Star Wars: Critical Divide (This is the way)

[Maltaran]

I liked the way the score incorporated some of the leitmotifs from Rebels, especially around Sabine (plus a little touch of the Mandalorian theme when she brings out the helmet).

[DaveSumm]

3 hours ago, Kalnak the Magnificent said:

I am so very tired of the puzzle thing though, especially puzzles that can be worked out by a 9 year old. I mean, come on, the sphere had 3 choices of variables and 6 options - you can't just brute force this? This is what you needed Sabine for? That was lame. 

Yea this was awful. At the very least you could’ve had her say “wait, pull up a model of the temple” and then solve it straight away. But to be staring at the damn temple and the sphere for what was supposed to be a long time, only to go “wait, is it … the same…?” It was literally ‘make object 1 look like object 2’.

I haven’t seen episode 2 yet but surely, SURELY this has to be a map to a location that has some ancient reason to need a map? Not cos Thrawn’s there? He couldn’t possibly have repeated the “ancient” knife map to a wreckage that’s a few decades old could he?

[Ran]

4 minutes ago, DaveSumm said:

SURELY this has to be a map to a location that has some ancient reason to need a map?

Yes. It has to do with the particular way Thrawn was defeated at the end of Rebels.

[Relic]

Space maps are so cool. 

[dog-days]

Halfway through the first episode now. Too much CGI for me. Plus a lot of the design feels hyper-generic. eg. The blonde sith with contact lenses. 

I was okay with Hera. I could see her as a natural development of the character a few years on from the death of Kanan. 

It may grow on me as we get further into the series. 

[dog-days]

I know that since Qui Gon Jinn and probably earlier (depending on the hairstyle you picked in KotOR), force users have been using their powers to control their flowing locks so that they never get in the way at a vital moment. 

Still. Seriously. WOULDN'T IT BE EASIER TO HAVE A SHORT HAIRCUT?? I mean, come on. 

[Jaxom 1974]

Hmmmm...and to think when the space map first appeared, I thought she'd found the Power Stone...

And while it was clunky in its overall execution, at least the reason for a map makes at least a little sense...moreso than a map to find Luke...

[horangi]

I quite enjoyed the first two episodes.  Having not watched any of the cartoons, I didnt come in with any preconceived notions.  Sabine was great in a Cowboy Bebopesque way.  Hera had a good feeling of familiarity with the rest of the squad, and sith apprentice lady was sufficiently glowering to go alongside Titus Pullo (I liked his bit of sentimentalism against the possibility of killing Jedi).  Honestly the one I'm liking the least is the title character.  I feel like every one of Ahsoka's dialogues is a cut scene in a video game.  Each movement is a bit exaggerated or stiff.  Like someone is hitting the the emote button for *cross arms.*  I can just see the dialogue selecting option popup in my head during the weird pause between anything she says and whoever she is talking to.  Not dinging the actress, I am sure this was, for some reason, what they are going for.  Like others the puzzle part was silly- the temple reminded me of the Skyrim dragon crypt unlocking with the spinning wheels. 

Edited August 23, 2023 by horangi

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Okay.  Finished the second episode.  It’s okay.  Worth continuing to watch.  

Why is everyone in almost every Star Wars show that isn’t a named character incompetent or corrupt?  Wouldn’t it have been more interesting and challenging to have a guy attempting to run a legitimate business who was talked into using ex-Imperials out of a sincere desire to rehabilitate?  Who was really thought these folks wanted to reform?  

Who was surprised by the hyperdrive being “classified”.  Who wanted to help and discovered he is being used?  

One of the things that Andor did well was portray the Imperial ISB as competent and difficult to hide from.  Why in Mandolorian and now Ashoka are all New Republic people in administrative positions portrayed as disintered, incompetent, or corrupt?

It is a galactic scale organization… surely they can’t all be like that?

[horangi]

23 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

One of the things that Andor did well was portray the Imperial ISB as competent and difficult to hide from.  Why in Mandolorian and now Ashoka are all New Republic people in administrative positions portrayed as disintered, incompetent, or corrupt?

 

Based on the last few shows, I am coming to the conclusion that the galaxy should have stuck with the Empire.  From Andor, apparently the biggest incident across millions of worlds flagged by Imperial high command was a couple rent-a-cops being killed in a bar brawl in a mining village in the hinterlands.  Whereas the New Republic is putting "rehabilitated' Nazis into highly sensitive jobs, allowing random unscreened work crews to scrap perfectly good star destroyers in the middle of a war with the Imperial Remnants, going the opposite direction of Operation Paperclip by destroying Imperial research, and hampering their front line soldiers with red tape and idiotic regulations. 

ETA: And a Republican General demanding classified information be briefed in an unsecured room where a buncha those same unscreened former Nazis are hanging out.

ETA2: And yes Storm Troopers are bad.  But if there is one thing consistent through the entire Star Wars universe, its that they cant hit anything.  So the one thing the Empire is incompetent at is their ability to enforce their police state through violence.

Edited August 24, 2023 by horangi

[karaddin]

6 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

One of the things that Andor did well was portray the Imperial ISB as competent and difficult to hide from.  Why in Mandolorian and now Ashoka are all New Republic people in administrative positions portrayed as disintered, incompetent, or corrupt?

It is a galactic scale organization… surely they can’t all be like that?

The charitable interpretation is that the rebellion just wasn't this big, it's had to scale up to take over operations of the entire Republic and they just didn't have enough people so they've had to do a lot of recruitment and they wanted to avoid imperials in the higher level positions which means they've excluded a lot of skilled bureaucrats from the "public service" under the Empire.

On a meta level they're also shackled by the sequel trilogy making it canon the the new Republic fails, so they need to show it failing. If we had these shows in the in-between period showing the New Republic doing a great job of taking over from the Empire that would make a lot less sense that it suddenly turned fail a few years later.

On the map front - I'm entirely satisfied with why it's a map and that the map exists now we have the explanation of what it's a map to. We don't know how Morgan knows where Thrawn is, but given she knows he's in the other galaxy the rest all fits - Ahsoka only knew about the map because of Morgan. It also explains why Thrawn and Ezra haven't returned in a decade or more, at the end of Rebels that was one thing I couldn't understand - why they'd be unable to return from anywhere in the outer rim in that time. Intergalactic travel is one thing I haven't seen in SW before, I assume it probably did in EU but I didn't read any EU, so that's actually opening up new stories to be told.

[IlyaP]

5 hours ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

PREQUEL FIGHT! PREQUEL FIGHT! PREQUEL FIGHT!

This stuff must correspond to phases of the moon (or something) and I'm totally here for it.

Oh look at this little hobbit hole in which I can hide! *ducks in*

[SpaceChampion]

Stars move....  they move together in bulk but individually not at all.  Not sure a centuries old star map makes sense.  A 10,000 year old star map definitely doesn't make sense.  It's not a three-body problem, it's a trillion-body problem.  But it's Star Wars, so magic, fine.

Edited August 24, 2023 by SpaceChampion

[Lord Varys]

LOL. What is the one thing that doesn't exist when you were drawn into weirdo hyperspace by fucking space whales?!

Yeah, you guessed right: A FUCKING MAP TO YOUR LOCATION FOUND IN SOME ANCIENT WITCH TEMPLE WHICH HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH ANYTHING!!!

Seriously, they had fucking Luke map and fucking Palpatine map in the Shithead Trilogy (ST), and now we have to go with 'Thrawn map'?! Why do tvose writers not know that maps lead to places and not to people? And unless you know for sure that a person is at a particular place you just get to a place using a map, not a fucking person!

And indeed shitty acting by fake Hera. Didn't look or sound or behave like the real one. Sabine good so far. Lothal not bad either.

Thrawn working with witches and evil Jedi feels like a disservice to the character. Such people should look for him but not because they were besties.

[Jaxom 1974]

To be fair, we don't know what Thrawn's motivation is yet...or why it seemingly works for the dark side users to want to work with/for him. And Baylan Skoll is only, at this point, a mercenary anyway.

And the thing about the Rebellion, and I think this comes through in Andor in some ways, is that there doesn't seem to be much of a plan of what to dononce the Empire is overthrown besides, "Restore the Republic"...which is, as shown here in the second episode, only possibly if so many of the Imperials are allowed to continue on doing what they'd been doing. Yes, Mandalorian seems to indicate the more hard-core Imperials have to be re-educated to some degree...but the New Republic seems to miss the point that the Empire appears to have succeeded and been accepted so readily because so many of the galaxy's population was already buying what the Emperor was selling...I mean, they had to have jad the same personnel issues that the New Republic faced, right?

 

[karaddin]

31 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

Seriously, they had fucking Luke map and fucking Palpatine map in the Shithead Trilogy (ST), and now we have to go with 'Thrawn map'?! Why do tvose writers not know that maps lead to places and not to people? And unless you know for sure that a person is at a particular place you just get to a place using a map, not a fucking person!

But it's not a map to Thrawn. It's a map to the other galaxy, and the head bad guy knows Thrawn is in the other galaxy.

Yeah there's issues with the star charts no longer being accurate in reality that I can hand wave as just Star Wars things, but the core idea of "it's a map to, and the key to operate, an intergalactic hyperbridge" actually makes sense as a thing that could exist. Unlike the other stupid maps let alone the fucking knife that perfectly matched the death star debris.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

10 minutes ago, karaddin said:

But it's not a map to Thrawn. It's a map to the other galaxy, and the head bad guy knows Thrawn is in the other galaxy.

Yeah there's issues with the star charts no longer being accurate in reality that I can hand wave as just Star Wars things, but the core idea of "it's a map to, and the key to operate, an intergalactic hyperbridge" actually makes sense as a thing that could exist. Unlike the other stupid maps let alone the fucking knife that perfectly matched the death star debris.

But Galaxies… are… really big.  That’s like saying, “I’m looking for Bob.”

”Well, he’s on Earth.”

Times a trillion, trillion…

[karaddin]

8 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

But Galaxies… are… really big.  That’s like saying, “I’m looking for Bob.”

”Well, he’s on Earth.”

Times a trillion, trillion…

Well yeah, we don't know how much is going to happen on the other size of the jump. It might be that it inexplicably leads directly to him in a way that's stupid, or it could be that he knows the other end of the bridge and will be waiting there, or it could be that crossing the bridge is only the start of a long search that will continue on the other end. It's like knowing that I'm in Australia and Bob is in America so my first step is to fly to LA, none of the "inside America" steps can take place until I'm already there. If Bob is already waiting at the airport because he knew where it was, that's fine. If the airplane lands in Bob's backyard then that's pretty contrived.

There's plenty of actual issues to complain about without deciding that it's doing something stupid before it's actually done it. 

[Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II]

Guys star maps have been a thing since Knights of the Old Republic (2003) , long before the ST. Abrams probably ripped it from there , along with aspects of Bastila for Rey and the star forge for palpy’s star destroyer army. All this just makes me wish that Drew Karpyshyn should’ve written the ST or any SW live action content for that matter. 

[Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II]

Overall I think it’s been quite positively received by the critics and the fanbase:

Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports that 94% of 92 critics gave the series a positive review, with an average rating of 7.5/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Elevated by Rosario Dawson's strong performance in the title role and a solid story that balances new and old elements of the Star Warssaga, Ahsoka is a must-watch for fans of the franchise

Good for Filoni!