Re: Star Wars -- The Clone Wars

[samuraidave]

So you're angry at Lucas for doing something (which you haven't seen) and instantly posted your indignation all over the internet?  Well-done.

yeah if he is trying to wind people up for some reason i would say he is doing a good job.

No you did a good job of winding yourself up perfectly well without any help from me with your caplocks, trolling accusations, and asking for me to be reported.

Listen you have to watch something if you want people to respect your review of it.  You don't see Ebert saying "I have not seen the latest James Bond movie but I know it sucks" ,and if he did he would be laughed out of town.

Nor do you see me say the Clone Wars TV series themselves suck. What I said which continues to elude you is that the CLone Wars as an overall concept from the films to the series is flawed IMHO because the story idea at the very core of the CLone Wars is flawed. Most of the combatants - droids and clones - were built to fight so they have no motivations therefore in a storytelling-sense they are not interesting as characters while the main characters are being manipulated and are in effect working for the same bad guy rendering their actions as ultimately pointless as they only further the designs of evil. And one army is entirely a group of traitors in the direct hands of Palpatine who will eventually mow down their Jedi ally without pause or remorse.

Because this opinion was focused on the overall concept behind the Clone Wars and not directly at the TV series, I made a separate thread because I thought it would make more sense since the topic was slightly different and it wouldn't hijack a thread which was discussing the TV series directly - though you guys did a good job of that yourselves by wasting several comments directed solely at or about me.

Personally, I commend the writers and directors of the series for trying to work with what they had and have no control of changing. I just wish they had a better core storyline from which to work from and where the actions of their characters have true consequences and true motivations.

So again for the attention-span deficient I am NOT attacking the Clone War TV series themselves nor anyone who watches them - I am questioning the overall point of the entire concept of the Clone Wars as a whole from a storytelling point of view.

[daltysmilth]

Bringing the rotting corpse of this thread back because apparently Darth Maul is being brought back in the series:

http://www.usatoday.com/life/comics/story/2011-10-11/darth-maul-returns/50736578/1

[Compound]

Bringing the rotting corpse of this thread back because apparently Darth Maul is being brought back in the series:

http://www.usatoday.com/life/comics/story/2011-10-11/darth-maul-returns/50736578/1

Filoni was as surprised as anyone during a Clone Wars story meeting when Star Wars creator George Lucas asked Filoni to figure out a way to bring Darth Maul back.

(facepalm) If you wanted to reuse the character George, maybe you shouldn't have cut him in half.

[daltysmilth]

Well, it's not the first time they've brought back a character that supposedly died previously.  Boba Fett "died" in Return of the Jedi, but he came back in a bunch of the novels and such.  And Assajj Ventress "died" during the original Clone Wars mini-series, but she came back for this one. 

I hope they get Pete Serafinowicz to do the voice.  Anything that gets him more work has my approval.

[Doctor Who?]

Boba Fett only fell into the mouth of a monster,as I understand it in the novels all they had to do was say he fired his jetpack before the mouth closed.

Darth Maul was cut in two and his top half fell into a bottomless hole,how do you come back from that?

[bta]

Will they bring Qui Gon back too?

[doggans]

Darth Maul was cut in two and his top half fell into a bottomless hole,how do you come back from that?

Maybe this universe has some technology that allows a life form to be...I don't know, duplicated in some way.

[bta]

"He is such a dynamic and exciting character," says Dave Filoni, supervising director for Clone Wars. "He made such a huge impression in that first film that when you go back and look at the prequels, you forget he's not in all three."

Who in the hell thinks this is true??

[daltysmilth]

Will they bring Qui Gon back too?

They brought him back as a ghost/hallucination thing, I guess. I haven't seen that episode yet.

Me neither.  When the hell is season 3 coming out on DVD?

[daltysmilth]

So I've been watching season 3.  So far I haven't liked it as much as the first two seasons, and it's mostly because of all the political episodes.  And there are A LOT of them.  And they're so heavy-handed and preachy.  But they also send mixed messages.  Like, they're trying to show that politics isn't black and white and it's not simplistic battles of good guys vs. bad guys.  The problem is that for all their talk, they don't do a lot to prove it.  Padme will passionately claim the Separatists aren't bad people, and they want peace, as though the audience are supposed to feel bad for thinking the Separatists are bad guys when really they just hold different opinions than the Republic, but then the Separatists go and blow up a power plant and beat up senators for not wanting to deregulate the banks.  In other words, they don't disagree with the Republic because of legitimate concerns about corruption, they disagree just because they're a bunch of dicks.  So why bother pretending otherwise?

Aside from being confusing, it's also boring.  When I watch a Star Wars cartoon, I want at least 1/3 of the episode to be devoted to Jedi kicking ass, with the remaining 2/3 being devoted to showing the Jedi either preparing to or just finishing kicking ass, not half-hour discussions of fiscal policy.

[Raefire]

Yeah, the arcs in the last half of Season 3 were pretty good.

[daltysmilth]

Still, I wonder why the writers decided to devote that much of the season to political stuff, particularly when they're so bad at writing it.  I mean, Timothy Zahn managed to put politics in his Star Wars novels without it seeming boring or out of place.  But then, he didn't try to use the politics of the Star Wars universe as an obvious soapbox for half-assed commentary on real contemporary political issues.  Plus he didn't focus entire subplots on things like zoning ordinances and procedural amendments.

[daltysmilth]

Still, I wonder why the writers decided to devote that much of the season to political stuff, particularly when they're so bad at writing it.  I mean, Timothy Zahn managed to put politics in his Star Wars novels without it seeming boring or out of place.  But then, he didn't try to use the politics of the Star Wars universe as an obvious soapbox for half-assed commentary on real contemporary political issues.  Plus he didn't focus entire subplots on things like zoning ordinances and procedural amendments.

Zahn's view of politics was like an episode of Dynasty, though, not about actual issues.  I rather liked tying the expansion of the army to needing more loans and thus de-regulating banks.

I really don't care about the actual issues of the Star Wars universe, though.  I appreciate that they're trying to make the universe seem more three-dimensional by showing that the Republic's money doesn't just grow on trees, but they fail to make the issues interesting enough to keep people like me from getting bored, or realistic enough to give the show's target audience a real idea of how politics works.  Like in the episode where they deregulate the banks, as soon as the bill passes, the Banking Clan jacks up their rates.  Their explanation for why they did so is basically "Well, you deregulated us, so we can do whatever we want, and there's nothing you can do to stop us.  We're greedy bastards and now we don't even have to pretend we have any other reason for doing anything.  Nice job deregulating us, suckers!"

If a real bank did that, they'd lose customers fast.