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Tales of the Jedi


The Choc
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Anyone check out these shorts yet? There are 6 episodes about 15 minutes each. Three are centered on Ahsoka, three on Dooku. I have to say I thought the 3 Dooku episodes were maybe by favorite Star Wars animation ever. Just really good stuff. Dooku always seemed like such a character with so much potential, the idea he was truly doing what he felt was right and maybe even was mostly right but he just goes too far in his tactics. This leans into that some. although obviously still has to have him be in league with Palpatine at the end. 

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Haven’t really been keeping up with all the new animated stuff. There was an entire series set around Sequel Trilogy times which I completely skipped. Hated the look and feel of it. Couldn’t get through more than a few seconds of it. Haven’t seen any of the little micro-shorts for much the same reason. Saw the anime stuff; that was fun, looking forward to more of that. There’s a show whose premise reminds me a little bit of how as a little little kid if I had a bunch of identical toys I’d differentiate them from each other by giving ‘em different personalities when I’d play with them, that’s The Bad Batch (‘21-’??), haven’t seen any of it so far.

 

Haven’t seen the Obi-wan show. Haven’t seen the Andor show. I imagine I’ll get to them sometime. I don’t really buy the hype about the latter, oh sure, it’s Star Wars for grown-ups, it’s for adults, right, yeah, it’s not that I don’t believe you or anything but pretty much everyone spouting that line probably said similar things about Rogue One (2016) so I’m going to manage my expectations here.

 

But a bunch of mini-episodes about what Ahsoka and Count Dooku got up to before, during, and immediately after the Prequel Trilogy!? That’s my trash! You can’t keep me away! I thought that was all over and done with but it turns out there’s more of it! Yeah! Great! It’d be like if they announced, oops, the coroner goofed and Aaron Allston’s not dead so here’s his new Wraith Squadron book. Sign me up!

 

 

 

 

Life And Death’

 

* Like the makeshift droids the village uses. There’s one thatching that roof with her dad, there’s a different bipedal one walking the streets. Neat!

 

* Kind of figured we were maybe heading for a little bit of a twist there. Maybe a reveal that the honoured elder was Ahsoka and the baby was named for her. Felt like maybe instead of showing us the birth of this character we were about to see her death instead.

 

* Wait, if Ahsoka is the same shade of orange as her mother then what’s with her father being purple!? How do Togrutans reproduce? That guy seemed really psyched at having a kid but, well, not to be indelicate ... well, I don’t see any way around this. Guess somebody’s going to have to write a 40,000 word monograph addressing Togrutan sexual dimorphism, phenotypic traits, fidelity and infidelity, the ongoing undecided veracity of the old canard over infants resembling their fathers more than their mothers, Rakatan plans for the GFFA, Shaak Ti’s peculiar mortalities, it’s all gotta be connected.

 

Justice’

 

* Makeshift droids again! One of those 8D guys tending bar. Saw him walking in Ahsoka’s village too. A good clanky puppet design. And I liked the sort of MechWarrior-ish tractor thing. 2-TON.

 

* Senator Dagonet’s guard. Neat hats! Nice Mortal Kombat masks.

 

* When you put together Luke doing Force Choke to the Gamorrean guard in RotJ with Qui-Gon’s lack of moral disgust at Dooku’s use of it and, yeah, I gotta assume there’s others I’m not remembering at the moment I guess you have no choice but to come to the conclusion they never teach ‘em in Jedi schooling it’s a bad guy power for bad guys!?!? That’s just something literal children in the audience figured out but nobody within the narrative itself seems to realize it. These guys are all like, yeah, nothing dark side about this!

 

Choices’

 

* Like the Senatorial Guard combat droids.

 

* Oh, this guy’s got David Bowie eyes. Neat!

 

* Love Ki-Adi-Mundi’s specially made hood for his huge head.

 

The Sith Lord’

 

* Wait, Dooku was still a Jedi during the events of TPM!?!?!? What’s going on with the timeline here? How can he use Sifo-Dyas’ security code if the guy’s dead? Sifo-Dyas was on a mission for Chancellor Valorum when he was killed (“almost ten years ago” is what Obi-Wan says in AotC) so once they did the episode of the show where all this was established up until that point it still seemed somewhat semi-plausible it was an alias for Sidious; some fake Jedi Master’s name on a line item expense report whom no one ever met and who ‘died’ I kind of assumed the guy got merked shortly before TPM because that’s the movie where Chancellor Valorum stops being Chancellor Valorum. Does this matter? Nope! But it’s funny how Dave Filoni’s desire to untangle this stuff every chance he gets just makes the whole thing more of a mess!

* Feel like the end result of all this is somebody doing some kind of definitive Prequels cut decades from now with all the animated stuff that happens during the movies interpolated in. Maybe with AI-assisted upscaling so it all looks live action!?

* Yaddle talks normal!?!?!? Dumb! No way! Yaddle talks like Yoda talks! Yaddle is the same as Yoda!!!! Yaddle is not toad-brown like the guy from KOTOR (wait, I just looked this up to doublecheck and apparently sometimes Master Vandar was coloured green!?!? today’s a day of doubly shattered illusions!!! I’ve taken my first step into a larger world and I don’t like it! Not one bit! I wish I could go back to the way things were! I miss when my life was all lies!!!!1 Oh, the pain!), she’s not Even Piell pink, she’s Lady Yoda, she’s Rebbetzin Yoda, she’s Mrs. Yoda, she is Yoda’s Wife. I don’t believe these untruths of the false world. I take comfort in the fact that no one can change the true and eternal Yaddle. Not concept artist Iain McCaig. Not Opie Cunningham’s daughter. But why won’t anyone stop them from trying?!?!?1? Just to be on the safe side I have taken my Yaddle action figure from out of her mint condition packaging alongside her Jedi Council co-members Yarael Poof (hah!) and Depa Billaba and disregarding the choking hazard warning emblazoned on the box stuffed her figurine directly down my gullet so she can live forever safe and pure within my body.

 

Practice Makes Perfect’

 

* Okay, I think we now know why Ahsoka never tracked down Luke, Leia, Obi-Wan, or Yoda near to or during the events of the Original Trilogy. She had brain damage from being repeatedly stunned unconscious over and over!

 

Resolve’

 

* What do those clones think Leia’s dad is doing? Do they think he’s drunk? Saying that he’s open to bribery? Soliciting them!? Just talking posh jibber jabber in a way that isn’t even supposed to make any sense whatsoever?

 

* Nice shot of the Y-wing flying out into the moonlit sky! There are spice miners on that there moon! Uh oh! They're disgruntled!

 

* Love those farming droids! Love their dumb gangly legs! Love their R2 heads!

 

* Oh, hey, neat design on this Inquisitor. And the way his head deflates when he gets decapitated! Voiced by Clancy Brown too.

 

just about the series as a whole, I suppose

 

Feels like the show is emphasizing a strain of thought that’s been pretty clear for a while now. Simply that the Republic was bad, the Empire was worse, the good guys are therefore not really fighting for something good in and of itself but merely the restoration of a profoundly unjust status quo ante. This would come up every now and then in the EU, yeah, but I gather that it seems to be the deal in a lot more of the live action and animated stuff over the past couple of years.

 

I mean, if everything’s up to what some Senators and/or royalty think then that’s just incentive to do what happens over and over again during this show and the Prequels and the extended media taking place during this era e.g. lie to Senators, abduct Senators or their dependents, assassinate Senators, blackmail Senators, bribe Senators, basically just use violence or the fruits of violence to get what you want. The Senators don’t have Force powers!!!1! They can’t stop you! The political system actively encourages this sort of thing!

 

Kind of apropos to watch this right after some dumb dumb who hated TLJ broke into the Speaker of the House’s ... house and nearly widowed her. I mean, at least the dumb dumbs who’d do that stuff during the Prequels generally speaking did it at the behest of Chancellor Palpatine or Darth Sidious (could there be some connection between these two separate individuals? Nah! Too farfetched!) but this real life dumb dumb is doing that stuff because of Facebook and talk radio and Fox News and Newsmax and Frank Speech and, like, websites. Not to mention the former President of the United States and multiple other current, former, and future elected officials!

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  • 1 month later...

I saw these the other day, but didn't have time to comment.  I thought they were great, especially the Dooku stories.  I really liked the one with Yaddle.  I am hoping that we get more centered around Dooku. I am also a fan of Dooku, mainly because I am a fan of Christopher Lee, who is probably one of the best villain character actors ever. I felt he got short changed in the PT.  Also, I agree his character could have been fleshed out more.  I think it would be great to explore the Dooku/Sidious dynamic, even though we got some of that already in TCW.    Also, it would be great to see some jedi tales centered around some of the other Jedi Masters.  Maybe even get into some jedi survivors during the period between the PT and OT, and explore their fates as well. 

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