Clone Wars So is this it for our good General Grievous?

How will the good general be remembered by the time the Clone Wars comes to it's undeniable end?

I am truely hopeful that before this series ends. The good General Grievous will redeem himself as a formidable and fearfull villain.

However I'm not entirely optimistic. Based on his battles in TCW's and his death in the Movie. Is this all the General will be?

I remember hearing an interview with Filoni where he said he did not believe grievous could beat a jedi or a force user like Ventress in a one on one match up. My memory is not that great but I got the impression that He did not think highly of GG. Which is the exact opposite of what we were lead to believe when this charcter was introduced.


Your thoughts?

Never going to happen. The old material on Grievous came out before Lucas retconned his character into what it is today. We're stuck with this cowardly version for good.

Midnight Cowboy Failoni does not think highly of GG? I think the feeling is entirely mutual.

Hmmmmmmmmm... A good question and a good thread @DavidIX!

I do not know at this point.

Grievous is one of the characters that has been most damaged by this show from all the movie characters. There are many sides to this issue.
I know that maybe episodes like "Massacre" or the news from CVI are making us think that maybe the show has finally learned and maybe is gonna try to treat the general with some respect but the damage is done. What was done from Season One to Season Four's abominable episode and pure garbage called "Shadow Warrior" has damaged Grievous's reputation in a very bad way.
I can not get into a discussion about Grievous and I can not prove these days how awesome he is cause every time a random person just spits out "HAHA He was defeated by Gungans and that is canon that higher your EU". What I want to say with this is that Lucas HAS DESTROYED EVERY TRACE of credibility or threat that Grievous had. At this point I think even Cobra Commander would make fun of TCW Grievous.

There are those people who consider the new show as **** and they will never admit the atrocities Lucas committed to Grievous's character. For them there was no Shadow Warrior or Ahsoka vs Grievous. For them he is still a threat but I am not sure how big of a group those people are.

The other problem is that the new version of Grievous is being constantly being embedded into young SW fans via CN reruns. The bad version of Grievous is just more public at this point.

So @ImNotAStarWarsFanboy said it best.

I can only hope we get a SW:TCW version of Palpatine's kidnapping with Grievous killing many Jedi.

'Dooku Captured' made an even more fool about one of the most powerful beings in the galaxy. 'Shadow Warrior' did not mistreat Grievous all that much. He never was supposed to be a bad ass warrior. GL introduced him in ROTS, and ROTS retconned every EU source depicting him as a bad ass warrior and Jedi killer. The ROTS Grievous would never stand a chance against a powerful Jedi Master, he is even described by Mace Windu as a coward.

The TCW is very much the ROTS Grievous. They did not mistreat the character in TCW at all. People should just stop expecting him to be a bad ass warrior. I'm actually somewhat confused about that. You can't take CW or LOE Grievous seriously after watching ROTS. ROTS and GL 'ruined' the character. GL changed his mind about the character during the production of ROTS. He never was supposed to be the way he was depicted in CW!

No! He was supposed to be a badass warrior. There should be a threat to him. TCW Grievous is not ROTS Grievous.
In TCW Grievous is almost being laughed at but in ROTS, everybody speaks of him as being this threat and how important he is. Even if he was a big retreatist in ROTS, you still felt that he was a threat and important to the whole plot of the War and movie.
Lucas has rendered Grievous useless, funny, unimportant and dumb in TCW. He is basically "Batman and Robin" Bane-level of dumb.
Basically Lucas is doing what Schumacher did to Bane in B&R but sadly there is no "Nolan" to fix Lucas's retarded mistakes.

Grievous can be a "coward" (by the definition of Jedi fans, Anakin is the biggest coward of all) but he does not need to be humiliated with that.

"Massacre" was indirectly a way of admitting they made a huge mistake with the Gungan scene.I was just about to throw something at my tv when they took down Grievous. I was livid at that point and seriously considered giving up on the show.


I wonder what the rating and fan appeal is of general grievous and episodes he is featured in. I'm betting " Massacre" and "Lair of Grievous" are up there on the charts. Maybe that can sway a change in how they handle the character in the future.

IMO Lair of Grievous and Massacre are the best and they are my two most fave episodes with Massacre having Grievous winning a Battle at #1.

All those memes seem to have soured their relationship. Though why Failoni gets upset at internet posters is beyond me.

Is the Filoni meme still outlawed?

When Grievous was introduced he was overpowerful Übervillain(Tartakovsky)- then he became less powerful but still cool villain(ROTS and EU after that) and then he was turned in TCW to be less powerful than forceusers, but still formidable bad guy (Season 1 and 2- especially Lair of Grievous, but also Grievous Intrigue portrays him as rather capable fighter)- then he became mere laughing stock (Season 3 and especially 4)

I don't feel any threat coming from Grievous in ROTS, I really don't. He is nothing but a funny and eccentric cliché villain. He is not only a coward according to Mace Windu, he 'will run and hide as he always does'. No one respects Grievous, and the whole Grievous-Obi-Wan-subplot is completely useless and uninteresting. Even the Jedi admit as much, they only sent Obi-Wan to capture Grievous to get a pretext to deal with Palpatine. There's no indication whatsoever that Grievous taking direct control of the CIS is going to be a major issue for the remainder of the war (which it would be, if Grievous was truly an evil monster committing countless atrocities and a multiple Jedi killer).

Most importantly, neither Anakin nor Obi-Wan ever give the impression that fighting Grievous is more than a mild annoyance to them. In fact, Ewan McGregor looks more irritated than afraid when Grievous starts his four sword thing.

The only thing that is not adding up is that ROTS Grievous even has a bunch of Jedi lightsabers. I honestly don't know how this pathetic being ever got them. I guess he took them from dead Jedi killed by droids during the Battle of Geonosis.

And to make things clear:

I really would like to see a bad ass Grievous. I liked the CW and LOE Grievous as well. A strong and dangerous commander of the CIS would have been great, especially during TCW. Seeing Jedi flee Grievous rather than seeing him flee would have been really great, as well. But that's not going to happen because GL did not design this character this way back during ROTS. There is no hint whatsoever that Grievous ever killed a Jedi in ROTS. And he did not kill an important or powerful Jedi during four seasons of TCW. This is intentional on GL's side.

They did make Dooku look bad there. But in the greater scheme of things it did nothing to tarnish his reputation. Mostly because he's whooped on some big time charcters. You know he can have a hiccup or two with that resume.

But for Girevous- hell yes they mistreated him. In ROTS even though he died in a forgetable fashion. He was considered a HUGE threat to the republic. They made his death/catpure a top priority. Mace called Grievous a coward. Ok I get that. But at the same time where is the line between a tactical retreat and being a coward? the truth is there none. Grievous was known as a strategist, so if he fights unfair then it's only to assure victory. And not so much because he's a coward. But to each his own.

I would also like to add that if grievous was not supposed to be a badass. Then why depict him as a jedi killer? I mean who knows how many Jedi he's killed. there is no denying that-look at his collection of sabers.

Oh, and back to 'Shadow Warrior':

I really like how Grievous was outmaneuvered here. He simply did not consider the Gungans a real threat. And then he paid for his arrogance. This was actually a great twist. And honestly, even a bad ass Grievous would have had no chance to cut his way through that much Gungans armed with energy weapons designed to short-circuit droids.

The fact that Grievous fled mostly during season 1 & 2 of TCW is actually what I expected to see there. Mace Windu would not say 'He will run and hide as he always does. He is a coward.' if that never happened!

And the whole acting of Grievous in ROTS, his lines and general behavior make him appear like an eccentric cliché villain, not like somebody anyone would fear...

In ROTS Grievous was turned to be more cowardly and less dangerous but I disagree with Calgmoth- he was not considered to be so insignifigant- remember how they decide that Anakin is not strong enough for the mission- "Master is needed". Grievous nearly kills Kenobi and in deleted scene he captures and kills Shaak Ti.

It seems that many people really liked the way he was portrayed before ROTS. I never did- he was just too powerful to be Star Wars-villain without the Force- that just didn't go well with existing universe and movies. It was blunder from George to let EU introduce GG before ROTS- he became too different and far more powerful character George wanted. But even compared to ROTS TCW-Grievous is pathetic.

Didn't the Jedi Council just make up this thing about 'a master is needed' to keep Anakin on Coruscant so that he could continue to spy on Palpatine. Even then, the master stuff has to be crap since Anakin is as powerful as the average Jedi Master despite lacking the title.

The Shaak Ti scene is cut, which means that it never happened (especially since it's now canon that she was killed in TFU). But even it was in the movie, all it proves that Grievous is evil, not that he is a great warrior. We don't know who defeated Shaak Ti. All we see is that Grievous kills an unarmed prisoner. Great.

Making Grievous a powerful warrior could have worked. All GL needed to do is to give us a good explanation why a cyborg who cannot use the Force can become a dangerous opponent to a Force user. I have no good explanation for such a thing, but I'm not GL, so that's not my department ;-).

And come on people, the whole point of Grievous in-universe and out of it was just to have a plot device to get Kenobi of the planet. Palpatine needed him away, that's why the Jedi got the assignment to hunt him down.

Grievous pretty much always loses, but generally it seems to be because his pride/sadism get the better of him. I.E he'll have an opening to kill his opponent, but instead will boast, giving his opponent time to regroup. I mean, he's not incompetent with a saber. In his several battles with Obi-Wan, and his battle with Kit, he holds his own fairly well at first. He's not the "I'll take on 5 Jedi and win" badass he was in the microseries, but he does respectable for not being a Force user. He seemingly defeats Adi (off camera).

The issues IMO are:

1. Like Maul did in TPM, he gloats when he should be going in for the kill. His overconfidence is his weakness.
2. He is repeatedly put into duels with people that he cannot kill for continuity reasons - If he fights Obi-Wan for the 1,000,000th time it's not going to result in either getting killed, one is going to have to run away.
3. He doesn't seem to have any kind of defense against telekinesis, which Obi-Wan and Kit both exploit.

Grievous has to survive until ROTS.

Pit him against Yoda, Mace, Obi-Wan, Plo, Kit, Aayla, Shaak, Saesee, etc. and he will neither kill nor be killed, since all of these must survive until ROTS.

They need to pit him against Eeth, Oppo, or new Jedi introduced in TCW like Tera Sinube or Ahsoka (highly, highly unlikely) in order to see potential victories over Force users. But it's not impossible to salvage the image that he is a threat to Jedi. My bigger complaint isn't his prowess in personal combat. But that he is General of the droid armies of the CIS; the CIS' entire purpose is to make the Republic feel threatened and maintain a state of emergency to give Palpatine more power; and yet the droid armies consistently lose, and so even as a strategist he's failing.

As for Filoni not being fond of Grievous, I don't know. However, he has said that he has tried to defend Grievous' image in the past by telling Lucas that certain decisions might make Grievous appear too weak, but Lucas insists. So I blame Lucas for that. I'm not disappointed that Grievous isn't on par with his microseries depiction, but I am disappointed that he just isn't a threat... at all... and that he's undeservedly arrogant, and that the extent of his motives seems to be the death of all Jedi for no particular reason.

Genndy's show doesn't explain at all where Grievous comes from- he suddenly appears and kill all the jedi he can..... that's not very good storytelling.

And yes technically Grievous was unneeded addition to ROTS. Making him too powerful would've made him too interesting and therefore he would've stolen the show from Anakin.

Yet he was capable of nearly killing Obi-Wan- which is proof enough that he is not just a generic bad guy in GFFA (like Greedo or something) but quite a warrior. He certainly seems to be capable of defeating padawans and young jedi knights.

Amen to that- I pretty much agree about all points

A lot of good opinions by everyone.

Good post.

Maybe they'll animate the successful capture of Palpatine. Giving him some credability as a strategist.

They should definitely go into why Grievous hates the Jedi. So far, without the EU he's just a cyborg that hates the Jedi for no reason LOL. That's funny.

It is only matter of time before Grievous gets the new backstory. Hopefully the best part of EU would be salvaged to be part of it like in Asajj's case.

The EU had a very VERRRRRRRRYYYYYY good reason why he hates the Jedi. TCW does not have a good reason for him to hate Jedi.

The problem is indeed that the show has all these expendable Jedi and the best they is do is pit him against Kenobi over and over and over again.
For a sec, in the horrible Nomad Droids I thought I would Grievous vs Plo Koon and that would have been awesome BUT NO... even if he does not kill him, a duel in space would be unique. It was planned in S1 after all...

So I agree with @TaradosGon, they should give him more Jedi to kill and show he is A killer. They should have even given him Adi Gallia.

When I asked a question on Filoni's FB page, he was very liking of Grievous and positive and gave his reasons but most were connected to Lucas.
SO LUCAS THE RETARD IS TO BLAME!



https://www.facebook.com/notes/dave-filoni/qa/10150219391017571

Something from the past that might help with Grievous's case:

To see our favorite stories cannibalized? That's even worse...