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Star Wars The Clone Wars & The Bad Batch [Spoilers]


Corvinus85

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Blew through the new season over the last two days and loved it. I'd read negative reviews of the first two arcs but other than the obvious sense of "let's just get to the fireworks factory!!" they were pretty good! I'm sure it all played better binged.

I wish they would let Filoni fill the gap between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens in animation. 

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I watched the five seasons of The Clone Wars proper but not the half-finished Season 6. Does Season 7 replace Season 6, or do you still need to watch Season 6 first?

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15 minutes ago, Werthead said:

I watched the five seasons of The Clone Wars proper but not the half-finished Season 6. Does Season 7 replace Season 6, or do you still need to watch Season 6 first?

You still need to watch season 6. Everything in season 7 are new arcs, though some had been released in unfinished form after the show was cancelled. There is an arc in season 6 that is referenced in season 7.

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6 hours ago, SpaceChampion said:

I'm watching the last 4 episodes.  Never watched this show before other than the season 1 premiere.  Does Maul not know Sideous is Palpatine?  I keep waiting for him to tell Ashoka.

It seems to be unclear. In the now non-canon books he knew. I always assumed he knew because a hood is not a great disguise and he makes no effort to disguise his voice beyond sounding a bit more sinister.

Edit: oh and when you're done you might want to watch the Rebels season two finale Twilight of the Apprentice. I mean I'd watch all of Rebels but if you just want to finish this story that would do it. 

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Just watched the last arc in a row. Pretty powerful stuff indeed.

A pity they didn't make some of the other arcs, especially the one where Talzin was dealt with and Maul got out of prison. That one is sort of missing there. And that Ventress thing may also not have been all that bad.

They should make more of episodes of this stuff.

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  • 1 month later...

I hadn't watched any of The Clone Wars until I watched season 7 when it was released a few months back. Enjoyed it immensely, that finish - damn! And Ahsoka Tano is a badass. Even though I hadn't seen the earlier seasons I could still tell that the main characters all seemed to be well fleshed out, even the recognizable names from Episode II AotC. I was contemplating starting over from the beginning, but then @RumHam 's recommendation steered me towards Star Wars Rebels. Thanks for that!

I tried looking for the Rebels thread but only found a remnant, so will post this here. Starting Rebels from the beginning I breezed through the four seasons within a week. I never expected it to, but I got a bad case of post-binge watching blues after finishing Rebels. How did that come about? Introducing a whole troup of new characters, annoying as some of them were at first and at times, and building a family show following their exploits and dramas within the Star Wars world leading up to the start of Episode IV: A New Hope, could so easily have gone wrong. That it managed to dovetail nicely into the events of Rogue One & A New Hope is a credit. I'll have to try find that Rebels thread again to post some further musings.
   
Then to sate the Rebels post-watch blues I watched all of The Clone Wars from the The Clone Wars movie to all 7 seasons. The CGI animation, the tone, the soundtrack was superb. Firstly, I recognised that I'd seen the TCW movie before - wasn't impressed enough on my first viewing to follow up with the series. I thought Ezra was annoying in Rebels, but Ahsoka was terrible in the movie and only became tolerable after a couple seasons - though ofcourse she developed into a fine character (and matured even more in Rebels), one I look forward to seeing in live action.  

There were several lame episodes throughout but the highlight episodes were outstanding - pretty much any episode opening with Sith coloured titles (ahem - Maul). Several episodes were dark as f$%k, not sure what time these got shown they first aired, being PG rated.  

To have several Jedi Masters, seen only as ornaments bearing lighting fixtures in the prequels, portrayed in depth to showcase why they merited being a Master was a joy to watch. They had to die in RotS ofcourse but Goddammit they should have died hard! Hard!

It was great to see episodes and arcs dedicated to the Clones and their grind as engineered soldiers for the Republic. By the end of the series I could name a dozen of them with ease. It made the final arc so bittersweet. And to that note, as much as I thoroughly enjoyed TCW, it was always going to lead to a darkening outcome for the characters we followed, whereas Rebels provided a leadin to hope. 

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I just got to the end of binging my way through this and damn I really loved it. Why ever was it cut short? There are a fair number of annoying/silly episodes especially early on but at its best this show is phenomenal - the final arc in particular is absolutely outstanding, but throughout the show and informed of course by my foreknowledge of how this all ends I got such a sense of melancholy and dread as I experienced the slow fall of the Jedi and the Republic (and the Separatists, and Neutrals too) to the grind of war, to growing war-weariness and disillusionment, the strain and ultimate collapse of the economy, the widespread destruction of infrastructure and breakdown of leadership throughout the galaxy... all part Sidious master plan and the evolution towards Empire as he gradually centralises power to his office. I definitely gained major respect for Sidious for what a true master stroke engineering the clone wars and placing the burden of leading the fight for the republic on the Jedi was, though his hood approach to disguise seems to come from the Clark Kent school of hiding ones identity, which I suppose you can't argue with the in-universe effectiveness of either, but come on. And there's those bittersweet moments and rays of hope where his master plan comes so close to unravelling, and where we get to see the humanity of the clones, their fraternal bonds, the sacrifices they make for each other, the Jedi who serve alongside them, and for the republic, the loyalty and dedication they show even so many treat them as disposable slaves, the valour of the Jedi, the efforts of Padme and other Senators like Bail Organa and Mon Mothma to hold The Republic together and preserve its soul in the face of the war, and the growth of Ahsoka from a rather annoying apprentice into a woman of courage and conviction, not to mention a real badass.

I found Ahsoka's arc particularly compelling because I didn't know that she would survive and I was sort of waiting for her to die in order for her not to be present in RotS (and the emotional damage of her death of his student adding to Anakin's emotional turmoil and growing darker emotions) because for something that's allegedly a kids show The Clone Wars got really dark in places so actually thought there was a chance they'd be willing to actually kill her. Having found out in this thread that she's set to return in live action in The Mandalorian season 2 I couldn't be more hyped and excited. She's definitely claimed a place as one of my favourite Star Wars characters.

I could ramble on about this show for a while but I think I need to take a breath and digest, it's all still sort of milling around in my head, a bit of a side-effect of this sort of binging, I think.

Alternatively I guess I could just go and start binging Rebels next? :laugh:

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21 minutes ago, Poobah said:

Alternatively I guess I could just go and start binging Rebels next? :laugh:

Yes. It's never as bad as the worst of The Clone Wars but it does take most of the first season to really find it's footing. Great show. 

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  • 10 months later...
2 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said:

Bumping this up to use for The Bad Batch when it starts on May the Fourth.

Looking forward to that.

Sort of done with Star Wars because they took my continuity away, but I'm still watching anything connected to TCW.

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@Poobah late replying to your post, but spare a thought for those of us who had years of her last appearance in TCW being her walking away from Anakin at the Jedi temple. They framed that shot so well to contrast with Vader arriving with the clones and then again with a particular scene in Rebels that's part of what was my favourite sequence in all of Star Wars until the siege of Mandalore replaced knocked it off it's perch.

They also managed to work her into Anakin's fall even better than her being killed off would have been.

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Pretty solid first episode.

I was pleasantly surprised by the first episode (enough to watch it entirely).

The whole thing seems a bit too commonplace though. If this was the first StarWars animated show, I might be more enthused, but after Clone Wars and Rebels, it's hard to be excited by these new characters. The fact that they even have similar features only highlights the fact that each of them is basically a walking archetype. It even becomes easy to predict some of the key moments that will no doubt happen (like Crosshair having an opportunity to kill Hunter or Wrecker, and hesitating, and then Hunter and Tech figuring a way to get his chip out).

The only bit of fresh air I can see is Omega, though having a kid with mysterious abilities is also a trope (hello Grogu). In a StarWars setting, one would expect a mysterious kid to be force-sensitive, but maybe there's a surprise there, who knows.

The period is interesting: seeing the Republic turning into the Empire has potential. I don't see the show really touching upon the more interesting political angles though.

So I dunno. It was a nice hour, but there's some way more exciting StarWars stuff headed our way, and I fear Bad Batch will be too kid-oriented to be gripping.

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Solid premiere.

Spoiler

 

I wish the Crosshair turn hadn't happened, mainly because I enjoy his trickshots, and now he's not part of the team, at least for a while.

Great cameo in the beginning.

OTOH I never liked Saw, and I wish they could find other characters for the one the frontline rebels. He is a bit tiresome.

Omega likely is Force sensitive, considering her apparent telepathic abilities, her amazing skill with the blaster without practice (see Rey) and that suspicious dialogue between the Kaminoan prime minister and Nala Se. 

And considering that she is female, it's likely the Kaminoans combined Jango Fett's DNA with a Jedi's.

 

 

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Hate...just hate...the name, "Bad Batch" in general...

But damn that was a fun premiere...

Spoiler

Really does seem they want to use the show to really tie everything up with a bow. Where did the clones go, for instance.  

But if this is going to be in anyway meaningful,  they'll need to keep Crosshair on the Empire's side...

 

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I really didn't enjoy the backdoor pilot in the Clone Wars revival. I cannot take Hunter seriously because he looks like he belongs in an 80's arcade game. 

I'd have rather they kept Crosshair around as a dissenting voice for the first season and then done the betrayal because he was a fascist fuck rather than brain chip stuff. In theory it should have worked better because of the clone wars episodes but they were just not memorable. Crosshair didn't come off as one of the team he came off as "the evil voiced one" 

Am I just that brain damaged or was the kid like....there in the meetings with Tarkin and the cloners? like the entire episode I was wondering "why is this kid here?" but that was extra weird. 

They probably should have set it up so the main characters knew the kid before this. 

Anyway maybe the "bad batch" was the result of an attempt to fuck with midichlorians? Maybe something along the lines of Twins?

Edit: Also it was weird that young Kanan had his adult voice. But I liked that Freddie Prince Jr. was basically playing Ezra. 

 

 

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