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  1. In Memory of LAJ_FETT: Please share your remembrances and condolences HERE

Full Series The Clone Wars - 5.13 - Point of No Return - discussion thread

Discussion in 'Star Wars TV- Completed Shows' started by Seerow, Jan 9, 2013.

  1. K'Kruhk

    K'Kruhk Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Dec 11, 2011
    From the TCW Facebook page:

    [​IMG]
     
  2. TaradosGon

    TaradosGon Manager Emeritus star 5 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Feb 28, 2003
    Now that is what I'm talking about as far as story. After raising questions pertaining to the awful R2 arc, I'm glad that Mr. Tarkin has apparently taken notice IU as well :p
     
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  3. 07jonesj

    07jonesj Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Aug 16, 2010
    Tarkin may just have become my favourite Star Wars character with that response.
     
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  4. Darth_Zandalor

    Darth_Zandalor Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Aug 2, 2009
    And watch that same point be ignored once the season is over. The show will continue pushing the Jedi as unstoppable military leaders that the Clones trust implicitly, while people like Tarkin go unnoticed because their names aren't Anakin, Obi Wan, or Ahsoka.

    I've never understood why Krell got such a bad rap, when Anakin had clones marching in parade formation directly towards an enemy fortress for the sole purpose of creating a distraction.
     
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  5. Super_Battle_Droid

    Super_Battle_Droid Jedi Master star 5

    Registered:
    May 8, 2002
    I just became one of the biggest Tarkin fans ever.
     
  6. Valairy Scot

    Valairy Scot Manager Emeritus star 6 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Sep 16, 2005
    Now THAT sets up a storyline!
     
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  7. anakinfansince1983

    anakinfansince1983 Skywalker Saga/LFL/YJCC Manager star 10 Staff Member Manager

    Registered:
    Mar 4, 2011
    I would have complained less if it had been just one episode, but the fact that it's one-fifth of the season was ridiculous.

    And yes, Looney Tunes is hilarious. TCW isn't Looney Tunes and needs to quit trying to emulate it or anything else, if that is indeed what they're doing. It needs to find its own brand of humor, whatever that might be. Star Wars has humor. See: Han Solo's lines.
     
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  8. Darth_Zandalor

    Darth_Zandalor Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Aug 2, 2009
    Lawrence Kasdan is too busy at the moment having Lucasfilm breath down his neck as he writes Episodes 8 and 9 to deliver his snappy Solo dialogue to TCW.
     
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  9. Narutakikun

    Narutakikun Jedi Knight star 4

    Registered:
    Nov 8, 2012
    First, define "children". This is crucial, because it's a distinction I don't think the TCW staff has a handle on. You can't really be both a show for 6-year-olds and for 14-year-olds, and where this show tries to split the difference or to appeal to both ages, it often fails badly. To riff on one of Plinkett's better points, this show is frequently way too dark and violent for small children. But then it's often way too slapstick and silly for teenagers.

    Second, if Lucasfilm doesn't understand that a lot of adults watch their show, then once again they completely misunderstand who their audience is. I know that George Lucas is fond of expressing his utter unbridled contempt for the fans who made him a billionaire, but at some point that crosses into plain bad business. Understanding who your audience actually is, as opposed to who you wish they were, is a skill as basic to being in the entertainment business as knowing where the gas pedal is located is basic to being a taxi driver. And responding to criticism by telling people who watch your show that the problem is that they're really not the sort of person who ought to be watching your show is... well, it's thankfully the sort of mistake that Disney is not much given to making.
     
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  10. 07jonesj

    07jonesj Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Aug 16, 2010
    /\

    Absolutely spot on. The tonal shifts in this show shouldn't be happening this late in the game. Can you believe that "Revenge" and "Secret Weapons" belong to the same show?
     
  11. Narutakikun

    Narutakikun Jedi Knight star 4

    Registered:
    Nov 8, 2012
    The thing is, Tarkin is actually not completely wrong there. He may be out for himself, and this may very much be from his own point of view, but his core points are basically pretty valid.
     
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  12. Barriss_Coffee

    Barriss_Coffee Chosen One star 6

    Registered:
    Jun 29, 2003
    Sometimes I wish everyone weren't being manipulated by Palpatine. Because right here, Tarkin just stated every logical, major complaint (and then some) we've had with the plot of this arc.
     
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  13. V-2

    V-2 Jedi Grand Master star 5

    Registered:
    Dec 10, 2012
    Cartoon Network know who their audience is and have a much better understanding of their demographics than you or I. I think you're the one guilty of wishful thinking on this point.

    I said about TCW being tame compared to many Grimm fairy tales, I don't know if that passed you by. It's really not too dark for any child who reads Hansel & Gretel. OTOH if your child cowers in fear while watching Thomas The Tank Engine then you should probably use your parental discretion and watch a nice puppet show instead.

    LFL know they have a section of hardcore fans who will consume anything Star Wars, even if they regularly dislike it and register their disgust on the internet. TCW toys are in supermarkets and high street toy shops, not just the niche comic shops frequented by us weirdos. It's a mainstream franchise that makes money from parents via their children, GL is a past master of this strategy. It's how he made all his billions of dollars. TCW is not an Adult Swim show. Venture Bros struggles to sell toys in comic shops, Star Wars is everywhere and seems to be doing just fine.

    That's not to say I don't appreciate TCW on artistic/entertainment levels, if it didn't have merit I'd be watching something else, or more likely sitting here moaning about it.

    Though TCW isn't made for you, it's obviously made with the awareness that hardcore nerds like us exist. It's a family show and GL knows that a lot of the 70s/80s kids have children now, the Star Wars brand still commands a lot of power with a lot of what you might call casual fans. It's even known to people who've not seen Star Wars. Obsessive 30somethings don't deliver the majority of Star Wars cash and TCW is not made for them. There's a hell of a lot of stuff that is made just for them too.

    Rejoice!
     
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  14. KED12345

    KED12345 Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Sep 10, 2012
    Wow, that gave actually meaning to the last arc we just watched, and Young Jedi, to the entire scheme of things. People are starting to see how the Jedi for how the Chancellor wants them to be seen as. These reasons will play into why we start seeing protests against the war as we saw in the trailer, I imagine, and reasons why distaste for the Jedi start to grow.

    The entire SW Galaxy sees what we see as fans.
     
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  15. Narutakikun

    Narutakikun Jedi Knight star 4

    Registered:
    Nov 8, 2012
    Cartoon Network isn't creating TCW, Lucasfilm is. All that CN does is play the episodes on their station.

    Now, as for Lucasfilm, their tone-deafness towards their fans is legendary. It's better with TCW than it was with the prequels, or than it often is with the EU, but it's still there.

    The Grimms' fairy tales were published 200 years ago. The world was a very different place then, the concept of childhood was very different then, and many people considered them unsuitable for children even in those times - times in which eight-year-olds working sixteen-hour shifts six days a week in coal mines was not an uncommon occurrence.

    Very, very few children are reading the original, un-Disnified versions of those fairy tales; certainly compared to the number who watch mass-market TV shows.

    I know that I'm not some big Hollywood movie producer or anything, but I'm pretty sure that the idea is to create things that your fans actually like and say positive things about.

    Yeah, about that: the fact that Lucasfilm sold for only four billion dollars - not all that much money by Hollywood standards, and three billion less than they paid for Pixar six years earlier - shows you that Disney picked up a company that it knew had suffered some mismanagement and lost some of its cachet.

    Disney does a lot of things I don't like, but one thing it never does is to insult its fans or to blame them for its failures. Even Steve "You're holding it wrong" Jobs never pushed the company in that direction after he became its biggest shareholder following the Pixar buyout. He knew how bad for business doing that is in the entertainment industry.
     
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  16. Robimus

    Robimus Jedi Grand Master star 5

    Registered:
    Jul 6, 2007
    Its the best thing about TCW this season and it is not even a part of the show.

    And I suspect it will be completely ignored going forward.
     
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  17. vong333

    vong333 Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Oct 18, 2003

    Well GL is no longer the owner and .......Star Wars belongs to Disney so they run the show and can do wahtever the heck they want.
     
  18. V-2

    V-2 Jedi Grand Master star 5

    Registered:
    Dec 10, 2012
    Naru, you don't seem to be disagreeing with anything I actually said in the context in which I actually said it. That's probably the best response I'll get, so I'll leave it there. My heart's not in it.
     
  19. Robimus

    Robimus Jedi Grand Master star 5

    Registered:
    Jul 6, 2007
    Like axe it outright?

    Clovis will never air [face_devil]
     
  20. Darth_Zandalor

    Darth_Zandalor Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Aug 2, 2009
  21. Narutakikun

    Narutakikun Jedi Knight star 4

    Registered:
    Nov 8, 2012
    Also doesn't make a bad wallpaper:

    [​IMG]
     
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  22. Seerow

    Seerow Manager Emeritus star 6 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Jun 7, 2011
    Cartoon Network's target demos are 6-11 year old boys. CN has gone out of its way not to cater to young girls which is one of the biggest positives to having Ahsoka on the show for me. Its been a long time in coming to have a young lead female character in a show on a network that once canned Sailor Moon saying it scared the little boys away. TCW is clearly able to defy CN's norm.

    I think they try to write it to appeal to all ages and this is where things get broken because its very difficult to create something that appeals well to both kids and adults, even PIXAR doesn't get this right all the time. I do think that's part of the problem and its actually my opinion they should hire some writers familiar with writing kids show. In my experience they tend to do a better job at figuring out how to write to please both than all these guys who worked on Primetime shows on things like Fox or worse MTV. Carl Ellsworth and Steven Melching are great proof of that. Honestly it feels like TCW confuses violence with all adults want in the show.

    Also, children tend to be much better as grasping things than they get credit for. My niece is only 4 and yet grasps some of the themes in The Lion King which while a Disney movie is one I appreciate more as an adult.

    I dunno about that, man, Thomas and Friends has a ton of suicides and attempted murders when you think about it. All those crazy trucks breaking away from their engines and getting smashed or forcing their engine to crash through barber shops? The Railway Series is a great example of something considered to be for little kids that has good continuity and very relatable characters. I'm pretty sure TCW is the most violent show on Cartoon Network. It beats the pants off anything I can think of in terms of violence across the kids networks. I often use Gargoyles as an example of what Disney XD might cut because I'm so familiar with it, TCW has plenty they might cut. Its got intense violence, suicides, zombie apocalypse, slavery, emphasized sex slaves, and stuff. For some comparisons: the worst I remember Thundercats 2011 doing was showing a hideout for the women and children getting blown up off screen. Sure, it did take someones arms off.

    Where have you seen Venture Bro toys? I would heart a Brock Sampson action figure. I actually think TCW would fit well with ThunderCats 2011 and Sym-Biotic Titan on Toonami. Episodes like "Mercy Mission" and "A Sunny Day in the Void' might work well with Adult Swims's 20 year old stone crowd. I've always known TCW isn't meant for hardcore fans, hate to break it to them but they make up a small part of the audience. Shows like this cannon survive with the core fanbase alone. They need a regular audience, a big target audience, and casual fans to make it. That's not an excuse, being a kids show is not an excuse.
     
  23. Narutakikun

    Narutakikun Jedi Knight star 4

    Registered:
    Nov 8, 2012
    Actually, if anyone could make a textless version of that letter where the Republic logo was just slightly more prominent, it really would be a good phone/tablet wallpaper...
     
  24. Narutakikun

    Narutakikun Jedi Knight star 4

    Registered:
    Nov 8, 2012
    [​IMG]
     
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  25. Narutakikun

    Narutakikun Jedi Knight star 4

    Registered:
    Nov 8, 2012
    From everything I've seen, Cartoon Network's target demos are 25-40 year old stoners.
     
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