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The Clone Wars: Refocused [COMPLETE] + Subtitles for season one! — Page 6

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Would be interesting what other members thinking of Mortis.
But I think your suggestion of a dream sequence as compromise could work well. Although I don’t know at which point to include it, righ now.

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 (Edited)

As an aside, I’m really feeling Maul’s absence in this rewatch. Originally he doesn’t come into play until episode 88/141, which is arc 43/61. That’s crazy late. I think we should get him in play as quickly as we can after the Nightsisters arc - with a brief delay to account for finding him - so that his presence can be felt.

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S04E11-13 - Zygerrian Slaver arc - Desirable

This is a good detour into the horrors of slavery and an accurate look at some of the ways power is misused in order to break someone’s will. It’s heavy, and for a family show, really quite brutal. But that’s important! Let your kids see the horrors in a cartoon so they’re ready to fight against human horror in real life should they have to!

I digress. It’s a strong arc for our big three, where they all get well tested and get a good excuse to bend the rules a bit.

It’s a little visually disinteresting, but it’s good. (One of the issues with the show shifting to longer arcs is that we tend to end up staring at a single colour for an hour at a time.)

The tie in to Sidious’ interest in involving slaving in his future empire is an interesting thread.

The first episode can probably be cut down to about five minutes so we get to the meat quicker.

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S04E14 - A Friend in Need - Vital

Lux! Mandalore! Death Watch! Bo-Katan (helmeted)! The Darksaber! Flamethrowers! Droid body horror! A bit of charming R2 action!

It’s also clear that Mandalorians are really going through a major culture crisis, which is pushing them to variety and extremism, which will help viewers coming from the other shows understood that they’re not quite what you’re used to.

Great episode. Worth shifting earlier though, to get those helmeted Mandos in play sooner.

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Just chiming in here to second the weekly watch party idea. With Mando wrapping up in the next few weeks, it’ll be great to have something else Star Wars-related to look forward to with some regularity!

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S04E15-18 - The Rako Hardeen arc - Desirable

Probably the most purely fun romp in the whole show. Obi-Wan goes undercover as the “guy who killed Obi-Wan” in order to infiltrate a plot to capture Palpatine. It’s pure dumb fun, with a prison break, Cad Bane, some underworld scuffling, the bounty hunter competition, and then a kidnapping attempt with subterfuge. Super fun.

It ends with some tension between Anakin and the Jedi which isn’t particularly earned, nor particularly valuable to the story, though we do get a little more of the relationship between Anakin and Palpatine - which I now realise we haven’t actually seen much of in this show to date.

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Regarding the Citadel Arch’s Excludable status:
Not sure if you’ve taken into account that this is where the clonetrooper Echo is left behind presumed dead to reappear in the Bad Batch Arch (and possibly the upcoming animated series). Fives, who is the star of the Order 66 Arch, also makes an appearance here. Up to this point they are the last surviving members of the Domino Squad, who feature prominently in some of the previous stories.

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Noted and duly updated, thanks! I think that makes it one of the weaker Important episodes, but I think you’re right that it should be included in any watch through other than one where you’re just racing to the finish.

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S04E19 - Massacre - Important

Not vital, since this is the branch of the Nightsisters storyline which doesn’t follow the return of Maul.

It’s great though, robots versus zombie witches as part of Sidious’ move to clean house and take a rival force wielder wildcard faction off the board. And we see some nice dangerous Grievous, and the continued fall of Ventress.

You could move this closer to Witches of the Mist, I don’t think Ventress needs this long on her own.

S04E20 - Bounty - Excludable

I nearly called this Important, for two reasons:

  1. It’s got Boba in it - but it’s not important to Boba’s growth to see that he was a fairly ineffective Bounty Hunter when he was starting out
  2. It’s got Ventress in it - but it’s not important to her growth to show that she took a stint as a Bounty hunter and was slightly morally unsure about it. We’re going to get more shades of Grey with Ventress later in the fall of Ahsoka, so we don’t need it here, and we learn she’s been bounty hunting in her next appearance.

This isn’t a particularly strong episode, it’s mainly a bunch of action on a train.

S04E21-22 - The Return of Maul arc - Vital

This is really the only bit of this quadrilogy that’s the Maul arc - the other two episodes are other things.

It does have to follow Massacre though, since Talzin acknowledges that the rest are dead, as it currently stands.

I’m not a big fan of the goofy worm thing, but it’s relatively unavoidable. We do spend a little too long getting to Maul, which could be trimmed. I also think it’s a bit silly of the council to allow Obi-Wan to go alone to fight Maul, but I understand that we need it for the story. Everything else is super though. By this episode the theoretical new viewer will definitely be feeling the tension of Maul’s presence.

I’ll be taking a look at some other approaches taken too, to see about smart trims and reshaping.

If you were going to watch it, I’d probably space it further from Massacre, to imply some time had passed. That said, I’d really like to get us to this point as quickly as possible.

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I say go with whatever you can make work 😃 If you can provide a sense of ongoing story with this without sacrificing other things, absolutely go for it.

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Whoops, I edited my previous comment instead. Wexter’s responding to my question about whether or not to spread arc content between episodes to create more flow, but on reflection I think this’ll be far easier to edit and present optional approaches for if each episode is kept standalone.

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I’d say Bounty should be kept in. It’s the episode which introduces Ventress to bounty-hunting and also serves as context for why is she on Tatooine competing with other hunters for the prize on Savage (in Revenge), and later on Coruscant willing to capture Ahsoka in exchange for payment (in the fugitive Ahsoka arc). Besides, the train action scene is pretty fun and sometimes even brutal.

Both Massacre and Bounty could be moved up a few episodes as long as they come after Deception. In Massacre in particular, with its current place in the timeline, doesn’t make much sense why Ventress takes so long to get back to Dathomir or why Dooku takes so long to get revenge on the witches.

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The Mandalore/Maul storyline should be a continuous thread going through the entire series. There is a lot of plot to cover and it should get a room to breathe. Just my honest opinion of course.

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Knight of Kalee, bear in mind that they’re all staying in unless they’re actively difficult to watch episodes. And MAYBE some of the skippable episodes may be looted for parts by the more important ones. But I’m not proposing their exclusion*- only that if you were only watching the core, or the most important/fun episodes, that you wouldn’t need to watch them to keep context.

I was on the fence about that one, but I could be convinced.

*I’m using the word “excludABLE” to imply that one MAY exclude them. Not that they ARE excluded. “Skippable” is perhaps a better term… But there’s no such thing as a VIDSO.

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Wexter, that’s what I’d like to achieve too. That constant presence and ongoing development. I think the problem comes from the fact that we get very little armoured Mandalorians, and zero Maul, until about the 60% mark.

I could pull them forward- you could probably put Nightsisters before the model update since I don’t think Ahsoka appears in them until far later (though you have to get all the ventress episodes out of the way first), but if you do that you’re left with less meat in the second half.

Then again, we are slightly making this something it’s not. The emotional heart is Ahsoka; Maul and Mando were always far later focuses of the show.

Perhaps if I lay out a line with just the Maul/Mando content in its best order, then string Ahsoka’s best episodes across it, then fill in the gaps with well paced choices for important and desirable elements, then take note of the excludable ones’ positions, we’ll get our answer.

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Yeah, that sounds great. I don’t see a huge problem with the earlier Mandalore episodes being mostly political. It is a slow build-up, but eventually it starts to deliver as it slowly but surely leads into the epic final arc. Maul (and thus Ventress) is absolutely crucial to Ahsoka’s story, even if she isn’t a prominent character every step of the way.

EDIT: Maybe if you want more Ahsoka, you could intercut the Nightsisters arc with A Friend In Need or something? Just throwing this out there, not sure if it would work.

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From my understanding, the whole point of giving Anakin an apprentice was to get him to mature, and learn to let people go, which he eventually would have to once she finished her training. Things just ended up blowing up in their face. Surprise surprise.

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@Hal9000 —- Having never actually been introduced to Ashoka since I never watched TCW, I’m far from an being an informed viewer. That said, coming from a great familiarity with the rest of canon, it never made sense to me that Anakin would receive an apprentice, seeing as the Jedi Council was firmly against his training in the first place. Plus, he was never elevated to Master Jedi. Maybe this gets clarified in TCW. Hence, my immense interest in @EddieDean’s pursuit. But until proven otherwise, I totally agree!

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A Jedi just needs to be knighted to take on an apprentice. For example Obi-Wan at the end of TPM. The rank of Master is conceded to a knight who succesfully trains a Padawan.

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There are a couple of technicalities in there, but the Important thing to know is that they make it work.

All of the elements that are new for TCW compared to ROTS are handled extremely carefully- the questions asked by their presence will be answered by the end.

There’s a reason people are so passionate about this show and a lot of it comes down to the fact that it absolutely delivers on Ahsoka.

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I think its a great idea to use the smudgers I movie. Just one thought, In my opinion you should trim a lot the first act.
well, If I were u Id cut the whole Anakin mission to arrive on Christophis. It ruins the pacing and its Just the most boring part I think 😀
Then, there is the first part of the clone Troopers story, on kamino, which should be drasticaly trimmed. It s Just too cartoonish for me. And pacing wise, it would be better to reduce it drasticaly.

What do you think about that?

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Yep, completely agree. I might keep a little of the first Christophsis episode - Trench is actually quite capable (and shows up later), and I’d like to show Bail being involved in aid missions. But then, yes, right to the point. On the Troopers story, the first episode is a little paint-by-numbers, so I will look for places to keep it tight, but it’s important to that overall arc.

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