Ahsoka

A lot of fun visual stuff this week. Thrawn’s exile legion, the bandits, the Eroks, Macbeth’s witches.

Still a strong sense that it assumes we already know who all these people are, what their motivations are and how they got here though.

Plus Thrawn really does look like Elon Musk.

Can’t wait for them to face off next week



I think I’m more interested in that bearded ex-Jedi’s mission than a generic stop the big baddie thing the main plot is following. Its going to be sad when his apprentice kills him.

Problem is that all the excitement/interest is based around them finding some Jedi guy that most people know nothing about.

He also disappears by episode 7 as does Thrawn.

I think I’m being fair with it. I thought the first three episodes were less than great, boring even, but noted the fourth, fifth and sixth have been much better. I’d also note that they’ve answered, in the later episodes lore dumps, what was a huge problem for me in the first episodes. To understand why people dislike it you have to see it from the pov of people who’ve not seen the cartoons, and ask whether the show could not have presented just a little more of the relevant information upfront.

So, in episode 6 we learned that, a long time ago, in a galaxy far away, someone hitched a ride on a migrating space whale to the Star Wars galaxy, then something something.

In the first episode we learned that, more recently, a bad guy and a good guy got whisked away to that other galaxy somehow.

Had the show established that first part first, it would have made THE EXISTENCE OF AN ANCIENT MAP LEADING TO A GUY WHO LEFT LAST YEAR seem less like totally stupid cartoon bullshit, which has understandably kept casual viewers at arms length from this ineptly handled narrative. Instead, they explained it in the 6th episode, showing that it’s… actually a good story, just badly told. Or, that they are assuming that viewers are steeped in the cartoons, which is a really foolhardy and unnecessary way to transition to live-action. There’s no good reason what the series couldn’t have predicted and served both kinds of viewers very effectively.

Genuinely don't understand good narrative being, tell you all the background right at the beginning. I'm struggling to think of anything good that works that way.

Maybe instead of characters doing lore dumps early on to benefit the casuals they could have a some opening text. Maybe text that crawls across the stars.

In a rare case for a streaming show it does appear to have a better back half than front for a change to be fair.

The lord of the rings films aren't as good as the books, partly as the significance of everything is spelled out so much.

The star wars trawls are deeply vague and not reading them barely matters.

So, world building in general is immaterial. Good world building comes from narrative, it extrapolates outwards from narrative and character. But it's essentially unimportant. Fury Road is a great movie because at no point do any characters explain the world, they merely inhabit a world and react to it accordingly. Their reactions and behaviours informs you about that world, via acting. But leaves almost all of it unexplained. They live in a hell hole isn't that enough.

Lord of the Rings the book, the ring becomes important through characters interacting not through being told it's exact significance. Gandalf thinks its important as all fuck, you get that immediately but the exact reasons why only occur much later. Marlow does not know what's been going on in the Congo, it becomes apparent through meeting Kurtz. Though Kurtz not being reliable the exact happenings are not clear, but it's unimportant as the motives of the characters are clear. Or become clear at least, or actually with Marlow they start clear but they are false and become muddied.

So original Star Wars, the scroll at the beginning, is light. There's an evil empire, there's a rebellion. It doesn't spell much out other than the fucking obvious that the Empire are baddies, which minus the scroll would be immediately obvious the first time you see Vader. The scroll is basically pointless. The Jedi are just some mystic pricks, with cool laser swords. There is 1 sentence about "The Clone Wars", the details remain unimportant it just serves to tell you Obi Wan saw some dark ass shit. Then once you see Empire, so did Darth. This stuff is only revealed to the viewer when it becomes apparent to the characters (well Luke mostly).

Whether it's been boring or not, which is a side issue, this show basically said straight out "These character's friends got lost somewhere with a proper wrongun, other characters are concerned about returning, due to being a wrongun". Sabine is clearly motivated by seeing her friend. Ahsoka is a bit more ambiguous, her motivations become more clear later on. The baddies like the wrongun coming back. Though Titus Pullo it turns out is also ambiguous like Ahsoka herself. The backstory isn't really clarifying, the characters are currently motivated by what they're doing and that is enough.

TLDR; this is why Villeneuve's Dune is infinitely better than Lynch's Dune. Show don't tell.

Spicediver fan edit of Lynch's Dune > Villeneuve's Dune > theatrical cut of Lynch's Dune

At least until part 2 comes out.

As the kids say these days....mid.

Quite obvious linear movement before we get to the cliffhangers for next week's finale. And when Pullo's teasing is more intriguing than the main Thrawn story, yup, something went wrong because we're back on Leia, C3PO, Skywalkers, and trying to tie together all the loose threads for that minority fanbase, whereas the thought of something new has the other side of the fanbase somewhat excited.

Just when progress seemed to be on the horizon, bam, REFERENCES AND CANON. And with Ray's passing, I'm concerned with what they'll do - handwave away or a recast, neither of which feel satisfactory.

Ever since the galaxy hop things have improved incredibly.

I hope we get to see where the bad Jedi is going. His quest almost sounds like it could’ve been a show of its own.

Well, bad guys in this series have a habit of getting disfigured and buried under masks or prosthetics and a different voice actor, so if they didn’t always intend for him to be gobbled up by the big bad he’s looking for, expect him to be at least splashed with its stomach acid in some hastily-added cgi next episode.

They really went big on it this week. 

And, man, Jedi are the worst. Dragging the hermit crab people into their nonsense and get their caravans all dinged up, the selfish twats.