Ahsoka (live action series) - general discussion thread — Page 15

Everything everyone else said is right. I wasn’t rooting for the show to get better because that would just be wasted, but it’s fun to watch it to pick it apart anyway.
I have no problems with Thrawn’s casting. He does the voice really well, which makes sense. The issue is the writing, of course. They didn’t really have a way to make him tactically genius. His main gimmick seems to be commenting on acceptable losses.
Mercenaries die. Ah, an acceptable loss.
Baylan quits. Ah, an acceptable loss.
Stormtroopers die. Ah, an acceptable loss.
TIE fighters run into the enemy ship for no reason. Ah, an acceptable loss.
Morgan dies. Ah, an acceptable loss.

I even wonder if this series (at least the first season) is necessary for the mandoverse. Honestly, depending on how things go until Filoni’s film, perhaps it could be completely skipped in future fan edits.

Firstly, this series appears to have almost no connection to Ahsoka’s appearances in Mando and BOBF. In Mando she questions Morgan about Thrawn, and this was not addressed in the Ahsoka show. In the series we find out that she trained Sabine, but this is not even mentioned in Mando and BOBF. Now we find out that she was conflicted, but that hasn’t come across in her appearances so far either, because the character is completely different in this show.

Secondly, everything points to Ahsoka returning with Sabine in a possible second season, which in theory would make her trip to another galaxy something “skippable” in an edit. Thrawn’s return is the type of information that can be reported in a crawl, for example, as well as the information that Ahsoka has a padawan.

I would really like to have seen a more character driven season, as Ahsoka from the animations is a very good character. But unfortunately, the character development was the series’ biggest flaw, in my opinion.

Vladius said:

Everything everyone else said is right. I wasn’t rooting for the show to get better because that would just be wasted, but it’s fun to watch it to pick it apart anyway.
I have no problems with Thrawn’s casting. He does the voice really well, which makes sense. The issue is the writing, of course. They didn’t really have a way to make him tactically genius. His main gimmick seems to be commenting on acceptable losses.
Mercenaries die. Ah, an acceptable loss.
Baylan quits. Ah, an acceptable loss.
Stormtroopers die. Ah, an acceptable loss.
TIE fighters run into the enemy ship for no reason. Ah, an acceptable loss.
Morgan dies. Ah, an acceptable loss.

In my opinion, you and WitchDR illustrated well how amateur this show was in terms of script, production, etc. Personally, I also found the zombie stormtroopers very embarrassing (I didn’t think the idea was bad, but the execution was very ridiculous).

If you ask me, I say Kreia would greatly approve of Baylan Skoll. Anyone else agree?

fmalover said:

If you ask me, I say Kreia would greatly approve of Baylan Skoll. Anyone else agree?

That seemed to be the direction they were leaning into, but they were also really afraid of actually having substantive dialogue between characters, so we don’t know what his plan was. It’s bizarre that the conversation between him and Shin about what he really wants and what they’re doing is seemingly years into their relationship, and many days into their crucial mission.

Hal 9000 said:

I genuinely don’t get why Filoni is held in such high regard, as I tend not to like his stuff very much.

I’ve been wondering the same thing for years.

This felt really on point…

Hal 9000 said:

This show has been a snoozefest.
I genuinely don’t get why Filoni is held in such high regard, as I tend not to like his stuff very much.

It’s one thing to feel a season of a show would’ve been better as a film, but I feel this one would’ve been better as half a film. To have spend close to 8 hours on this story so far, it doesn’t feel worthwhile.

It’s five things:

1. Zoomers and younger millennials grew up watching The Clone Wars
2. He defended the prequels when it was not quite very popular to do so
3. The Clone Wars “fixes the prequels” by filling in some blanks and characterizing Anakin better, so it looks like Filoni is an expert
4. He interconnects all his own stuff so it’s like a facsimile of the EU, you can watch TCW and Rebels and Bad Batch and the Disney+ shows and all the characters are going to cross over
5. He has a reputation as “Lucas’s apprentice” because George Lucas told him some story stuff while making The Clone Wars, so he’s allegedly like the chosen successor

It’s not really about quality, more like recognition.

The show has been so boring due to the subpar writing, acting & directing. None of the characters appear to have any inner life. They seem like characters in a video game just waiting for the prompt to say their lines. Chatbots have more depth.

& once again we have another series where heroes & villains make one stupid decision after another in order to get from one lazy plot point to another. There is no dramatic tension & the stakes don’t feel real.

Thrawn doesn’t feel like a threat to the galaxy because he comes across as an idiot. He has always been, to an extent, a stupid person’s idea of a genius - his ability to outwit an enemy based on psychological flaws revealed by a species’ cultural artefacts was laughably ridiculous - but at least Zahn tried to make him seem efficient & ruthless. In Ahsoka he just comes across as a cartoonish incompetent buffoon.

Filoni has shrunk the galaxy - & even his new galaxy seems to amount to nothing more than a barren & misty moor in northern England.

I have been pretty positive on the season overall but I have to say that I think it’s really odd that we didn’t get a conversation between Sabine and Ezra about the big choice she made. It’s evidently resolved off screen? I was also disappointed that Baylan and Shin are sidelined in the finale. Overall it feels like an incomplete story, which I guess it is. I don’t think a fanedit could fix these issues. If anything I think the show needed a few more conversations between the characters to fill in some of the gaps.

NeverarGreat said:

GuardianoftheWhills said:

The show has been so boring due to the subpar writing, acting & directing. None of the characters appear to have any inner life. They seem like characters in a video game just waiting for the prompt to say their lines. Chatbots have more depth.

& once again we have another series where heroes & villains make one stupid decision after another in order to get from one lazy plot point to another. There is no dramatic tension & the stakes don’t feel real.

Thrawn doesn’t feel like a threat to the galaxy because he comes across as an idiot. He has always been, to an extent, a stupid person’s idea of a genius - his ability to outwit an enemy based on psychological flaws revealed by a species’ cultural artefacts was laughably ridiculous - but at least Zahn tried to make him seem efficient & ruthless. In Ahsoka he just comes across as a cartoonish incompetent buffoon.

Filoni has shrunk the galaxy - & even his new galaxy seems to amount to nothing more than a barren & misty moor in northern England.

The art psychoanalysis is ridiculous, but at least it’s different enough to be interesting.

I think the reason Thrawn still feels like such a towering threat is because there’s been no competent villain in any Star Wars movie past the OT. The bar is so low here that even a halfway decent Imperial commander would feel like a terrifying mastermind.

The art psychoanalysis is cool and it’s believable in a setting like Star Wars. There’s lots of people with mental and magic powers, and there are lots of varied alien races. It’s not too different from the real life concept that a culture is heavily shaped by their language, what they do or don’t have words for, and how they express things.

I remember people on this very forum complaining that midichlorians imply that some people can’t use The Force and now I see people complaining that Ahsoka implies that anyone can use The Force.

Well, certainly these two statements weren’t made by the same people.

I was thinking back to how Mando season one felt like so well done at the time, compared to how things have unravelled now. So much in Ahsoka is tell not show. Whereas Din barely speaks so you have great moments like the Super Battle Droid attack or that scene where the probes search the fires on Mandalore. Where the hell was that stuff here, in show heavily relying on a series of past events to lend it drama? Where was Sabine’s family or her decision to become a Jedi? By comparison the Clone Wars flashback was clunky and cheap looking, with each setting and time period being the same orange smog.

Mocata said:

I was thinking back to how Mando season one felt like so well done at the time, compared to how things have unravelled now. So much in Ahsoka is tell not show. Whereas Din barely speaks so you have great moments like the Super Battle Droid attack or that scene where the probes search the fires on Mandalore. Where the hell was that stuff here, in show heavily relying on a series of past events to lend it drama? Where was Sabine’s family or her decision to become a Jedi?

Exactly this.

And to me, nothing suffers more from the “tell don’t show” pattern than Thrawn. Ahsoka and some of the New Republic figures act like the prospect of him returning is basically equal to the second coming of Palpatine but there is nothing in this series (and I would argue in any other cannon sources) that would justify this point of view. He was supposed to be a brilliant tactician, nothing more, nothing less. That Mandalorian Season 2 episode re-established him as Morgan Elsbeth’s master for some reason and the only thing he seems to have accomplished since his exile was making friends with some Dathomiri witches while slowly running out of resources until Morgan came to pick him up. His only real achievement after that was getting two second-rate Rebellion heroes stranded on Peridea, while giving a ride to another Rebellion hero, who would have stayed on Peridea if Thrawn hadn’t provdied Sabine with means of finding him. But the real threat to the main galaxy really seems to lie with the necromancer witches, not this overhyped imperial has-been who’s coming along with them.

The fact that we did not see Ezra trying to sabotage Thrawn’s ship and thus ending his campaign before it could even start is just another massive missed opportunity.

Imagine if they’d had flashbacks to the kind of things that made Thrawn intimidating, by showing the TIE Defender program in live action or his use of forced labour, through how people like Ryder remembering him. They could have done something.

Mocata said:

Imagine if they’d had flashbacks to the kind of things that made Thrawn intimidating, by showing the TIE Defender program in live action or his use of forced labour, through how people like Ryder remembering him. They could have done something.

They didn’t need flashbacks though. All they needed to do was to establish Thrawn as a viable threat. He could have built weapons factories, a new fleet - shown (the audience unfamiliar with the character) he is a resourceful & ingenious leader.

Much of the series was set in a new galaxy. Filoni had a blank slate to do anything. For example, this galaxy could be the home of advanced but pre-hyperspace civilisation. Thrawn, despite his depleted resources, could have used his superior knowledge & technology to conquer a system and convert its technologies into a military industrial complex from which he could rebuild his forces. Ezra could have been liberated by the local rebellion & become one of their leaders. That would also have demonstrated his worth to an audience unfamiliar with his character.

But instead we got a planet as dull & barren as Filoni’s own imagination. One where Sabine - on her own - is easily able to track down Ezra, making Thrawn look like an even more useless lump.

Essentially…they had alot of nerve not calling this Star Wars Rebels season 5.