PT Was Tartakovsky wrong or was Lucas about General Grievous's character?

We're about to have ... what... over 100 episodes by the end of this season of TCW. Compared to the TWO collective hours of Tartakovsky's. As much as I love what they did with the character development (most of which was in season 3) in the original microseries, this new season goes far above and beyond the old. I put Gennedy's series with the Droids cartoons these days. Very true to the characters, and very fun, but just a cartoon about the movies. This new The Clone Wars series is a whole thing unto itself. More is being asked of the viewer, not just in time, but in thought as well.

That being said, if I had to choose between the EU and TCW, I recognize that TCW is so self-contained and frankly so derivative of other movies and entertainment (often more explicitly than Star Wars), that I would actually demote it to something UNDER the EU, simply because I don't believe that the creators are taking it as seriously as the EU authors have. In other words, the grain of salt with which I used to watch TCW turned into a giant heap when they had that whole Face/Off arc, not to mention the Gulliver's Travels/Wizard of Oz episode. But the season five premier pretty much trounces the entire Clone Wars microseries.

 

That you've seen on screen.

No. It's obvious not relevant to the story they want to tell.

Millions? On the arena? No, there were hundreds, and there were dozens of Jedi aswell.

More than that.

Writing? Anyway, I call it an acceptable defeat.

Or you're reffering to Ahsoka's ability to sneak away? Anyway, the show has shown him able to defeat Jedi, therefore disproving your comment.

Says who?

In your opinion.

 

I'm not a huge fan of the Clone Wars micro series. I enjoyed it, to be sure, but it seemed rather over the top. Watching Jedi effortlessly take out armies just seems unrealistic and done more for fan escapism than for the integrity of the story. Likewise, Grievous, while fun to watch in both the film and the series, isn't really my main interest as a character. I find both incarnations to be equal, but I like Lucas' a tad more simply because I thought his character fit the film slightly better. Really, there was no need to have Grievous be an amazing "badass" villain to challenge Vader. In my opinion, that was already achieved with Palpatine who is, far and away, the best villain in the Saga and certainly the most entertaining and disturbing.

 

I didn't want to see him challenge Vader, only that having a decent, menacing, meaningful villain in the PT who wasn't just pulling the strings behind the scenes (as he also was in the OT) would have done wonders to increase the clear and present danger factor for me. And the version of Grevious in the micro-series (but in that series, not live-action) made me believe it would have been just fine. No threat to Darth Vader's iconic status.

In the end, sure we'd then be having "Who Is the Better Villain?" threads with battles between PT-mega-villain versus OT-Vader but the point would be that Vader is still Vader and iconic/classic because he is the Empire's muscle and image in the OT (and intimately connected to the protagonist Luke) and the protagonist Anakin would need to be deeply involved in the effort to defeat a trilogy spanning PT villain that may or may not have been Grevious but could have been and not as the CW micro series incarnation but also not the coughing, cut-and-run version of ROTS either. That's why I like him, he gives me something to riff off of while imagining how things could have been different.

 

It's just down to personal preference, I guess. I prefer Palpatine's subtle (and not so subtle) manipulation in the PT to Vader's overwhelming physical presence in the OT. Vader, in my opinion, only makes for a great villain in ESB -- in ANH, he's pretty run-of-the-mill and in ROTJ, he doesn't do anything particularly villainous. There's something about Palpatine, though, that's just chilling in a way Vader never could be -- how callously he manipulates those around him, how he makes his people suffer for his own gain, the facade he projects, and, in the end, what he does to Anakin.

Personally, I found the Palpatine-Anakin dynamic just as compelling as the Luke-Vader dynamic and far more sinister.

Grievous was rather ancillary to that and he didn't need to be more, in my opinion.

 

I agree that Palpatine is much more insidious as a villain and more interesting in that way. In theory and sometimes in performance anyway. Unfortunately, the way his master plan unfolds in the details is what prevents me from buying it fully. I like the broad strokes of his plan as written but all the other small coincidences that would need to happen that he either foresees (which starts to paint him as an omniscient super being villain, which makes him less interesting to me) or that he just gets lucky to have happen as his master plan unfolds, so things he didn't foresee but that just go his way and he rolls with it, make his plan seem flimsy and too far fetched. I liked the Palpatine in ROTJ who seems to kind of be on some sort of high with the dark side and is capable of having his own enthusiasm cause him to perhaps misread things he senses. The Palpatine of the PT, though very interesting, seems to be able to foresee all sorts of things he then needs to micromanage or something. I'm not being very clear. But I think others have argued it better than I am right now and RLM (your favorite person!) does a pretty good job of at least showing how unnecessarily convoluted it all ends up getting or feeling.

Ultimately though, a more villainous front man in the PT, Anakin's trilogy spanning nemesis would have worked wonders, with Palps perhaps even overshadowing him in the end result too! And Grievous reworked and as the Vader prototype I think he was meant to be could have been the one to use, but something between the ROTS and CW version IMO.

 

Lucas isn't "wrong" about Grievous, but neither is Tartakovsky. Tartakovsky was establishing the character in Clone Wars using the pretty limited information he was given by Lucas / LFL beforehand. Grievous' exagerrated abilities in Clone Wars pretty much mirror the exagerrated abilities of the Jedi in that show too, which is my main problem with it. It was a fun show to watch, but the over-the-top abilities got pretty silly sometimes.

 

In regards to Anakin, to be honest, I always got the impression that his trilogy spanning nemesis was himself, which is how it should be, in my opinion. Grievous wasn't that important to the proceedings in that regard.

But, in terms of Palpatine, one thing I like about him (and the way Lucas handles him) is that it's shown that things often don't go according to plan. But Palpatine's greatest asset seems to be his ability to adapt. When Amidala escapes Naboo, for instance, he just alters his plan and has her call for a vote of no confidence. Not exactly what he was planning initially, but it works just fine. Likewise, the same is true for Padmé's assassination. Whether she lives or dies is good for him. If she dies, he is rid of an opponent to his plans in the Senate. If she lives, though, he can use her to tempt Anakin. Or the situation with the clones -- I think it was very well done in the sense that regardless of how suspicious the situation might seem, Palpatine kept his attention on the important factors to make sure that the Jedi would have no choice but to use the army. He basically railroaded them into the decision. With the Separatists having created a huge army and ready to attack the Republic, the Jedi don't really have a choice whether or not to accept the clones.

Likewise, his temptation of Anakin was also very well done in that I felt he did a good job in playing upon all of Anakin's fears and anxieties while offering him what he'd always wanted and a set of circumstances in which he could justify his betrayal and the subsequent atrocities.

Palpatine's a great villain, in my opinion, because he is both fantastic and real. His political machinations and his personal abuse of Anakin are both (sadly) not at all uncommon in the real world. At the same time, though, his status as a Sith Lord helps to integrate him into Star Wars and help him fit into the space opera setting.

 

Anakin as his own nemesis is probably what we are supposed to get, though having that come through a real and physical grappling with a nemesis in the form of a character could still have lead to the same conclusion and been more interesting IMO.

I like your analysis of Palpatine's ability to adapt. Something about how it is executed (I know I'm a broken record...or a skipping CD?) doesn't work for me. Though I think you hit on something, his plot and character may just be too real world and subtle for my tastes in SW and therefore the "oh and he's also a Sith Lord" tag seems to be the afterthought that sutures him back into that world. And for me, it doesn't feel like enough to get it to stay sutured.

 

On some level, I think those factors were externalized -- such as with Dooku, for instance, the political idealist. But I think Lucas was wise not to lean too heavily on an opponent because I think he looked at the larger trajectory of Anakin's arc. As Darth Vader in the OT, for instance, it's pretty clear that the person chaining Anakin to the Dark Side is not so much Palpatine as it is himself, a point which is really clarified in ROTJ (in my opinion) when we see Anakin lament that it is too late for him but ultimately find the strength to destroy Palpatine. Of course, that's not to say that a physical nemesis in the form of a separate character would have been bad, but I'm very happy with the way Lucas presented it as is. For Anakin in the PT, making his conflict primarily man vs. himself was a good choice, in my opinion.

Well, it's merely a difference of opinion. To me, Palpatine's a great villain because, unlike Vader, he doesn't rely so much on his Force powers, his appearance, his voice, and his physical presence in order to make an impression. It's really his actions which are horrifying. And so I'm not really all that scared of Vader because he's much more difficult to perceive in a real-world analogue (at least, speaking in terms of a villain, rather than a pitiable wretch). Palpatine, on the other hand, is ever-present and that makes him truly frightening.

 

Both were correct. George Lucas wrote those episodes of the original Clone Wars series. The reason why Grievous is so powerful in the CW because he had the element of surprise and the Jedi had no time to prepare. In all the other instances the Jedi are prepared to fight him which makes Grievous lose one of his greatest advantages. Notice when Grievous is training with Dooku that Dooku notes that if he doesn't have the element of surprise then he might as well flee the battle! This fits in perfectly with all the other versions of Grievous. Although I think he's less of a coward in Revenge of the Sith that TCW the episode Grievous Intrigue balances all aspects of Grievous perfectly.

 

Ahsoka ran away and is more agile than Grievous. Really if Grievous wasn't so good at monologuing and being prideful than Ahsoka wouldn't have lasted long. Grievous definitely won that battle though quite easily.

 

I take it you are not a fan of Darth Maul returning in the fashion that he has then?

Good, me neither (nor any DM fan I would guess. Not robo legged, constantly mouthing off Maul. Esp when we know he has to die again anyway)

And Grievous should never have been in the movies. At the least, not have a Jedi Killer reputation, because quite frankly as his duel with Kenobi shows, there is a reason only Jedi and Sith weild Lightsabers. It is called the Force.

Greivous would have had better luck had he weilded 4 blasters, instead of Lightsabers.

 

I also thought that a cyborg with lightsabers was overkill. It's the most boring duel in a movie already filled with them.

 

It's kinda hilarious that a guy with a couple of blasters and a rocket pack did about eleventy billion times better against Obi-Wan than Grievous did

 

"Only Republic (Imperial?) clonetroopers are this precise"

 

I don't find ROTS Grievous and micro-series Grievous incompatible.

 

I will say I think the voice and the "knives slicing" sound for Grevious did sound better in the TCW micro-series. Also that voice was provided by the guy who plays Bender, and he does a really menacing (and very similar to his Grevious) Joker in "Batman: Under the Red Hood". The vocal switch is the only thing that annoyed me, really. Aside from that they're very similar in power-set levels.

As for Grevious being beaten by some Gungans, he was quite outnumbered and being shocked with electrical sticks, I think at that point it's a pure-numbers equation. And it's not as if he went out like "lulz, what a punk" he did look for a while there that he could smack out all those Gungans by himself and one of them did even bite it. It's one of the main motifs of Star Wars is that the smallest person (ie. this group of Gungans) can defeat a larger enemy (in this case, Grevious).

 

Grievous, not Grevious.

 

He defeated Master Mundi, while he severely injured Master Shaak Ti and Ayala Secura. In process he killed 2 Jedi Padawans. That battle to me didn't look right at all, a cyborg as good as he could be with lightsabers and some technological additions to defeat 2 Jedi Padawans, a Jedi Master and 2 Jedi Masters who were members of the High Council looked pathetic to me. On other events, Griveous killed a Jedi Knight who was an ex-Padawan of Master Fisto.

Anyway, talking about the original question, Lucas cannot be wrong for a character whom he created, and all other writers who overpowered him are a little wrong.

 

Lucas just because he allowed him to be a coward who runs instead of being a notorious Jedi killer that the Jedi feared to face.

 

The whole idea of a lightsaber wielding cyborg who kills the Jedi is silly.

 

Yeah, Darth Vader is such a silly idea.

Star Wars is full of silly ideas.

Grievous was hella entertaining in the microseries.

 

Ok, I'll clarify: non Force sensitive cyborg
The microseries were entertaining but totally over the top.
I wouldn't mind if Grievous was less cowardly and more threatening, but in a different way.

 

general kenobi, the negoiator, your beard has grown since we last met, 3 weeks ago

i've been trained in your Jedi arts by count Doooookkkkuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu, but oh you know that already, hmm,