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Post #1528797

Author
EddieDean
Parent topic
The Clone Wars: Refocused [COMPLETE]
Link to post in topic
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/1528797/action/topic#1528797
Date created
14-Mar-2023, 4:06 PM

I’ve been thinking a little more about a potential movie from the start of the show. NO PROMISES, as ever!

As Smudger and others have observed, it’s right that there’s a focus on Ahsoka meeting Anakin, plus the Clones, for a movie that follows AOTC. For that reason, the core should be the movie’s Christophsis content and the Domino Swuad arc. But I think we also need to focus a bit more heavily on Ahsoka’s early character development, which suggests Malevolence and Cloak of Darkness, and both of those feature Grievous and Ventress respectively, which I think fleshes out the plot nicely.

That way, you get the core three Jedi, a clone focus, and all of the main villains working together toward a single goal. I count thirteen main sequences across those episodes, ordered so the plot works and so the characters flow naturally through it:

  1. (Malevolence) Plo Koon is shot down by Grievous’ massive ship (the “emergency”), possibly as a cold open.
  2. (Hidden Enemy) Anakin and Obi-Wan, on Christophsis, are ambushed and track Ventress, discovering an invasion.
  3. (Cloak of Darkness) Dooku pulls Ventress away from Christophsis since Gunray’s been captured.
  4. (Movie) Anakin and Obi-Wan struggle against the invasion.
  5. (Movie) Ahsoka is delivered to Christophsis (warning of the “emerency”), and helps Anakin win the day. Obi-Wan leaves.
  6. (Malevolence) Anakin and Ahsoka rescue Plo. (I might pepper more scenes of Plo earlier than this, but the main conclusion comes here.)
  7. (Domino Squad) The Domino Squad fail their training. (Intercut with the previous.)
  8. (Malevolence) The Malevolence targets a medical station and is destroyed by the three Jedi. Grievous escapes. (I might actually cut this or leave it for a later conclusion. With the prior content leaving Grievous on the loose, that lines up nicely with his suprise appearance later.)
  9. (Cloak of Darkness) Ahsoka returns to Luminara, and interrogates Gunray.
  10. (Domino Squad) The squad are beaten by Grievous’ forces on the Rishi moon.
  11. (Cloak of Darkness) Ventress comes for Gunray, Ahsoka survives, and Ventress escapes with Gunray (intercut with the above). (Add dialogue to have Ahsoka’s interrogation yield the Rishi hint for Rex.)
  12. (Domino Squad) Rex comes to Rishi, and rescues Domino Squad. They learn of Grievous’ Kamino attack.
  13. (Domino Squad) Everyone except Ahsoks goes to destroy or defend Kamino.

There’s a new tab in my spreadsheet you guys can look at if you want to dig into this further.

There are a few good scenes with the right people who can help bridge some of this. And potentially a few good ways to string it together. The Malevolence attacks are now more of a distraction to panic the Republic (“emergency!”) into helping enable the Rishi-Kamino strike.

The main issue is in focusing the first half of the film. You need to introduce the Malevolence threat early, and it’s useful to give Ventress a good reason to get off Christophsis, but then it feels a bit busy to also introduce all-new clones at the start in addition to all this - though you do want to give the 501st enough time to get from Kamino to Rishi.

I’d be really interested to get more brains on this.