Clone Wars

Because of Barnes' recent plunge into the series as well as all of the episodes now being available on Netflix, I think several of us are catching up. Rather than bore everyone in the "What are you watching" thread, I thought I should start a new one.

I'm not really concerned about spoilers (Anakin's the hero, right? He goes on to save the universe or something?), but feel free to hide plot points if you want. I mainly just want to talk about a lot of the little things.

Some topics that have already popped up in other threads:
--Who is the target audience for this show? Is it too dark? Are we supposed to be okay with the mass slaughter of droids and clones? Why is this so much better than any of the prequels?

Here are some of the more recent thoughts I've had while watching:
CONS:
--Sci Fi Racism - So I finally got to an episode that featured Kit Fisto (yeah, try having that be the name of your favorite character when you're in junior high). He's the green Jedi with the big black eyes and the tendrils coming out of the back of his head that vaguely look like dreadlocks. When he speaks, OF COURSE he has a vaguely Jamaican accent. Really!? I thought Lucasfilm got enough slack when the villains spoke with bad Japanese accents, but obviously they haven't learned their lesson.

--Good Guy Lasers! - Why do the good guys shoot blue lasers and the bad guys shoot red ones? I kinda get it with the light sabers (not really), but I totally don't understand it with ray guns. Is there a color setting on the side or something?

--Never Give Up on Jar-Jar! - Fortunately, I've only seen him in one episode, but I found it irritating that they were STILL trying to make him a viable character. Let it go.

PROS:
--The show is really good. It's weird and neat how from episode to episode you never know what you're going to get. It could be action, drama, suspense, thriller, or horror. I'm almost done with the second season, but it's so much better than the first. I hope it keeps up this level.

--Each Jedi has his own fighting style. This was true in the movies as well, but it's much more noticeable here. I especially like Asoka's reverse grip; it's like she's in a knife fight with a light sabre.

--The pacing is pretty great. Sometimes it's hard to believe everything that happens in a single half-hour episode.

Okay, That should be enough to start the ball rolling.

The answer to your target audience is: kids. It's for kids. That should also answer your good-guy lasers question.

I don't know about the sci-fi racism. All the bad guys have English accents too, no? Is it bad to think that people with dreds look like bad-ass Kit Fisto? I don't think that's bad. I think i'm sensitized to this type of stuff a bit too so you'd think I'd notice it, so either I'm not sensitized enough to it or some people are over-sensitized to it.

It's violent though, but I still think its for kids cuz its on Cartoon Network and such.

Agreed on most of your points. I disagree with you on Jar-Jar, though. I think he does have a place in this show as more clearly positioned children's program.

Hrm. I shouldn't have mentioned the other post questioning the target audience, since now I find myself defending a position that isn't my own. I know the show is for kids. Maybe I should have been more specific, as I don't think the show is appropriate for kids under 10. Of course, I'm not a parent, so I have no idea what ages people consider appropriate.

It's violent, but that doesn't bother me. I grew up with Speed Racer, where people died in the opening credits. But some of the violence is pretty disturbing-- torture, burning Geonoshans with a flame thrower, Anakin backstabbing a guy so the lightsaber comes out his chest, etc. That seems a little more extreme than your typical "kids" show.

I also wonder about all the cannon fodder. The Clones are all identical, of course, but they customize themselves with haircuts, color, tattoos, and nicknames. Often they decorate their armor as well. The droid army isn't just mindless automatons, but individuals with personalities. They're probably the most ineffectual robots I've ever seen, but they do appear sentient. So with all this individualism going on, do clones and droids have souls? Shouldn't we feel bad when they get mowed down by the hundreds? The show does a good job of keeping that in the background without every really addressing it head on (so far that I've seen).

Gregarius wrote: I also wonder about all the cannon fodder. The Clones are all identical, of course, but they customize themselves with haircuts, color, tattoos, and nicknames. Often they decorate their armor as well. The droid army isn't just mindless automatons, but individuals with personalities. They're probably the most ineffectual robots I've ever seen, but they do appear sentient. So with all this individualism going on, do clones and droids have souls? Shouldn't we feel bad when they get mowed down by the hundreds? The show does a good job of keeping that in the background without every really addressing it head on (so far that I've seen).

I agree with you here. The show is very conceptually disturbing. Creating clones to fight for you, then watching those clones desperately do anything they can to make themselves individuals... I don't have kids so I don't know. But do kids think this deeply about the material? If they do, it is pretty horrifying.

Yeah, I don't think the show is appropriate for kids under 10 since its war and such.

I watched Looney Tunes growing up which is considered violent but I can't imagine Looney Tunes not being appropriate for kids. No one was getting killed in Looney Tunes. Getting blasted by a shotgun point-blank in your face only turns your duck-bill backwards. You can just twist it back to the front of your face after and make a sarcastic remark. Kurt Cobain didn't do that but I don't have to know about that stuff when I'm a kid.

...some of the stuff that Foghorn Leghorn did to that dog, and some of the stuff Bugs Bunny does to Elmer Fudd in Barber of Seville I did to my sister. It might be a coincidence but I remember finding it really funny how one would torment the other.


edit: i'm not trying to hijack, I think this is on-topic

This show is clearly not for kids and I'm going to define kids as pre-teen. I don't care if you think it being on Cartoon Network makes it so. Lots of stuff on Adult Swim and Toonami is not for kids. Using a flame thrower on sentient aliens, stabbing a dude from behind through the chest, dismissing the death of multitudes as unimportant, blowing off the death of a "friend" as Asoka does without a second thought good guys mind raping a prisoner. None of this is for little kids, or shouldn't be.

This gives the show a strange dichotomy and it's very prevalent in the first season but much less in the second, which is as far as I've watched. It is as if the creators were having this inner debate where it was supposed to be a kid show and they wanted to meet those expectations but also, as is clear, they have a deep love for the material and universe and wanted to make something deeper. I think by the second season they have ditched any pretense of "kid show".

The comparison of the violence in this show to the slapstick of a dog and chicken fighting I don't think particularly valid. Foghorn never doused the dog with napalm and watched as he shrieked in agony as he burned to death.

As to sci-fi racism. Having a hero talk with a Jamaican accent, or the trade guild talk with Chinese accents or Japanese is not racist. It'd be pretty dull if the all talked with west coast American accents.

Some things about the show are pretty weak.

"I've got a bad feeling about this." Jesus Christ, give that line a rest. It was ok when it was once every 3 years in a movie but every episode ( almost) is irritating. It isn't funny in the least.

The utterly incompetent droids. They never feel like a legitimate threat. They grunts I mean.

How does Grievous have a job? He loses a capital ship in every episode he's in.

Why are all mercenaries called Bounty Hunters? A bounty hunter hunts people for a reward. You don't hire a bounty hunter to break into the Jedi temple.

Some really cool things:

The visuals. The ships, the backgrounds. They are really cool.

The clones quest for identity and the resentment of some to being warrior slaves. A pervasive theme but we are never hit on the nose with it.

How the can have a particular story arc run for one to four episodes gives them a lot of flexibility and thus increases the quality of the story telling.

The tone is the oddest thing to me...I let River and Scarlett (4 and 2) watch some of the episodes and they love them. River in particular loves the one with the Jedi kids and the ones that highlight C3PO and R2-D2. He loves Kit Fisto.

But there are some episodes that are very clearly more adult-oriented. The Umbaran storyline, all of the Darth Maul stuff, the thing in season 2 with Cad Bane looking for force-sensitive children...but then there are shows that are pretty much all-ages.

I kind of like that scope though, to be honest...I like that they can get really dark, but then bring it back to an all ages footing.

The lasers is definitely a kid thing...that's old timey GI Joe stuff. Jar Jar works in this show, completely. His episodes are actually not bad, and as a comic relief character the writing is WAY better than anything in Episode I.

The war is such an interesting thing...it's really complicated when you break it down. The separatists aren't really bad apart from Dooku, Grievous and Palpatine...they're just "differently motivated". The Republic is a massive colonial power with Jedi enforcers enforcing hegemony.

Funny how Palpatine is the Yojimbo character in it all, I haven't thought about that before...

But yeah, one side is throwing an endless supply of manufactured humans at the other, who is throwing an endless supply of semi-senitent robots back at them. It's a war that on an institutional level is completely without accountability, responsibility or morality. Which is where the characters come in, and evidence those traits as individuals. And that's really what SW is about- strong individuals.

The one major issue I have- and it is actually pretty serious- is that I don't buy that Anakin becomes Darth Vader. There is just no way that character becomes the greatest film villain of all time. I almost wish they did some kind of crazy retcon where it turns out that Clone Wars Anakin wasn't really Darth Vader after all and that whoever Vader really is was lying to trick Luke. I guess that would mean invalidating Revenge of the Sith...which I'd actually be pretty OK with.

Thing is, Anakin is actually a really great character in this show. I love the bit with him pretty much risking everything to go get R2 back, I love his whole "fuck this shit, I'mma do this my way" demeanor- it's not handled in a stupid way, it's more of a confidence thing that he knows exactly what to do to get results. And Obi-Wan's relationship with him is much more compelling than in the prequels.

Can we just make that an assumed thing now? "Everything in Clone Wars is better than in the prequels".

Ha ha, that cracked me about General Grievous' job...I freaking LOVE him, River does too. I had to buy him the Lego General Grievous wheelbike a few weeks ago, really neat set. I did not have a choice.

As for the space racism...well, it doesn't get any more racist than making the OT's only black character a blaxploitation character...more or less a pimp, gambler, pirate, pusher, operator, etc...

"Well what do we have here? I'm a space black man in a cape and bellbottoms, hello space white lady..."

Kit Fisto is just cool, doesn't matter. The Jamaican accent works. I imagine him singing "Electric Avenue".

Oh, one thing I wanted to add about the Clones, and it's pure genius, is that they all view each other as brothers. They might have chosen to make them view each other as rivals or even to make it seem like they didn't acknowledge that they were clones at all but they didn't.

Also, any straying from their programmed loyalty is viewed as a betrayal not of the Republic but of the family.

And there are "defective" clones, which I thought was an interesting touch.

That one with the deserter is one of the top ten or so best episodes. It really touched on a lot of the more interesting aspects of the clones.

I just finished the four-episode arc where Obi-Wan goes undercover as a mercenary. I thought overall it was pretty good, but there was one thing that bothered me. Obi-Wan is never shown outright killing anyone, but there are several instances where his fellow mercenaries (notably, Cad Bane) straight-up murder innocent people, like some prison guards, and then later a mechanic on Naboo. Obi-Wan never does anything to stop it. I realize that doing so would blow his cover, but Obi-Wan is never shown wrestling with this issue. The violence goes totally unexamined. Seems like a missed opportunity there to give the plot some depth.

One thing the show has driven home is just how fucked up the concept of the Jedi Order really is. Here's this unsanctioned, independent quasi-religious-military order sitting square in the middle of this democratically-elected government. As far as I can tell, they answer to no political authority. Everybody's just supposed to trust these super-powered dudes that they're all good and noble and self-sacrficing??? Are they soldiers? Police? And everybody's okay with all of this?!?!? Riiiiiight.

joebot, interesting point on the Jedi. In the Mass Effect universe, there are these super-solider-police guys known as Spectres. They are universally respected and feared. I thought that they were better explained and contextualized than the Jedi were. I assume the idea is supposed to be similar. Jedi are above the law and are the strong-arms of the republic.

Joebot wrote: One thing the show has driven home is just how fucked up the concept of the Jedi Order really is. Here's this unsanctioned, independent quasi-religious-military order sitting square in the middle of this democratically-elected government. As far as I can tell, they answer to no political authority. Everybody's just supposed to trust these super-powered dudes that they're all good and noble and self-sacrficing??? Are they soldiers? Police? And everybody's okay with all of this?!?!? Riiiiiight.

YES. This is so strong in the show. The creators of the show have managed to contextual why the Empire would be a completely acceptable alternative for the public/elites. As opposed to this unaccountable group of mystical enforcers.

The best analogy I can think of for the Jedi is the Templars, the military monks of the middle ages.

A group of religious warriors operating outside of normal authority and law. Answerable only to the pope. Started with humble goals but became increasingly powerful and arrogant. Their wealth made them targets and their arrogance made them vulnerable. The King of France took them down and stole all their stuff.

The Jedi order is the Star Wars universe equivalent. They are answerable in theory to the Senate, as they say a number of times, but are really only answerable to the Jedi Council. They even have a vow of chastity (No attachments). Their eventual destruction by the Emperor is akin to the French King's purge of the Templars.

The order itself has the same strange dual nature as the show itself. On the one hand they are ruthless enforcers of the will of the Republic with no compassion or empathy for the millions dying around them. On the other hand, the Jedi are supposed to have a respect for all life and such and sometimes they play that card when it suits the story but for the most part it's ignored.

As is the more mystic side of the Force. We see it used constantly for telekinesis but hardly ever for the meditative and spiritual. Hell even Darth Vader had a meditation chamber and Yoda used it to try and see the future. Not in the Clone Wars though. It's all about pushing a dude off an energy bridge or crushing him under a boulder.

A side question: Yoda, in Empire Strikes Back, makes it quite clear that the size of objects does not matter when using the Force. So why then do all the Jedi in the Clone Wars look strained when lifting large heavy objects as opposed to smaller ones?