Full Series The Clone Wars: Episode 419: Massacre Discussion Thread

I get that. Like I said, I could have done without it as well (still glad it was a statue and not a straw doll), to me it's just a really minor detail. It doesn't have the power to ruin other stuff like seeing how Mother Talzin fights with the Force. That's my opinion, I'm not saying everyone has to agree with me.

I agree that zombies would not have been my pick but they executed it well enough. Whatever "magic" the Nightsisters do, they do with the Force, and to me there's never too much Force use. When it comes to Talzin, I agree that they didn't portray her as mysterious as she was in the Force-witch trilogy of S3, but that was because she was going all-out with her Force powers which was crazy. So I'm cool with that. To me it developed her because we finally got to see what she could do in a fight as opposed to just rituals and such.

 

She must have snipped his hair while he visited Dathomir. I don't think he would trade something like a lock hair well knowing the witches practice voodoo magic.

 

Midi-chlorians

 

I haven't been following this discussion, but I don't see why there's such resistance to the proposition. I don't think the point was ever that it was impossible to come up with an in-universe explanation for what happened. That's always doable. Rather, I think people are just trying to point out that this represents a new direction for Star Wars, and more of a fantasy/horror direction than they'd gone heretofore. In much the same way, the concept of midichlorians was giving the series much more of a science fiction edge than it had up to that point.

As I think that example demonstrates, such new elements are A)not really worth disputing the novelty of and B)not the end of the world just because it's something new. We'll see how they work it in over time. As things currently stand, I guess I was okay with it. It makes a lot more sense than all the foolishness about Force vampires, Anzati, and whatever other stupid attempts to shoehorn Twilight and Dracula into this franchise have been made over the years.

 

I don't even know what that is, but it sounds awful.

 

Well, she makes some comment about how Dooku should have known better than to make a deal with witches. I figured that might be part of the price for their services, that he had to give up some of his hair. It's like in several demon/witch film/tv concepts, where someone making a deal with the demon has to spill some of their own blood as a sacrifice or whatever, and that - for some unexplained supernatural reason - seals the deal. I don't know if it's a matter of something similar in which Dooku was asked for some of his hair when making a deal with the witches, and then that in turn allows the witches complete control over him.

They didn't really dwell on the subject. But I hope that's the case. I'd hate to think that if Talzin just snipped some of Yoda's or Sidious' hair that she could just kill him. I'd hope that she only had that kind of power due to the nature of the deal they were making using dark magic, and that the hair had to be willingly given.

 

I'm...not exactly sure what I just watched.

Happy to see Ventress back though. I do enjoy her as a character. I felt for her at the very end. Talk about never getting cut a break.

But everything else? I have to wrap my mind around it first. Maybe try to catch a second viewing.

 

The thing is that while "the undead" are a very broad fantastic concept, cropping up in anything from religious texts to pulp sci-fi, ancient mythology or fairy-tales, sticking pins in voodoo dolls is a terribly specific reference.

Another thing that disappointed me in this episode was how uninteresting the nightsister warriors were. For a cult of Force-witches they seemed very limited to normal bow and melee combat. Is Talzin and the old crone the only ones with actual powers? It reminded me of the boring Jedi in the Ep2 arena. At least a few of those occasionally used Force Push or something...

 

Dooku fetish (or "Voodoo Doll") / Scooby Doo:

I was reminded more of this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1_I36qHDts

Maybe it depends on your frame of reference.

 

Well what is Star Wars exactly, ever since Mortis it has been clear that anything can be star wars nowadays.....griffins, gargoyles, magic and voodoo as well it seems- not too farfetched after we saw Talzin conjuring things from nowhere, and Forcewielders changing shape magically etc.- besides those things can be easily explained by midichlorians if magical explanation is not enough- apparently pure midihclorians are green... curious...
Surprising that dathomiri didn't have broomstickspeeders

 

Too much fantasy bull****

 

First examples of "fantasy bull****" in Star Wars: Obi-Wan's Jedi mind trick and Darth Vader's Force-choke in Ep. IV. It's magic!

Also, SPOILER ALERT, if you get past Ep. IV there are actually ghosts!

 

The problem is that the narrative of the episode tries to present Asajj as being someone who cares about her sisters. I would have liked the presentation more if Asajj was presented as a bit more cold blooded and callous towards her new "sisters". She shouldn't be the emotionally moved being who gets upset everytime one of them gets killed.

Asajj got more upset than Talzin when her "sisters" were getting killed and that makes it seem to me like they were trying to push Ventress as the hero that we as the viewers were suddenly suppost to care about. If it had been presented as a straight evil vs evil battle within the confines of the episode I would have had as much issue.

As for your Transformers dig, your way off base on that one. Not unlike Star Wars, Transformers has a varied history with shows and films that capture emotions as well as any. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. When Optimus Prime dies in the 1986 film it was one of the most emotional deaths in cartoon history. It actually resulted in a letter writing campaign against Hasbro by both kids and moms condemning Hasbro for upsetting so many kids. Tears in the theater and a letter writing campaign, hard to top that

 

I guess Dathomir is just a giant Dagobah cave. Extremely strong in certain aspects of the Force. When I think of it this way, I'm absolutely fine with everything that happened.

 

When I was a kid, this is what I imagined the Prequel era to be like. I've always had the notion that just like real history, where the farther back you go the more strange the world seems, historical eras in fictional universes should work the same way. By the time TPM came out, my interior version of the prequel era was a cross between War & Peace and The Golden Bough! So, none of this bothers me. I don't think GL went far enough with the PT. I loved the Veitch-era "Tales of the Jedi" comics, and I love all the zany stuff Lucas toyed with before rolling up his sleeves and crafting the minimalist perfection of the original film. Some of the Lucas material 1999-Present is weirdly like things I had imagined as a child: Naboo, Kamino, Mustafar, Mortis Trilogy, and all this Nightsister stuff.

I guess that people who don't like TCW will love the live-action series.

 

I don't think it's exactly the same, but it's similar. I remember many people made that comparison to Mortis, which I think makes a lot more sense. I think Dathomir is in that same vein, but not to the same extreme that Mortis was. It's like Mortis junior, the planet clearly has unique Force properties, but I don't think the planet is the Force like Mortis was.

 

Maybe the problem is: the Force is supposed to be the ONLY magic/mystical power in Star Wars? The witch magic doesn't really seem like the Force.. but when it come to the dark side, who knows.

I didn't exactly have problems with the witch magic, except that it was pretty boring and unoriginal. And with power like Talzin's, Ventress should visit home more often. I'm sure she could've gotten some beard trimmings from Obi-Wan at some point.

 

Well...

"Run, Luke, Run!"

"Use the Force, Luke."

Ghosts have been there since the beginning.

 

True, but in Ep. V and Ep. VI you actually see ghosts. And they're actually important to the story, unlike Talzin's artifact.

Force-witch magic = the Force. Earlier in the thread someone quoted Mother Talzin from the Book of the Sith talking about how the Nightsisters use the Force. (This was well-established before that, in fact, even before the PT.)

 

Six page, in-depth review:

http://tvrecaps.ew.com/recap/star-wars-clone-wars-season-4-episode-19-nightsisters/

 

Cursing or healing someone by using an effigy of them is not unique to Voodoo but appears in many cultures. So called poppets originated in European witchcraft, as did the practice of sticking pins into them, which later became ascribed to Voodoo.

It's not as specific as people think and so such an object can be considered as fitting into the SW universe as well as anything else that might be used in general magic rituals.

 

Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.
Green magic brew and Lock of Dooku
Make him twist and scream and go cuckoo.

I really liked this episode for the most apart, that being the part where it went overboard with the witchcraft: green cauldron and the voodoo doll.

+Awesome action and visuals.
+Super-speed undead sisters.
+Talzin Force zap powers.
+Grievous kicking ass.
+Defoliator
+Ending shot of Ventress and Talzin that was similar to Luke and ghost Kenobi on Hoth.

-voodoo magic stuff.

 

Yep, it's generically called a "fetish" and given Lucas's interest in anthropology it's not surprising that he should use the concept. Indeed, the Force was once related directly to a fetish, which almost made it into the original film:

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Kaiburr_crystal

So, nothing new here...