Star Wars, Clone Wars, Rebels, Oh My

Annnd we got more Mandalorian details:

https://www.starwars.com/news/pedro-pascal-revealed-as-the-mandalorian

Pedro Pascal (Narcos) has been cast in the title role as a lone Mandalorian gunfighter in the outer reaches of the galaxy. He is joined by Gina Carano (Deadpool), Giancarlo Esposito (Breaking Bad), Emily Swallow (Supernatural), Carl Weathers (Predator), Omid Abtahi (American Gods), Werner Herzog (Grizzly Man), and Nick Nolte (Affliction).

Ah yes, Werner Herzog, star of Grizzly Man

I suppose revive this one for The Mandalorian details:

https://io9.gizmodo.com/the-first-footage-from-the-mandalorian-just-kicked-our-1834033182

Also, separately:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nw7sRmD-ViY

Herzog? Carl Weathers? Baby, they've got a stew going!

https://i.imgur.com/2kBY6OT.jpg

offered without comment https://ew.com/movies/2019/11/12/disney-new-hope-han-greedo-macklunkey/

they should just randomly show you one of any current and any number of new possibilities, every time it's played. We have the technology!

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EJQRrHcXkAAXD5a?format=jpg

I like the sense one starts to get that we've always only been seeing heavily abridged snippets of a long, psychologically complex conversation between the characters and eventually, gradually, the entire 20-hour scene will be revealed

If only to stop shitting up the SW IX threads with my discussions about a tv show, can I just say: I'm way more invested in The Clone Wars than I have been in any SW movin' picture show released since my childhood. Like I'm even able to look past the off-putting character design (my #1 barrier of entry since this show has existed) because this is kinda everything I ever wanted from SW on a story level (tho the OG trilogy still wins easily in terms of the overall visual/aural presentation). Guess I started binging at a good time, too, since the long-delayed final season starts next month.

It's just now occurring to me that, since this was arguably the primary SW product released during the decade between the prequels and the Disney acquisition, this might actually be THE SW of an entire generation. Jealous.

huh i guess i'm gonna watch clone wars now lol

I would recommend it to SW fans in general but I'd go so far as to call it essential if you're at all invested in the prequel storyline. There's such a radical change in status quo at the end of AOTC, and this show gives that changed world room to breathe. And there's more of a gradual shift in where the characters and relationships end up when ROTS rolls around (I just, a season and a half in, got to the first moment where Vader's Theme pokes into the score when Anakin goes a little further off-book than usual).

Cool: a young Boba Fett wreaks massive havoc in an attempt to exact revenge on Mace Windu (this show covers all the angles!)
Drool: getting to hear Bossk's voice for the very first time in forty years and discovering that he sounds like someone's dad doing a shitty impersonation of a cartoon character

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLW2jkd6E7g

ending, these clone wars are

Caught up in time to watch the final season, I may well be. Rippin' through the show at lightning speed. It's so good, y'all. Can't believe I slept on it for so long.

Okay so the 'Maul on Mandalore' storyline in season 5 of Clone Wars is big and epic and awesome and dark and apparently very highly regarded, but I've been appreciating the extent to which this show narratively functions very well as a bridge between the two films which abut it and then they just totally blew it with Palpy being all 'bring me my ship' (flips up hood). Like yes, of course, we the audience know that he's behind everything, a-doy, but they did such a good job within the narrative of straddling that dramatically ironic line without ever being all PALPATINE = SIDIOUS DO U SEE because that, of course, is a job for ROTS. It's a minor quibble, particularly since it's chronologically quite near the fall of the Republic but still. Come on, y'all.

BTW, it's only taken about a month for me to go from 'yeah I guess Rise of Skywalker was dece but I ultimately don't think I'm all that invested in the enterprise' to being actually kinda super invested as a result of binging this show. Which may be an argument for treating the films themselves as ancillary elements of a much bigger and better story.

Time to steal a Disney+ login, y'all, the first ep of Clone Wars final season dropped TODAY

I was idly wondering if/when a new animated series would be in the works and behold:

https://www.starwars.com/news/star-wars-the-bad-batch-series-announce

Today, Disney+ ordered its next animated series from Lucasfilm, Star Wars: The Bad Batch. Fresh off of the critically-acclaimed series finale of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, the Disney+ original series will premiere on the streaming service in 2021.

The series follows the elite and experimental clones of the Bad Batch (first introduced in The Clone Wars) as they find their way in a rapidly changing galaxy in the immediate aftermath of the Clone War. Members of Bad Batch — a unique squad of clones who vary genetically from their brothers in the Clone Army — each possess a singular exceptional skill, which makes them extraordinarily effective soldiers and a formidable crew. In the post-Clone War era, they will take on daring mercenary missions as they struggle to stay afloat and find new purpose.

Also: for the past few weeks I've been going through all the animated series for the first time ever -- four seasons down on The Clone Wars itself as of yesterday -- and it's been enjoyable for sure, just in terms of the variety of the kind of stories they do. (And some of the surprises along the way: one intense battlefield episode directed by Walter Murch was a credit I didn't expect.)

Aw, man. I wanna be excited but that Bad Batch arc felt like a misstep to me.

The QC may be all over the place but I've been getting a lot more enjoyment from the expanded universe stuff lately (cartoons, novels, comics) than I did from the recent run of sequels.

Anyway -- had muttered something about this on another thread but today I finished a long-planned, not a binge watch but a thorough back to front of the entire Clone Wars series over the past few weeks, very little of which I'd actually seen before. Gotta say they really did the business throughout -- sure not everything landed but yeah if you had all this as a big part of your introduction to the world I can see where all the characters would be specific anchors and interpretations you'd hinge on even more than the films, just thanks to the overall volume of work.

The whole thing on Mortis, with the Force Wielders? Never not gonna be weird.

“Hey Mr Filoni, what if we throw some random stuff late in the season that’s a lot like the endgame from a JRPG?”

“Sure”

I remember the little arc about the Mon Calamari / Quarren civil war being a lot more boring and confusing than this time around.

Maybe I give more fucks this time around since both races got recent screentime on The Mandalorian?

It was pretty involved! And the shark asshole died too quickly.

I think that guy was probably the actual ugliest character not named Hutt in the entire series.

almost done with Rebels. loving it. I do like that it and Mandalorian really dig into the fascistic tendencies of the Empire, rather than the morality play it was depicted as in the films.

depicts civilian life in the Empire on many worlds, how the Empire uses virulent language about the rebellion to paint them as the violent ones and put a target on their backs (much like....ehh, too easy), allegories for the cold war....and hell some really nice scenery throughout each ep

RIP Kanan

Closing in on the end of Clone Wars S5 on my rewatch and really starting to realize how fucking amazing this show looks on my new 4K QLED.

Some of the textures are just so PAINTED

Yeah there's a ton of art across the years of animation that's stellar. This from Rebels of a Sith temple is the ultimate prog-metal cover, really:

https://lumiere-a.akamaihd.net/v1/images/malachor-sith-temple_1bc752c9.jpeg?region=0%2C0%2C1560%2C878&width=768

The other thing you learn from watching all of Clone Wars is that the Jedi spend a LOT of time in the gym

Somewhere in the galaxy is a whole other club of force users who huff and puff after five minutes on the track and would really rather just have a cold space beer while they use their powers to detect when the coals have gotten the space pig to exactly the right internal temperature

did we talk about how terrible Anakin’s hair is in CW S7? My god

That's how you knew he was headed to the dark side.

The dork side

new Bad Batch episodes!

this show’s grown on me and it seems more promising now that they’re out of the origin arc. it’s like the a-team but with experimental clones (and a kid)

Ahsoka tv show trailer's out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnzNZ0Mdx4I

It really does look like live action Rebels!

LIVE ACTION REBELS would so be my jam.

i'm down for this.

I keep coming back to the realization that there's a whole generation of folks for whom Clone Wars/Rebels was THEIR Star Wars, and that this must be such an exciting time for them. Like, imagine if all of the anticipation and hype leading up to The Phantom Menace had been in the service of something other than a two-hour George Lucas fart.

Love it! And Titus Pullo as a Sith!

So if they’re doing Thrawn, and they teased the line “heir to the Empire,” dare I speculate that that’s Joruus C’baoth?

Still no sign of Ezra so he's definitely dead.

they've got to hold something back for the show!

xxpost Pretty much my initial guess. (Also: given all the various breadcrumbs being laid EVERYWHERE re cloning things lately in Mandalorian, Bad Batch, etc., that would fit in as well. I've seen it argued that this is a massive Rise of Skywalker retrofit going on, which makes sense -- but I'm actually interested in how that plays out here.)

xxpost Ezra’s in the trailer ( as a hologram) around the 1:20 mark!

Be great if they went full Uncanny Valley and Ezra is the only one specifically rendered in CGI as his Rebels look without alteration. "But I've always looked like this."

I think that hologram (and the bit with Sabine in the tower) is a recreation of the end of Rebels where Ahsoka shows up

Yeah, definitely.

not sure I'm very excited by more Rey.

God it’s all so t e d i o u s