Is this a night scene or just more Hollywood vs the sun? I can’t tell anymore but I still lightened it up.
My usual wakeup podcast wasn’t on this morning, so I watched a replay of yesterday’s The Real BBC. Hosts Gary Buchler (happy birthday, Gary–you old fart), Az, MauLer, and Gary’s producer X-Ray girl discussed, among many other topics, two Star Wars related ones. Apparently Dave Filoni and the Star Wars X-Twitter posted an explanation [that one’s an article] for Yoda’s iconic statement “Do, or do not. There is no try” as if we were too stupid to figure it out at a level that defies simply trying to (doing?) inspire people. We got what Yoda meant when he said the thing. Commit fully, don’t simply attempt. Accept the success or failure that follows.
Then again, look at what Dave Filoni did.
The other topic they went over in the Star Wars segment of the show was a trailer for season two of Filoni’s surrogate daughter, Ahsoka. Clearly his preference to whom should replace Luke Skywalker over Rey Palpatine, Ahsoka Tano’s not that well received series, set after the original trilogy so we know she didn’t die to General Order 66–which at this point has so many Jedi getting past in shows and games you wonder if they truly nailed anyone–is of course getting another season because Filoni plays favorites. She and the cast of the animated Rebels series, which took place during the original trilogy, and Grand Admiral Thrawn (because he was so successful in the books they locked out of continuity they had to have him in official canon) are coming back to tell us how awesome Ashoka and his other surrogate daughter, Sabine Wren, are. You can call it “woke”, I call it Pet Character Syndrome, but either way it shows who Filoni cares about. Mainly Dave Filoni.
If that was it I wouldn’t be doing this article. Even if I had Disney+, and I don’t, I probably wouldn’t watch it for similar reasons to the ones keeping me from watching Lanterns and making me less than excited for the next Avengers movie duology: we don’t care about the same things but they’ll alter what I like to their weak preferences. I only know season 1 third hand, but it doesn’t sound all that interesting OR good. However, having watched the trailer on the new season, and listening to the quartet’s responses, I ended up with a few of my own they missed, and they were just really silly. Let me show you the trailer so we’re all on the same page, and then we’ll set the book on fire.
Is she a Jedi or not? Not! Did you watch your own shows, Dave? In The Clone Wars, Ahsoka left the Order because they didn’t stand by her when she was framed for an explosion in a launch bay that killed a bunch of people. Then the show further showed their hubris, because this era of Star Wars was all about making the Jedi Order look as bad as possible–and that’s while Lucas was still greenlighting things–by not apologizing when Anakin proved her innocence and found the real bomber, one of the new “Dark Jedi” types. (How come we never hear of a “Light Sith” then? You know, they use the Dark Side of the Force to do whatever they want, but they still use it to help people and fight evil instead of self-serving control and destruction.) Instead they claimed it was the “will of the Force” and had nothing to apologize for, as if you couldn’t have both. So she rightly told them where to stuff it and left the Order. We see her doing her own Rebel thing later in that series, and being a backseat mentor to the crew of Rebels. So Anakin’s ghost is kind of forgetful. They used how she was treated to further push him away from the Jedi Order, and he still moves and has the look of pre-damaged Darth Vader than the Anakin from early in the cartoons or the replacement in later Lucas re-edits of Return Of The Jedi.
Also odd that his Force ghost is there more for Ahsoka than Obi-Wan was for Luke, who had to self-teach until he was finally sent to Dagobah, and more after while prepping to rescue Han from Jabba. Maybe if Ewan McGregor gets his wish for another season of his show they’ll explain that. Or maybe he’ll ditch watching Luke some more to run around with Leia and a Sith who wants to kill a kid to get revenge on Vader for killing kids. I guess it would make more sense than Boba Fett or Kylo Ren/Ben Solo not being dead for new stories. Meanwhile, I missed most of Rebels due to…just read my 2016 postings, so I don’t know exactly how they ruined Grand Admiral Thrawn, but somehow he’s not as intimidating in this trailer as he was in the books. I hear he’s worse in the shows. Do we even need to discuss Discount Grievous? LEGO Star Wars had better villain ideas, and it’s a parody franchise.
There’s also the issue of Sabine now being a Jedi. Did she show any Force talent during Rebels? I hadn’t heard of it. Like with Finn, you don’t need to be a Force user, Jedi or Sith, to be interesting in Star Wars. Filoni just wanted to get the “sisters” together, methinks. There’s also a belief lately in the Hollywood mindset that being special to the show isn’t enough. You have to be special to the world/galaxy/universe to matter. So I guess Ahsoka’s a Jedi again now that the Order’s been deep sixty-sixed, and she needs a Padawan, so Dave chose his other daughter. Sure, why not, I don’t care at this point because they clearly don’t.
They also seem to be using too many virtual sets and not enough daylight. Somehow Mos Eisley was more colorful than what we see from Star Wars today. Jabba’s Palace was more colorful even while inside the palace and barge, and both were supposed to be darker places for the narrative atmosphere. At least outside was as sunny as you’d expect a desert planet to be. (Subverting the wrong expectations again?) You’re outside during an explosion! How does it have dull colors and little light?
I had to lighten the first picture up twice, and it’s still way dark. Dude is literally holding a stick of light and it isn’t helping! I’ve seen lightsabers and ripoffs used as torches!
Speaking of “light”, here’s the dumbest part for me. All of that is just par for the course lately in Star Wars specifically and 21st century science fiction in general. Let’s talk about the weapons. Look, I have nothing against doing new things with the lightsaber. Going to Rebels again, my favorite lightsaber is Ezra’s saber with the built-in blaster, made from parts donated by his friends for a great story moment for his character. You can blast at them from a distance, then switch to blade mode when you get up close. It’s the same strategy I use in Transformers: War For Cybertron. I also think the spinning lightsaber holder is kind of a cool idea, though I’m not buying you can use it like a helicopter. Tails flying with his twin tails in the Sonic The Hedgehog franchise makes sense for the lighter universe it exists in. For Star Wars? They don’t even have regular helicopters so how would that come to mind, nevermind actually work?
Point is, I’m not against doing something new. Darth Maul’s double bladed lightsaber is cool. The one up there is not. The middle is still lightsaber. Unless he’s pulling them apart into two double bladed sabers, which is still dumb for other reasons, he can’t use that thing bo staff style like Maul can. Somehow they created a harder to safely use bladed melee weapon than the Klingon bat’leth from that other star-titled franchise. The bo staff is my favorite melee weapon and you somehow failed at making a lousy stick! It’s not even a polearm. It’s a staff you can’t grab anywhere useful! What were you thinking?
I’d call it the dumbest one ever if the other one didn’t say “hold my blue milk” and break out a light bow and arrow! To invade a ship’s corridor and assassinate people! Looks like she(?) gets blasted and disintegrates or something, which I’ve never seen blasters do before. Phasers in Star Trek do that, but Star Wars blasters are just guns with condensed plasma instead of bullets. Why bother making this? Chewbacca’s bowcaster was more believable and reliable. This is just taking the rule of cool and misusing it. “Wouldn’t it be cool if…” No, it just looks silly. The gun is an advanced version of a crossbow, and a ray or laser gun are sci-fi versions of the gun/rifle. You don’t need a bow that shoots plasma instead of arrows, fired in…how does that collect and fire? I can’t tell if it makes more or less scientific sense than the lightsaber that turns into a whip…somehow…I’ve seen in clips of The Acolyte. No wonder she got shot. Her weapon’s lame! Hawkeye (both of them, I guess) would find that silly. I hope he or she gets to call it that in the upcoming comic crossover. No, I’m not kidding. Sounds like something out of Super-Team Family but it’s real now. Never a crossover too out there anymore. Sorry, Ross.
I’m not judging the show, so drop that nonsense right now. I’m judging the trailer, the thing that’s supposed to get you excited for the show. It’s having the opposite effect because it just looks so very stupid. Star Wars was never heavy on the “science” but it at least tried to make some form of sense in it’s science. A bow that shoots energy bolts? Seen it. Didn’t try to turn the energy bolt into an unneeded bowstring. Darth Maul isn’t the first double-bladed energy melee weapons I’ve seen. Look up Galtar & The Golden Lance sometime. It was more usable than that thing and probably still wasn’t first. Thrown in Hollywood being more afraid of the sun than a vampire–and there I thought all the vampires were the agents–Lucasfilm’s cheap digital sets with only the stuff the actors need to interact with, and Filoni putting his characters above George Lucas’s, and nothing about this looks like something I’d want to waste time to watch. I’ll watch the mockery from the The Real BBC crew and their friends for the entertainment value they provide, but the show itself doesn’t interest me at all.
Shame. I liked Ashoka when she first showed up, in defiance of everyone else. Too bad about the Pet Character Syndrome, Dave. You done ruined her.
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