Television Star Wars: Ahsoka (Disney+) OUT NOW! - Discussion Thread

[Spawn_of_Apathy]

5 minutes ago, Greatoneshere said:

(fight scenes came off weirdly slow) and I didn't have any cognitive dissonance squaring this with Star Wars Rebels, personally.

Though fight scenes in clone wars and rebels are often faster and will show in wide shot so you can see the actual better. But this is most likely due to limited time for the actors to train and practice. Ewan and Hayden got to train and practice for two to three months for that fight sequence at the end of Episode 3. 

It’s doubtful they got too long to practice any one fight for the show to get to a point where they could go through the choreography at a blistering pace. 
 

It’s funny, I read the choreographer for the show watched Ahsoka from the animated series and when seeing the acrobatics and speed said something along the lines of “yeah that’s not humanly possible.” lol 

[Greatoneshere]

9 minutes ago, Spawn_of_Apathy said:

Though fight scenes in clone wars and rebels are often faster and will show in wide shot so you can see the actual better. But this is most likely due to limited time for the actors to train and practice. Ewan and Hayden got to train and practice for two to three months for that fight sequence at the end of Episode 3. 

It’s doubtful they got too long to practice any one fight for the show to get to a point where they could go through the choreography at a blistering pace. 
 

It’s funny, I read the choreographer for the show watched Ahsoka from the animated series and when seeing the acrobatics and speed said something along the lines of “yeah that’s not humanly possible.” lol 

 

Yeah, that's definitely part of it, but perhaps they should have sped up the framerate or something like they sometimes do for fights so the humans don't look like they are moving like slow-ass humans do. Also, I know it was mentioned earlier, but I'm much more of a fan of the Fate of the Duels Darth Maul fight than the one in Episode 3 since that was a lot of nonsense at times. Like what is this? Hurts not having stunt guy Ray Park (Darth Maul) to help.

 

[EternallDarkness]

never watched Rebels so have no connection to these characters. Thought the actress playing Sabine looked familiar to me but checking IMDB the only thing she's been in that I could have seen her in is The Greatest Showman but hell if I can remember her from that

[Reputator]

9 hours ago, cusideabelincoln said:

 

Maybe it's not so bad going in blind, because my impression of the show so far is the characters are trying too damn hard to imitate the animated versions, and it simply is not translating to live action. From subtle (and not so subtle) mannerisms, their body posture, and down to the inflection of their voice, the real life actors just seem like average impersonators to me. Of course, it certainly doesn't help when Filoni also copies the exact same camera shots from the animated series too.

 

This might be a bit exaggerating. I think what you're experiencing (and I've experienced as well) is simply a disconnect between these characters and their animated counterparts, and I think that's something that can be adjusted to over time.

[cusideabelincoln]

8 hours ago, Spawn_of_Apathy said:

yeah it’s a problem with playing a character that was brought to life and given an established personality by other people. And unlike something like a comic book movie this isn’t a different version of a character. It’s expected to be the very same character in the same universe. 
 

though I feel like the camera angles are more because of not shooting on a massive set, or on location. Someplace where they have a lot of room. They’re shooting most of these shows on the Volume, which is probably barely bigger than the inside of Ahsoka’s ship. I say this because we got these same camera angles in every Star Wars show … and even some of the marvel movies since Endgame. 

 

The volume is definitely driving these shots, but in some circumstances the real life background actors are just standing in one spot as the main characters talk. Also he straight copied.... err I mean "rhymed" two Sabine scenes with two Rebels scenes (Kana cutting off his hair, and the finale). I wonder if the volume also the reason the show's color palette is so desaturated and overly bright.

 

7 hours ago, Greatoneshere said:

 

That being said, I thought Ahsoka was shot pretty well (fight scenes came off weirdly slow) and I didn't have any cognitive dissonance squaring this with Star Wars Rebels, personally.

 

Everything felt pretty slow. Slow isn't a problem on its own, only when its overdone and I feel like it was here. Hopefully the rest of the episodes can move now that we've spent plenty of time simmering in this angsty drama of Sabine's.

 

1 hour ago, Reputator said:

 

This might be a bit exaggerating. I think what you're experiencing (and I've experienced as well) is simply a disconnect between these characters and their animated counterparts, and I think that's something that can be adjusted to over time.

 

It certainly doesn't help that for some reason Youtube has recently recommended a dialect expert channel, and I watched a few episodes. So now I'm keyed into exactly how people are enunciating their words.

[Reputator]

I took the bright color scheme to be a deliberate choice that reflected Ashoka and her white sabers and head tendrils.

[skillzdadirecta]

‘Ahsoka’ First Episode Draws 1.2M Households, Even With ‘Andor’ But Off From ‘Obi-Wan Kenobi’

DEADLINE.COM

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'Ahsoka' Viewership: 1.2M Households First Episode, Down From 'Obi-Wan'

 

I still haven't watched yet so I'm just dropping this here without reading the rest of the thread. Pardon me if this has been posted already.

[Reputator]

Odd. I figured there was a lot of hype around it.

[69los]

To be fair, Obi-Wan was a show based on a character that's been in 6 of the main movies. Plus, Ewan coming back is probably a draw. Ahsoka has a more limited audience reach being based off cartoons. The Star Wars fans showed but Obi-Wan has a more casual draw for D+ subs who aren't exactly SW fans.

[Reputator]

47 minutes ago, 69los said:

To be fair, Obi-Wan was a show based on a character that's been in 6 of the main movies. Plus, Ewan coming back is probably a draw. Ahsoka has a more limited audience reach being based off cartoons. The Star Wars fans showed but Obi-Wan has a more casual draw for D+ subs who aren't exactly SW fans.

 

I get that but even the fact that it only did equal with Andor. Quality aside I would have figured Andor was more niche.

[Kal-El814]

Obi-Wan hit at the perfect time to ride the Hayden Christiansen "redemption" / Ewan is back hype. None of these other shows are going to do that.

[Mercury33]

Episode 3 is on TV right so I’m rewatching it. This shit is not good by any measure. Even the fights suck. 

[CayceG]

I like this show. It's not Andor, but not everything can be. Rebels Season 5 isn't far off the mark. 

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

Man, those merc starfighters look janky as hell.

 

They don't even look like they're from the pre-Empire Republic - they look look like they're from The High Republic era or even older!

[Jwheel86]

8 minutes ago, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

Man, those merc starfighters look janky as hell.

 

They don't even look like they're from the pre-Empire Republic - they look look like they're from The High Republic era or even older!

 

What was that wild western style fighter console game way back when, reminded me of that. 

 

edit- Crimson Skies

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

1 minute ago, Jwheel86 said:

 

What was that wild western style fighter console game way back when, reminded me of that. 

 

I'll have to search my memory for that one.

 

Aaaaaaaaaand there "they" are!!! 

[Kal-El814]

I liked the tea set they had on the ship.

[cusideabelincoln]

Changing my TV's color temperature from neutral, where every other show looks fine, to cool drastically enhances color saturation, bringing it into alignment with most other TV shows [although IIRC Obi-Wan was also very drab]. It looks so much better now. 

 

It's too bad the writing is... peak prequel-trilogy-dialogue bad. 

[CayceG]

The Japan vibes were off the charts on ep 3. Samurai sparring in suits that were very reminiscent of Samurai outfits, Huyang holding holo-thingys that look like big bundles of hay that might be used for katana targets, then a time jump to the snub fighters looking like Imperial Japanese Zeros  

 

 

I really dig it. There's some "yeah, whatever" moments (Ahsoka suited up into that space suit real fast), but it's entertaining and engaging. 

[Kal-El814]

34 minutes ago, cusideabelincoln said:

It's too bad the writing is... peak prequel-trilogy-dialogue bad. 

 

Tell me you haven’t seen the prequels in a while without telling me you haven’t seen the prequels in a while.

[cusideabelincoln]

10 minutes ago, Kal-El814 said:

 

Tell me you haven’t seen the prequels in a while without telling me you haven’t seen the prequels in a while.

 

Ok, it's not quite as bad as Anakin telling Padme he murdered women and children and then Padme telling Anakin she deeply loves him, but the rest of TPM and AOTC is comparable. Lots of standing or sitting exposition dumps, and too much

 

 

[Greatoneshere]

Well, it's pretty clear that Marrok (the sub-villain with a mask on and a distorted voice wielding an Inquisitor lightsaber) is clearly important and not just a lackey. If it's Ezra and/or Kanan that will be lame as fuck.

[Kal-El814]

I’m probably thinking about this too much, but regardless of who he is, Marrok being an Inquisitor seems… weird? Skoll lamenting that killing Ahsoka / a Jedi would be a shame because there are so few of them left is a decidedly non-Inquisitor perspective. He and Shin have orange lightsabers, not true red ones that you’d expect from a bled kyber crystal.

 

I don’t THINK it could be Ezra; I don’t know that there’s enough time for that to work? Unless “beyond time and space” comes into it and then obviously all bets are off. It seems really unlikely that Ezra would see the purrgil and not truly react. And he’s rarely been the kind of person who would just take an order from someone like he did from Shin… he rarely was that deferential to Kanan or Maul. I also don’t think it’s going to be Kanan, I don’t think Filoni would “undo” how that worked out.

[Greatoneshere]

29 minutes ago, Kal-El814 said:

I’m probably thinking about this too much, but regardless of who he is, Marrok being an Inquisitor seems… weird? Skoll lamenting that killing Ahsoka / a Jedi would be a shame because there are so few of them left is a decidedly non-Inquisitor perspective. He and Shin have orange lightsabers, not true red ones that you’d expect from a bled kyber crystal.

 

I don’t THINK it could be Ezra; I don’t know that there’s enough time for that to work? Unless “beyond time and space” comes into it and then obviously all bets are off. It seems really unlikely that Ezra would see the purrgil and not truly react. And he’s rarely been the kind of person who would just take an order from someone like he did from Shin… he rarely was that deferential to Kanan or Maul. I also don’t think it’s going to be Kanan, I don’t think Filoni would “undo” how that worked out.

 

Yeah, that's a good call about him not reacting to the purgill. I don't think Marrok is still an Inquisitor, but maybe once was? I was thinking maybe they could be pulling from Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order and Survivor? It's obviously not Cal Kestis. It'd be interesting for Merrin and Morgan to meet though. Obviously those games' stories, like Rebels, take place before the OG trilogy while Ahsoka takes place 8-10 years after, so we don't know who makes it out of those games to this point. Whoever it is, it seems to matter to the story. 

[Kal-El814]

15 minutes ago, Greatoneshere said:

Yeah, that's a good call about him not reacting to the purgill. I don't think Marrok is still an Inquisitor, but maybe once was? I was thinking maybe they could be pulling from Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order and Survivor? It's obviously not Cal Kestis. It'd be interesting for Merrin and Morgan to meet though. Whoever it is, it seems to matter to the story. 

 

Yeah, former Inquisitor would be more accurate. Which again is part of why Ezra doesn't seem super likely to me? Ezra yeeted himself and Thrawn around 0 BBY and we can assume the Inquisitorious was disbanded or everyone was considered dead by 0 BBY. Tarkin worked with the Inuisitorious and in ANH he told Vader he was the last practitioner of his religion (however he worded that), so it's reasonable to think that there were no Inquisitors openly active in the Empire right then. Not that Vader didn't keep secrets, but there doesn't seem to be enough time for Ezra to come back and get kitted as an Inquisitor specifically between when he left the galaxy and when Vader died?

 

Who knows.

[Greatoneshere]

6 minutes ago, Kal-El814 said:

 

Yeah, former Inquisitor would be more accurate. Which again is part of why Ezra doesn't seem super likely to me? Ezra yeeted himself and Thrawn around 0 BBY and we can assume the Inquisitorious was disbanded or everyone was considered dead by 0 BBY. Tarkin worked with the Inuisitorious and in ANH he told Vader he was the last practitioner of his religion (however he worded that), so it's reasonable to think that there were no Inquisitors openly active in the Empire right then. Not that Vader didn't keep secrets, but there doesn't seem to be enough time for Ezra to come back and get kitted as an Inquisitor specifically between when he left the galaxy and when Vader died?

 

Who knows.

 

Yeah, Ezra doesn't make a lot of sense, but they cast a live-action actor to play Ezra and the season is only going to be 8 episodes so that's probably why people think it could be Ezra (why cast him to only have him show up in one scene in the finale-kind of thinking). I agree that Ezra or Kanan doesn't make sense, but then I wonder who is left important enough to need to hide their identity on this show? But yeah, definitely former Inquisitor because it did indeed seem like there were was no active Inquisitorious by the time of the OG trilogy.

[Kal-El814]

Just now, Greatoneshere said:

Yeah, Ezra doesn't make a lot of sense, but they cast a live-action actor to play Ezra and the season is only going to be 8 episodes so that's probably why people think it could be Ezra (why cast him to only have him show up in one scene in the finale-kind of thinking). I agree that Ezra or Kanan doesn't make sense, but then I wonder who is left important enough to need to hide their identity on this show?

 

Part of me REALLY hopes it's Sam Witwer but that he's playing someone named Rando McGee and that he dies while slipping on a banana peel or something just so Starkiller stans can eat shit. I don't know what part of me is broken to make me happy when fans that want Force users to be Super Sayains get bent out of shape but it's there!  

[Greatoneshere]

8 minutes ago, Kal-El814 said:

 

Part of me REALLY hopes it's Sam Witwer but that he's playing someone named Rando McGee and that he dies while slipping on a banana peel or something just so Starkiller stans can eat shit. I don't know what part of me is broken to make me happy when fans that want Force users to be Super Sayains get bent out of shape but it's there!  

 

The part of you that broke probably happened when The Last Jedi first released and a bunch of gatekeeping Star Wars nerds didn't like the depiction of an old Luke Skywalker being unlikeable, angry and curmudgeonly rather than teleporting himself across the galaxy and single-handedly Force crushing Star Destroyers with his bare hands. This is not an invitation for others reading this to re-start a Last Jedi debate - obviously there are real people with genuine criticisms of old Luke Skywalker's characterization (that I agree with to some extent!) but that's a different group than the Star Wars Luke Skywalker stans who just wanted a Force Jedi Super Saiyan. I've made the distinction so anyone here who in the past has had real Last Jedi criticisms does NOT fall under the group of fans who want Luke to be a Super Saiyan. This is what broke you Kal (maybe).  

 

[Kal-El814]

2 minutes ago, Greatoneshere said:

 

The part of you that broke probably happened when The Last Jedi first released and a bunch of gatekeeping Star Wars nerds didn't like the depiction of an old Luke Skywalker being unlikeable, angry and curmudgeonly rather than teleporting himself across thee galaxy and single-handedly Force crushing Star Destroyers with his bare hands. This is not an invitation for others reading this to re-start a Last Jedi debate - obviously there are real people with genuine criticisms of old Luke Skywalker's characterization (that I agree with to some extent!) but that's a different group than the Star Wars Luke Skywalker stans who just wanted a Force Jedi Super Saiyan. I've made the distinction so anyone here who in the past has had real Last Jedi criticisms does NOT fall under the group of fans who want Luke to be a Super Saiyan. This is what broke you Kal (maybe).  

 

 

Fortunately Rebel Moon is coming out so we'll know what it would be like if everyone in Star Wars was fucking yoked and covered in baby oil.

[Greatoneshere]

2 minutes ago, Kal-El814 said:

Fortunately Rebel Moon is coming out so we'll know what it would be like if everyone in Star Wars was fucking yoked and covered in baby oil.

 

That's a great description. I mean, that's much more Snyders' speed than Star Wars' so I'm hoping he does go full bug nuts by comparison! It's Snyder, give me the beautiful visuals and awesome action Star Wars shouldn't be doing (at least, Star Wars should not be doing Super Saiyan level action).  

[Reputator]

The only way it could be Ezra is with some mind control/amnesia thing, and that would be a joke.

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

On 8/23/2023 at 1:40 AM, 69los said:

Obvious bias but this makes me giddy.

 

I did have a slight groan at the opening crawl when it mentioned searching for a map.

 

I thought this was a pretty interesting analysis as to why maps play such an important role in the Star Wars universe:

 

Why Is Star Wars So Obsessed With Maps?

GIZMODO.COM

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Ahsoka puts heroes and villains alike on a quest for cartography in its premiere. But why has contemporary Star Wars storytelling made this trope so crucial?

 

Quote

 

And that’s it, really: maps are important in Star Wars because knowledge is power in Star Wars as much as a Death Star or the Force is. And specifically in the case of a long, long time ago, archival knowledge and history is incredibly vital to understanding why Star Wars is the way it is. It’s been postulated before that the Star Wars galaxy has a... complicated history with the written word. We don’t see people engaging with books and writing in Star Wars very often if at all (save for Nemik and his manifesto, the first literal political text on screen in Star Wars since... ever?), and when it comes to historical, institutional knowledge, archival history gives way to hearsay and myth passed on to other generations.

 

It’s perhaps why in part generational knowledge in Star Wars seems so spartan compared to our own cultural approach to history. Luke Skywalker is a mythic legend after three decades after fighting the Empire, the Clone War and the Jedi Order themselves are pretty much hearsay and superstition just two decades after the outbreak of a debilitating galactic conflict. Speaking of the Jedi, their temple archive, the closest thing to a contemporary historical record of the galaxy, is largely dismissed and destroyed when the Empire takes over, and so when characters do engage with history, it isn’t with recent archival examples of it rendered in Star Wars’ high-tech holographic slate style, but specifically ancient history—the battered old written texts, actual physical books like the ones Luke and Rey pore over. History is lost to the characters of Star Wars in this manner, and in being so, they are often doomed to repeat its mistakes, leading to the cyclical generational conflicts we’ve experienced throughout the franchise.

 

 

This builds off the notion that the vast majority of the inhabitants of the universe could very well be functionally illiterate:

 

Most Citizens of the Star Wars Galaxy are Probably Totally Illiterate | Tor.com

WWW.TOR.COM

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Not once in any Star Wars movie does someone pick up a book or newspaper, magazine, literary journal, or chapbook handmade by an aspiring Jawa poet. If something is read by someone in Star Wars, it…

 

Quote

 

Attack of the Clones sees Obi-Wan Kenobi go to the Jedi Library, but again, this research facility seems less about books and more about pretty colors, interactive holographic maps, etc. The amount of actual reading even someone like Obi-Wan does is still limited. Now, I imagine Jedi can probably read and are taught to read, as are rich people like Princess Leia and Padme Amidala and Jimmy Smits. But everything in Star Wars is about video chat via holograms, or verbal communication through com-links. Nobody texts in Star Wars!

 

It seems like this society has slipped into a kind of highly functional illiteracy. Surely, for these cultures to progress and become spacefaring entities, they needed written language at some point. But now, the necessity to actually learn reading and writing is fading away. Those who know how to build and repair droids and computers probably have better jobs than those who can’t. This is why there seems to be so much poverty in Star Wars: widespread ignorance.

 

[johnny]

the new season of star wars rebels fucking rules 

[TwinIon]

When it comes to Jedi becoming legends of myth in the span of one generation, I'd always bought into the idea that when the Empire took over they destroyed most history and the Jedi themselves were sparse to begin with, so few would have had personal interactions with them to begin with. I can extend similar logic to other aspects of Star Wars enough to cover why so much seems to have been lost in 30 years. I still don't like the reliance on maps. It's not as if the Empire destroyed hyperspace travel. People are still going all over the place all the time for war, trade, government, whatever. It also really doesn't help when you're post Empire and have walking databases like Huyang with centuries of institutional knowledge at your disposal.

 

What I find especially irksome is this Star Wars trend of finding ancient maps to modern solutions. Find ancient map to get to ancient thing? Sure, that makes sense. There can be any number of reasons that ancient thing is useful for modern problem. Jedi Survivor does that and I have no issue with it. However, finding an ancient map to find dude-who-went-missing-a-few-years-ago (something we've now seen on screen at least three times!) doesn't scan.

 

I feel like the maps in Star Wars are all about reducing complexity around mysteries to something simple and physical. It's a convenient mcguffin, but not a good one. Especially since in the end you have to come up with some weird reason that ancient map solves modern mystery, and I've generally not found those explanations very compelling. I'm not arguing that these are plot holes that they don't explain, just that I haven't found them compelling and usually the whole map thing was unnecessary in the first place.

 

There doesn't need to be a map for people to want to find Thrawn or Luke or Sidious. You can just have clues and detective work chasing the same goal but without the unnecessary orb which only represents your ability to find a thing anyways. If True Detective season 4 came out and they decided they needed to find an ancient map in order to find the killer, it would be crazy. Maybe instead of trying to solve some ancient riddle you just follow the clues. We see exactly this in episode 3 of Ahsoka! She kills the bot, recovers some memory, uses that with existing knowledge to get a lead, and follows that lead to find her quarry. There was no need to find a map to where the bad guys were hiding, and there's no need for there to be a map to Thrawn.

[Greatoneshere]

20 minutes ago, TwinIon said:

What I find especially irksome is this Star Wars trend of finding ancient maps to modern solutions. Find ancient map to get to ancient thing? Sure, that makes sense. There can be any number of reasons that ancient thing is useful for modern problem. Jedi Survivor does that and I have no issue with it. However, finding an ancient map to find dude-who-went-missing-a-few-years-ago (something we've now seen on screen at least three times!) doesn't scan.

 

I feel like the maps in Star Wars are all about reducing complexity around mysteries to something simple and physical. It's a convenient mcguffin, but not a good one. Especially since in the end you have to come up with some weird reason that ancient map solves modern mystery, and I've generally not found those explanations very compelling. I'm not arguing that these are plot holes that they don't explain, just that I haven't found them compelling and usually the whole map thing was unnecessary in the first place.

 

I completely agree with everything you're saying, it's a weird thing that just doesn't scan. The only explanation I have now for ancient map solving modern problem/mystery is that the ancient map has the intergalactic hyperspace lanes the purrgil have taken for millenia, given Ezra and Thrawn went somewhere the purrgil migrate to. It makes some logical sense on that level (assume Ezra and Thrawn are where purgill go) and to use ancient high tech that knows those locations (here, an ancient orb) to get there. Hence the Eye of Sion, the giant hyperspace ring Morgan is making. Huyang says: "the Jedi archives speak of intergalactic hyperspace lanes between galaxies which used to follow the migration paths of star whales named purrgil". "Lanes which used to follow" means civilizations followed these natural lanes of the purrgil and had access to do so.

 

That being said, the constant focus on ancient thing solves modern problem/mystery is something that should definitely stop happening. What doesn't scan is why/how were these intergalactic hyperspace lanes lost, and when? Star Wars does imply that lots have been lost over millenia but who knows.