have these characters and we know what happens to them. When it comes to Obi-Wan in the prequels, he does what’s required of him to meet up with where we are in A New Hope, but it wasn’t his story, so we didn’t really get a “behind-the-scenes” look at Obi-Wan Kenobi. Now we have a whole series to explore his character!

In Season One we didn’t really deal that much with Obi-Wan. He had a larger role in the Ryloth story-arc, but he was never a major focal point other than playing off of Anakin’s banter. In Season Two he’s a great character, and we had an opportunity to really talk with George about some opportunities for him. George had some ideas that he wanted to explore, and I’m really pleased with how it’s turned out. I think it’s exciting to fans that they’re going to get some more insight into the background of Obi-Wan Kenobi and his thought processes. We’re always used to seeing him in relation to Luke or Anakin. But Obi-Wan Kenobi is an interesting character to explore.

Are there any other characters that you'd like to explore in the show?

Padmé’s always an interesting one. We’ve done more with her in Season Two. It’s really tricky. When you get into the Padmé/Anakin dynamic there’s a lot defined in the films, and she has a role in Revenge of the Sith that I have to make sure that we meet up with. When I deal with Anakin in relation to Ahsoka, I have a lot more room to play, because obviously nobody knows what happens to Ahsoka. So how he reacts to her and how that relationship builds, gives us a lot more room to grow. I would still like to see more stuff involving Padmé to get a better sense of who this person is on a more intimate level.

You have all these episodes you do for every season and you can fill them up before you blink and go, “Oh my gosh, we didn’t do anything with that character or that group. Well, next season....” Then you create a whole bunch of new things that season and you go, “Well, I want to keep going with that.” Cat Taber [the voice of Padmé] is always on me to expand the role, so it’ll never get left out because she constantly reminds me that we need more Padmé!

So we can expect an episode centering on Padme for Season Three, perhaps?

Oh yeah, absolutely! Nothing wrong with that.

What's the biggest misperception people have about making animation?

I just don’t think people realize how long it takes and the amount of detail that goes into everything we do. And why should they? It’s hard for people who don’t draw to understand how much work goes into every single second that you’re watching. In our show, for example, everything that you see on screen had to be designed, built, textured, and rigged. There’s a tremendous amount of work, be it a plate on the table or some new type of walker that’s running around or a whole planet. On the planet you need the landscape; are there trees, or is it barren? Grass? Bushes? And it all needs designing. It’s always been that way. That’s not a problem that’s exclusive to The Clone Wars.

It’s just amazing to me, when you watch something like Coraline, to think that they built all of those beautiful sets, and put all those details into the sets. It gives you a real appreciation for the artistry going into everything. The end result is that you shouldn’t realize it, which is why the audience doesn’t need to be aware of it. All they need to be aware of is the story and the characters, ultimately. But I think it’s a misperception that somehow it just happens, or that it’s easy to redo stuff because it’s animated.

Do you have to ever redo things or go back and change things?

Oh yeah! I work with George Lucas. Of course! He is constantly improving stuff. For me, it’s actually a lucky situation that I work with someone that produces the show that wants it to be constantly better. No matter how small the detail, when he and I watch the final color version, he’ll say, “I love this episode, it’s great, but let’s go take a look at it and see if we can improve anything. For most people it would just be, “This episode is great, we can put it on the air, let’s go.” But for George, it’s always a matter of, even incrementally, getting something better up there. As an artist you learn a lot by watching him maneuver and tweak tiny things, and all these little things make a big difference in the end.

Can you talk a little bit about what comes up later this season?

We’re going to have some massive battles in Season Two, on a scale much larger than anything we had in Season One. For example, at the end of the Ryloth trilogy it would have been fantastic to have had a battle at the capital city with gunships firing, bombardments from above, and Separatist ships countering. But it really wasn’t a possibility for us to get that rendered at that time. I like that episode very much; I just wish the city had been more fortified when they attacked it, but we didn’t have the ability to do that.

I guess in some ways it’s like seeing the attack on the first Death Star compared to the second Death Star. You’re never lacking for the presence of a Rebel fleet or an Imperial fleet in A New Hope, but if you think about the giant logistics of a war, you do kind of wonder, “Well, if there’s an Imperial fleet and their main engagement is the Rebels, then why aren’t they jumping in from all over the place?” So you have to suspend that disbelief when you make stories, which I think we did pretty well with the Ryloth episodes. But when you’re aware of it you want to then later attack it head-on and say, “Okay, let’s do a battle, let’s do a landing, let’s do this in a massive way.” That’s a heavy task for a film, let alone a television series. We’ve got several arcs of episodes that I think are more emotional in tone and that delve into deeper layers of characters, and that’s going to be fun for people to watch. I’m very excited by Season Two as a whole. We have a nice gamut of episodes. Each week there’s going to be something different. Not to say that Season One was bad, but we looked at it and wanted to improve on what we did—and we have.

Who is the unsung hero of your team on the show?

That’s so hard to say, but I think for animation in general, a lot is always going to be made about the directors and the artists. It’s easy to see the tangible work that we do creatively on the artistic side of making a series like The Clone Wars, but the production staff behind the series, the people who have to sit down and figure how we’re going to get all this done, do a tremendous amount of work; it’s not glamorous work that gets written about much, if at all.

For example, if we have five new characters to build in a couple weeks, how are we going to budget an artist’s time? How are we going to get that done? How do these people manage all their time, my time, finding time, making time when there is none? The production staff does a tremendous amount of work behind the scenes to make sure this series gets done. It’s always very impressive to me. I just say, “This needs to happen,” but they actually have to figure out how. There are a lot of unsung heroes there. They’re here late making schedules, dealing with hundreds of assets, planets, and bizarrely-named things. And you know, they’re just as big fans as the rest of us. They’re huge Star Wars fans!

My associate producer Athena Portillo worked for Lucasfilm Licensing long before she ever worked on The Clone Wars. She actually wrote for Star Wars Insider, I think. [Ed: Athena wrote for issues 32, 34, and 35 in 1997.]

I get a lot of talk-back about being a fan, but the fandom of the crew of T The Clone Wars runs deep, so I think it’s in the production staff, it’s everywhere, in the rock, in the tree, in the grass....

You've kind of become a Star Wars celebrity. Could you say a few words about the fan response to the show, and what it's like signing autographs?

Well, I’ll tell you that it’s bizarre signing autographs, that’s for sure. The fan response, the fans themselves, have been nothing but fantastic. I’ve never had anything but great interactions with them. I always hate to say “with them.” I don’t feel any different today than I did when I was standing in line for The Phantom Menace—I honestly don’t. I feel incredibly lucky to have the job I do. I’m incredibly flattered that people want to talk to me about Star Wars and ask me questions about it, and I understand why. I wouldn’t have this job without people watching the show and wanting us to make it, so I do whatever I can when I’m at events and talk with them and say as much as I can without spoiling anything. That’s always hard! But it’s a real privilege to be this involved and to be a part of Lucasfilm.

I feel that so much has been made of me being a fan for so long, I’m just trying to represent that well. I mean, you can be a fan of this stuff and actually go on to make it. Peter Jackson was a big fan of the Lord of the Rings books, so who better to make those movies than Jackson because he is a fan? I think it shows when you have someone behind a project who really cares about it and can discuss it with fellow fans in a way they are passionate about. It’s always fun. I’ve been going down to Star Wars Weekends at Walt Disney World for two years and I always enjoy that. I recognize and know a lot of these people. It’s fun to represent them and to be involved. It’s always funny when people ask me though, “Can you sign something?” and I go, “Sure.” I see no value in that whatsoever. So I try to give them something more, which is a little drawing or something, because I feel that has more intrinsic value. I give them something other than my poor scribble! My grandmother would not like that signature at all!