Full Series The Clone Wars: Episode 422: Revenge Discussion Thread

Well said, Robimus.

I'm well aware of and happy with the fact that Lucas is making SW up as he goes along. That does not mean I have to like every little thing about.

For example:

I think the ability to use the Force has become pretty insignificant next to the power of Nightsister magic.

The problem is not that it's too powerful. I mean look at the Death Star. THAT is powerful. The thing is, Nightsister magic is also very easy. And that's the problem. That is what cheapens it.

Imagine if it was just as easy for Vader to destroy an entire planet with the Force as it was to choke the life out of some imperial officer. Wouldn't that, you know, cheapen the Force incredibly? That is why there's a Death Star that takes 20+ years to build.

P + E = C^2

Powerful + Easy = Cheesy

 

I didn't quite understand Savage's concern that if Asajj and Obi-Wan get away, that the Jedi will know that they are back... Maul already sent a broadcast to the Jedi Temple to summon Obi-Wan, so I figure that kind of gave everything away.

 

Yeah, it's so easy, unlike how Luke is able to destroy the DS after about one day of Jedi training, and Anakin is made a Sith Lord after doing one act of evil for Sidious, or how Luke can almost defeat Vader after a long weekend with Yoda!

Uh huh, SW is so consistent

Oh no, the Force has been cheapened!!!

 

Yes, it has been. Along with the whole thing, pretty much.

Internal rules have been violated. In the SW universe, the things you mentioned can happen, per precedents. All the stuff in the Katie Lucas-scripted episodes cannot. Could not....

 

@ Sword

Yeah, now you're just over-simplifying things.

I'm trying to remember things you have been complaining about in the past, because I'm pretty sure you have.

 

Nah. I want an explanation, but there is a big diffrence between what happened and your example. Afterall, the movie focus on Luke while the CW doesn't focus on Maul.

Nah, I'm fine with survived as there is a precedent for it in the EU, still I want an explenation for the legs.

 

I wasn't a fan of all those middling, going nowhere eps at the head of S3. All those repetitive "political" eps that didn't actually delve into politics or explore what was happening to people. I was also disappointed with Asoka being kept in an endless adolescence, and how she was being handled. I was very happy to see her moved up in age. I'm not a fan of KL's dialogue, although I guess she's just carrying on the grand family tradition!

But as for story logic...SW had some? I must've missed that. Seems to me characters just do whatever and never really explain their motivations. And when they do it tends to come out like, "Come back to the real world, Ani! I'm a Senator and you're a Jedi!" This is hardly sparkling character dialogue.

Dunno, for me, complaining at this point that SW makes no sense...kinda makes no sense.
And maybe, just maybe, they've got a solid direction they're getting to, in the end.

 

I don't have problem believing near human species can breed with humans myself in the GFFA. Twi-liks and humans, Zabrack and human look very related. I base this on what I know of real world biology and zoology. There are going to be freaks out there who find their soulmate in someone who is not their own kind (how romantic!), freaks with fetishes, or who merely are not able to find a soulmate of their own kind.

Lions and Tigers are different species in the same genus of Panthera just like Humans are the genus Homo. Those two big cats have different numbers of chromosomes yet they can breed and create either a liger or a tigon depending on which animal is the father. The real problem with this would be moral and the fact the mutant offspring usually has serious health problems, an identity crisis, is sterile, and lives a short life.

FYI some species can interbreed even though they are in a different genus.

 

I kinda agree with you but whether the audience accepts bull**** or not (yes, I'm aware there's enough in the movies) depends on the presentation too. If this presentation lacks it stretches the suspension of disbelief. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WillingSuspensionOfDisbelief

This story twist simply seems to much for many in the audience. Accepting Mauls survival in such a short time frame coupled with Talzins superpowers isn't easy. I mean, even I find Talzin hard to swallow and I'm usually really relaxed about that kind of thing. For some reason it is easier for me to suspend my disbelief when I'm watching the OT.

 

No, he chose to become one. The reasons for which were carefully established over the course of 3 movies. And yet people still felt like it all happened too fast. Even within Star Wars, there's a certain logic to things. It's not like Lucas suddenly went 'LOL Anakin turns here' in the middle of making RotS. He spends 3 audio commentaries explaining how he establishes everything step for step. Sure he'll cut some corners here or there, but the important elements all have a certain build-up.

It's just not true that SW has never seriously tried to be internally consistent, yet that is what you claim.


You're over-simplifying things just to get your point across. As such, it's hard to take you seriously, especially because of the style in which you debate. It comes off as really condescending, between the lines or not, it's definitely there. It's almost like you just like to provoke reactions.

 

Gry Sarth and Cadeus already made excellent points. To those, I would only add the following: we saw Darth Maul fall down. Even then, he didn't look remotely alive. He looked like two pieces of a lifeless corpse, tumbling down a giant hole. Because that what he was.

This is both true and completely irrelevant to what we're discussing. Yes, a given myth has many different permutations, and every teller will change the story slightly. But each version is internally consistent to its own rules. There's no myth where they go out of their way to explain that the world works in a certain way, then disobey those rules, then not offer any explanation for it.

This is not at all the same thing. There are plenty of intelligent, successful adults that don't realize it's impossible to hear sound in space. For centuries, not even the smartest scientists in the world knew. By contrast, almost as soon as someone grasps the concept of death, they realize you can't get cut in half and still be okay. Let alone getting cut and half and then falling down hundreds of feet. Your comparisons are ridiculous, and only undercut your own position. We all understand and accept that Lucas fudges on the details, and no one is asking for hyper-realism. We're asking that when people do things that would be obviously fatal, they either A)actually die or B)give an explanation for the survival. That's a pretty basic tent of any notion of reality at all.

We are making posts about what actually happened, and the story told in the Star Wars films and television show. You, however, have to resort to attempts to psychoanalyze our enjoyment. Why? If this is so similar to stuff that has become before, how come you have to keep offering hypotheticals? How come you can't find one single incident of something like this, if it's supposed to have been so common?

For someone who is trying to argue that this is consistent with the style of Star Wars, you've been incredibly skimpy about actual facts. Have you considered that this is perhaps because you are not correct, and this is different after all? In the end, this isn't about me, or my childhood, or people losing their sense of innocent enjoyment. It's not about different story-telling styles, or mythology, or anything else. It's about the fact that they did a 180-degree reversal of position, and what us to pretend like they didn't. That's silly.

 

I don't know how those kids could be twilek hybrids. For one, they sure wern't bilogical children to that clone, because of there age. And if they were hybrid kids from another human man....that creates another question.

Why was that episode the 1st time we see human-twilek hybrids? Think about it. Man (baseline and near-humans) is the largest intelligent species in the GFFA. Add that to the fact that many female twileks are used as slaves/hookers/etc, for other species. So you would think, that if female twileks could be impregnated by male humans.....then there would be alot more hybrids in the galaxy, probably alot because of an "accident". I know the real world reason why we haven't seen these hybrids in the EU until that TCW episode is because they hadn't created the concept yet.....though in-universe, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I really hope that those twilek kids are 100% alien. I really don't want star wars to become more like star trek.

Though perhaps an in-universe explanation could be given. Maybe twilek's can have kids with humans.....it's just rare....because of the biological reasons. The fact that they are different species causes the percentage of having an offspring with another species....very low.

 

Are you saying that, in his broken mind, he thought he was some filthy spider and so therefore had used the dark side of the Force to appear as one?

 

That's retarded. Now 2 alien species have been retconed into not being aliens at all (near-humans are not aliens).


Watch out humanoid aliens.....you may be retconed into never being aliens in the first place.

 

[/thread]

 

Au contraire. It's rather the smart thing to do.

If you want to be an alien, you have to try harder than this .

 

Okay, just saw it today. I have pretty mixed feelings about the episode and the arc as a whole.

-This arc should have gotten rid of a villain IMO. We now have Asajj, Dooku, Grievous, Savage and Maul. I feel Savage served his purpose and has nothing to contribute anymore. Same with Asajj. She seems like a fan service character now. First she got an Emo Jedi background, then she became a nightsister, and finally she's an uber-cool bounty hunter who suddenly discovers her morale. I find her character was never given a real long-term storyline, she could have just as well been defeated by Dooku or Grievous in both Nightsister-centered arcs. Really unfortunate the team didn't use the advantage of the TV series medium to steadily develop her into something. Instead she was dropped into the movie, then suddenly turned into a disposable assassin in Season 3.

-I wish Obi Wan had been given a Force meditation scene before the holographic transmission came in. Would have been a great opportunity to show a flashback to TPM's duel of the fates and Obi Wan's trauma that resulted from it.

-I couldn't make out anything Maul said in the freighter. Could someone post a transcript, please?

-A great little moment when Maul drew those crates closer to him to hide. This was the perfect way to demonstrate he was a broken soul.

-Although Maul's revival felt rushed, I liked how they utilized the remains of the Separatist droids for the creation of his legs.

-So does Maul not hold a grudge against Sidious for leaving him for dead?

-Maul getting the Council's attention by slaughtering others was quite effective and pure evil.

-The discussion between Mace and Yoda was one of the episode's highlights for me.

-There were parts during the freighter duel I really liked:
Obi Wan's reckless attitude. Shows his humorous side from the movies. Some really good zingers in there.
Maul mentioning Qui-Gon and the fact Obi Wan can turn towards Dark Side rage (as he did in TPM).

-Parts I didn't like:
Asajj turning "good", while it featured some fun banter felt too much like a fan-service to me.
The duel happening in such a claustrophobic space. It felt a bit like fan-fiction / a fanfilm.
Too many villains with too little background/ character (Savage/ Asajj) and the fact everyone was spared to live another arc.

-Obi Wan's animated hairdo. I'm sure we already saw his hair move during the slave arc, but it stood out here bringing the character more to life.


So yeah, the whole Savage / Nightsisters / Maul story has yet to establish something significant to Star Wars as a whole. So far it feels to go nowhere, even though it contains elements that could turn everything that we thought we knew on its head.

 

JW - point by point:

>>if ESB had ended with Luke falling down the ventilation shaft<<

Gry Sarth and Cadeus already made excellent points. To those, I would only add the following: we saw Darth Maul fall down. Even then, he didn't look remotely alive. He looked like two pieces of a lifeless corpse, tumbling down a giant hole. Because that what he was.

No they didn't. Reality also tells us that getting your hand cut off & getting tossed down a few miles and left to hang for a couple of minutes will also probably kill you. I would imagine that the physical & emotional shock would be enough to stop anyone hanging from little metal sticks. But Luke has "the Force"...all fixed! This is a matter of degrees. If I'm going to swallow the first part, I'll swallow the rest. Lucas is using the same story gimmick: the Force, "magic", whatever. No one has yet to make a compelling response to this. So Maul looked dead -- so did Obi Wan! He was literally gone!! And Ani sure looked dead burning on that pyre in RotJ. Big deal.

>>Myths don't make flagrant illogical changes? What have you been reading? There is not one single traditional story from anywhere in the world that exists in only one form.<<

This is both true and completely irrelevant to what we're discussing. Yes, a given myth has many different permutations, and every teller will change the story slightly. But each version is internally consistent to its own rules. There's no myth where they go out of their way to explain that the world works in a certain way, then disobey those rules, then not offer any explanation for it.

1. I'd argue with you that "myths" are internally consistent, the idea of internal consistency in narratives is a very recent invention, but its a fair enough point. However, we're talking about the intentions of the artist. Lucas purposely leaves things out of his narratives to create the effect of a real cultural artifact, something not created by an individual author. You can actually find lots of quotes of Lucas talking about this, how he experimented with editing speed, with leaving things out of the story, with referring to events that occur offscreen, sometimes to emulate pulp fiction, sometimes to evoke the sense of a bigger world, like obscure references in fragments of myths and epics. This is abstraction. And as I said before, it's not unlikely that he's worked out the Night Sister "magic" in great detail. But it's not in his style to lay all that exposition on the audience. TPM is as close as we've ever come to that. Partly, it's that he likes fast-moving stories; another part is that he wants the viewer to feel disoriented, something like artificial "culture-shock"; and partly because he might have a place already earmarked for explanation and we haven't gotten there yet. How is Maul's return not in line with the well-established perimeters of SW?

2. The concept of SW "rules" is purely subjective. Each viewer has a different perception. Once I was old enough to understand some science and the reality of warfare, for me, SW was relegated to pure fantasy. Lord of the Rings represents a complete fantasy that is fanatically internally consistent. But even with Tolkien, who didn't live long enough to tidy everything up, there are inconsistencies. Many Tolkien fans like this, they say it's like a real body of "myth" with overlapping, conflicting narratives (see above). SW has never striven for Tolkienian verisimilitude. Thus, I don't find Maul's come-back any more or less believable than the other absurdities in SW.

>>Have you ever watched a movie serial or read a serialized story? They are full of this sort of thing, and that is the structure Lucas used to base SW on. He's been "cheating" since C3P0 strolled across a corridor riddled with laser-bolts unharmed. Or since the arrival of the Star Destroyer was accompanied by the roaring of giant jet engines...in the vacuum of space!<<

This is not at all the same thing. There are plenty of intelligent, successful adults that don't realize it's impossible to hear

 

Witwer makes it sound more like the Dark Side of the Force is just kind of doing its own kind of thing with Maul. I think the whole thing is absurd, but I think given that Witwer is such a nerd, I'm sure he asked Filoni how Maul survived, so I doubt Witwer is just making stuff up in the chat. He probably got the answer - as ridiculous as it is - from Filoni.

 

The kids were confirmed as hybrids in a TCW character guide. Visually the younger boy looked more halfbreedy than his older sister but there you go. I guess Suu Laqwane just has a thing for humans. I thought it vaguely possible that the boy was Cut's and had inherited some clone rapid-growth genes, but I guess not. Of course they could be easily retconned into being full-bred but sort of weird-looking (albeit not even as weird-looking as Orn Free Ta) Twi'leks.

Pretty much agree with the rest of that, though. In any case the TOR Mother Machine thing is just awful, as is the Dathomiran Zabraks being all half-human. Why did anyone feel the need to make that change? Bizarre. Is it just because the Nightsisters are predominantly human? And if so, doesn't that imply that the Nightbrothers would become exponentially less Zabrak with every generation?

 

Does Filoni still do the recaps behind the scenes snippet on TCW site? I used to enjoy that to a certain extent - but cant find them anymore.

 

And just saying - for all the arguing and outright incivility and fighting in this thread - it seems to me that the ONLY episodes of this series from start to finish that enjoyed near total approval are the ones fully Clone focused with little Jedi action.

Anyone disagree? Apparently - when making a show about The Clone Wars and focusing on, duh, Clones - these guys can make some darn good episodes.

For the record - from an outsider not engaged in any of this debate anymore -- you all seem to say "i hate arguing" or "i dont wanna fight" but no sooner than you smooth it over with someone you begin with someone else.

Thus - Star WARS is alive and well.

 

The Clone episodes are the ones I liked least.

I watch this stuff mostly for how it looks, and the clones look downright ugly. Plus... I can never tell them apart.

 

Ok! Can we please stop fighting over Maul still being alive??? This thread needs to be about the "Revenge" episode and only that episode. The Mods already said they're going to start banning or lock this thread. I'll make a thread about Maul being alive and you can discuss it there.

 

My guess is that it could be reconciled that the Dathomiri witches are Ratattaki pilgrims/outcasts/whatever. I don't know if the EU has tried to reconcile things yet, but given that the zabrak themselves are not native to Dathomir and were introduced, it might be the same for the Nightsisters. They could be Ratattaki. There isn't some sprawling civilization of nightsisters on Dathomir, it just looks like a small tribe that was wiped out, and curiously enough in Revenge Talzin makes reference to them surviving like they always have. Unless she intends for herself to breed with Savage and make a new generation of horribly in-bred witches, it could mean that they will assimilate others in the "old ways" in order to rebuild.