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

[johnny]

2 hours ago, Kal-El814 said:

On the topic of the fights, I know it's a fool's errand to expect these things to make sense, but... I feel like Ahsoka took too many L's here. She's held her own against Maul! She's handled peak Vader! Yeah I guess Baylan is super dope, whatever, but Elsbeth? What are we even doing here.

 

to be fair Elsbeth got handled without too much trouble on Mando but in the finale she got leveled up by the night mother and given a badass sword so i don’t think that one is really a big deal. it was tough but she did kill Elsbeth ultimately. 

[Spawn_of_Apathy]

9 hours ago, Kal-El814 said:

On the topic of the fights, I know it's a fool's errand to expect these things to make sense, but... I feel like Ahsoka took too many L's here. She's held her own against Maul! She's handled peak Vader! Yeah I guess Baylan is super dope, whatever, but Elsbeth? What are we even doing here.

She also fought off 3 Inquisitors at the same time. I think part of the problem is we don’t know anything about Baylan. We don’t know how strong he is. We saw him kill a bunch of normies at the beginning of the show with stiff yet highly efficient saber work, but that’s par for the course with force sensitives with lightsabers. Maybe this was just my read, but Anakin even seemed a little disappointed Ahsoka lost. Which knowing who she lost to would mean he thinks she should not have lost. Maybe. 
 

But maybe it’s meant to be kind of a thing where when she loses to Baylan it’s like not only is it “woah he must be strong”, but also with the next episode “Ahsoka needs to get her groove back”. 
 

lol On the one hand I want to say animated Ahsoka would wipe the floor with Baylan, but then if Baylan was animated they could make him appear faster and stronger too. Able to keep up with her acrobatics and agility defensively while showing off his powerful attacks. His fighting style kind of resembles Vader in the suit. Guarded, but powerful, utilizing lots of heavy attacks. Which would have made for a very interesting fight to see. 
 

I get the desire for live action by Disney as there are many people that will not watch an animated show, while everyone that would watch the animated show will watch the live action show. 

[TwinIon]

I was watching a video on how The Creator was shot and they blamed the lightsaber fights on shooting in the volume. The argument goes that if you're shooting in the volume, it's just so much easier to film a fight happening in a flat area and to do as little interaction with the environment as possible. Compared to what we get in the films where people are often running and jumping around a lot more, it seems like the volume is constraining the choreography quite a bit.

 

Hard to say that's the case for sure, but it rang true when I heard it.

 

(As an aside, The Creator and Andor are both pretty excellent examples of how much can be gained by shooting on location. Both still use the volume when scenes or locations call for it, but shooting on location still can't be equaled.)

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

This series review from Polygon does reflect many of the salient points that we've posted, albeit a bit more (perhaps, too) harshly.

 

Ahsoka season 1 was a massive waste of time and goodwill

WWW.POLYGON.COM

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What a huge bummer!

 

Quote

 

Let’s say you’re hanging out with some people who’ve known each other for a long time. Maybe longer than they’ve known you. They have all these hilarious in-jokes and constantly reference times they hung out together. Times which you were, notably, not present for. It’s all they do. They never bring you up to speed or endeavor to discuss things you might know about. What a bunch of assholes, right? Ahsoka is like one of those jerks.

 

Every week of Ahsoka has been more baffling than the last, to a degree largely dependent on your investment in extracurricular Star Wars. If you’re the type that’s deep in it, well-versed in the animated series and its implications, Ahsoka — while not a good show — is at least an opportunity to feel useful. Because for those that aren’t up-to-date on deep Star Wars lore, Ahsoka has been a slowly accumulating disaster, with its few bright spots (gorgeous space battles, cute turtle guys, Ray Stevenson) overwhelmed by a series so uninterested in entertaining the unconverted that it defeated my weekly struggle to enjoy it. I now know what it was like for Obi-Wan in the pits of Mustafar. Ahsoka was supposed to be the chosen one, the reason for me to tell others, See I wasn’t an idiot for watching all those Star Wars cartoons; you’d like them. Instead I feel like an idiot for watching all those Star Wars cartoons.

 

The current fixation on interconnected cinematic universes and the vertical integration that fuels streaming platforms does a lot to make the viewer feel like it is their responsibility to do homework. Like it’s their fault if a story doesn’t make sense, because answers are, ostensibly, attainable with a few taps on an app and several hours of your time. Let me do you a kindness: That is not on you.

 

 

Quote

Ahsoka’s cardinal sin is a simple one: It’s the middle of a story that the viewer has no way of knowing they started. To make sense of Ahsoka, someone has to tell you that it is a sequel to Rebels, that it leans heavily on several bonkers arcs of The Clone Wars, that its big villain is a callback to decades-old Legacy novels and kind of a Big Deal. And one of the only ways to avoid being frustrated with Ahsoka’s cliffhanger ending is by going in with the knowledge that creator Dave Filoni is working towards a film that will wrap up his “New Republic” story, and that real closure won’t come until then — regardless of whether or not Ahsoka gets a second season, or if its plot threads are continued in The Mandalorian.

 

[Greatoneshere]

1 hour ago, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

This series review from Polygon does reflect many of the salient points that we've posted, albeit a bit more (perhaps, too) harshly.

 

Like the A.V. Club episode reviews, definitely a lot of strong points made, but too harsh in both cases I think as well.

[cusideabelincoln]

I mostly agree with that Polygon article, and don't think it's as harsh as it could be.

 

Among the various things that I didn't like about the show and the things I thought were just bad, the biggest driving factor to my disappointment is I never connected with the live action Ashoka and Sabine characters. It's the one thing I never expected to happen, because I choked up in the last season of Clone Wars and Sabine was a great character in Rebels. 

 

Seems to me people who are in love with the show are of at least two camps: A) People 30 or under, who grew up with the PT and watched the animated shows on loop; B) Casual consumers who probably loved TRoS.

 

The one thing I thought was pretty great was Baylan, and it took 6 episodes for the show to convince me of that. Looking at the meta story, his goal to break the cycle of endless Jedi/Sith fighting is contrary to Filoni (and Lucas') vision that story elements of Star Wars repeat... like poetry, and the show definitely overused the callbacks and repetition of past storylines.

[Reputator]

It was definitely a baffling decision to make most of Ashoka and Sabine's relationship happen in off-screen.

[Spawn_of_Apathy]

9 hours ago, Reputator said:

It was definitely a baffling decision to make most of Ashoka and Sabine's relationship happen in off-screen.

and yet by the end I no longer really feel I missed it. It feels like bad story telling, but it was just a brief moment. 
 

Talking with my dad and for the most part he didn’t have an issue following the story and enjoying it having only seen Mandalorian and Book of Bobafett. He was thrown off by hearing that Ahsoka was Anakin’s Padawan. So he googled when that happened. But he pretty much just rolled with it. 

[Reputator]

4 hours ago, Spawn_of_Apathy said:

and yet by the end I no longer really feel I missed it. It feels like bad story telling, but it was just a brief moment. 
 

Talking with my dad and for the most part he didn’t have an issue following the story and enjoying it having only seen Mandalorian and Book of Bobafett. He was thrown off by hearing that Ahsoka was Anakin’s Padawan. So he googled when that happened. But he pretty much just rolled with it. 

 

It didn't kill it, it just lessened the impact that I think some of the moments were intended to have. The old adage, show, don't tell.

[johnny]

4 hours ago, Spawn_of_Apathy said:

 

Talking with my dad and for the most part he didn’t have an issue following the story and enjoying it having only seen Mandalorian and Book of Bobafett. He was thrown off by hearing that Ahsoka was Anakin’s Padawan. So he googled when that happened. But he pretty much just rolled with it. 

[SuperSpreader]

These virtual sets are killing the show 

[Spawn_of_Apathy]

15 hours ago, SuperSpreader said:

These virtual sets are killing the show 

Not just this show, but all their shows and movies. There are times using the Volume does really well to light a scene, but there are times it’s being used everywhere with minimal set building. They’re trying to use a closet to make it look like it’s in a massive open space. The scenes they’re trying to use them for are making it painfully obvious. 
 

it kind of reminds me of the small sound stage they used for TOS and TNG episodes with away missions. But it was the 60s and 80s, we knew they didn’t have a huge budget, and the budget they did have had to be stretched over 24 episodes.