Star Wars, Clone Wars, Rebels, Oh My

Coming in just to mention how good the Genndy series was and how it's really worth tracking down of you haven't checked it out.

my kids have watched it like 5 times, all in french obv. the snobbiest star wars experience ever!

anakEEEN!!

so everyone in rebels is going to die, right?

Everyone except Ezra, who grows up to become Admiral Ackbar.

Is this a spoilers-free zone or is it fair game if it's aired? Season finale of Rebels really left things in a pretty dark place for most of the characters

I'm guessing they close the series out with a trip to Alderaan

fair game if it's aired imho
spoilers for Clone Wars are basically unavoidable and I mean really were you watching that show to find out what happens?

Coming in just to mention - ah kingfish got there first.

supercut of the whole thing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVk9lPotcW4

hadn't considered the Alderaan trip idea, good plan

there's some rumor floated that Rebels is going to have only one more season and Disney is going to spin it into another cartoon that carries over some of the characters

in one of those incomplete Clone Wars cartoons you can watch online (they have voice and audio cues, really basic 3d models clunking around) they actually did the "guy looking at a lightsaber accidentally activates it through his own head" joke

not sure if it would have made it in a completed episode, but... funny that they did it

uh I'm going to make this the place where I post new-canon things that are not movies

so, I'm reading this Bloodline book that just came out, because it's my lot in life to absorb SW stories

it's pretty decent! they definitely picked the right author (Claudia Gray) to write a second novel, even if her other one was supposedly the young adult-targeted one. Aftermath was pretty boring.

I'm finally finishing up Clone Wars and this is some dark, complicated shit with a strong coating of political science, as it relates to individual agency, trust in institutions, statecraft and the inevitable failure of skill-based meritocracy.

Yoda realizing that everything is lost because the Jedi became a martial force is heartbreaking. His preparation for what is to come, with the idea of meditating toward tethering his consciousness to the world is some long game shit

So that guy? Whose sister got the job leading the Onderon rebel faction, instead of him, because he was kind of a dick?

Star Wars Anthology shit talk (Rogue One, Young Solo, TBD)

Now played by Ghost Dog! I'm so glad I'm a nerd

You woke me from a DEEP slumber

I had a few free hours last night and read the Ahsoka book

...

Rebels is totally binge material, not so great as a week-to-week serial, so I'm saving this entire season to watch on demand. Is it over yet?

Nope, second half about to start.

I could never put my finger on what the horrible scenes that were supposed to be romantic in the prequel movies reminded me of, thematically. I think someone's got it figured out.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vEG76KfRKc†

finally getting into the middle of Rebels S3. This nascent insurgency sure does put a lot of sweat and treasure into hair

"you must drink it all. just like me. all of it."

forcefully enunciated this to many apprentices in my day as well

Saw Gerrera revealed as long ago, far away Bernie Bro

Thrawn forcing that suspected saboteur dude in the factory to accelerate the speeder bike until it exploded was some cold-ass shit for a kid's cartoon tbh.

In a show centered on teenage soldiers in a guerilla war you gotta take your chances to illustrate the stakes when they come, is what I thought of that bit. Ditto Hondo's cellmate although his demise was so quick I barely registered that we'd lost a dude.

Mandalore = Europe

This is one of the only planets in the SW canon universe that has more than one observed biome
Population 100% warfighters who all look alike but have very, very, deadly serious clan shit
They invented and mastered many of the deadliest combat technologies around, except for that one
THE LIGHTSABER (ps this is a metaphor for the bomb)
and they have the lightsaber now, they just call theirs the darksaber, or whatever
and it's cool and all but it's not the same, is it
no, it's not

Also in the end, they're just fighting over Mandalore, provincial as can be, and not to spoil it, but

the toughest Mandalorian is cloned into a bazillion battalions, but all are rendered moot by a whiny hippie and his chubby robot friend. This metaphor pays for its own ticket, no?

the darksaber was from clone wars, i forgot about it but it's some mandalore leadership symbol from hundreds if not thousands of years ago and was taken from a jedi they defeated in battle

I take that back, it belonged to the first mandalorian jedi and has been a status symbol: http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Darksaber

This is one of the only planets in the SW canon universe that has more than one observed biome

Some of those are actually different planets btw. Sabine's family/clan are on Krownest, which is in Mandalorian space.

BTW they announced at Celebration that next season is officially the final season.

I'll be vague to avoid major spoilers, but the seeing Thrawn's plan get spoiled at the last minute by the one factor he had no idea existed in the season finale was great

placeholder for how fucking awesome the death of that one guy is

DM?

slide into your DMs like obi wan, DGAF your double sabers

*sound of soda can opening*

Is Coke it?

Yes, Coke is it.

"hhhhhh"

the idea of really skilled swordplay being a matter of sizing up stances, countering, and very little actual action is good imo

-- I become a redditurd about 20 words into this so bear with me or don't --

oh it was SO GOOD

Watching the entire "canon" from CW to the prequels, and Rebels, OBK is basically the one dude who could probably whup Yoda. He didn't get lucky in EP III; he called it how he saw it, and he was right. There needs to be albums about OBK. The only other truly fearless motherfucker in that galaxy is R2-D2 and he's actually an avatar of god, so

In Revenge of the Sith, Yoda tella Kenobi he isn’t powerful enough to face Sidious, which Yoda then goes to do himself. I do not think, at least that point, if at any point, really, could Kenobi beat Yoda.

The orbital bombardment of the base by Thrawn is one of the most terrifying things I've seen in an SW movie in terms of showing actual warfare. Like you genuinely feared for the characters' lives there.

well, could Yoda have beaten Sidious? In the movie it's a draw; in the novelization he loses.

Kenobi vs Yoda is decisively the dumbest argument I have ever started in any context

Sentence mitigated by you subconsciously trying to drop responsibility by calling him OBK.

are we talking "fall of the republic" kenobi or "been meditating and seeing all the moves in advance for twenty years" kenobi

I think the best written/performed part of the Maul/Obi-wan episode isn't even the confrontation -- it's Ezra being so driven to help, and Obi-wan just calmly telling him, "You're not supposed to be here." But it doesn't seem to really bother him that this has happened, just acceptance that this is how things have flushed out.

That was the original series' idea of How a Jedi Should Be that stuck with me. Not that being a warrior makes you less of a jedi, but the monk-like existences of Ben and Yoda not simply an artifact of them being in hiding

And then him just being chill while Maul basically throws a tantrum, and finally igniting his light saber only after Maul's finally done thinking out loud

it was almost a look of resignation when Maul puzzles out why Obi-wan is there and his primary purpose -- protecting the Skywalker kid, the only thing that spurns him to combat

spurs him to combat

jesus I've mistyped that twice this week

Phil D pretty close to the mark re: orbital bombardment. Very happy to see Sabine back in the fold. Also TOM BAKER WILL THUNDER DOWN ALL YOUR AT-ATS

I had a few free hours last night and read the Ahsoka book

...

― dr. mercurio arboria (mh 😏), Wednesday, October 12, 2016 10:48 AM

Have you read any of the other canon novels? Has anyone dipped into any of the canon novels besides mh? I probably shouldn’t, but who knows if I end up doing it anyway.

I would recommend it to SW fans in general but I'd go so far as to call it essential if you're at all invested in the prequel storyline. There's such a radical change in status quo at the end of AOTC, and this show gives that changed world room to breathe. And there's more of a gradual shift in where the characters and relationships end up when ROTS rolls around (I just, a season and a half in, got to the first moment where Vader's Theme pokes into the score when Anakin goes a little further off-book than usual).

Cool: a young Boba Fett wreaks massive havoc in an attempt to exact revenge on Mace Windu (this show covers all the angles!)
Drool: getting to hear Bossk's voice for the very first time in forty years and discovering that he sounds like someone's dad doing a shitty impersonation of a cartoon character

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLW2jkd6E7g

ending, these clone wars are

Caught up in time to watch the final season, I may well be. Rippin' through the show at lightning speed. It's so good, y'all. Can't believe I slept on it for so long.

Okay so the 'Maul on Mandalore' storyline in season 5 of Clone Wars is big and epic and awesome and dark and apparently very highly regarded, but I've been appreciating the extent to which this show narratively functions very well as a bridge between the two films which abut it and then they just totally blew it with Palpy being all 'bring me my ship' (flips up hood). Like yes, of course, we the audience know that he's behind everything, a-doy, but they did such a good job within the narrative of straddling that dramatically ironic line without ever being all PALPATINE = SIDIOUS DO U SEE because that, of course, is a job for ROTS. It's a minor quibble, particularly since it's chronologically quite near the fall of the Republic but still. Come on, y'all.

BTW, it's only taken about a month for me to go from 'yeah I guess Rise of Skywalker was dece but I ultimately don't think I'm all that invested in the enterprise' to being actually kinda super invested as a result of binging this show. Which may be an argument for treating the films themselves as ancillary elements of a much bigger and better story.

Time to steal a Disney+ login, y'all, the first ep of Clone Wars final season dropped TODAY

I was idly wondering if/when a new animated series would be in the works and behold:

https://www.starwars.com/news/star-wars-the-bad-batch-series-announce

Today, Disney+ ordered its next animated series from Lucasfilm, Star Wars: The Bad Batch. Fresh off of the critically-acclaimed series finale of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, the Disney+ original series will premiere on the streaming service in 2021.

The series follows the elite and experimental clones of the Bad Batch (first introduced in The Clone Wars) as they find their way in a rapidly changing galaxy in the immediate aftermath of the Clone War. Members of Bad Batch — a unique squad of clones who vary genetically from their brothers in the Clone Army — each possess a singular exceptional skill, which makes them extraordinarily effective soldiers and a formidable crew. In the post-Clone War era, they will take on daring mercenary missions as they struggle to stay afloat and find new purpose.

Also: for the past few weeks I've been going through all the animated series for the first time ever -- four seasons down on The Clone Wars itself as of yesterday -- and it's been enjoyable for sure, just in terms of the variety of the kind of stories they do. (And some of the surprises along the way: one intense battlefield episode directed by Walter Murch was a credit I didn't expect.)

Aw, man. I wanna be excited but that Bad Batch arc felt like a misstep to me.

The QC may be all over the place but I've been getting a lot more enjoyment from the expanded universe stuff lately (cartoons, novels, comics) than I did from the recent run of sequels.

Anyway -- had muttered something about this on another thread but today I finished a long-planned, not a binge watch but a thorough back to front of the entire Clone Wars series over the past few weeks, very little of which I'd actually seen before. Gotta say they really did the business throughout -- sure not everything landed but yeah if you had all this as a big part of your introduction to the world I can see where all the characters would be specific anchors and interpretations you'd hinge on even more than the films, just thanks to the overall volume of work.

The whole thing on Mortis, with the Force Wielders? Never not gonna be weird.

“Hey Mr Filoni, what if we throw some random stuff late in the season that’s a lot like the endgame from a JRPG?”

“Sure”

I remember the little arc about the Mon Calamari / Quarren civil war being a lot more boring and confusing than this time around.

Maybe I give more fucks this time around since both races got recent screentime on The Mandalorian?

It was pretty involved! And the shark asshole died too quickly.

I think that guy was probably the actual ugliest character not named Hutt in the entire series.

almost done with Rebels. loving it. I do like that it and Mandalorian really dig into the fascistic tendencies of the Empire, rather than the morality play it was depicted as in the films.

depicts civilian life in the Empire on many worlds, how the Empire uses virulent language about the rebellion to paint them as the violent ones and put a target on their backs (much like....ehh, too easy), allegories for the cold war....and hell some really nice scenery throughout each ep

RIP Kanan

Closing in on the end of Clone Wars S5 on my rewatch and really starting to realize how fucking amazing this show looks on my new 4K QLED.

Some of the textures are just so PAINTED

Yeah there's a ton of art across the years of animation that's stellar. This from Rebels of a Sith temple is the ultimate prog-metal cover, really:

https://lumiere-a.akamaihd.net/v1/images/malachor-sith-temple_1bc752c9.jpeg?region=0%2C0%2C1560%2C878&width=768

The other thing you learn from watching all of Clone Wars is that the Jedi spend a LOT of time in the gym

Somewhere in the galaxy is a whole other club of force users who huff and puff after five minutes on the track and would really rather just have a cold space beer while they use their powers to detect when the coals have gotten the space pig to exactly the right internal temperature

did we talk about how terrible Anakin’s hair is in CW S7? My god

That's how you knew he was headed to the dark side.

The dork side

new Bad Batch episodes!

this show’s grown on me and it seems more promising now that they’re out of the origin arc. it’s like the a-team but with experimental clones (and a kid)

Ahsoka tv show trailer's out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnzNZ0Mdx4I

It really does look like live action Rebels!

LIVE ACTION REBELS would so be my jam.

i'm down for this.

I keep coming back to the realization that there's a whole generation of folks for whom Clone Wars/Rebels was THEIR Star Wars, and that this must be such an exciting time for them. Like, imagine if all of the anticipation and hype leading up to The Phantom Menace had been in the service of something other than a two-hour George Lucas fart.

Love it! And Titus Pullo as a Sith!

So if they’re doing Thrawn, and they teased the line “heir to the Empire,” dare I speculate that that’s Joruus C’baoth?

Still no sign of Ezra so he's definitely dead.

they've got to hold something back for the show!

xxpost Pretty much my initial guess. (Also: given all the various breadcrumbs being laid EVERYWHERE re cloning things lately in Mandalorian, Bad Batch, etc., that would fit in as well. I've seen it argued that this is a massive Rise of Skywalker retrofit going on, which makes sense -- but I'm actually interested in how that plays out here.)

xxpost Ezra’s in the trailer ( as a hologram) around the 1:20 mark!

Be great if they went full Uncanny Valley and Ezra is the only one specifically rendered in CGI as his Rebels look without alteration. "But I've always looked like this."

I think that hologram (and the bit with Sabine in the tower) is a recreation of the end of Rebels where Ahsoka shows up

Yeah, definitely.

not sure I'm very excited by more Rey.

God it’s all so t e d i o u s

just give me 5 seasons of Andor please and nothing else

Confirmed today that Lars Mikkelsen will reprise his role as Thrawn for _Ahsoka_

So many Mikkelsen in Star Wars now

Finally finished watching Rebels after all these years, very good stuff. Obv on the whole, way more consistent than Clone Wars (though that had a lot of high points tbf) and weird since I watched Season 7 of CW and the first 2 episodes of Ahsoka before this... but yeah. Pretty worthwhile. All the characters (except maybe Zeb who they kinda stopped giving stories after season 2) got nice arcs and the last 1.5 seasons especially had great momentum

cool that they carried over the Disney/deco art style from the final Jedi Temple story into future properties - current Ahsoka credit sequence, some of the stuff we saw in Visions etc.

Am enjoying Rebels more than I thought I would. It’s a great accompaniment to painting SW Legion minis at night.

Yeah it's a solid effort in the overall canon-as-such. Tom Baker as a big plant-animal thing in tune with the Force, I'm down.

That was Tom Baker? Ha!

It was indeed!