Tuesday 17 May 2016

Star Wars: The Clone Wars

I have now watched all of The Clone Wars, all hundred-odd twenty-minute episodes. (As opposed to Clone Wars, all two hours.)

And I never did warm to the big wooden puppet head characters, but it worked well when moving away to them, to long shots, crowds and space battles.

As good a (possible) death as Asajj got in Clone Wars, they used her well enough in The Clone Wars that I didn’t mind bringing her back.

Less sold on Darth Maul. Although it led to the best lightsaber battle of the series at the end of season four, two against two for a specific goal while everybody had huge personal stakes in it as well.

Various other non-Droid villains came in as well, like the bounty hunter Cad Bane, who we never actually see bounty hunting - in fact, a lot of characters working as mercenaries, assassins, kidnappers and the like are referred to as bounty hunters with no evidence of them doing that job. Maybe it’s a “kids’ show” content censorship issue, like how the Ninja Turtles were the Hero Turtles here in the 80s...

I cheered when Ziro the Hutt died. Not because he was so villainous, but because he was so badly queercoded.

And there were good guys in it as well. Anakin was rather more action-hero-y than a straight adaptation of the live-action version, Ahsoka grew beyond the kid-friendly sidekick role, Obi-Wan was dashing and the clones developed enough that they needed an SFish explanation for Order 66. Heck, even the Jar Jar episodes worked, mostly because of everyone around resenting his presence. It could have done with more non-Jedi and non-clone heroes, I think, but that’s the GM in me talking.

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