Full Series The Clone Wars - Episode 5.1 - Revival - discussion thread

Perhaps you should look at one's profile before assuming they are male

 

I'm not sure how you read my post and got from it that I'm trying to shoot you down. I think it's good that you're giving the show a second chance, but I don't think you should expect it to all of a sudden start abiding by all established canon since it never has, regardless of it being a good choice or not. That's not a put-down.

 

Every season Filoni seems to address the EU concerns at least once, if not multiple times, and says that it does not reflect Lucas' vision of the universe, and that while it is a source of ideas and entertaining stories, that it is separate. Lucas himself has said as much. But any time these ideas are expressed explicitly in an episode, it gets the same reaction every time. I could understand it being an issue in the first season, but after 4 seasons of it, I'd think people would get an idea of what to expect. After Even Piell was killed off, did anyone really think that Adi Gallia's death was going to hold to the Obsession depiction?

Filoni and Lucas seem to be treating TCW as a standalone entity that in their minds meshes with the films as the "official" canon vs. what has been previously established in novels, comics, games. So, I imagine that when it comes to Adi Gallia, Even Piell, etc. being absent from ROTS, they are going to address why those characters are missing in the show. Given that Oppo Rancicis has been confirmed to make an appearance eventually, I am heavily convinced that he too will be killed off in TCW in a way that does not in any way coincide with the comic depiction, and people are going to complain yet again as though it's some kind of surprise after Adi and Even's deaths and the resurrection (and presumably future death) of Eeth Koth... and bringing Maul back... And Asajj becoming a bounty hunter... and Maul being half human/half Dathomirian (possibly Ratattaki), and the huge thing they did from the start in giving Anakin and apprentice, etc.

If Lucas licensing says one thing regarding canon, and Lucas and Filoni (who personally works closely with Lucas) are saying something else, I'd be inclined to trust the latter.

 

Your Canon's Dead son.
Accept it.

(I don't know how to make proper meme's )

 

I think it's just a case of a reopening wounds. I was mad when I saw the Mandalore episode trilogy from Season 2, like seriously, seriously pissed. But with time and the EU's strong response, putting the episode elements in their place, I came to be at peace with it all. Yet when Corruption aired and Satine mentioned the Mandalorians "are a people of tradition" when the show had quite literally thrown aside every existing Mandalorian tradition, I'll admit that I still felt a twinge of bitterness there.

Since Ventress' Season 3 criss-cross, I've also come to accept that Obsession would be by-and-large falling by the wayside. And the Shadow Conspiracy leaks confirmed that with the first news of Adi's death. So I knew what was coming, but to still see it on screen was like scraping at a scab that hadn't healed quite enough to stop being painful. And unlike Mandalore, there's not going to be any rescue, no fighting back.

I think people still complained so strongly, even after Even Piell, because there's still this latent sense of faith in the franchise. People who still thought that maybe, just maybe, they'll take a page out of Mass Effect 3's playbook and realize they'd done wrong by their fanbase, and while it may be too late to unring that particular bell by killing off a character like that, they'd keep that outrage in mind when moving forward. Like you, I'm almost grimly certain that Oppo Rancisis will die in the show, yet still hoping deep down that they won't do it, expecting full-well to have those hopes dashed.

 

Dave Filoni and George Lucas walk like men, but they're vicious, mindless monsters. Thirty of us went out to restore the Clone Wars Multimedia Project and its derivatives. Four of us came back. I'd be with them, only... after they retconned Adi Gallia's death, I just couldn't ride any more... until I heal. I don't want to give up on the old timeline, but after four seasons of TCW, There's little hope it has held up.

 

TaradosGon times infinite

After now having watched this episode at least ten times, it is sufficiently ingrained into my brain for a proper write-up.

I give this one a 9/10. For me, what really makes an episode is the combination of action or pulp entertainment with a cerebral component or something to think about. This episode doesn't have any major cerebral components like the Mortis arc or the General Krell arc, but it has a nice little group of things that still had me thinking. I'm also a big fan of episodes with a wide variety of environments, which Revival excels in.

This episode does a great job of blending the action, story, and characters. Sure slicing through robots isn't an incredible feat, but it's still nice to start out with immediate action, and I love the way the scene is shot with one of the robots looking for one that went missing and then all of a sudden having Darth Maul running them down. I also love how they use Force-powers instead of just swinging their lightsabers. But it plays an important part of the plot of the episode and the character development of Darth Maul since it sets up bribing the pirates as well as showing the type of mind for planning Darth Maul acquired being raised by Palpatine.

I love the part where it becomes official that Savage Opress is Darth Maul's apprentice. Maul explains the master/apprentice roles he's learned about the Sith from Palpatine, and in true Sith fashion, Savage refuses to automatically accept Maul's dominance until he's defeated in combat. The fight was short, but I was really glad they included that as a point in their back-story.

I always love when this show references the Sith, but with this episode there are several scenes where I get the impression they're purposefully establishing that while your average citizen of the GFFA during the Clone Wars is aware of the Jedi, they're not aware of the Sith. The bank guard robots, the bank alien the Jedi talk to, the band of pirates without Hondo, Hondo himself. It's definitely a running theme. I'm curious how this will be developed and where they're taking it. It doesn't seem accidental.

The part when the pirates are first shown on the bridge of their ship, it feels like an old school Star Trek moment to me with the captain in the big center chair and the officers at consoles circled around him. Very good vibes from that. I'm also a big fan of the old school pulp science-fiction flying saucer design of their ship (going back to S2) which adds to that overall aura. Darth Maul has such an easy time getting them to join him, it seems obvious to me once again that he's doing things he learned from Darth Sidious, which makes it a million times cooler than it would be by itself for me (same for that scene towards the beginning).

This leads to one of my favorite parts of the episode and what to me is its most thoughtful aspect. I don't think I've seen others talk about this, but for me it was very serious when the pirates were killing each other with Darth Maul and Savage Opress casually looking on. It reminded me of an even more perverse, somewhat reversed version of the clone massacre in Carnage of Krell. Whereas the clones have more of a sense of honor and had to be tricked into slaughtering each other, the pirates' moral code is so empty that all it takes is a few credits and they're mowing down people they've probably been fighting alongside for years. Completely willingly. That is a major sociological statement about this group of individuals and how they compare to others in the GFFA. For me, it had all the emotional and cerebral impact of the clone massacre in Carnage of Krell, but it was even colder given that major difference. And then having the dark side brothers simply looking on at the moving gears they've set into motion including Darth Maul's calculating and calculated gaze is just the icing on the cake. There's this atrocity going on that to him is just one small part of a much more massive plan. And again, there's room to see how he learned to do this type of thing from Palpatine and some parallels with the story of the larger Star Wars saga.

And then there's Adi Gallia's death, about which I am quite ambivalent. On the one hand, I don't really care about TCW having differences from EU (even in cases where I like the EU better - I see no problem with counting the EU in my SW canon rather than that specific moment or episode of TCW), but on the other hand, it did feel like a really cheap and undeveloped death. Adi Gallia has been in prior episodes but never developed a personality like, say, Luminara has. So if they were going to kill her in this episode, they absolutely should have done something to pick a character trait of hers to develop and make part of the plot of the episode to give her death real meaning. But they didn't. All her lines are short, perfunctory plot-movers, and when she dies it honestly has far less impact in my opinion than even the death of Nahdar Vebb in Lair of Grievous. That was a character with identifiable personality traits that went on to play a crucial role in the way he died. The lack of that type of development really makes Adi's death feel meaningless to me. I think it's great that she has a new death at the hands of a character who is a powerful Force-user rather than her EU death at the hands of a cyborg who's been trained to threateningly twirl lightsabers, but it really could have been any other Jedi including a brand new one made just for this episode and it wouldn't have made much difference, much like the Even Piell situation. The visual of her being impaled by his horns is freaking sweet, but would have had much greater impact if the character killed had actually been developed. Hence my ambivalence.

Then there's Obi-Wan's two-on-one duel with the brothers. I was a big fan of not just the visuals but how it progressed in terms of story. When Savage first gets kicked in the knee by Adi, he doesn't even feel it. He's a monster. But Obi-Wan develops the tactic of continuously going after that same knee every chance he gets. Because he's a monster, Savage doesn't do anything to compensate for Kenobi's tactic, just assuming that his own body will continue to act like a rock no matter how many times the same part of it is attacked. It also may play a role that while the Jedi use the Force primarily for defense, dark siders use it to attack, so he's not even paying attention to his knee. Obi-Wan, showing a Jedi trait, has the patience to keep going at that one knee knowing that eventually there will be a pay-off (and, I think, probably also making the same observations about Savage's mindset I have). And he's right. In what I see as a nod to the OT and the larger Star Wars saga, Savage's overconfidence is his weakness and leads to his defeat.

And yes, the green Force-witch-magicks mist coming from the hacked-off limbs is freaking sweet.

My only other big issue with this episode other than the total flopping of Adi Gallia's new death is how so few pirates had Maul and Opress on the run. Aboard their ship, they could take on a small band of pirates with ease. They should have had an overwhelming number of pirates, which would make sense since the mutineers were back with Hondo, and that combined with Savage's injury would be sufficient explanation for them having to run. But them having a small handful of pirates just like aboard the ship should not all of a sudden be a huge problem just because of the lost limb. They should have made it a combination of factors to make it easier to believe and more consistent. To me it's not a huge deal, but it is an annoyance.

What makes up for this annoyance is how well-executed the escape scene was otherwise. My heart was definitely pumping faster after Darth Maul gets shot and is being helped along by Savage Opress and he reaches out with the Force and flings the Jedi starship of the cliff into the path of their pursuers. If that wasn't epic enough by itself, the music there REALLY brought it all together and made the scene, it was really exciting.

I was a big fan of the resolution of this episode. Palpatine and Yoda are content that Darth Maul and Savage Opress are probably dead, while for once Obi-Wan takes up Anakin's character trait of letting his emotions dominate his thoughts and cannot accept that they're probably dead. Somehow, many LACWACers seem to have missed this as I've read many comments along the lines of, "Why don't they think Maul and Opress are a threat to the Republic?" It's not that they're not a threat, it's that they're presumed dead. Just like in Revenge when Mace points out that it's obviously a trap and Obi-Wan shouldn't go alone, yet many LACWACers complained that they were stupid for not realizing it was a trap and sending him alone because they didn't realize that.

Palpatine's reaction is great, and while at first I thought it was dumb that Anakin was sitting there with members of the Jedi Council and Palpatine for this meeting, after further consideration I'm taking it as a subtle precursor to Palpatine attempting to appoint Anakin to the Jedi Council in Ep. III. Anakin could be there because it's routine for Palpatine to make such a request.

Lastly, I agree with everyone who said it was a terrible idea to mix up the dialogue of Palpatine's new voice actor with the old. It sounds REALLY out of place, and wasn't even necessary given the full context; that one line from the new voice actor could have been easily removed with zero repercussions for resolution of the episode.

EDIT: It'd be a tragedy if I totally failed to mention Hondo had me laughing out loud multiple times on my first viewing of the episode. I almost never laugh at TCW's attempts at humor, but this episode probably had a record number of laughs for me. Also, great to have them coming from a veteran original TCW character.

 

The one thing that really felt off to me was how pleased Palpatine seems to be at the end. With Maul out there as a potential and unexpected (?) threat, I would think that he would have a more furious or concerned face ,not have what seemed to me was an everything-is-going-as-I-have-foreseen look on his face. Also I thought it was awkward that Maul asked for Obi-Wan's surrender. That seemed uncharacteristic of a Sith except for maybe Dooku, who could use prisoners as a means to further CIS goals.

 

It seems some posters, regardless of opinion, feels his/her opinion is being "shot down" with every dissenting post. Being that this is an episode thread, perhaps we should focus on (notice I didn't say "ignore canon debates") the actual episode?

One of the little touches I liked in Revival is how JAT "grunted" during his fights. I noticed Ewan McGregor did a lot of that, and JAT is carrying that on.

Obi-Wan's reaction to Adi's death (and later comment to Hondo) was quite expressive without taking really any screen time up - nice emoting there.

Hondo - what can I say about Hondo? Love love love his lines. "Leave you to fight those crazies alone - okay."

This is one episode I can and did watch more than once - and it's not even been a full week since it first aired.

~~

What a post, Tarkas - I so concur with everything you said I could quote it verbatim.

I don't know. Escape pods seem to be standard equipment and Ob-Wan was contemplatively stroking his beard and staring at the sky when Honda was gleefully thinking of riches falling from the sky. I think it's not just emotions guiding Obi-Wan, but a hint of the actual what-went-down. He also knows now Maul is not easily killed. I think he's not willing to accept "no bodies" as proof yet and he's wise to think so.

 

That's a large part of my problem with it right there. Because of her minimal presence in the show itself, how many non EU fans actually cared about Adi? Honestly? I'm sure there were a lot that were like "Oh damn, he just stabbed her with his horns! Whoa, and killed her while she was down! But she was a Jedi Master! Damn, this guy's kinda dangerous." Or at least a general reaction like that. But how many people were thinking "Oh my god, he killed Adi!" I really don't think anyone who isn't an EU fan thought that at all. She wasn't developed enough in the show to really care for her, so any emotional impact outside of the "Wow!" factor it has ends up banking upon the EU's establishment of her as a likeable character in the Jedi Apprentice/Quest series and other novels, the Jedi Starfighter game, and an assortment of comics. To anyone else, she's just Background Jedi #6.

Definitely. Brief though it may have been, there was a very good moment between the facial expression, his body language, and the voice acting that lent itself to the idea that Obi-Wan truly was saddened, and had to simply swallow it or die as the Sith Brothers attacked.

 

I saw it as him being happy that he'd convinced the Jedi to leave the matter alone, meaning he'd be free to handle it how sees fit without worrying about their interference.

 

Yeah- all "good guys" automatically shoot blue That was not the case in OT....

 

I thought that Darth Maul and Savage Opress had a weapons stash aboard their ship? Wouldn't that explain the differing weaponry?

 

I had no idea what you were talking about until I just re-watched the scene. And... wow... that's terrible. I remembered hearing it when I watched the episode the first time and not quite catching what was said and just took it for granted that someone else was speaking like Mas Amedda but didn't realize that he wasn't there.

I agree, there was absolutely no reason to include that line. It didn't add anything, is extremely jarring as it doesn't sound at all like Ian's voice, and also could have been easily omitted since Palpaitne isn't even in the shot when the line was saidt.

 

That out-of-the-place Palpatine dub irritates me more than Adi's death

If it indeed is Adi in Onderon-arc that creates interesting canonical problem if Hondo's comment about weapons being "paid for handsomely" is supposedly meaning what happened in the Revival. Either she is mystically alive or then she is Stass Allie. At least Adi has better chance to survive than Even Piell.... and even Maul survived .....

What comes to Adi's character, I agree with those who think that they missed a possibility of character development there (Not the first time they do that). But nothing prevents future EU from using Adi or expanding her character. Way she died in canon is now shown bit differently, but that's it really. Also TCW may return to do prequels and use her later.

Maybe. Pirates may have stolen two different kind of Tibanna gas

 

Powerful? Did you see them running from Pirates? How are they more of a threat then Grievous again?

 

It's called the Force. I recommend watching the OT for a full explanation.

 

That's a good question, but the same can be asked for Even, Dengar, and a few occasions involving the main characters.

I'm a bit late to the party but this ep wasn't too bad IMO, thanks largely to Hondo.
It's already been mentioned multiple times but Adi's death was just pointless and completely lacking in any meaning, for multiple reasons. Then to top things off there's Yoda agreeing with Palps and telling Obi-Wan to forget about his 'personal vendetta', Maul and Randy aren't as big a threat as the CIS, and the death of a Council Member (as well as other Jedi by the looks of the newsreel) is nothing to be concerned about. It's not like they weren't thought dead, and nobody considered the possibilty that the two used an escape pod, which by definition should be incredibly easy to locate.
In the first act, after the Horny Bros ltd. completed their pissing contest, Savage said something along the lines of "You have become so powerful." That line made me laugh because not only is Randy a tool in the first place, but also because Maul is suppose to be dead! Powerful indeed from his POV.
It was nice of the 'traitor' pirates to have different colored blaster bolts so we can tell where the shots were coming from, as if that was at all necessary.

 

Not having the Force doesn't make someone impossible to threaten Force users. Ask Jace Malcom, Durge and Jango Fett

 

Hmm, I did think that was strange that Maul asked Obi-Wan to surrender but thinking back on it, Maul wants Obi-Wan to suffer before dying. If he has to kill him before he can get proper revenge on him then he will but if he has the opportunity to capture him, then he will, just so that Maul can make Kenobi suffer.

 

Maul wants that Obi-Wan looses his lower half and lives 10 years as mad spiderman like he did.... with nothing but extremely irritating anacondan as company......

 

I fail to see how gender should have any impact on what I said, unless you wanted to play the sexism card.

 

My statement in that post was that one death was better than the other. Saying the old death wasn't impossible does not make it better.

 

Now that's just subjective

 

so hold on, when we are told by you that force users are infinitely better, your evidence is "go watch the OT".
When we try to make a counterargument, you say "explain without a source that says canon says so."