Star Wars

It was fine. I’ve seen all the shows so I get the backstory and references.

That being said, there are just too many Star Wars and movie cliches to be bearable:

Oh wow she cut her hair dramatically, she’s such a rebel and such a badass. (Cheap and overused character moment)

Staring pathetically at a spaceship flying away after a lightsaber duel (has happened four thousand times in Star Wars)

“Get ready!”

Lightsabers are harmless

Fixing a bomb under a ticking time clock (false peril)

Ancient artifact leads to the location of a place or character in the present (another cliche and cheap writing)

Another star map mcguffin (overused cliche)

Thoroughly enjoyed it. My personal favorite of the live-action shows, as a fan of the Jedi and all things Force. The new concepts of a Jedi with little Force sensitivity and an entirely new galaxy to explore are intriguing.

I’d average the first two episodes as a B-.

The pacing of the dialogue is off, and most of that could have been fixed in editing. That would largely help with the energy of the episodes.

Rosario makes a great Ahsoka. Baylan Skoll seems like a pretty great character, and I find it sad that Stevenson died for the obvious reasons, but especially because I already feel like he’s a character I’d love to see much more of.

People complaining about an ancient map leading to Thrawn and/or Ezra are missing that it’s not a map “to them”, it’s a map to something else that happens to be where they are.

Excited to have a live action “night sister”, some (seemingly) grey Jedi, and a ?former? Inquisitor As representatives of non-Jedi/Sith force users.

Weak points aside from the pacing:

Over telegraphing the imperial folks on Coruscant.

A bit too long spent on the Lothal highway scene which could have been about half as long, in fact the whole Sabine not showing up at the dedication was kind of pointless and it’s removal would have fixed a lot of pacing issues with the first episode.

A little less explaining of Sabine by Ahsoka would have been fine. Just too much telling, not enough showing.

I haven't watched any of the CGI Ahsoka stuff, so I came into the live action show without that.

My verdict is that I want to like it, and will watch a few episodes, but what I've seen has made me suspect it won't have the legs I was hoping for. I'm getting Book of Boba Fett feelings, basically.

I like how Ahsoka is played quite a lot, she has a screen presence I enjoy, but the vast majority of the supporting cast are played/written as too juvenile compared to her. Like, she's clearly a mature women, and the cast around her are, by and large, kiddies. Mentally, at least. They don't act or think like adults regardless of whatever war titles they gained.

I could tell they were playing on nostalgia for the animated show heavily. (Without having seen the animated show.)

Knowing nothing about Sabine or her history with Ahsoka, I just wanted to drop Sabine down a well. She runs off to decode the map, but then it turns out she doesn't actually have to go home to do it, given what's shown on screen...the two things she actually used were the two things she started with. You can argue she didn't KNOW that--but from a writer's perspective, something like this could've been written better, executed better. Sabine needed to earn sympathy from the audience, beyond having a cute "cat", and that could've been delivered here but it wasn't. (I do wonder if they lingered so much on the cat because they knew she had little else to make her likable in the first episodes.)

The map stuff would've been more palatable if she'd run off home--but just grabbed tools or something, then started back to the ship and got run into by the Apprentice THEN. Because at least it would have shown her THINKING and TRYING to correct her mistake. Like, still making the mistake because she's hot-headed, but then at least trying to course-correct before it bit her.

And the scene with the "general" patting her on her little dumb head and saying it's ok she disobeyed and fucked up didn't much give good character development/portrayal to a character who is supposed to be a general. I can only assume "General" is a vanity title at this point, she's not much acting like one.

Sabine fucking up majorly put them in a lot of hot water--and it's just really weird (as someone going into it without knowing the history of the characters) that despite what she did, she gets coddled and patted for it.

It's just very obvious plot armor--and the thing is (and I say this as a writer)...you can actually have a great show and great development when a character is correctly punished or correctly has consequences for doing something, you know? "Hurting" a character can lead to gigantic growth. It's actually ok to put a character through hard things.

So it WAS possible for her still to fuck up in such a giant way and have the story continue and grow--WITHOUT having to coddle her. You don't actually need to be gentle with main characters.

And having her treated as she should've been treated would have given a new show watcher who doesn't have background knowledge of the characters some trust in the storytelling. That's something you need to build early on when introducing characters.

There's also the issue with the exploding robot head--I can see it's an attempt to "show" she's a hot-shot, but it still feels a lot like telling (rather than "showing"). And as someone else said--it was false peril to raise the stakes. Or perhaps to redeem Sabine as being useful? But the peril of the exploding head just underscores that Sabine is out of control and stupid--and I already came into that scene not liking her because she was out of control and stupid with the map. So fucking around with the head after she'd already fucked around with the map made me feel MORE negative towards her, not less. Her getting the data didn't make me feel more inclined towards her--because I feel if she really was a hot-shot at this, she could've been hot shot enough to avoid the exploding head.

I know I'm ragging on Sabine a lot, but I feel it impacts the larger story too. Like, from bits and pieces I've heard, Thrawn is supposed to be really dangerous. And supposedly this character Sabine knows that in a very personal way.

Wouldn't even a hot-headed stubborn person TRY to get their shit together if something that big showed up on the horizon again? So Sabine acting like an idiot undermines the threat of Thrawn, too. Clearly even his worst enemies aren't even scared enough to get their shit together, so why should I care or be concerned as a show-watcher if he's coming back?

Anyway. I suspect this show isn't made for me, for someone who hasn't seen the animated shows. It's for existing fans of Ahsoka and Sabine who understand their backstory and sympathize with them enough that the things I talk about above don't undermine the threat of Thrawn, and the competence of Ahsoka's allies.

Loved it so far! Can only imagine how people who haven't watched Rebels are dealing, though.

Sad that Thrawn is where he is, though, as that almost certainly rules out what I was hoping to see in the series (being vague for spoiler reasons).

I like it so far. I really like Rebels so I was super excited for this one. I can't wait to see the Ghost and Thrawn.

I'd gone a little spur on Star Wars after the rise of skywalker.

Honestly it felt like a return to form in many ways, and a little bit of a fuck you to RoS, "here's how you do a map macguffin!".

Loved it.

The little dedication to Ray Stevenson at the end of the first episode was nice.

I'll watch the season, because it's only 7 episodes, but it seems like something that's more for the die-hard fans than me (any criticism I could come up with is probably true for any number of other Star Wars projects)

Nah. Star Wars has burnt me out with too much crappy new content.

It was below average. None of the actors captured the essence of the characters. I know it's different as its live action but they were all so one dimensional and boring.

Visually it was absolutely fantastic.

Oh and the Inquisitor has to be starkiller.

Let's see where it goes but so far, hmmm.

It was great, my only criticism is where’s Zeb?

So in the first sequence they demonstrated how powerful the bombs in those hunter droids are.... But then later just played around with one in a hospital, potentially risking thousands of lives.

Even the robot suggested doing it outside.

I don't understand why the writers thought setting up the significance of that danger was worthwhile only to wave it away so casually and stupidly.

Also when you detonate the robot things in order to kill someone - don't make them have a five minute timer.

What would be the point of that?

It was fine. I loved Clone Wars and Rebels. But the acting in Ahsoka was just too muted for characters that have been far more animated in the past. No pun intended.

I get that the characters in Rebels are supposed go be more grown up and the tone can be more serious, but the writing feels...I don't know, stilted? And because of that the acting is sort of just meh, with the exception, funny enough, of Chopper...

Anywho, I'm hopeful though. It looks to have lots of potential.

I felt like the "you did good" part of Sabine's redemption arc was over-played versus the "you fucking idiot you took one of the most valuable and potentially dangerous secrets in the galaxy home with you, and you may well have brought a terror even worse than Darth Vader back into play, and you may have ruined our chance of getting Ezra back."

I've caught more flack for buying someone the wrong type of beer.

Fuck Disney. Fuck consumer culture. Star Wars was worth being a fan of before Disney took it and milked it for all it was worth. This is another shallow attempt at more money-grabbing.