Clone Wars, S1

[Set Harth]

Vader could barely defeat an old man and a novice who had a modicum of training, he was slow as hell and could barely use his TK powers.

He used them just fine in Cloud City. Also, Yoda and Dooku were quite powerful as old men.

He clearly lost a great deal of his power.

Potential, not power. In terms of actualized mastery he has increased, as we might expect given his 20 more years of experience by the time of the OT: When I left you, I was but a learner; now I am the master. We can already see at the end of ROTS that he hasn't lost as much of his power as some might think, due to his destruction of the medical droids. Lucas toned down Anakin's displays of power in ROTS, but it seems significant that this happened in scenes occurring both before and after the immolation.

The "Dark Lord" novel goes into this in detail, how he can barely move in the suit and every movement is agony for him.

The same novel also emphasizes that the true power of the dark side lies in the will, and features Vader more fully embracing this by the end of the book.

After all if it is the presence of midichlorians in your blood that gives you Force power, and he just lost all four of his extremities, his M-C count probably just fell by half, explaining why he's so weak and slow in the OT.

His midichlorian count remained the same. It's a cell concentration as defined by The Phantom Menace, not the total amount of midichlorians in the body ( a meaningless statistic which is never cited in the films or other canon ). Qui-Gon took a blood sample to determine Anakin's midichlorian count; he didn't grind up Anakin's whole body and feed it into the machine. A blood test on OT Vader would yield the same result. The protagonist of Jedi Twilight ( which takes place after ROTS ) senses Vader as someone stronger in the Force than he had ever encountered before.

The midichlorians are total BS as an explanation for anything

They're really just a name for the genetically-inherited strength in the Force which was already on display in the OT era, both explicitly in ROTJ dialogue and implicitly as a reason for Luke's importance as stressed by TESB.

 

[Hound of UIster]

Potential, not power. In terms of actualized mastery he has increased, as we might expect given his 20 more years of experience by the time of the OT

No this has been confirmed by Lucas. Anakin had the potential to be twice as powerful as Sidious. After his lava bath, he was at Dooku or Maul's level who he had surpassed already in the beginning of Revenge of the Sith.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

^ I chalk that up to one of the fundamental discrepancies between the OT & PT. Heck, even Palpatine was doing swirls and twists and flips and such in the PT. And no one in the OT could do that? Really?

I see it more as a stylistic difference than informing us about the realities of the characters themselves.

Palpatine didn't expect Vader to betray him.

His entire weakness or shatterpoint was that he absolutely trusted Anakin to act as his pawn.

First Vader is turned into a naive idiot, and now Palps?!? Is there no one left to root for in the entire Star Wars mythos?

Palps may have been a vile, wretched excuse for a human being but I always figured he was the smartest guy in the room (not that he had much competition, but oh well). As a Sith, he should expect any other Sith to be either stabbing him in the back or thinking about it real hard. Sorta goes with the territory, doesn't it? I certainly hope this doesn't mean he chose Anakin as his pawn because he was such an obvious dupe. That's just too depressing. Sure, it's a smart move on Palps' part, but we don't want to watch stories about stupid heroes or depowered villains, at least I sure don't.

I want everyone in any given story to earn my attention by being the best at whatever they're supposed to be best at. And nobody should be stupid. I really, really, really despise stupid characters and have no respect for writers who fall back on the obvious crutch of making a character stupid for the convenience of the plot.

To bring this back around to the alleged topic of this thread: I haven't noticed Clone Wars committing the sin of making characters stupid for the convenience of the plot. So far, so good.

After his lava bath, he was at Dooku or Maul's level who he had surpassed already in the beginning of Revenge of the Sith.

Well Dooku and Maul seemed capable of doing some serious damage in a fight, so if Vader was "only" at their level while getting used to his new bionic setup, then he's still a force to be reckoned with, not some hobbling, pathetic cripple.

 

[Silvercrest]

First Vader is turned into a naive idiot, and now Palps?!? Is there no one left to root for in the entire Star Wars mythos?

Stick with Artoo. He's da man.

No this has been confirmed by Lucas. After his lava bath, he was at Dooku or Maul's level who he had surpassed already in the beginning of Revenge of the Sith.

After creating one of the most iconic villains of all time, I don't get why Lucas is deliberately trying to tear him down. I mean, it's one thing to mess up Anakin's story through poor writing. It's another to come right out and say that Vader was never that powerful.

 

[Dream]

Season Two of Clone Wars comes out on DVD next week!

No break in between the first two season for you!

 

[Listener4]

This show isn't bad, and in many ways more satisfying than the prequels, but it doesn't seem to really be getting any better. If it's really a kids show it should be on Saturday mornings. I would like to see some more depth to the characters and some of the real problems of the prequels, such as the morality of enslaved clones, addressed.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Season Two of Clone Wars comes out on DVD next week!

No break in between the first two season for you!

Good! I don't want there to be a break. I tried to pace my S1 viewing so I wouldn't have to go more than a week or two before seeing the next bunch.

I haven't seen it at normal pace yet, but I think the series really comes off better in chunks of 3 or 4 at a time, especially when the stories are structured as trilogies. And even the trilogy structure is kind of loose, and stories can have threads that are easier to keep track of if you're watching in chunks.

One isolated episode can seem kind of "empty" and simplistic (and the endings are so abrupt they often don't even feel like endings, but invitations to keep watching) but when you see them together, they create an interesting cumulative picture.

I'm compiling S3 on my DVR and I might just start pacing my S2 viewing so that I've got all of S3 queued up by the time I'm ready for it.

After creating one of the most iconic villains of all time, I don't get why Lucas is deliberately trying to tear him down. I mean, it's one thing to mess up Anakin's story through poor writing. It's another to come right out and say that Vader was never that powerful.

Messing up Anakin with poor writing is a far bigger crime to me than having Vader be "only" as powerful as Dooku in the early years in the tin suit which we aren't going to see anyway. I have no actual understanding of who's more powerful than who, or why, or by how much. That's just video game type score-keeping stuff that makes no difference to me. If the story requires that Dooku win a fight, then he'll win, fine by me.

I was objecting to Vader being weak as an excuse for why he didn't stab the evil Emperor in the back immediately and prevent the Empire from growing into an oppressive and genocidal government. I say he didn't do that because he's a villain!!! Not because he meant well but was feeling weak and listless for 20 years, poor baby.

Which brings me back to the original point - now that Anakin is being rewritten pretty thoroughly, and is definitely heroic and capable of empathy and other normal human emotions, how is he plausibly going to become a villain in the end?

Maybe I should squelch my objection to the dark side being a form of mind control. I dislike that because it negates the moral issue of falling to the dark side. If it's like being assimilated by the Borg, then you can't blame anyone, not even Palps! Phooey on that.

But unless it's kind of like mind control, then some Jedi - who are mentally healthy and haven't had deprived childhoods or suffered any particular trauma - should be pretty strongly immune to the dark side, and I don't like that idea either. I prefer the idea that all Jedi are susceptible and their only real defense is vigilance. If a nice kid like Luke is susceptible, then really anybody should be.

So maybe it needs to be a combination of the two, but getting the balance right without it all seeming like a cheat and not adequately motivated is going to be tough. One thing Clone Wars really needs to do is to start showing other Jedi besides Anakin being susceptible to the dark side, maybe even have someone go almost all the way through the process before they pull back from the brink or are killed or something. Could be a minor character or someone invented for the plotline - maybe a Jedi who isn't making the cut and gets angry or desperate - that could be enlightening.

 

[Silvercrest]

After creating one of the most iconic villains of all time, I don't get why Lucas is deliberately trying to tear him down. I mean, it's one thing to mess up Anakin's story through poor writing. It's another to come right out and say that Vader was never that powerful.

Messing up Anakin with poor writing is a far bigger crime to me than having Vader be "only" as powerful as Dooku in the early years in the tin suit which we aren't going to see anyway.

True. I just meant that being a poor writer can't really be helped-- but going out of your way to assassinate an existing character is another story.

Of course, come to think of it, that's exactly what he did with the Han/Greedo situation. I guess George has some weird vendetta to deconstruct his coolest characters.

Like I said, stick with Artoo.

 

[Mr Light]

One thing Clone Wars really needs to do is to start showing other Jedi besides Anakin being susceptible to the dark side, maybe even have someone go almost all the way through the process before they pull back from the brink or are killed or something.

Did you see the mid season one "Lair of Grievous" episode yet?

No spoilers here but a lot of us think that Ashoka is going to go Dark Side and that's why she isn't in ROTS. She *IS* Anakin Junior after all!

 

[Temis the Vorta]

One thing Clone Wars really needs to do is to start showing other Jedi besides Anakin being susceptible to the dark side, maybe even have someone go almost all the way through the process before they pull back from the brink or are killed or something.

Did you see the mid season one "Lair of Grievous" episode yet?

No spoilers here but a lot of us think that Ashoka is going to go Dark Side and that's why she isn't in ROTS. She *IS* Anakin Junior after all!

I've been wondering if Something Terrible(TM) happens to spunky, cute little Ashoka and that sends Anakin around the bend. I figured that every so often, a Jedi's gotta buy it, and that she just gets killed, but your theory is more interesting.

I did see Lair of Grievous - do you mean the headstrong young Jedi who got himself killed being foreshadowing about Ashoka? That could just as easily be foreshadowing about Anakin or anyone else in the story.

Yoda: To answer power with power, the Jedi way this is not. In this war, a danger there is, of losing who we are.

Yet they run around swinging lightsabers at everyone they see. As of S1, there hasn't been much effort to depict the Jedi as people who have to be very selective about how and how much they fight, if the implication is that violence itself exposes you to danger of the dark side.

It would be an interesting development if they realized that as the war drags on, the Jedi are getting more vulnerable and they have to ratchet back the battle part of their overall strategy and try to use more diplomacy or maybe start to figure out that the whole thing was manufactured by Palps and maybe rushing off to fight everywhere, all the time, is exactly the wrong way to handle the situation?

Are the Jedi not accustomed to this degree and intensity of fighting an all-out war? Did Palps manufacture the war simply to expose the Jedi to the danger of the dark side and then wait patiently as one by one they start to fall right into his lap?

I just meant that being a poor writer can't really be helped-- but going out of your way to assassinate an existing character is another story.

Yet Lucas is involved in Clone Wars and is therefore overseeing or at least permitting a total rewrite on Anakin. Is he a) ashamed at how much he frakked up the character and trying to make amends; b) uninterested in how the character is depicted because it has no impact on the real point of Star Wars, namely selling plastic to kiddies at Toys R Us; or c) oblivious to the notion that the Anakin in Clone Wars and the PT is a completely different guy, because he just doesn't see it?

 

[Whofan]

In one of the other threads I actually wondered if Clone Wars was, in fact, an alternate reality of sorts.

-The series has largely rewritten the war as presented in previous comics/novels/games etc. These had Anakin still be Obi-Wan's apprentice for the majority of the war until the final year or so before SITH (and his characterization was more in line with the films than the 'good man' from the current series), didn't have the Jedi wearing battle armor all the time (Although one can say that's simply because robes are hard to animate), and had somewhat different characterizations/origins of Ventress, Boba Fett, Greedo and the Mandalorians. And no Asoka was ever mentioned.

-The problem with this is that Lucasfilm licensing is almost always going on about Star Wars has an airtight continuity between the films and all licensed material. Oops.

-Star Wars is actually no stranger to multiple timelines. The Infinities label by Dark Horse allowed DH to make several alternate reality series, mainly the Infinities trilogy which was similar in execution to Marvel's "What if" and DC's Elseworlds-basically, what if Luke missed the Death Star, Luke died on Hoth and Leia had to take on her brother's Legacy, and what if the ROTJ plan to rescue Han didn't work as planned? Plus a lot of comedy/parody licensed SW fiction and otherwise uncategorized stories were now put under the label.

-Yoda did say in the season 3 trailer that there are many possible futures. A hint perhaps?

 

[Temis the Vorta]

In one of the other threads I actually wondered if Clone Wars was, in fact, an alternate reality of sorts.

Could be. It's the REAL reality as far as I'm concerned.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

No spoilers here but a lot of us think that Ashoka is going to go Dark Side and that's why she isn't in ROTS. She *IS* Anakin Junior after all!

I just saw an episode description for tonight's (S3) episode.

Spoiler: upcoming ep

And I think you're onto something. Also, I won't be reading any more episode descriptions, if there's an actual character arc emerging!

 

[Set Harth]

Yoda did say in the season 3 trailer that there are many possible futures. A hint perhaps?

More like a rehash of something he said in TESB.

Yet Lucas is involved in Clone Wars and is therefore overseeing or at least permitting a total rewrite on Anakin.

Anakin in TCW is sketched in essentially the same way as he is presented in the beginning of ROTS.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Huh? Anakin in the prequels is an appalling, unappealing whiny little bitch who elicits no sympathy at all, and raises the question of why smart people with discernment and taste, such as Obi-Wan and Padme, would be his friend and lover respectively, or why the Jedi Order doesn't kick his sorry ass back to Tatooine when it becomes apparent that he just ain't Jedi material, something that should be obvious the minute he opens his mouth and starts whining again. He's not only a bad character, he makes characters around him look bad by association and taints everything in the movies.

OTOH, Anakin in Clone Wars is heroic, funny, appealing, sympathetic and warm-hearted. He doesn't whine or act like a disgusting, self-pitying punk who needs a good hard slap or twelve. He seems like perfectly good Jedi material and it's easy to understand why Obi-Wan considers him a friend and Padme is enough in love with him to ignore perfectly reasonable rules about Jedi celibacy despite being an otherwise sensible and intelligent young woman. This Anakin is the one I expected to see in the PT, not that other horrible guy who I am doing my best to forget ever existed.

Anakin in the PT isn't a character worth building any story around. Anakin in Clone Wars is definitely worth building a story around, but then the problem becomes how a fine, upstanding character like him could fall to the dark side. As of S1, it's still a mystery. There's been a little foreshadowing along the way, largely in how he's animated every so often to look sinister, but that's a long ways from being a psycho who blows up whole planets.

So it's a challenge for the writers but I think there are ways to pull it off plausibly and I'm interesting in seeing them try. Even if they fail, at least they've done good work in salvaging half of Anakin's story, even if it's the easy half.

Or do you mean that the negative impression that Anakin makes in the PT is due to Hayden Christensen's performance, and the same script given to a different actor would have made a thoroughly different impression? I haven't really gone thru the script line for line to see if such a thing would be possible. I can't think of any other example of bad casting alone so thoroughly sabotaging a character with no help from the script, but that could very well be the case. In that case, I guess Lucas just didn't realize what a disaster he had on his hands until it was too late to recast the character and do massive re-shoots.

I'm not so sure that the problem of Anakin appearing to be stupid could be solved by recasting, but then again, in Clone Wars he hasn't been presented as a genius or particularly smarter than the rest of the Jedi, all of whom are pretty gullible for not sniffing out Palps' plan or having any idea of how he's manipulating them all. If Anakin is only as dumb as the rest of the Jedi, I'm fine with that. Their whole social structure is built on a naive assumption that human (or sentient-being) nature can just be swept away by making up insane and untenable rules for themselves, so a certain amount of obliviousness just goes with the territory.

 

[Whofan]

^Jake Lloyd's Anakin was potrayed as a more selfless guy (Although it was more 'tell' than 'show). I remember fans complained that he was too nice to eventually turn into Vader. Even scenes where Anakin shows a hint of darkness (Such as a fight scene) were cut from the script. Hence Hayden's more angry, emo Anakin. Lloyd's performance is far from the best, but he (and the script) presented Anakin as more likeable. In TPM he's really no more whiny than say, Luke. But in AOTC he's not likeable at all, and although ROTS improved him a bit at the beginning, by the middle he was pretty much back to pouty Anakin.
Lucas in interviews strikes me as a guy who thought all the problems people had with TPM were down to Jake Lloyd and Jar-Jar, and if he simply removed them from the prequel sequels then everything would be fine. Unfortunately the flaws run deeper than that.


You know, sorry to go a bit OT, but why'll were at it, whatever happened to "reckless" Obi-Wan (As dialogue in ESB stated Obi-Wan was)? In all three prequels he seems to be a very by-the-book Jedi-pretty much already the Alec Quiness version. Ewan Mcgregor, at the time of TPM, was a bit of a troublemaker so you'd think he would be perfect for that type of Obi-Wan. I remember the original Lucas idea for II was to be the Yoda/Obi-Wan story, but instead we got Qui-Gon and a retcon in AOTC which sort of explained things. I would've preferred it to just be Obi-Wan discovering Anakin, as Lucas originally intended, but instead Obi-Wan got split into two different characters (Qui-Gon was a bit reckless so I suppose that's where all that went).

 

[Silvercrest]

Anakin in TCW is sketched in essentially the same way as he is presented in the beginning of ROTS.

Huh? Anakin in the prequels is an appalling, unappealing whiny little bitch who elicits no sympathy at all, and raises the question of why smart people with discernment and taste, such as Obi-Wan and Padme, would be his friend and lover respectively, or why the Jedi Order doesn't kick his sorry ass back to Tatooine when it becomes apparent that he just ain't Jedi material

Mostly true. But I think what Set Harth is referring to is this: At the very beginning of ROTS, during the dogfight, there's some banter between him and Obi-Wan that suggests a likeable fellow with a roguish streak who enjoys fighting side-by-side with his best bud. It's no longer visible by the time they invade the ship and it never appears again, but it is there.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

It's hard to tell who TPM Anakin was supposed to be. The character was too young to give us a strong impression about how he'd turn out and they would have had to hire an extraordinary actor of that age for him to be able to pull off any kind of complexity. Trying to start Anakin's story as a child was just a terrible idea. He should have been 15 or 16 at the youngest to begin with, and that's only if an actor of the right age or at least who could pass himself off as that age (and yet grow to be six-foot-plus for the two subsequent movies?) could be found to handle the role.

But I think what Set Harth is referring to is this: At the very beginning of ROTS, during the dogfight, there's some banter between him and Obi-Wan that suggests a likeable fellow with a roguish streak who enjoys fighting side-by-side with his best bud

Ah, right. Now I remember that scene. I do recall thinking, "too little, too late, wrong actor." In both AOTC and ROTS there were flashes of the character and the story that should have been told. That just annoyed me even worse.

Here's another aspect of Anakin in the PT that seemed right: at one point, he and Padme are talking politics. Padme is being the good little liberal senator, democracy is wonderful, blah blah blah. Anakin: democracy is weak and stupid, we need strong rulers who will kick butt and I'm sick of the way those incompetent fools are running this war. (I may be extrapolating, but that was the gist of it.) The dialogue and delivery was clunky and made me cringe, but the idea was right.

Anakin just cannot be portrayed at any point as a guy who sincerely believes in the Republic because how and why does he suddenly embrace totalitarianism instead? It's more believable if he's a young guy who never really thinks about politics and when he matures enough to start thinking about it, he starts to formulate anti-Republic opinions based on his personality - he respects power and efficiency, he's impatient with obstacles, rules, ceremony and having to ask permission or seek consensus. Show us his personality first and then it becomes obvious why his politics follow his personality.

I'd also like to see Clone Wars do more with the notion that the Jedi rules are bullshit and Anakin is a smart guy who sensibly rebels against them. Just give the guy a bit of a wild, willful streak but not like a brat, more like Han Solo. The Jedi rules may make sense in their own historical context, but they are kind of unappetizing and contrary to what the audience would feel sympathy for, so if Anakin starts chafing at the rules, the audience will love him for it.

In short, I think Clone Wars could stand to portray Anakin as a bit less sympathetic in certain key ways. He's so likable that we won't balk at seeing little glimpses of more sinister things, things that seem trivial in context with how cool and heroic he is. Anakin thinks rules don't apply to him. He's arrogant. He likes being a Jedi and running around kicking butt but doesn't really believe in what they're fighting for. He doesn't care about democracy as a political system and the more he sees of it, especially how it handles the prosecution of a war, the less he likes it. If he was in charge, he'd make some changes...that would go a long way to setting up the fall to the dark side believably.

You know, sorry to go a bit OT, but why'll were at it, whatever happened to "reckless" Obi-Wan (As dialogue in ESB stated Obi-Wan was)? In all three prequels he seems to be a very by-the-book Jedi-pretty much already the Alec Quiness version.

I'm not sure Obi-Wan should be portrayed as reckless - he should be a character who can stand in stark contrast to Anakin, who is the reckless one, since they're going to be in scenes together a lot and need to be distinct from one another. I'd portray Obi-Wan as "the perfect Jedi." Maybe not the biggest ass-kicker because that's Mace Windu. Maybe not the wisest, because that's Yoda. Maybe not the strongest in the Force, because that's Anakin.

Obi-Wan represents the Jedi ideal of perfect loyalty to the inhuman, almost-unattainable idea of attachment to none, compassion for all - which is a terrible thing to ask of someone, especially someone who's expected to go into battle on a regular basis. It takes a great soul, and a great deal of willpower and self-discipline to manage to love all living things and yet not be bothered when some Sith comes along and mercilessly slaughters helpless civilians or some brand-new, shiny-eyed padawan.

Even Obi-Wan has to struggle with that; he's only human. As he admits in one of the episodes, he is bothered by stuff like that but he "hides it better." I'd like to see him depicted as someone who sincerely is trying, understands the value of that philosophy, and is doing his damnedest to convince Anakin, who of course regards it all as total horseshit and the first thing he'll be changing when he's in charge.

 

[Set Harth]

or why the Jedi Order doesn't kick his sorry ass back to Tatooine when it becomes apparent that he just ain't Jedi material

Maybe they don't think someone with his Force connection running around loose is such a great idea. They find themselves in a no-win situation.

but that's a long ways from being a psycho who blows up whole planets.

Or fails to object when Tarkin blows up whole planets, at any rate.

You know, sorry to go a bit OT, but why'll were at it, whatever happened to "reckless" Obi-Wan (As dialogue in ESB stated Obi-Wan was)?

That quote basically refers to Obi-Wan pre-TPM, but it could also be read to include his overly aggressive attack on Maul which almost involved his getting killed.

Lucas in interviews strikes me as a guy who thought all the problems people had with TPM were down to Jake Lloyd and Jar-Jar, and if he simply removed them from the prequel sequels then everything would be fine.

However, those were by far the most frequently heard complaints about the film. Here Lucas simply got burned by assuming he would get accolades for giving the disgruntled fans what they said they wanted.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Maybe they don't think someone with his Force connection running around loose is such a great idea. They find themselves in a no-win situation.

It would have been interesting but maybe untenable for the situation to be portrayed that way - either they succeed in turning Anakin into a Good Little Jedi(TM) or what? They kill him? Lock him up for the rest of his life in a deep, dark dungeon? That might make the Jedi look a bit too villainous so I can see why Lucas didn't go there.

Or fails to object when Tarkin blows up whole planets, at any rate.

Oh cmon, he's definitely on the board of directors for the Empire. Whatever shit they get up to, he's implicated. He would have enough power to have started undermining the Empire years before, if he was really so opposed to their style of governance. There's a weird tendency I've noticed among some fans to try to mitigate Vader's role in the Empire as though he were some sort of helpless victim rather than the second in command for the whole shebang.

However, those were by far the most frequently heard complaints about the film. Here Lucas simply got burned by assuming he would get accolades for giving the disgruntled fans what they said they wanted.

They were the most frequent complaints until we were introduced to Hayden Christensen. And Lucas didn't kill off Jar-Jar so he didn't even take care of that problem. The complaints about TPM that I remember is that the story was pointless and stupid. I didn't hate Jake Lloyd because hey, he's a kid, of course his acting sucks. It's cruel to get on his case for that. The problem was Lucas starting the story with Anakin as a child. That was just a disaster waiting to happen.