Star Wars: Critical Divide (This is the way)

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

4 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

A thought about Loren from Andor when he destroyed the fighters sent after him from the big tractor beam Star Destroyer the beams looked like a red lightsaber.  Given the information about how red lightsabers are created… that’s an interesting twist regarding Loren… as a character…

Nah. That’s just a laser.

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

13 hours ago, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said:

I hate to keep bringing up a dead horse but how can you guys love Andor and complain about Ahsoka’s pace ? Andor moved at the rate of watching paint dry. Compared to that this show is a lot faster with more things happening. 

As I recall there were similar complaints about the early episodes of Andor, but they were doing some necessary world building and the series finished strong.

It’s possible to do “slow burn” and still have it be engaging. The first two episodes of Ashoka ain’t it. 

ETA: and I was a huge fan of Clone Wars. 

Edited August 26, 2023 by Deadlines? What Deadlines?

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

18 minutes ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

Nah. That’s just a laser.

We’ll see.

[DaveSumm]

14 hours ago, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said:

I hate to keep bringing up a dead horse but how can you guys love Andor and complain about Ahsoka’s pace ? Andor moved at the rate of watching paint dry. Compared to that this show is a lot faster with more things happening. 

Andor is a study of fascism, and the characters who are drawn to it and those that are drawn to rebel against it, and why. It earns its slow pace, as its quieter character moments are important in that telling.

Ahsoka is a follow up to a cartoon, and so far isn’t really about anything as such. A slow pace isn’t inherently better than a fast one, if that’s not the story you’re telling. In as much as Disney tend to homogenise everything previously successful and repackage it anew, I think Ahsoka is so far worse off for the influence Andor has had on it. It’s slow for no other real reason than to (attempt to) give off Andor vibes.

[VigoTheCarpathian]

1 hour ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

We’ll see.

Big fan of this:  technically, the Fondor is the one wielding the red beam weapon, so wouldn’t the theory be that he’s somehow enslaved a Sith Lord ?  
 

Like he captured Darth Flatulence and torture-modded him a la the movie Walrus into his personal killer spacecraft, with a shell of a mind left as the ship computer?  Lightsaber space arms?  And the tractor beam-neutralizing flechette weapons were like, killer pointy Sith diarrhea in space?
 

 Scot, you’re one twisted dude, and I like it.

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For the record - I’m pretty sure they were just some kind of short-pulsed cutting lasers, ingeniously mounted for close combat.  They were vey cool and I’m surprised there aren’t more canon weapons like this, given how dog-fighting seems to work in the SW universe.

[mormont]

2 hours ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

Such as?  Blast your way on Board; pull an Oceans Eleven; pull a Mission Impossible; steal some Republic plumbers uniforms and tell them you’re there to install new low flow shower heads; ring the doorbell and ask for a cup of flour; formulate a plan to distract the bridge crew by staging a guy fucking a grizzly bear and sneak in when they aren’t looking… I could go on. 

The options are endless. 

None of them work, though. By which I mean none of them do what the writers need to do here, which is establish the characters of Skoll and his apprentice.

As noted, the use of the Jedi codes establishes for the viewer the idea that Skoll has links to the Jedi. The captain's preparedness, and Skoll's ability to handle that reaction with ease, besting all of the New Republic troops easily, establishes his power levels. And the fact that he tried the deception when he could simply have killed them all to start with, establishes that he doesn't want to kill for the sake of killing.

Writing needs to do more than satisfy your version of credibility. I've said it before, people on this board get too hung up on 'plot' and 'plot holes' as the be-all and end-all of good writing. It's a blinkered view.

[Kalbear]

15 hours ago, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said:

I hate to keep bringing up a dead horse but how can you guys love Andor and complain about Ahsoka’s pace ? Andor moved at the rate of watching paint dry. Compared to that this show is a lot faster with more things happening. 

Because the acting was better, the sets were more interesting and it was telling something very new. Also, all sides were actually smart and clever and not completely shit at their jobs. 

And honestly while the first two eps are slow the third one hits the ground running. Then you get into the heist which was another sweet look into things, and THEN we get the prison which was just a fucking amazing piece of Sci-Fi regardless of Star Wars setting.

Did I mention that the acting (and the associated directing) was awesome? 

[Kalbear]

9 hours ago, Ran said:

The whole thing was very simplistic. The only thing about it being cartoonish that gives me pause is that what follows is a terrible slaughter of dozens of New Republic soldiers and officers. I imagine the cartoons generally avoided that sort of thing, so there's a definite dissonance between the tone leading up to that slaughter and, well, the slaughter.

Nah, they kill folks all the time in variously horrible ways. You don't see, like, blood flying or whatever but the violence on the show is almost perfectly inline with the violence in TCW and Rebels. 

[Kalbear]

3 minutes ago, mormont said:

None of them work, though. By which I mean none of them do what the writers need to do here, which is establish the characters of Skoll and his apprentice.

As noted, the use of the Jedi codes establishes for the viewer the idea that Skoll has links to the Jedi. The captain's preparedness, and Skoll's ability to handle that reaction with ease, besting all of the New Republic troops easily, establishes his power levels.

Okay, these are reasonable points. 

So change a very small thing: have Skoll mind trick the captain. Heck, have him do it from afar. Have it play out basically exactly the same way except have his stupidity explained because Skoll made him do it. Have his crew bothered by this but completely unaware that mind tricking is a potential weapon against them and have them follow his orders anyway. 

Basically the difference is that one has the captain be cartoonishly naive and overconfident and the other has the captain be the victim of power greater than him. 

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

9 minutes ago, mormont said:

None of them work, though. By which I mean none of them do what the writers need to do here, which is establish the characters of Skoll and his apprentice.

As noted, the use of the Jedi codes establishes for the viewer the idea that Skoll has links to the Jedi. The captain's preparedness, and Skoll's ability to handle that reaction with ease, besting all of the New Republic troops easily, establishes his power levels. And the fact that he tried the deception when he could simply have killed them all to start with, establishes that he doesn't want to kill for the sake of killing.

Writing needs to do more than satisfy your version of credibility. I've said it before, people on this board get too hung up on 'plot' and 'plot holes' as the be-all and end-all of good writing. It's a blinkered view.

 

2 minutes ago, Kalnak the Magnificent said:

Okay, these are reasonable points. 

What?!? 

An “old Jedi code” that apparently “checks out”? A thirty year old code?!? Maybe codes work differently in that galaxy, but with everything that’s happened since the fall of Coruscant, there are a multitude of ways someone could have gotten that code. Someone with obvious evil intent if they tried to use it to board a Republic ship. Even the idiot captain realizes this since he automatically decides the people sending it are imposters; but “what the hell let’s let them in anyway”. 

So, the plan apparently was: 1. Send ancient code 2. Hope that bullshit impresses the captain of the Republic ship so much he invites you on board to laugh at you about it. Nice. 

As far as Skoll’s aversion to taking life, he bent to it pretty fast once his weird plan started to go sideways, didn’t he? It didn’t look like he took much convincing to me. Hell, even Darth Vader would allow someone to “fail him” or “disappoint him” a few times before choking them out. 

You’re right about one thing:

Quote

Writing needs to do more than satisfy your version of credibility.

This is true; but it still needs to be credible. A ships captain, responsible for the safety of his ship and the lives of every soul on board, would not behave the way that guy did. Everything you describe as requirements for that scene could have been done without lobotomizing the Republic Captain. 

 

[karaddin]

2 hours ago, Kalnak the Magnificent said:

Nah, they kill folks all the time in variously horrible ways. You don't see, like, blood flying or whatever but the violence on the show is almost perfectly inline with the violence in TCW and Rebels. 

The one that springs to mind for me is Ahsoka decapitating 4 death watch mooks in a single move. Like you say it just skips the gore, but it's pretty clear what's happened when a lightsaber buzzsaws through someone's neck even when it doesn't dwell in the details.

[Kalbear]

2 hours ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

 

What?!? 

An “old Jedi code” that apparently “checks out”? A thirty year old code?!? Maybe codes work differently in that galaxy, but with everything that’s happened since the fall of Coruscant, there are a multitude of ways someone could have gotten that code. Someone with obvious evil intent if they tried to use it to board a Republic ship. Even the idiot captain realizes this since he automatically decides the people sending it are imposters; but “what the hell let’s let them in anyway”. 

 

 

I mean the "old code but it checks out" ie clearly a reference to rotj and is how things work in star wars. It served to have them show they were jedi previously, though later events show that to be redundant info (we get that from the Droid lightsaber analysis). 

Though that would have been interesting as a beat - if we find out at the same time as ahsoka that these aren't Sith- they're ex-jedi. Instead it isn't that surprising. 

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

On a side note, one of the things The Expanse does really well is depicting overconfident ships captains getting buffaloed by a combination of force and deception. The Battle of the Donnanger comes to mind. 

[Relic]

9 hours ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

So, the plan apparently was: 1. Send ancient code 2. Hope that bullshit impresses the captain of the Republic ship so much he invites you on board to laugh at you about it. Nice. 

3. He'll come great you personally. 4. Will only bring a couple of guards. 

[Heartofice]

I’ve only watched 20 mins of the first episode and not sure I’ll watch any more of it, but I think keeping in mind that this is essentially a live action cartoon makes some of the less logical decisions much easier to take.

I do think that opening few scenes did a decent job of setting the tone and setting expectations. The bright colours, vibrant costumes and ridiculous looking Mon Calamari guard should be hint enough that this isn’t Andor

[Denvek]

13 hours ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

So, the plan apparently was: 1. Send ancient code 2. Hope that bullshit impresses the captain of the Republic ship so much he invites you on board to laugh at you about it. Nice. 

I assume he had other plans, but since that one worked we didn't need to see any of them

[sifth]

The whole scene feels like, having a character do something stupid, while having the character thinking they are doing something smart.

[mormont]

19 minutes ago, sifth said:

The whole scene feels like, having a character do something stupid, while having the character thinking they are doing something smart.

How unrealistic, nobody ever does that in real life.

[sifth]

Just now, mormont said:

How unrealistic, nobody ever does that in real life.

Not unrealistic, just stupid.

[hauberk]

8 hours ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

On a side note, one of the things The Expanse does really well is depicting overconfident ships captains getting buffaloed by a combination of force and deception. The Battle of the Donnanger comes to mind. 

100% different scenario.  The Donnager absolutely should have been able to go toe to toe with a capital class ship and stealth ships were not a thing at that point.