Full Series The Clone Wars: Episode 302: ARC Troopers Discussion Thread

Yes, cause no kid has ever played with guns before. Grow up.

 

The kids in the show weren't "playing" there, chief.

Anyway, since you go out of your way to watch commercials like that, I guess you really like watching little boys play with guns!

 

You're taking stuff out of this that is just off. You can think what you want, but stop acting like anyone who isn't complaining about the weapon use is disgusting.

 

Frankly I was more creeped out by your description of them using guns then them actually using them.

 

Yeah? That's weird 'cause I didn't say anything creepy and I sure as hell didn't share a commercial featuring a bunch of little boys. Why don't you provide a quote of what I said that was "creepy", eh?

Anyway, it's cool to see that all of you guys like the idea of little boys firing guns with sneers on their face...and taht being portrayed as heroic in a children's cartoon. Awesome.

One person said they thought that it was irresponsible. The rest couldn't even say, "Maybe it was crossing the line a little bit, but it was just one episode, so I'll just ignore it." Nope. They just went right for the, I want more little boys with guns! Check out this YouTube video - the little boys are REAL!

Somebody should do a fan edit of T2 where John Connor's strutting around like Rambo. That'd really get you guys excited.

 

1. I was kidding with the sissy comment. (Thanks, Kualan!)

2. Is that supposed to impress me? He's had five wives? So he can't keep a marriage together--big freakin' deal.

Cameron is wildly successful, I agree. I never tried to argue it...and I don't really see what that has to do with anything. He has moral issues with showing kids using guns. (Although evidently he had no issue with marketing an R rated film to little kids, since back when T2 came out they had a toy line aimed at children and commercials during kid's shows and everything else.)

Lucas and Filoni don't have an issue with it. Maybe because they are trying to be dark and edgy, or maybe because they look at it as "meh, they are just laser guns shooting non-living beings". I don't know their reasonings...but either way, I don't think it's quite as big a deal as you're making it out to be. Just my opinion.

Just because Cameron doesn't like the idea of kids with guns doesn't mean it's automatically immoral and obscene. It is dark, it is disturbing...but it doesn't cross the line so far that it becomes the disgusting snuff film that you are making it out to be.

 

Right, we don't impressionable kids to start gunning down random robots in the streets with their dads' lasers.

If case you haven't got the memo, people aren't stupid, and they can tell the difference between fantasy and reality. We don't need moral guardians telling us what is right or wrong to watch.

And you'll also forgive me if I don't think there is anything wrong with portraying the defense of one's home from armed and hostile intruders as heroic...even if they are kids. Recently in Kashmir, a pair of young teenagers managed to save their parents from some local militant thugs by driving them off with guns (and even killing a few).
Course, you are saying actually showing that would be wrong.

 

Okay. By that rationale, then Shaak Ti and Obi-Wan should be able to have buck-naked wild sex on the show. After all, just like lasers and robots are fake, so are Togruta aliens and Jedi Masters. Therefore, if anybody would object to that, you would respond, "People aren't stupid, and they can tell the difference between fantasy and reality."

Lots of things are fantasy - Penthouse Comix are fantasy. '300' is fantasy. That doesn't mean it's right for people who have countless impressionable kids listening to them to show them.

As far as your story about Kashmir, I don't know anything about it and I tend to not believe anything that the mainstream media says. But that's irrelevant, anyway.

It's possible that some kid would have to be in a horrible situation of having to kill their schizophrenic father because he was about to hurt his mother. There are many other terrible situations. That don't mean that the Cartoon Network should put them on TV.

 

Why is this a big deal? This is part of the culture ever since little kids grew up watching westerns and played cowboys and indians during the early history of TV.

Having the young clones use weapons is in no way going to influence children towards violence when you already have 2+ seasons of gun wielding heroes and much more graphic violence. Any cartoon has this stuff. GI Joe, transformers, Ben10. You could argue all of these shows encourage children to engage in violent behaviors. Kids are not looking at unnamed clones and modeling after them. They will look at Rex and Cody and dress up and emulate them yet no one complains about them being violent.

If anything all it does is provide parents a great opportunity to talk to their children about what is acceptable behavior and when to stand up for yourself and fight and when not to. Acting as this is some new form of brainwashing children into becoming violent killing machines is ridiculous when similar content has been on TV since the advent of television. If parents are monitoring the children and talk to them about some of the more mature content on the Clone Wars there isn't a problem unless they are bad parents to begin with.

 

First off, I don't know that Lucas paid much attention to this - I kinda doubt he scrutinizes every episode, and I highly, highly, highly doubt that he overlords in-depth show preps. That's why he pays Dave Filoni.

You said that I'm "making it out to be a big deal". I don't think so. I just think it's wrong an that they shouldn't do it. The bigger issue, honestly, is with how nobody even bats an eye at the idea. (I think it's kinda similar to my objection to tween Ahsoka's revealing clothing and coy comments. I catalogued a lot of this stuff in season one....nobody ever cared. It's like, is there anything that's wrong anymore? Guess not.)

Also, I don't personally consider TCW "dark" (despite the melodramatic opera music they played when they killed the hunchback from '300'). Just the opposite - I consider it kinda breezy and disposable.

 

First off, everybody here (besides me and one other commenter) has said that it's great to have killing children. So it's not a "big deal" to anybody but me. So let's just dispose of your fantasies of being a lone voice against the masses. You're the masses.

Secondly, we know that kids play with guns. Nobody ever argued that. Once again, somebody responds with total non sequitur arguments that make no sense whatsoever.

Personally, I agree that none of this ultimately matters because I agree that the buck stops with the parents. I've joked about Penthouse Comix and '300', but I actually think those types of things should be allowed - I'm against censorship.

The issue is just one of people with a lot of influence and a captive audience of children making responsible and dignified decisions. That's what James Cameron did (again, on an R-rated movie). I'm sure that thousands of other filmmakers did the same thing. (I can tell you that no cartoon makers ever put that sort of imagery on shows when I was a kid. But, like I said, there also weren't nubile young women prancing around in midriffs on the cartoons when I was a kid, either.)

 

In the modern age of mass media it is impossible to really shelter children from a lot of the messages out there. Whether it be sex, violence, whatever you can't filter it all. Every program has these types of themes in one way or another and plays them off much more nonchalantly than the clone wars. Either you argue for the total sheltering and shutting off of children from the outside world or you accept the fact that this mature content is out there. It isn't so much about censoring the content anymore than taking the responsibility of talking about what the content means and how to think about it and how to behave in a proper way regardless of what is shown on TV.

 

okay...

 

Maybe you were too busy watching more of your videos of little boys to construct an actual argument?

Funny that you're the one who loves watching commercials with squealing little boys....and then you take some completely innocuous sentence fragments of mine (you didn't even know to start with the capital letter and end with the period. Nice.) and try to pass those off as controversial.

 

Please, don't act like Lucas would have handle it any differently. This is the same man who has a nine year old blow up an entire ship full of living beings, which ironically is worse. And no, the bigger issue is how you overreact to everything, from pointy lightsaber, to a "relationship" between Anakin and Ahsoka, and now this.

Maybe the problem isn't people aren't paying attention, maybe the problem is you.

 

I think you are just jaded trying to think of some pure time in the past when children weren't exposed to these things even though they were. Also I really fail to see what James Cameron did with an R-rated film that children were definitely not supposed to watch has to do with the state of modern children's entertainment on TV.

You would have to be a kid in the stone age since objectionable content in the media has been around since the dawn of TV, heck since the dawn of radio. I don't know how far you want to go back but even in the 70's or 80's you have young protagonists using violent means to dispose of enemies along with women in skin tight clothing.

 

This premiere truly shows what the Clone Wars is all about. I can't get over the fact that the team was able to make the clones so "human". You got to see them struggle and triumph (more so than any episode). Going into the minds of the clones is my favourite part of the show. I think that is a strength of the show is the look into clone society and exploring their backgrounds and their stories. Plus it is always cool to see what other beings think of the clones and their society. Personally I like the nicknames.

It was good to see the Rookies together again but man I lost it when Heavy gave his medal to 99. Then of course they had to kill 99. Truly he was an amazing character to show another side of the clones. The show has really stepped up in the action and the effects. Plenty of times I found myself at the edge of my seat hoping that the clones will make it. Or there were other moments that just made me sit back and have my jaw drop to the floor (in a mix of horror and my mind being blown by the visuals) such as seeing the towers of clone pod crumbling... Amazing start, this is why I freaking love this show Now I am patiently wait for next week to see the return to Ryloth. Here's to a good season with more heart filled stories, moral lessons, adrenaline pumping action and above all showing that Star Wars is the king of TV!

 

I'm going to stop now because even your replies are creepy.

 

I'm going to try to stop now because you're a phony and your arguments make zero sense.

Nice attempt at trying to reflect your creepiness onto me there, chief. You're the one who's been talking about how great the boys with guns are and telling people to watch a commercial of little boys, for little boys.

 

Guns are easier to animate than couples (or what-have-you) rolling around in the throes of wild passion.

 

Talk about taking what he said out of context, all he was saying is kids, mainly young boys tend to like to play with toy guns, I did when I was kid, and I am sure plenty other posters did when they were younger. How you take that as he enjoys watching kids playing with guns is beyond me.....and no offense is a bit creepy.

 

I know that lots of kids play with toy guns. (Although my dad was in Vietnam so he didn't let my brothers and I have them, we still got to play with them at most of our friends' places.)

But that, again, is a complete and total non sequitur. Zero relevance to whether it's appropriate for a children's cartoon to show young children firing "real" guns (not playing with toy guns).

My objective here wasn't to start a fight (although I think that, subconsciously, I do always want a little bit of an argument). But I seriously just thought that people would be like, "Yeah, that was crossing the line a little bit. But, hey, it was just one episode." Instead, the nearly unanimous consensus has been that it's good to show children firing guns in a children's cartoon. To me, that's absolutely insane. That was NEVER shown on the cartoons I watched when I was a kid - including supposedly "adult" and "dark" cartoons like Batman: The Animated Series.

 

Y'know, I personally think anyone who thinks anything Ashoka says is in anyway, "sexually coy," . . . well, I think that says more about their personal fantasies than it does anyone else.

Besides, no one has been able to provide any objective reasons as to why fictional clones bred to destroy battle droids shooting fictional blasters at fictional battle droids is something children wouldn't want to see. I mean, seriously.

BTW, I'd have had no issues if Cameron had allowed John Conner to fire a gun in T2. Granted, I'm not a soccer mom.

 

Just to let you all know, the dataclip on CN.com includes the scene where Asajj kisses the ARC Trooper. Which is ironic given that it's on CN's website.

The iTunes version didn't have the scene.

 

Cameron's not a soccer mom.

Granted, he's also not an impotent, Viagara-popping phony, wannabe tough guy.