A More Civilized Age: A Star Wars Podcast - 02: Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones

Episode Date: December 30, 2020

"We need a system where the politicians sit down and discuss the problem, agree what’s in the best interest of all the people, and then do it.” “That’s exactly what we do. The trouble is that people don’t always agree.” “Well then they should be be made to.” The Phantom Menace  raised questions. Perhaps, you hoped, Attack of the Clones might answer them. Unfortunately, Episode II itself only offers a litany of new lines of inquiry.  How many nations are part of the Galactic Republic? Why does Padme ever give Anakin the time of day? Who the hell is Sifo-Dyas? Why don't the Jedi ever seem to help people? Why, oh why, do we spend so long in this terrible droid factory? And has anyone ever apologized to Frank Oz? Join us as we breach the horizon of these questions and more. Begun, the Clone War has. Show Notes The Attempted Assassination of Padme TikTok From Puppets to Pixels: Digital Characters in Episode II The Art of Pre-Visualization of Episode II The Sound Design of Episode II Hosted by Rob Zacny (@RobZacny) Featuring Alicia Acampora (@ali_west), Austin Walker (@austin_walker), and Natalie Watson (@nataliewatson) Produced by Austin Walker Music by Jack de Quidt (@notquitereal) Cover art by Xeecee (@xeeceevevo)     anakin's trick

And we're back once again to a more civilized age of Clone Wars podcast. At least that might be the title. We're going to argue about that more after we record this episode. Rob with the executive decision. Supreme Chancellor, exactly. You just got to try things on for size. You've got to be like, this could be our lives. Sometimes you leave the Jedi order behind for a minute and think,

What if I weren't a Jedi anymore? And a world of possibilities opens itself to you. I'm Rob Zakeney, joined by Ali Akampora, Austin Walker, and Natalie Watson. Today, there's no running from it anymore. We are returning to the scene of the crime. Star Wars Episode 2, Attack of the Clones. I would just like to say that George Lucas should go to jail for this movie. Well, that seems like answers my first question, which was, is a crime.

Is this the worst Star Wars movie ever made? Yes. Yeah. I haven't seen solo yet. Oh, the solo is better than this, by a lot. Okay, I trust you. The only one in the running, right, is Rise of the Skywalker. Yeah, yeah, Rise of Skywalker is definitely.

Is that the last one? That's the last one. That one's pretty bad. I saw both of these movies and theaters, and only Rise of Skywalker had people literally laughing out loud together at the events on screen, not the comedic events on screen. Sure.

The like, I can't believe these motherfuckers did that. But as a film. Rise of Skywalker is really bad. Like, I was thinking about it. I really was. I think it's really bad. I don't.

This one is good. This one is bad. They're both like really tied. We're allowed to. I don't think they're tied, though. Really? You think attack is worse? No, actually, I think it had to finally drop the belt.

Like, it lived in my head for years as the worst one ever. Can I just tell the story real quick? Yeah, please. Because here's the setup for people who maybe missed this last week or fell asleep in the middle of our podcast. Is that, Rob, this was the, you haven't seen Revenge of the Sith. And in fact, the farthest you got into the prequels was Attack of the Clones, but not all the way through Attack of the Clones. Because while in the theater, you fell asleep. I did

So So this was probably like This is the high watermark Of my Star Wars fandom And I was going to do the midnight showing With my friends And I got an amazing idea What if we all left school that day

And we went to my place I grill out And we watch all The Star Wars movies Right of course Of course Watch the original trilogy Then watch episode one

And then we're primed to go straight in and watch Tackler Clones and finally see what this whole Clone War is all about. Everyone wants to know. Everyone's been asking us. Everyone's asking this. And there's a couple things. One, that's just not a good idea.

Because that's so much movie. It is so much movie. And at a certain point, you're kind of just exhausted of hanging out with your friends and watching movies nonstop. Also, like, barbecues heavy food. You're sitting there. You're starting to be like, my belly's so full.

I'm sleepy. I just kind of want to sleep this off. So, Austin, you did call that last week when you're like, do you eat? And I was like, oh, yeah. Oh, no, I called this. Do not give this credit to Austin. People are always wanting to give me credit. I said, what did you have for dinner that night?

That's true. So, but the other thing is this, it started to go off the rails because you go from Return of the Jedi and then you watch Phantom Menace. And that's when it clicked for me, oh, this movie was not as good as I thought it was. Like, seeing them all together. in context. I was like, oh, shit. Like, I just watched three good movies, two great ones.

And now I'm watching a movie that's like, fine, but kind of corny, and not as awesome as I remember. Then we go to the theater. And I'm like, well, this is going to be where it gets awesome. And you're treated with that little kid for

this hot young actor who is rising up as a leading man in Hollywood. He could be the next, who you don't even know he He could be the next Harrison Ford. You know what I mean? He could. You don't know his potential.

In the making. In the making. JTT, too. I literally texted Austin. I'm so excited for Hot Anakin before watching this movie. And Austin said, hmm, okay. And yeah, so we get to this movie. And one, it's like my context, this is.

this does not help this movie. I'm a bit of a gamer. I played a lot of CD-ROM adventure games and a lot of like interactive movie type things. And so I know the look of like really bad green screen like actors not really believing they're in a scene and kind of like looking in the wrong places and the lighting all being wrong.

And then this movie starts and right out of the gate, I'm like, did the command and conquer like team shoot this? Is this? Did Jane Jensen? Produce episode two? The answer is no, because Jane Jensen would have still made a banger of a fucking movie. Like, oh my God, Anakin and Padmay in this movie

like with Jane Jensen, that would have been hot as hell. Problematic, even more so, but hot as hell. But nevertheless, I'm watching, like, the movie just keeps going. And then at a certain point, right around the time they're in this like interminable action sequence. Which one? I'll just start.

Which one? It was the Droid Factory, where they're hopping around a conveyor belt, and I just started to, like, I don't have an hard time staying awake. This is kind of bad. And then I just dozed off. And then the next thing I remember, I opened my eyes, and there was some sort of giant testes meck wandering the battlefield, blasting away at Proto Storm Troopers. And I was like, what's happened?

and I was out again and then I opened my eyes again and proto Star Destroyers are lifting off from Corrassant and the movie is over and I realized three things at that moment one was that I did not

know what it happened at all two that I did not care and three I also no longer really cared about what happened to Star Wars after this at all and I walked out of that theater and I was just done

like I had you hung up your lightsaber just broke it in half just raid it straight out and I can do that a lot in this movie to be fair which is fucking breaking lightsaber's right and left and you know this is so

heading into this I've been wondering and this is sort of where we led off last week there's been this movement to reprise the prequels and like These things are not as bad as you think. These things deserve a second chance. And I was kind of like, yeah, you know, I'll bet they do. There's no way that movie that I saw like three quarters of once,

there's no way it's as bad as I thought. I was just sleepy. That was the real problem. I was sleepy and in a bad mood. And I'm watching this thing, and actually I think it might even be a little worse than I remember because now I'm seeing like all of it very clearly. And it's very bad. It's bad.

I want to know who the fuck is leading this charge of the prequels are good, actually, because we need to speak to them. We're in, like, a discord with them, Natalie. That's not true. DM at me right now, please. I think that there's, what there is. Here comes Austin, the Redeemer. No, I, you know, I'm doing my best to speak on behalf of people I don't agree with here. I think there are people who

were able to see those films for the first time without the clouding nature of having a different idea of Star Wars in their heads and were able to see the bits of the stuff that they liked more than what maybe we could see. Also, they were young enough that, you know, the Anakin shit here didn't read as gross as it does now and without that, I think this movie is probably a lot better

because for me, the stuff that I like about this movie, I think there were some, like, high highs for me in this movie, and they're all, like, before any of the action happens, and whenever, like, Caden Christensen is not on screen. Basically, if you go to every fight scene, except for the final duel, and also the entire love sequence, uh, I think this movie's all right. I like Obi-Wan as, like, a weird, like, noir detective going around town, Coruscant, going to rain planet, finding out of old weird Jedi shit that, like, they shouldn't have gotten into, but did. And, and, and, putting, piecing together the fact that this, this clone army has existed or has been being built for a decade. And then, and then I think that that final duel with Duku is interesting because Christopher Lee can say whatever he wants on screen and he'll look sick as shit. And so that's the fall works for me. Unfortunately, there's like 90 more minutes to the movie besides what I just described.

Because it's a very long movie for what it is. Yeah. It's two and a half hours, right? It's not two and a half. I think it's two and a half. It's close. Fuck off. Why did they just cut the fucking droid factory?

Dude, they chose to add it late. We were talking about this before the podcast. But we'll get to it. We will get to it. 142 minutes. Fuck off. There was a point. Like, watching it the other day, there was a moment where I was like this movie has not

been as bad as I remembered. This has been all right. And then I brought up the interface. and I was like there's 40 more minutes left and I know for fact the dramatic arc of this movie is basically over

like the rest of it's just an action sequence it's a 40 minute action day new ma it's just going to like hard cut it's a commercial boom it's a commercial it's for his fucking it's for his fucking toys

and it's for his fucking stupid graphics machine and they're not good and they're terrible and what the What fuck did they do to Yoda? Oh my God. Bring the pop it back.

Bring the pop it back. Okay. So last week, you may recall that we'd watch the beginning, a document behind the scenes featurette that was packed in with the original DVD release, I believe, a Phantom Menace. And in that, in that thing, one of the things we zero in on is George Lucas telling Frank Oz will always need you. For your voice. What he meant was for your voice. What he meant was like for your blood. We got to put your blood in the machine.

machine to make it go. But because the feature that I think, I think, Allie, you may have also ended up watching this one. That is like, from puppets to pixels. First of all, how dare you call it that? But second, it opens. It opens with them convincing George to go over to the digital Yoda, which is in every scene in this movie that Yoda is in.

Instead of even splitting it up, instead of being like we're going to use regular puppet Yoda for the council scenes, for the politician scenes. And then we're going to use digital Yoda for when he's a toad man doing backflips. And that's dead ass how George Lucas describes him. He says in that documentary that Yoda is the love, the illegitimate love child of Herbert the Frog and Miss Piggy. That is a thing that George Lucas says. No.

That is the thing that he said. Add this to the list of George Lucas's crimes, please. If you just use the CG for that stuff, okay. Fine. It's going fast anyway. Who cares? Yes.

But they use it for the talking scenes. They use it for everything. I mean, the truth is, they use it for everything because things like the Joyad Factory scene are 100% CG. It's a blue screen set. Rob was talking before that you were saying,

Rob. In fact, to go back to you, that whole sequence didn't exist in the original shooting schedule, right? Yeah, I was watching one of the features that's on Disney Plus about the making of, and it is about how they did a mix, how they planned their effect shots in advance, and they started investing a lot of effort in animatics as an intermediate step between storyboards and final animation and composite shooting.

The Droid Factory, eight months after principal photography ended, and they were in editing, did not exist. That sequence was not in the movie. Crucially, that also means it had never been storyboarded and it had never been animated, not even as a test run. But Lucas saw the scene where Obi-Wan infiltrates the Gino's factory and sees its workings. And they show a piece of concept art at this point of him sort of looking down through the works of the factory. And it is a great shot. It's evocative. And Lucas being Lucis, Lucas cannot rest at evoking. He has to show. He's got to be like, no, I need you to

see all the things that that moment of taking in the factory implies. Right. And so we get this really terrible chase sequence through the factory that was done during reshoots on a completely blue screen set with the actors on a blue conveyor belt. But it was like this is as close to kind of an ad hoc action sequence as you can get with this kind of shooting, I guess. And there's a reason it feels forced in and kind of narratively inert. That's because it was never, it was never in the movie. It's a whim that like

George Lucas can make everyone go along with. But if we're anybody but George Lucas having that idea, that scene doesn't happen. Like someone's like, wouldn't it be cool if? Chances are everyone's like yeah maybe that'd be cool but we wrapped we shot the movie yeah the movie's done the movie is done my guy past the jay we can keep dreaming but like so were they supposed to did they just get captured like right off the bat so after obi one gets the implication seems to be after obi one uh gets god uh Anakin and padmay would just show up and like either try to infiltrate and get captured or there's a deleted scene where they're just straight up trying to negotiate with Duku and being like, hey, like let Obi-Wan go. And that's where he turns and is like, no, you can either join me or you can join Obi-Wan in jail.

But those are your options. And so like that seems, but that seems way more elegant, right? Because then they just show up. And then you have a scene with them interacting with Count Duku in his full, like, aristocratic, seductive. like semi-respectable role, which is a scene that I think we kind of leave this movie wanting to have seen. We want to have seen, like, mysterious Count Duku. Let's see this guy be mysterious.

He got Christopher Lee. He rules every time he's on screen and there's just not enough of him talking to people who know anything about the world, enough to where you can like, he doesn't get to elaborate his position at all, really. I mean, Padme is a perfect counterpart to that because she can do the politicking of being a senator and they can have that moment of negotiation. It's like the whole fucking dictatorship conversation can come to hear. Instead of having that conversation, we had to have her rolling around on the grass

listening to a future fascist. Talk about how he's a current crypto-fascist. We should set up, can we just quickly do the thing where I say, here are the five acts of this movie so that people know, just so we are all on the same page. Somebody read the opening crawl. No. Actually, I have, what are my notes from the opening, my opening crawl notes, several thousand star solar systems have declared their intention to leave the republic. Thousands of star systems are like, I got to go. Why? I would like to know. Hey, guess what, Natalie? Literally the word I put after that was why totally caps locked. Um, my questions included, what does this put at stake? Who is made vulnerable? Who profits from this? Uh, Hopefully, I say that the Clone Wars TV show will maybe get to answer that a little bit. From what I've seen of Clone Wars over the years, that is a constant thing.

It's like, hey, here's what I need to stay in the Republic. Here's what we, here's why we want to leave, et cetera. But, okay, five acts. Act one, the clearest act in this film, maybe the only thing that is like a singular what you think of as an act. There's an assassination attempt on Queen Amadala, sorry, on Senator Amadala, on Padmay, as she arrives at Corrassant, that she suspects. is being done by the nefarious Count Duku.

Did she say? Count Duku there, she explicitly does, right? Yes. The rest of the folks don't think that that's the case. They don't know. Who could it be? They think it's disgruntled spice miners on Nabu. Fair.

Okay. You know, the trade guilds are always trying to kill politicians who don't have their best interests at heart, I guess. I don't know. Always blame the unions, say the Jedi. so we get the kind of status quo set up at the beginning of this film in act one what we learn is the reason that amadala is is whether we don't know why she's coming under attack why a bomb almost kills her and instead kills a different one of her decoys um because presumably kira nightly just wasn't available to do the same role and then die i've got a career now yeah i'm not like a big actress i'm no longer in like lighting double for for Natalie Portman Territory. That was Kira Knightley?

Oh, in episode one? The thing I did not know until like last week. Yeah. Uh-huh. So the state of things as it is, as of the beginning of this movie, is that the Republic is falling apart and the Senate is debating whether or not they should start an army for the first time ever, apparently. Don't ask me how the Republic has lasted this long without, as a, as like a, a

galactic hegemony without having some sort of force to not come into conflict and not be taken over by whoever has that sort of force. I don't know if really what this means that there are lots of, you know, in the Crusader King's term, that like each solar system could raise high levies and they're all, this is the Holy Roman Empire, right? Is that what it is? These are questions that, like, I was about to start saying something that I think comes up in Clone Wars. Like, I think all these questions start having, like, the thing this movie does is it poses so many interesting things. You're like, this seems like there's a lot of cool stuff happening on the background that

I never learned anything about. And in that blank space, that undiscovered country of Star Wars, the Clone Wars cartoon is like, okay, we need to make this make sense. Yes. I hope so. We'll find out. So they don't have an army. And it seems like a lot of them don't want an army. They understand the second that there is a kind of federal state army, we've changed what this is. You're enforcing your control over these places that want to leave, et cetera. Also, thousands of them want to leave. They're not going to vote in favor of their being an army to force them to stay.

You don't get it here. You get it much later in the film, but you do get a little bit of a taste later of who is in the separatist group. It is the commerce. And I've also looked this up because there's at least a couple of these here that were not listed in the movie, but are fun to say out loud. So Commerce Guild, corporate alliance, the intergalactic banking clan, the techno union, which does pop up here in this, the Trade Federation. The one that they don't say is the retail caucus, which is extremely funny.

The Chamber of Commerce is ready to declare mutiny. Target has teamed up with Cinnabon and Clares to say, we got to get out of this. fucking country. Sabarro is already gone. Sabarro left. Sabaro been gone. Outer rim for sure. Your galactic credits are no good here.

Given all this context, it's very important that Padmay stay alive because she is an influential senator. She has a close connection with the high chancellor, Palpatine, who is also from Nabu. and seems like she can kind of moderate conversation and potentially lead it towards a happy conclusion. So it's important she stay alive. Enter two young Jedi. Well, one young Jedi and his Padawan pupil,

Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker. I'm like you had to reach for the name there. What's his name? What's that guy? Obi-Wan, Kenobi. The kid. You know, the kid. He's a kid.

That's what she says. That's such a kid anymore. That's what he says. She does not say that. What she says is you will always be a child. And we'll get there. Let me just go very quick, very quick. Long story short, they get the assignment to protect her.

Obi-O-B-Wan thinks that that should be very passive. Anakin's like, we should go active. We should track down who's killed her. Some stuff happens. They end up tracking down who is trying to kill. Sorry, who's not killed her. He's tried to kill her. Well, he killed someone.

He did kill someone. Or, I have to go Wikipedia real quick. Hold on. Keep going. I don't know. It's something with an M. Hmm. They end up tracking down an assassin.

We talk about those scenes. The assassin ends up giving up some clues, inadvertently, that sends off into Act 2 Obi-Wan to try to figure out who is it that sent this assassin. And in the process, Obi-Wan discovers, in Act 2, which is blended with another act here, kind of. He discovers, uh-oh, ten years ago, a Jedi went to a planet and ordered hundreds of thousands of soldiers be cloned from someone. Meanwhile, Anakin gets to stay with Padmei as her bodyguard and also as the most aggressive and...

I'm just disgusting, just like insufferable, horny dude I've seen on film in the last year. And that stuff sucks. That's all I'm going to say about it for now, because I think a lot of our conversation will be about it throughout the episode. That's also happening. Towards the end of all of this, this arc, Obi-Wan, what? Obi-Wan discovers that, you know, he leaves the planet, the rainy clone planet. He tracks someone connected to this great conspiracy to a planet where there's a bunch of droid factories, sends a message to Obi-Wan or to, fuck, to Anakin and to Padmae to try to please send this message back to Corrasson. I need help.

This is bad. There's a huge army here. But at this point, the thing is that Obi-Wan has followed his dream visions and that's led him to tattooing where he has found that his- No, Anakin has. Fuck, I said Obi-Wan again, didn't I? God damn, I should write these. Anakin discovers the kid. The kid, he goes to Tatouine with Padme, who at this point he's admitted his affection for,

and she has, we can talk about what her arc of response is that they're very confusing and confused as written to Tatooine, and Anakin finds that his mother's been kidnapped by some Tuscan raiders, whom he slaughters to their last man, woman, and child. in response, Padme hugs him, and they go back to the ship where they find Obi-Wan's message and Anacan's mad at him because he blames

he blames Obi-Wan for what happened to his mother. His mother died, I should be clear. But Padma is like, we're going to go rescue him. And Anakin's like, I guess so. Like, yeah, he is kind of my dad. Which I don't think that that's their relationship. I very much read Obi-Wan's older brother figure here, if anything.

The step-brother, too. like doesn't really like this kid in a lot of ways. Like, you stuck with him. Yes. And so they go to the drone factory, uh, droid factory.

Hmm. Hmm. And, uh, it turns out, uh-oh. There's a lot of droids here. They get captured. There's a big arena fight. And, uh, good news. The Jedi got an army now.

Republic has an army. The army sweeteners. The army is the general, by the way. Yoda's a general. Big important note. Believe me, have lots of notes on Yoda being a general. And there's a big, there's like six long fight sequences, each one worse than the last.

And then everything kind of fights to a standstill, like honestly. Like the end result is I guess the droid factories are destroyed, but no one important dies or gets, I guess Boba Fett die or sorry, Jingo Fett dies. But that's it. Duku gets away. Everyone goes back to Khorasat and now there's a proto-authoritarian. Army, the end. The Imperial March plays. And Padmay and Anakin get married?

Secret marriage. Secret marriage, right. Secret marriage. That's really important. Yes. Where do we begin? I think of the beginning. All right, let's go back.

Scrolling up. Let's get back to the, going back to the start of this movie, Um, let's grab of that noir tone at the start, because I think this is, it almost hints at being a different movie at the outset of, of, uh, attack of the clones. For one thing, we get kind an unsettling shot of the spaceship coming in, and we've seen so many ships descending to planets where the planet's at the bottom of the frame, but this time the planet, like, Corsent looms above at the top of the frame. And you have this sort of like, just uncomfortable, like, the world

is literally upside down like the the ground is above you um and they descend through this fog and everything just has this like if the first movie all feels like it's shot at in the noonday sun uh it is sort of the uh you know zenith of the late republic like things have not quite gone to hell yet this movie all feels like it happens in the gloom in the shadows of like twilight or the gathering murk of the storm and I think that's sort of there at the start where they make this landing

in this fogged in a landing pad and I think right there you have these two things that are really intention and it's not resolved in this film which is that some conceptually the scene is kind of cool

but also the minute they cut to the actors on the sound stage screen into this Coruscant landing pad, it looks really bad in a way you can't take your eyes off of. Like they pop out of the scene because they're lit so differently and because they don't appear to have any connection to the backdrop. And so I think this movie's going to keep throughout this first act,

it keeps being like, what if Star Wars was noir? Suddenly there's Venetian blinds all over Coruscant, slats of light, really Scott type of hours here. and every time you're starting to, like, vibe with that, something happens where it's like, okay, but now we have to take these cool scenes and put an actor in them. And immediately you're like, or vice versa,

where like you're starting to get into the acting, the character development. And then it's got to be like, okay, well, now we need to look at another big CG building. And, you know, that's going to dominate the frame. This stuff ends up working better.

for me than most of the rest of the film visually, because most of it happens at night where there is not as much of a need for making sure that shadows make sense. The sense of being in a physical space is so much easier when it's correspondent at night and they're walking around a street or into a nightclub where they have so much greater control over the way the light is supposed to diffuse through that space versus the way some of the shots on Nabu or Tatouine or the last place that I always forget

the name of, Genosis. Look, especially Deonosis, especially Deonosis during the day during the arena scene and stuff. Especially the Droid Factory. Yeah, the Droid Factory, too, is also terrible. So, yeah, I think that that part of it, that part of it, and then also just like, I think

conceptually I do love this thing where last movie felt very, I said, Flash Gordony. This one feels like a different adventure. serials. It has like that art deco. You know, the touchstones that I reach for are things that are already interpreting those things like Sky Captain in the World of Tomorrow or Crimson Skies, which are both building off of an era of like pulp cereals. But I like, I like this vision of Choracin. And I think I, it's interesting because I don't think I did when we first saw this movie,

when I first saw this movie years ago, because in my mind, Corrassant was always more cyberpunk, because that's how it had been depicted in, in so many books that I'd read. And also because I had always been focused on the grimeier parts, and this is literally focused on parts that, in some cases, you can only see from above cloud cover, like, where they first arrive, because it's this giant city that's, like, as big as the whole planet. But, but, yeah, it never looks good. The other thing I want to get into here is after the assassination, we get another really revealing sequence with how the Jedi interact with power and how the Jedi regard themselves where they're debating what are we going to do about security for padmay and she does make the accusation that like count ducu is behind this and we immediately get Yoda and mace window both taking real umbrage at the notion that an ex-jeti which is fascinating

information this is the first time we've we've heard of someone being a former member of the Jedi order and not having like fall into dark side. He just quit. Which is that allowed? Like can you just stop? I guess. Yeah. They let him go.

They don't see pissed. Role and lightsaber. I feel like I would be more concerned if I just let someone with like the ability to use the force and all of that, just like start a little political uprising. I don't know. Like if I were the Jedi Council with their interest. trusts, you know, not me personally. I think it's, go for it, Count Duku.

But, like, if I was the Jedi Council, I would be like, hmm, maybe we should keep an eye on this, perhaps. But isn't this like the head of, like, I meant the head, but like someone high up in the FBI quitting to join the private sector? And we love that in this empire. Well, there, I think they just have complete trust in the fact. in what, like, Rob was saying before, in the fact that he was once a Jedi. And Yoda or, sorry, who is, Mace Windu?

Mace Windu, yeah. And then Mace Windu says, once a Jedi, if somebody was once a Jedi, they could never assassinate someone. It's not in their character. And I was just like, y'all kill people. Are you fucking kidding me?

You all have killed people before. You're trained soldiers. That's you're trained for combat They're keepers of the peace And not soldiers Okay Yeah I think

Like this There's so much happening here You know One is this notion That the one thing The Jedi can't tolerate Whether or not it's I don't know

It's very funny to me That they can't countenance The notion That Duku could be bad Because we already know They have a lot of anxieties About how Jedi are brought up And trained

And who they're going to turn into This was the entire conversation they had around Anakin in the first movie but that is a conversation for among the Jedi when other people are in the room the Jedi present this really united front

where it's like a bad Jedi that's preposterous and like I find this like the cool thing about this trilogy is the Jedi become more and more sinister and doubtful the more you look at them and everything thing about this movie is like just red flags flying up where I'm like they speak out of both

sides of their mouth like Jedi in scenes with non- Jedi are different dudes than when it's just them talking which which which if you are you know running a ancient monastic warrior order I get it but don't pretend that that's not what you are do you know yeah anyway I i i Aren't Sith bad Jedi? It's not clear in canon at this point, it's not clear that the Jedi know what's up with the Sith at this point in time. Because they were surprised that Maul showed up and that there were the Sith were back, right? So they've encountered them before in history? Historically, yes.

Yeah. But it's like if in Assassin's Creed, the Assassins had killed. of all the Templars, or vice versa. The Templars, let's say, killed all the assassins. And then all of a sudden an assassin showed up, the Templars would be like, yo, what? There aren't supposed to be any assassins left. We killed them all. Because that is what the Jedi.

The Jedi think they won that fight, you know? Right. Oh, right. We got rid of the Sith. We, you know, whatever. But what more, I think, talk about this. Well, we'll find out. Okay.

We will. Okay. So, Ellie, did you have something? Yeah. Just while we're on this really quick. Because, like, I think that this is a really frustrating part of the movie, especially thinking back on the last one, where instead of, like, being able to zoom in on these parts and be like, okay, in what ways did the Jedi not support Anakin?

In what ways did he fall through their cracks? He's immediately presented as this person who's just, like, tainted and sucks. And, like, is that just fate? Is that what I'm supposed to believe that he was just, like, made to be an asshole? there was a prophecy that he might be an asshole and that's why he acts like this and it's not like oh it's because the council didn't reach out to him or that he's seeing all of these like

different parts of the Jedi from inside of it and is able to react no he just sucks also he watched the Jedi not give a fuck about like freeing his mom and the rest of the slaves on fucking Tatooine that was his That was his first experience with the Jedi and he still wanted to be one because he thought even if I can even if I join them at least I can get the ability to change other people's lives and help other people and like by using this like the skills that they teach me or whatever even if I I don't know it's just it's so immensely frustrating. I think one of the things like under the surface here, and again, if this were a competent script and competent acting, Annequin wants power, but not initially for bad reasons.

And deep in the Star Wars ethos of like the force and how the Jedi work, ooh, wanting to use power, we should be really skeptical of that. But I think one of the things this movie in particular, but I think the prequels writ large are starting to point to is like, look, Power not wielded is power wasted. And it begins to dissipate and diffuse and go elsewhere. And to an extent, like, what Anakin is demanding is we have power. Not using it is a choice. That is itself an application of power. And y'all are just fine with that.

You all just sit on your hands and, like, kind of stroke your own egos about how little you do while the world gets worse. but allie you mentioned Anakin sucks and he does out of the gate this next scene we're like now that we reunite the band hey here's Jar Jar

um who's become a congressman and he's so happy to see his old friends his pals yeah uh huh and then they meet with Padman and the vibes are weird out of the gate

they're rancid they're rancet they are it is bruh radioactive waste, just emanating. It's instant. It's instant. And, hmm.

Yeah. It's just, it's like approach, headshot. It's dead. He's dead. It's bad privately when he's like, I've thought about her every day for 10 years. And now I'm going to see her again. And Obi-1 has to be like, uh, no, don't. You need to.

Do it's real. Do not say that ever again to anyone ever. Do not say it out loud. Second of all, you need to chill. You need to find chill. He's like, I don't think she liked me watching her. Bro. I literally was like, who, why?

Why is this? Who is writing? Why is this? Why is he like this? And in addition to his fucked up vibes with Natalie Portman, we also see the first, like, as they're debating, what are we going to do about keeping her safe? And Obi-1 starts laying out, look, we're just going to stick to the letter of the regs here. This is a bodyguard detail.

We're not going to do shit. We're just going to watch her like Hawks. And Anakin protests that, no, we have a lot of latitude in how we interpret this. We can go on offense. And the thing is, this is all good. This could be a good scene. Except the delivery is terrible. And it's the first, there is something up.

I can't even, I cannot really put my finger on what is so discordant about Hayden Christensen's performance here, but it's like every single scene is just completely tin-eared. There's a way to do this. There really is, and it's tough because it means bringing you the viewer on board with Anakin. And instead, he's written and played like a brat. Like, he's constantly throwing temper tantrums. he the response so so so you know what obi one basically says is like we're not allowed to leave her side we're here to be passive you know bodyguards not to be active investigators and the camera like goes to pan

away from that basically and anakin just goes why and and he does it again later in the film to padmay actually yeah and and this sort of like interruptive he he is not like speaking truth to power he's just like mad he's not getting his way and that's not a good way bring you on board with him, which is a failure to the character, because the thing that the character is supposed to do, and what I think, you know, kind of does show up in some Clone Wars episodes that I'm excited to get to now, is that he can be the counterbalance to Jedi passivity, to the refusal to recognize the real threat in the room. He's right here. He's right fundamentally that there is a threat, you know, on her life and that figuring out what's going on there could

lead them to very important information. It does. But they don't write him. in a way that makes us root for him to be right. They write him in a way. They're so concerned with, like, getting across the fact that he's going to turn evil one day that, like, they don't focus on the fact that he has to be right on the way there, you know? He's not inquisitive. He's argumentative.

Like, instead of being, like, he's just constantly combative to, like, and you're exactly right. Every question is, like, I feel like I'm asking the same. questions. And I feel like there, Anakin is, I'm supposed to have like this sort of proxy relation, like I'm supposed to kind of be like, yeah, Anakin's right. Why

are we? Which speaks to what Ali said, which is that there's a version of doing that if what we've had is a long story where we've connected to Anakin when he's been more humble and we've seen him grow increasingly you know, angsty and angry

and quick tempered because his good ideas have been shot down because he's been, you know, put on such a short leash by the, by the Jedi Council, because Obi-Wan treats him like a baby. Like, if we'd been with him on that path there, if we understood how he got to be the way he is, then I think that there's a version there were like, yeah, that's right. You stick up for yourself. But instead, he just seems like a child. I think you could, I think you could have had it in this movie if they would have like turned down the first third angst by like 30 to 30 degrees like just bring it down to like this more sort of like questioning young adult rather than like little piece of shit

and I think like then you can get the arc of like him getting to tattooing and like really seeing true awful evil things happen to someone that he really, really loves. And like, yeah, then it fucking makes sense. I would fucking be pissed too. But it's just, it starts off. He goes so hard in the beginning that you just lose the momentum. It just, it's insufferable. Yeah. It's tough because like it's the complaints that he has are, Obi-Wan doesn't listen to me. And I'm stronger than everybody around me, and I couldn't be stronger if they let me be. And it's like, bro, that's a bad idea already. Like, just, no, no, get that out of you before we could, like, let you have a responsibility.

And it's just very tough. I just want to, like, you know, it reminds me he has a character how adults see teenagers, but that is not how teenagers are. Right. And I think this is part of the problem is, this is a middle-aged dude. writing about how he thinks teens are. And let me just toss this out, because this does loop back to Star Wars.

A movie, I think, works very well that goes the complete opposite direction is Ryan Johnson's brick, which imagines a hard-boiled noir set in a high school. And the reason it works is because all the overplayed, like, hard-boiled P.I. dialogue, the Femphital, all these, you know, the shantu-sexual.

in the in the nightclub that's actually just a party at someone's house all this stuff works because it's actually not that far removed from how teenagers do see themselves at a pretty early age like when you're 14 you're starting to be like I'm pretty grown up and by the time you're like 18 you're like I'm I'm an adult like what the fuck and the thing is that yeah kids that age are probably pretty wrong about a lot of that stuff but at the same time they know how to to perform as adults. They know how to perform as, like, here's who I, here's who I imagine my adult self-being. And Anakin instead is basically imagined as what if you still had someone who intellectually

was the same age as the kid we just left, Jake Lloyd's, like, basically, like, a, you know, nine or a ten-year-old. But now he's sexually mature. Oh, God. And we are firmly in the, like, I want to gouge out my eyes. territory. Because now it's just like a horny man child with like incredible power. But like to all appearances, you know, the self-control and worldview of a small child. And it's the other thing that occurred to me watching this is like, oh, this is like if you tried to make Ferris Bueller a dark

anti-hero. Yeah, totally. The thing is, this is a movie for teens. at this point, right? Like, the kids from Jake Lloyd's... It's only been two years. It's been three. Has it been three? It comes out in 2002. You're right.

You're right. 2002. And it was 1999. So I think we're at least preteens. Let's say 13, 14. I've watched a lot of media for teens. I've watched a lot of toxic relationships. I've seen it all.

And what I will say is just that, first of all, this just such injustice to the bad boy toxic relationship that plagues young adult fiction. And it's just, it's so frustrating because I think that Anakin is like, they are these like teen heart throbs and they're going to be on the covers of like every magazine, every teen magazine like to come. and it's just it's the if it's four to it's just written like a fucking alien wrote it like I like if I was a T if I was 13 watching this

I just I'm supposed to be like I'm supposed to be glorifying essentially the relationship between and completely romanticizing the relationship between Padme and Anakin that's what I would be doing if I was 14 in watching this but it's just I cannot

not there's nothing to like it's he's so hard to grab onto like he's feel so abrasive and I've watched like I've watched gossip girl there are terrible people in that show that are fucking insufferable and horrible think about it I've been thinking about that Chuck Bass is horrible he's a terrible human being and yet Anakin is more just he makes me want to crawl inside of myself and die like he is just so terrible And I genuinely think that's because of the writing and the direction. I don't know. I haven't seen a lot of hating Christensen movies.

I don't know. Well, we tell you, there ain't been that many after all this. But it's just, yeah, I don't know. It's just for it being in the young adult genre, it's just such a shame. It's just such a shame. It's especially really difficult because, like, Natalie Portman is a good actress, and she's able to like change her face and her like um body talk what is the word for that body language whenever he says something to her where she like stiffens up and her face drops and it's like

this is what am i how am i supposed to feel about this because she's actively uncomfortable so i definitely am i feel like she's writing a secret like she's she's acting her own part like her own movie She's like, this is an act of resistance. Like, Natalie Portman's acting is like, I fuck this, all of this. I feel so. I really think that there is a version of this movie where if she is, instead of acting the way she does in response to these advances, if from the jump, and this requires a script change too, if she's like, more like, whoa, he grew up and like, I don't know

how I'm supposed to feel about that, that version of that movie is one in which you by some of their later relationship developments. Instead, it feels so much like Natalie Portman is drawing on her own experiences shutting assholes down who are making passes at her. It is so believable when she shuts him down in the first half of the movie because she just sounds like a person saying no to someone, not saying no in a way where she's like, I shouldn't be having these feelings, he's a Jedi. She's just like, no, I am not interested.

You are stepping through personal boundary. You're stepping across a personal boundary here. I don't want you to do this. And then later in the film, when it comes time to flip, it just flips. There is no development. There is no thing. There's no set of things where that attraction slowly builds up. There's a point at which she is just there for it.

And it makes that arc feel like nothing. It's just, it's miserable. So really quickly we get through. There's an assassination that's. of there's a... Oh, do you mean the one where... Did you watch the TikTok? Yeah.

Oh, fuck. I forgot to watch it. I didn't watch the TikTok. You should go have what... I mean, we can't do it right now because it's like a two-minute-long TikTok, and I'll summarize it for you. It's someone emphasizing the fact that what happened here is, effectively,

Darts Sidious wants to kill Palpatine. Sorry, nope. Dart Sidious wants to kill... There's layers to that. There really are. Well, really the death drive. Don't we all? Click my pen.

So why do you think Darth Sidious resents Palpatine so much? Darts Sidious, Darnsidius, why didn't they kill Palpatine is a kingdom hearts thing. Like, that's like they split. All right, Dard Sidious wants to kill Amadala. And so to do that, he tells Count Duku to kill Amadala. But Count Duker doesn't want to do it. So Duku hires Janko Fett to do it. And so Jankofet sends his friend the Changeling Zam Wessel.

to go do it. And Zam Wessel doesn't want to do it herself. So she sends a droid to do it. And the droid releases a bunch of insects to do it. There is a TikTok. We should put the TikTok in the description. Oh, also the insects have stealth mechanics. Yeah.

The insects have stealth mechanics. It's so fucking funny that that is how that goes. And then at the end, there's a huge chase sequence. I do even note about that chase sequence, which is this is the moment. that this series stops being Star Wars, the Star Wars we've known from before, because this is where Jedi can fall, hundreds of feet, land on cars and keep moving. This is where the action sequence stuff, even more than the like kind of Rushia, like, um, uh, dual the fates stuff from episode

one where everything's a little more acrobatic. This is superpowers. Like the, the Jedi are full on, like, doing stuff that is impossible in a way that it's kind of so fun, adventure heroic stuff. I like this chase sequence well enough. But it's not like anything from the previous four movies at this point. And so I think that's like an interesting, important moment. And to some degree, it made me go and look up like, well, what other movies came out during this time frame? The answer is the matrix. Right? That like the matrix is like, oh, this is what it looks like to be sick as shit. And so we have to, the Jedi have to have a little bit of that here. The second thing about this that I do love is, I do love the end of it when they're in that bar, and there are a million extras. They all have really interesting masks and costumes. It's a lot of practical effects. Believe it or not,

when you have practical effects in your movie, people in costumes and makeup and prosthetics, that stuff all really reads well to the camera, especially on the CG tech just isn't there yet. And there's like an atmosphere. It's also where you get the goofiest shit. In fact, this whole part of the movie has my favorite goofiest shit, which is like the death stick dealer.

Oh, my God. Whose name? Does anyone know the name? Wait, I forgot it. No. No, his name isn't said in the movie. It's only said in, like, the art book. His first name is Alon, E-L-A-N.

His last name is Slees Bagano. Yep. Oh, my God. Also, okay, that's actually a fucking wild bit because Obi-Wan just use his mind control on him. Yeah. It'll fix his life.

Yeah. Don't worry about it. It's fine. He wants to go home and rethink his life now. Yeah, I can put a pin in your mom. This man is a smoker. I got it.

And I need to just mind jack him right now. Excuse me. Hold on. Got to rewrite some neural patterns. Oh, he's so fucked up and funny. Also, just a quick thing. I also love here. There's actually a little bit of suspense in this.

Like, there's a shot where it's a misdirection. Like somebody's closing through the crowd and moving through the crowd, but also the entire bar is shot like the bar in 48 hours, the great Nick Noltee Eddie Murphy like Buddy Cop movie, which is like one of your great all-time mismatched partners movie that's very much about like policing and being like and the relationship of black people to police and this thing kind of ends in a similar sort of thing where we see the Jedi in full

cop mode like they fuck this assassin up in the middle of the bar and Obi-Wan just stares the bar down and like Jedi business go about your knights and it's like a different aspect of the Jedi and I was here for it I was like yes that's how the Jedi fucking role

you know the bit where Anakin talks about aggressive negotiations like that stuff is good because it is the stuff about what the Jedi order has actually been up to all this time it's not the love story stuff and I wish there was a good love story stuff I want to be 100% clear I'm not like

get this love story out of my Star Wars I'm like, give me a good fucking love story or fuck off. The other thing that's good about this part of the movie, and it's a little bit ahead of this, is Dexter Jester, the big alien who runs the space diner in Correscent that the Lvon goes to. I think that was a guy from Reboot. That's a guy from, he's also from Reboot.

He did a little, he was like, Reboot had just wrapped, I think, right before. So, just used the set. They were like, I need that diner model and the robot models and textures. And George wants a diner. Yeah, just, can you just download that for me? Awesome. Great, diner. dat, load him in. That guy rules, that whole scene rules.

Like, I, again, I think it's probably a little racist. He is, like, the most, what if there was a big fat Greek guy, but an alien character. But I love Dexter. He gives him a big hug. More people should hug Jedi. I feel like he would, like, fix their whole shit. I really want the side movie of, like, why are they past? Because they're, like, very close.

They're very good friends. But he also can have a scumbag. Yeah. And he knows a lot about, like, weird bounty hunter technology. What's that about? What was his life before he was running this diner? Well, he says he used to be, like, doing shit out beyond the rim, beyond the outer rim. He used to go, like, deal with, like, basically, the thing that you're doing for me, Allie, is Company of the Spade.

And that's what it basically sounded like he does for Friends of the Table fans. I'm like looking at his thing now, but I can't find what it says because there's a bunch of other stuff here that I think is from a book I haven't read. I don't know. Anyway, the point is he used to go do like prospecting is what I think he used to do. Yes. Out beyond the outer rim, which is wild. So he's lived that life on the quote unquote frontier of space. So good.

I want all his stories. Give me a whole side, you know, when we. get around to a certain point of view, attack of the clones, Del Rey. You know who your boy is to write the Dexter Jetser backstory. Well, and the guy calls out,

he provides the key piece of information, which is this dart that this mysterious bounty hunter fired. By the way, in all that chase, apparently, like the bounty hunter was just tracking the chase and setting up this shot outside one. Padma is in her room, alone at this point.

It's surrounded by whatever Nabu guards. Django Fet could have kicked down that fucking... Well, okay. Uh-huh. But Django Fet is that... Like, Django Fet knows more than anybody in this movie, and it fucks me up to think about for, like, a second, because, like, it's very confusing what the actual play is here,

and we'll get to that. Because he's the one guy who sees all sides, and he dies, and we don't know what he knows. That's true. But, like, the dark... is the tell that it's from it came from this planet Camino and so Obi-Wan's like cool I'll Google that at the Jedi archives and the archives come back with Camino never never heard of it and he's like well no I like I just talked to somebody who was there who's been to Camino

he says it should be here and the Jedi archivist is like look if it's not in the archives, then it doesn't exist. And I think, again, this is Luke as kind of being an okay concept guy. Like, he's tapping into, like, digital archives will create, like, digital reality for people that, like, if it can't be called up, like, to your fingertips and prove that something is real, it's reality becomes questionable, because the archive becomes the record of reality and not actual reality. And so he taps into something here, which is, like, you know, you know, it's not, you know,

You know, this is right as the dot-com bubble has, I think, already kind of burst at this point. The internet is still developing at a rapid pace. But, like, Lucas is kind of tapping into something here, which is, like, one of the things that indicates this society is declining, or at least the Jedi's grip on it is declining, is... Their records are not really under their own control. Like, they've outsourced memory to things that can be hacked, to things that can be stolen and altered. And it's kind of a cool insight from a movie, you know, a Star Wars movie from this period. It doesn't explore that much more, but it's cool.

Gen Archivist is cool as hell too. Do you all see the deleted scene? No, what is it? I didn't watch those for this one. So, before the conversation happens, I swear to God, she goes into full Mr. Darcy's housekeeper mode because there is a bust of Count Duku in the Jedi archives. Oh, my God.

And the scene actually opens on, or was originally an open, on Obi-1 contemplating this bust of this, like, majestic Christopher Lee. And she comes up, and she's like, quite handsome, isn't he? Quite a striking figure. And he's like, so what's like, yeah, who is this? and she explains she knew Count Duku and he and Quigon were like this like they were very tight

he taught Quigon and Duku learned from Yoda and like both of them both he and Quigon were kind of viewed as like the rogues of the Jedi order and he just kind of fucked off and went away and she's like we don't know what happened to him for like you know 15, 20 years there. And then he came back, and he was

Count Duku, and he was this enormously important person leading the separatist movement. Incredible. They cut this scene for, I don't know, any other scene in this fucking movie. Yeah, it's... Wait, so is Duku

not the Jedi that ordered all of the drones? That is correct. That is not Duku. We can get there. So there is another Jedi. There are two Jedi question... I don't know what we know, but we'll get...

Yeah, we'll get there, and I know a little bit more. I have so many questions about that. Well, again, there's lots of stuff that would have been great to have gotten more attention in this film itself. Some of it will not be answered until, like, season five or six of Clone Wars, unfortunately. So, yeah, anyway.

Obi-Wan's like, okay, these records are fucked. I'm going to go talk to Yoda. He interrupts the class with the younglings, class of never going to graduate, whatever. DRIP, and... Pour one out. And he's like, hey, I can't find this planet. I know for a fact it exists.

And so Yoda does a weird thing here. He's like, let's all concentrate and think about this map that is missing this spot and, like, let our feelings stretch out. And it almost seems like this is sort of a collective intelligence thing of, like, the younglings and Yoda all, like, thinking toward this planet. And Yoda's like, yeah, there it is. You should go there. but the thing like that's yeah go ahead you finish

no I'm basically done Natalie is your issue with this the same thing is my issue with this he already knew it was there he already knew it was fucking deleted he knew it was so his boy dexter told him

it was there one two he goes into the room and he's like it's like the gravity is pointing here and saying there should be a planet here and a star system here because all the other stars nearby are being pulled in by it by gravity

and then Yoda and the where the little kid basically points out. The kid's like, well, yeah, the archive has been deleted or stolen or changed or whatever. And you know, just like, that's right. The gravity is pointing there. And so that means it's probably out of the mouths of babes. Out of the mouth. Who would have thought? And you're, I guess it goes back to what Rob was saying before, which is this is supposed to illustrate the belief that the archive is, you know, impossible to, that it is, it is infallible, right? And so, like, I do get that point. But Obi-O-B had enough to just go there. Obi-Won had enough to go there from

the jump. Just trust Dexter. Just go. You have a spaceship You know you have a gas card Given to you by the Jedi You're going to get refilled for three Like And fucking Yoda's like Only a Jedi could have erased it

But I don't know I'm gonna go meditate on this For a while I'm not sure who it could have been Is that awesome to think about it I'm like Are you fucking kidding me It's fucking Dukeu

Of course it's Dukeu Who the fuck else would it be You're only one Jedi Has left the order in like fucking 30 million years and it's a fucking doo-coo. Of course it's him. I was losing my shit.

I was like, am I smarter than Yoda? Yes. So the answer is yes. I think that that's canonically the case. We learned that. I mean, already earlier, Yoda is like, there's a lot of arrogance is growing in the Jedi order, right?

That's a thing that he says and it's also true about him. But also later in the film, this is jumping far ahead, but I think is relevant now, Yoda says Is it time Is it Yoda who says

Or is Mace Windu The one who raises it? It's their conversation. That maybe it's time to tell the republic That we're losing touch with the force That the Jedi I totally miss that Yeah

Oh dude Go ahead Rob No I'm not going to step on that excitement Okay If you see how the Jedi interact with non-Jedi They're often like We talk to the force We listen, we meditate on things

We find answers as we let the force flow through us. This is kind of the party line. The Jedi are in touch with the force. They can sort of communicate with some intimations of what is happening, et cetera, what will happen. And then in the conversation with him and Mace Window, they finally, like, admit, do we need to tell the new republic? Do we need to tell the Senate that we can no longer see the future? They've been talking about this cloud of the dark side, sort of obscuring their visions.

And it's been getting progressively worse. But at this point in the movie, it's like the eclipse is complete. They can no longer see. Their vision is getting worse and worse. Now it's just gone. And now it might be finally time to admit there's a problem. But the question is for how long have they been faking it? Yeah.

Like the implication that whole scene is like they've still been going around being like, yeah, you know, we meditated. Here are our conclusions. But they're talking to no one anymore. They are priests without a God. And I find that so incredibly fascinating because when the chips are down, they basically go like full imposter. And they hope like this isn't going to catch up with them. They have a different hope, I think, Rob.

Yeah. And I think that this like underscores so much about all of the decision making. And this is the one thing that makes me okay with. tantrum throwing Anakin, they think that he's the chosen one who's going to bring balance to the force, which to them may mean clear up this weird vision shit

that we don't have anymore. Like, we just got to put up with him until this happens, until he gives us our power. Like, why not then fucking support him? And... Listen, fate is funny, isn't it?

Because they don't know. Because they've been relying on seeing the future for their whole lives. So they can't, they don't know how to just do that organically because they don't live a life of attachment or they do compassion yes but not attachment not possession

or possession not that style of love right? Also just to be clear that the conversation that we're talking about between Yoda and Mesa Windu happens after the call comes in from Camino where Obi-1 calls in to be like, yo there's this army and

there's like thousands of miles. Cepo Diaz bought it I guess let's save the Cepo conversation for when we get there. Awesome. I think you've hit on something really important here which is I think you're right that is their hope and it's caused them to turn on a dime where and this is going to be a pattern with the Jedi in this movie where they're just starting to grab at life preservers they see so they were

skeptical of Anakin they were worried about this kid in the first movie but now like now that the force is hard to talk to they're like fuck it I don't care like this kid Quigon said this kid was the child of prophet and it comes so easy to him he is powerful yeah so they're completely fine with it. They, they, they completely, slages their fears because now it's convenient for them to have a savior. They didn't need one 10 years ago. Now they

do. They were skeptical of an army. The minute they need an army. They're like, oh shit, there's an army. And it's ready? I have no further questions. I'm a general now, by the way. You call me General Yoda. I'm ordering fucking

clones around. I specifically say around the survivors a perimeter create. I was losing my shit. I said, why is Yoda a fucking general? That's my notes for this. Exact shit.

Exact shit. Concentrate all your fire on the nearest starship. That's a thing that Yoda says in this movie. Yoda turns in Colonel Kilgore from Apocalypse now, like on a dime. You have to remember he was a little fucking swamp gremlin in the popular consciousness until this. even episode one Yoda is like wise and detached but but episode two Yoda has been playing on the headset bring that thing down it's so fucked up we should slow down because we're skipping over a bunch of stuff yeah important stuff like uh off they go uh anikin's greasy

fucking poncho did y'all notice how ugly this poncho which one which one the refuge thing, the outfits? Look at this shit. Oh, my God. That one is disgusting. It is disgusting. Honestly, I think this one from Padmey was a worse. Hold on.

Well, we got images ready to go on these looks. Okay, it looks like he's wearing a mattress pad that's been soiled. I was pretty into the costume design in general. Yeah. But this was a crime. Yeah, that's not a good one. You want to describe that for the people at home? This was the blue, I don't know, like Malibu, bohemian, like rich mom, like walking down the beach with her golden retriever and like maybe smoking a joint that she bought for like a thousand dollars, I don't know.

This is this look to me. It is abysmal. Anyway, I just had to have a fashion moment briefly. They got to go off to Nebu to be safe. Turns out, you know that old queen thing? Elected position. Noble Padman. Usually they elect children, apparently.

And they've done it again. They were going to pass a term limits extension just for Padma because she was so good at being their elected queen. But she was like... I would have voted for Padma twice, three times. Three times by good. Three times by good. So they go there, and immediately we're right back in the weird vibes where they're talking to the new queen, and the new queen asks the Jedi at the meeting, like, hey, what do you think we should do? And right away, Pad May's like, oh, he's not a Jedi.

I love it. It's so good. Which is true, but also I think he is kind of just like, wait, hold on, what the fuck? but then rather than hold that thought they get into it yet again he gets into it with somebody in public as he tries to argue his position but looks like more and more of a child

and this all ends with them going to her estate at Naboo Lake Cuomo It is really the Amalfi Coast of Nabu I just okay there's a moment that there's two things one the new queen of of nabu is like the day we stop believing democracy can work is the day we lose it and i just wanted it just absolutely i just could not believe that we were going to just walk on by that because it's it's it's

It's just, I don't know, because I don't know, queen, I mean, Queen Amadala, when she was a queen, was like, really engaged and was like suspicious, but also wanted to do by her country. And then I felt like this new queen was just like, yeah, it's like, you know, Santa Claus, as long as he believed in democracy, like, he's coming on December 25th. The thing is Amadala later in the movie is not much better. she's not yeah and i think this is an interesting aspect of this yeah are we meant to be like ah yes so true so so right young queen or are we yeah are we meant to hear that and be like that's corny shit like wake up and smell the ashes right like the republic is dying like before your eyes and it's not because people no longer believe in the democracy fairy that is causing it to go to shit. It is because this democracy is failing. It is decadent and in rapid

decline. I think that it's the latter because if I am following my theory that we are supposed to be Anakin, Anakin doesn't believe in the current system. He also believes in a dictatorship, which is a little scary. My theory is that I think in an ideal world, we would have been... Anakin is our proxy if this movie was better. But then Anakin gets a little fashy

and it's... A little. Very fascist and it's a little... It's very scary. I think we're supposed to be Padme and being taken in. That's my counter, not counter, but that's like my reader

because she's the one who falls in love with Anakin. She's the one who's going to eventually it's going to be her tragedy. That's true. But I think we're supposed to Like we're supposed to see how someone could get to the dark side Yeah Like we're supposed to see

That is the arc that we're supposed to like This is all of these disillusions coming to light Is what will just send someone Just all the way To go maybe kill 40 people Yes Maybe Men, women and children

Yeah Animals Animals animals to him. Oh, they're animals, yeah. They're like animals. And he slaughtered them like animals. And he slaughtered them like animals. Anyway, he's a bad boy. Don't open your mouth. Keep your teeth clenched while you say the speech. And that way people know how sad you are when you say it. Again, you got out of their baby. I swear, like, the other stroke of luck for that first movie is you had actors who were considerably more secure

in who they were for the original movies. Like, you have Harrison Ford, who's 30 years old already a rising star in his own right. You have Kerry Fisher, who's a child of Hollywood, like, knows the game, knows who she is as a performer. Yeah. You know, like you could argue the ingenue in that cast is Mark Hamill, but that totally works. And it turns out it's a very talented one. Fortunately, Mark Hamill turns out to be an exceptional actor and does well with that role. but, like, here, these actors are just, like, marionettes for Lucas,

and Lucas doesn't understand performance. He doesn't know what to do with them. It's so painful. Naboo keeps happening. Can I ask one more question? Yeah, please. Before we move on. So, at the beginning of this whole Anakin, mansplaining to Padmay about, you know,

everything he's learned about being a Jedi, he talks about um you know pride and how pride you have to get over your pride and sometimes you just have to you know take direction and follow what other people say and then uh he's giving all this advice and not taking it and then when i just i wrote down a note at the end of this whole queen conference situation on naboo what where what is the what is the what What is the root of Anakin's pride? Because I feel like there's angst. And then he has all of this unexplained pride.

And I just don't understand where it comes from. He's the last one in the room and the first one out during final exams. He didn't he, you have to remember, these kids come to school. These kids go to, these kids go to Jedi Academy Coruscant. Sorry, they go to the old folks home, which is the code name of the Jedi Temple, by the you hear Obi-Wan call it that in this movie. He calls it the old folks home. That's confirmed the name of what,

that's what they call it in coded communications. Yeah. That's really dark. When does that happen? He tells R2 to put it through via the old folks home when he sends the message to Camino or to Tatooine when he's on Camino. And he calls it, he says like, sorry, he says R4, scramble code 5 to Coruscant care of the old

folks home, and that is the code name for the Jedi Temple. Anyway, those kids are coming at like age 2, age 3, right? So he came at 9. That's a big difference. Because they've said he is too old to do it at all. But he shows up and not only is he

doing it, he is, he says the second best swordsman there next to Yoda is a thing that he says. He is doing stuff with the force that very few people can do who are Jedi Knights, maybe even Jedi masters. He is so far ahead of the curve. I think his pride, and he is Palpatine in his ear

literally saying, you're one of the strongest Jedi I've ever seen. And I've known some Jedi. That's the validation, right? Because I feel like for pride to really fester, you have to have validation, like someone that Palpatine whispering in your ear validating you against whoever else. Well, where there's a real superiority of mind, pride will always be in the regulation. That's really the difficult thing about this movie, though, is that, like, we really don't ever see that. Like, we see him, we see him doing some cool stuff with pears. We see him claiming that he.

Is it cool? Right. Cool stuff with pairs. I don't know. If you were on a date with someone who hadn't totally repulsed you already, and be like, hey, let me show you something. That's a fucking fly to the Concord scene of ever seen. it's like a fancy way of stealing somebody's french fry like she was going to eat that fair then he just takes a cut of it with the magic powers and he gave her the smaller hat

when he started sending it back I was like please do not put it in her mouth please do not I was just like please the love of God please not feed her hand feed Natalie Borgman with the force yeah so we have that and then we have him just saying I am the strongest swordsperson I could be better than Yodif they let me be and then like we don't even really see any interactions between him and Palpatine that like you don't see the feeding there

there's one convo right there's the one convo where he's like what's he say I don't remember the Jedi finally gave you a job assignment yeah the only other time it like sort of comes up is when they're sitting in the grass and Anakin is like well I like two or three politicians

He's like, I really like Palpatine. He says it to Obi-1 Canobi, too, as they're standing on the terrace outside sleeping Amadala's room. And he's like, I really like Palpatine. And Obi-Wan's like, you really should not. He sucks. He really sucks. I like the fascist, the hot one.

And the goofy guy with the ears. Those are my poles. I think that's like That's truly what What Ali just said Is truly the thing about Star Wars for me That just grinds my fucking gears Is that something will be introduced

One time And then it's just like All right, that's it We've established that That's in the universe Everyone knows it It's all the reinforcing we need to do And that's just about it

And now we can just move on To the next fucked up thing And like I think that's why I was saying In the last episode God I wish I had a prequel for this But, like, again, I feel like, God, I wish I had a prequel for this movie because there's so fucking much that it's just said and taken for granted and we just move with it. And it's just, it blows my fucking mind that we're all expected just not along and keep going with this bat shit fucking thing that they're giving us, this movie.

It's just... I do just want to say one thing about Anakin's Pride, though, which is, I think also, I think Austin, you're correct that it's partly he shows up and he, kicks ass as a Jedi immediately. I think also, like, he is surrounded by the equivalent of trust funders in some ways. He's a slave who was spared, and he and his mom were both spared the worst of, like, whatever slavery he looks like on Tatooine, because he was so fucking good at doing jobs. He could do things better than anybody, and that protected him, protected his mom. It even allowed him to, like, talk back to Wado in a lot of ways, right?

Like, he was Wado's slave at the same time, like, Wado needed that kid. to do, and that's going to be driven home later in this film, but like Waddo needed this kid to like not just work, but like want to work. If he was like, I can do pod racing for money on the side, that happened.

Nobody else could do it. He could. And so I think to an extent he's also very justly like, he's already lived out in the roughest parts of the real world in circumstances that a lot of the people here know academically, right? But not really.

And so I think there's also kind of a, in the movie, what a fascinating, okay, in the deleted scenes, Padmae's family is at this lakehouse. What? What? Her parents and sister are there at this lakehouse. He meets the parents? Here's the other wild part. Her dad is a working stiff, like, trade union rep who became an academic. And so her dad is a dude who's.

still has, like, grease and grime under his nails. Um, and he kind of married into a more well-to-do family. Also, they kind of do this thing where it's like, the front of their house is on a busy street, so it's like not a lakehouse mansion. Wait, it's just that the house that we see? Yes. That's out of the street? The establishment shot is them walking down a street into the front door.

It's like a brownstone. And then the backyard. It's like, kind of. And the backyard opens up on a private lake. I've seen houses like that. But the whole thing has to go out in the woods to be safe. There's a million of those. They're in Park Slope.

I can't believe they're in Park Slope. Yeah, Echo Park. Yeah, God. Fuck off. But I think a really fascinating thing here would have been there's a scene where he's talking to Padmay's dad. And he's kind of explaining his arc through life and how he's just a dude who cared about like labor issues.

and academics and didn't really have much time for the politicians and I think there's a fascinating version of this where oh yeah like in a weird way these are two dudes

from very different positions in life like Anakin was a slave but at the same time they both did manual labor at the pointy end of this stratified economic society in a way that no other characters in this fucking series

have had to face. And this is kind of why he gets on with their dad. You know, it shows she's kind of down to earth. Interesting movie, if those scenes remain in, but the kind of excise. And we are left with the impression that he just goes to her ridiculous, like, Italian at Villa. And they're just eye-fucking for weeks, days?

I don't even know how long they're there. Until he finally kisses her, and it's disgusting. Let's just do it. Let's just tear the bandit off. Just tear the bandit off. Yeah. I wrote in my notes. I wrote in my notes, I would like to cease to exist.

Because watching this. Oh, weird. Padmey says that later. She does. She does. She literally does. She literally does. The height of romance.

Ready to die. The Padma, the Padma, Amadala's story. What is the exact line? They're about to face the fucking gladiator. realm and they're about to die and she's like I'm not afraid of death and he's like what really and I'm like you're a Jedi you should really not be scared of death um and she's like I've been dying every day every second since you came back into my life and I was just like holy shit and he's like awesome make out let's make out as we

You go into the fucking gladiator realm and just get fed to huge alien creatures. It's just unbelievable. Anyway. It's especially really frustrating because it's like when she says that, it's not like, it doesn't feel like an actual emotion that she had. It's just a weird reversal of what he said to her earlier, which is like, oh, I'm so tortured around you because I want to be with you, but I can't. And it's like, I hate it. It's so bad.

It's so terrible because then not only do they have this, the first time they're alone together, basically, when they're in the Italian villa, he kisses her. He's like, I'm in love with you. He touches her back. He touches her back and I literally was cringing into, it's horrible. She does not want it. She hates it. And then later, when he's like, yeah, I'm fucking tortured, I'm horny. What the fuck?

She's like, he's like, you kissed me. Yeah. And I'm just so tortured. And I was like, are you fucking kidding me? That kiss could become a scar, he says. Get fucked. I was so, this is what no pussy does to a motherfucker. This is what I wrote in my notes.

I was just, I could not believe how, he just, he just has the, he just has the, The most poisoned brain where, first of all, the fact that he even thought that she kissed him makes me like either the direction on that entire little villasine was just incredibly poor and not in line with what the script was, or Anakin is just a horrible human being. Just the absolute, I mean, he's pretty bad. They have the ability to go that to say he's worse than he is, but they take it off the table because she at some point says, I don't remember what the framing is, but it comes up that no, no, no, I couldn't use my Jedi powers on you because you're too strong-willed.

So, like, we know he isn't, like, force manipulating her by the text, because Lucas is clearly Oh, 100%, but Lewis, I think is nervous that we would read it that way, which is why that that line is there. Because if he says it, there's no way he's forced to be doing it. My not force manipulating you into starting a relationship with me, sure, is raising a lot of questions answered by my shirt.

Instead, I'll just gaslight you into it. It's fine. And then, that whole scene is where they have this political debate about like, basically, they both have completely immature visions of politics, and we get a real insight in here into why the republic's fucked.

These two kids. Do you want the exact dialogue? Because I have it. Do you want me to do it. Please deliver it for us. And then I'm going to make marginal notes on it. I don't think the system works. How would you have it work?

We need a system where the politicians sit down and discuss the problem, agree what's in the best interest of the people, and then do it. That's exactly what we do. The trouble is that people don't always agree. Well, they should be made to. By whom? Who's going to make them? Someone. You? Of course not me. But someone. Someone wise. Sounds like a dictatorship to me. Well, if it works.

And then they kind of like push each other a little bit and tease each other. And senators don't fuck crypto-fascists. That's my rule. This is a disgusting moment because she's like, you're making fun of me. Like as if this is like nagging. And I was like, no, he's confessing to like being into fashion. democracy is ugly. You think that you're wearing that democracy? Did you think that democracy looked good? And she's like, okay. But you can read, like, you can read Natalie Portman's face, and he's like this.

Like, he's just looking at her. With the most spursy, it's so disgusting. She literally says to him at one point, she's like, don't look at me like that anymore, please. And he just gives her the. the most pervy fucking eyes. No, that she doesn't take the camera. There are scenes that end with him turning to look at the camera over his shoulder. Like he's playing a trick that we're supposed to like his fucking...

Anakin's trick. Yeah. Anikin's trick! I can't... It's... Oh, my God, he's doing the house of cards thing. Where he's like, with my mind. Oh. Anyway, yes.

Very naive positions. Well, but I think so the thing is here's the here's the thing that Padmay seems to be missing there appears to be no mechanism to arrive at some sort of like majority action where it's like well

we disagree but we're just going to roll she's portraying it sounds like they've got a really consensus based republic which makes sense when you have an overgrown there is definitely a filibuster yeah 100% and so she's like well people don't agree and it's like that is

If agreement is necessary to the functioning of your democracy, you're fucked. Like, that's not, like, democracy adjudicates agreements by moving past them. The conversation becomes closed. We revisited later by the action of democracy, but, like, it moves on. And that is not happening in the Republic for a variety of reasons. But she's like, well, you know, that's just, that's just how the system works. And then he's got this idea of, like, yeah, well, we should just, uh, do stuff. We should, we should just force

the issue. Um, I don't know how this would work. I'm not a details guy. But we should just do things. Doing things is, I'm an idea guy. I don't, I don't execute. Yeah. Well, we found out in a bit, he definitely executes. Yeah, he does.

He does. Well, that's, that's, that's the new. Like, that's Anakin's new bag. That's Anakin 2.0. Yeah. Um, but yeah, so it's just, it's, it's really frustrating because her, and this this is why I think now that Natalie has put it in my head that we're supposed to be like we're going through this journey with Anakin I kind of buy it because this is ultimately

the story of a fall and we should be sort of perceiving why the best of us ends up becoming the worst this should be sort of a paradise loss thing we should see we should see lucifer in all his glory before he before he falls and instead we get a good looking guy who the minute he cracks a smile, your skin just walks out of the room and has the understanding of a small child of like how the universe should work. It's because Anakin is the Joker

of this fucking universe. And we're all getting fucking jokerified. We're all getting, we're all going Vader mode throughout this whole arc. It's just, we are all just, like we are in it with like I don't know how to not just you're either in or you're fucking out

and I feel like I am going Vader mode the thing that I'm so excited for about Clone Wars is a lot of the stuff that they try to set up in this movie we don't have we can fill in the blanks on how they set it up we don't need to know how they set it up we can pretend that there was a really good love story here that leads to the Anakin and Padme we see in Clone Wars in which their relationship

is already they're already married by the time Clone War starts. Oh, Clone War is going to do so much cleanup. Clone Wars is going to be like. I don't, I'm so curious because I really, like obviously I have friends that love the show and I'm just very looking

forward to seeing how they managed to swing back on this. While this is all happening, can we, can we keep moving a little bit here? Camino. There's another movie happening here. Camino is happening. I think a better movie. Obi-Wan shows up and I think there's some like genuinely dope shit that, unfolds. He shows up and

an alien with the longest neck I've ever seen comes out the door and is like, Master Jedi, we've been expecting you, which is great. Anytime someone is investigating something and someone there is already like, oh, we've been expecting you.

And what he learns is they are like how is your master doing? And he's like, my master? And they're like, Seifo Diaz. And they're like, and he's like, like, oh, Cimo Diaz is dead. He died a decade ago, nearly a decade ago, he says. The timeline here is very weird. And they're like, oh, no, you still want your order, right? And he's like,

my order. And they're like, of hundreds of thousands of people, you would still like them, right? And he's like, oh, of course. Yeah, can I, yeah, definitely. And they're like, do you want to see the people for you that you own? And he's like, show them to me. I would love to see them. them, and they show him a facility where over the last 10 years, a huge army of proto-storm troopers have been cloned and raised off of the genetic template of Django Fet Mandalorian Bounty Hunter. They have been rapidly aged. They have been genetically recoded so that they're more obedient.

And maybe some other stuff. We'll maybe find out if they've been genetically engineered to take. have any sort of other obedience uh down the line um and they have been given the best combat training the best piloting training you know that money can buy and obi one is like wow yeah you really huh is that jango is he around and so he goes and meets jango fat but he also meets boba fat which it turns out is the one special condition along with apparently a very good paycheck that Django gets. And it is one clone who was genetically programmed to age normally.

And also not be obedient in the same way as the soldiers. He just wants a son. He wants a genetic clone himself to raise as a kid. And so he has that. And Boba, I love the kid who plays Boba Fett in this movie. I think that he is rude in the best way. He feels like he doesn't have any respect for Obi-Wan Kenobi. I am, you know, I guess we're getting ahead of ourselves.

The fact that he doesn't get to grow up and kill Mace Windu is a shame for what Mace Windu does to his father, which we'll get to. I don't really know much about Boba Fett. I'm going to be honest. That's fair. Boba Fett is a cool bounty hunter. Not much to know. He, Boba Fett looked cool and had a cool action figure when Empire Strikes Back. Wildly overrated character.

Deeply overrated, but like cool. Do you know what I mean? A very particular type of cool that came from, who is that guy in the background? and then a bunch of books came out to try to fill in that backstory and they made him corny as shit but like 90s cool and that's the problem right anyway

Obi-Wan Django Fed immediately you know kind of clocks that things are about to go bad and he's like I've never been on Corosan I was dealing with some other business it doesn't matter what you think let me talk in Mandalorian to my son really quick and tell him to go hide my armor

which is just kind of out in the open. Which, are you not supposed to see a Mandalorian without his helmet? You should keep watching this season. You're back on this season. They answer why you believe that very early. You should keep watching in season two? Yes. Uh-huh.

Okay. Anyway, Obi-Wan is like, all right, I got to go call this in. And so he calls in Khorasan in the rain, you know, out on the landing pad. He's standing outside of his spaceship He could just go in there Inside the spaceship Yeah, you're right Good call

Unvely annoying It's very annoying Maybe that's just where the The thing is on the outside The camera's on the outside of the spaceship They should get one on the inside It's the outside You have the outside photo

He's leading into the parking camera Yeah He cracked the front facing one So he had to do the other He's talking to Art 2 right And it's like R2 just Yeah, just camera phone. Like, I can talk to you through cobs inside where it's warm.

Like, come on. You don't even need the photo. Like, give me the audio, honestly. It's not like you showing anything. That's true. Yeah, he had that in his contract. Also, there's that sick water teradactal thing in the sequence that just like one of the Camino aliens is riding. Anyway, it's great.

He calls home and is like, hey, we have an army? secretly? Did anyone know about this? Cepo Dias put in the order? Remember? Like 10 years ago. He doesn't know him, right? Didn't he die like 12 years ago? Right. So that's the thing. So, so, in this movie, it is not clear who put this order in. It is attributed to Cepo Dias or Cipho Dias. It's SIFO-G-A-S, which is important because originally it was.

I think that there was a typo that led to this name. This is not a joke. I can't check it anymore because my internet died, but it was basically, it was Sidious, basically. Instead of Cepodeus, it was Cidius, and it was supposed to be Cidious as like a fake name, an alias. We know a Cidius. We do know a Cidius. But that's not the, I want to be clear, it is not Cidius.

Cidius did not put this order in. Seifodias did. Some other Jedi broke away, and some of this will be given to us in Clone Wars, some of it was given to us in art books. A lot of a thing to know for people who didn't follow these movies at the time is when everyone knew one of these movies came out, they would drop a huge compendium of all of the behind the scenes art, all the art from, or like the creature design, the mechanic designs, all the ships, all the lightsabers, etc. And that is where a lot of these characters got lore. This is where it's like, oh, this is Plu Koon, who is from this species. And he has to use like a fucking breather, a rebreather to breathe in the atmospheres that humans breathe in, stuff like that.

And so through all of that stuff, what we know is Cephodeus is a Jedi who left the order like Count Duku did 10 years ago because he could see that shit was coming. He believed that a war was coming and that they needed an army. And so he secretly left to start an army. But did he leave the Jedi order to do it? According to what I've read, and some of this might be stuff that we learn in Clone Wars long term, but not until like season six, but some of it might be stuff that was in those art books and stuff. There was a fight because he wanted to have an army and the rest of the Jedi Council didn't. And so I don't know if he was exiled. I don't know if he voluntarily quit.

But he left, made this order, and then got killed. I'm going to leave some of that stuff as blank as possible because I do know we eventually learn some of it. But I think for this conversation, it's important not to talk ourselves into believing that Sidious did this or that Dukku did it. because Wikipedia is very clear Cepo D.S. made this order. So, and I think that's important. But in the movie, they're very clear that he, like,

their timeline that the Jedi have is that he should have been dead by the time the order was placed. This is the thing that jumps out of the Jedi. This is the thing that's confusing, yes. That they say, I mean, the other thing that's confusing about this is he says almost 10 years ago or something like that was when Seifodias died. But they seemed to believe that Seifodias was there before that and made that order.

And like the way that that conversation with the Camino go makes it seem as it seem as if that would have happened after. Because they don't stop and say, well, how could he have done that if he was dead? But later conversation, it's very confusing. I think it's part of this movie is a fucking mess, you know? I'm not sure he tells them that he's dead. Or that he would have died before that aura. I don't think he reveals the timeline doesn't make sense to that. I'm 99% sure that he literally says,

but Master Siphodias died nearly 10 years ago or something like that. I heard 10 at some point, and then I also remember a 12. I thought that's when he called the Jedi, though. And he's like, this doesn't make sense to me. There's an easier way for us to do this. Cipho, yeah. Which is watching the movie. No, which is like, I have a script.

Yeah, it's a script. Oh, yeah. No, yeah, he says it to Lama Sue. Please tell your master Sifodias that we have every confidence that his order will be met on time in full. He is well, I hope. I'm sorry, Master. Jedi Master Sifo Dias, he is still a leading member of the Jedi Council, is he not? Master Sifo Dias was killed almost 10 years ago.

He says it outright. Oh. So they did not say, like, well, that doesn't add off. Anyway, the point is, the movie is confused about this. Here's another thing the Clone Wars show is going to clean up, but it seems as if Yeah, a Jedi was like, we got to go make an army. I don't understand how you have a movie that takes place 10 years before, right before this movie, and you don't put any inkling of this in there.

George Lucas sat down in his office. Oh, right. He wrote this. And he wrote space. He didn't know about this. There's also a little confusion here, which is, um, Lama Su does say Cifodias chose Django Fet himself, But then Django Fed is like, I never heard of him. I don't know if Django is lying.

Yeah, but that just feels like Jango being like covering his ass. That might be confirmation that TIPODS did it. Also, man, I do love this because I didn't know what's the species called the Camino folks? The Camino. Oh, just that called the Camino? Yeah. El Camino. That's your joke.

You wanted to do that joke. I didn't. I figured I was going to just start doing it accidentally. Okay. But the thing about, the thing I dig about the Clone Wars is the Camino are all over it as like MedTechs and, you know, they're running tons of like installations for the Clone Army. And watching the Clone Wars, I was always like, these people give me a weird vibe. Like they just, they seem like all, what's the way, all technical prowess, but not a lot of like empathy. or there's just something unsettling about them.

It's like... Well, and there's a running line of conversation in this movie, starting in the Dexter Jester scene, in which, what is the difference between a droid and a person? Early on in that scene, the droids of the archives miss that the little dart does not have the... It's not tied to Camino.

And what Dexter says is like, oh, but droids don't know that stuff. You know, there's a difference between knowledge and wisdom. humans have wisdom, et cetera. Then... And he says... Go ahead. He says, you know what's better than droids is clones.

Does that what he says? Does he say that? He says, I wrote this down. Does he say, do you know what's better than droids? A billion clones. He says... He says... Oh, no, sorry.

He doesn't say that. I can't imagine you text your death. You know what he says? He says, if droids could think... None of us would be here. None of us would be here. Yes. And then later in the movie, we again get this thing of, I think it must be the Camino.

The Camino specifically say they're immeasurably superior to droids because clones can think creatively. But the thing that's so weird about this is what Rob is pointing out, which is the Camino themselves feel affectless. they're written to be that like very specific like stereotype or like archetype of being you know

removed scientists who are so obsessed with their project they don't look at the outcome they just want to build the thing they just want to build the machine and I think the movie understands that this is all bullshit

I think right question mark well we just like we're not given because there's immediately told that they're less, they're less obedient, or totally obedient and less independent. So it's like, are they actually, you know, able to think creatively? Are they

actually superior to droids in that way? We see R2D2 being creative and, and, you know, I think that's just like the misunderstanding of droids in general. But in the moment that they say that, they pan over like a uniform sea of people eating the same way, except one dude is like, looking around. Yeah, that's Clone Wars, baby. Get ready. If you like that shit, there's going to be a lot of, hey, what's up with, hey, do these clones have individuality?

Do they have names? Do they have relationships? Do they want to be doing what they're doing? That's like a huge part of what we're about to watch. Well, I'm just like, I am very curious about that because first of all, we have like a billion clones from the same dude. And then are Stormtroopers clones? Oh, well, isn't that an interesting question?

Because Finn doesn't look like Django Fet And there's lots of different There's a lot of time There's like whatever 60 years between where we're at now and Finn So I I will say at the start of Solo He goes off to the Imperial Academy at Carita Which is a new thing

So like they have military academies now That have replaced whatever the Republic was doing So yeah like at some point Stormtroopers like become dudes that get trained. But how, like, this is, watching this movie, I was like, wait, stormtroopers have their origins as the clones? 100%.

Like, that fucking shocked me. Like, the fact that that shot, if you go watch the attack of the clones trailers, they put the clone troopers in the trailers, and I'm furious that they did that in retrospect, because as someone who loved Star Wars as a kid, if I had gone into this movie and just seen that reveal of like, oh, shit, that army is an army of stormtroopers. I don't know, that would have fucking slapped. So, like, that reveal, it's still good. It's still good to realize that, like, the Jedi ordered the stormtroopers to be created.

A Jedi ordered the stormtroopers to be created. Your ineffectual host has a question. Knowing that we are long on time, can I air a grievance I have with this movie and the lore of the clones? Please. Go for it. That's why we did this podcast, Rob. Okay. So another thing I couldn't quite get over with this movie was that in what is now the

legends canon, the expanded universe, somebody else had a crack at trying to figure out what were the Clone Wars. And again, it's our boy Timothy Zahn. I'm going to bring that guy up a lot because, like, what is my Star Wars? In a lot of ways, it's like the universe building that Timothy Zon did in the blank spaces that like Lucas left. I think genuinely, for people of my vintage of Star Wars fan, Timothy Zon is kind

of what Dave Thaloney is going to be to Star Wars fans of a different generation. But he's the dude who starts reworking the fiction and setting a lot of the rules and building out a lot of the setting. The thing he fills in is that the Clone Wars was actually a clone uprising. The plot

of the heir to the Empire trilogy, which is where Grand Admiral Thrawn, who was basically out on assignment when the empire collapsed, he comes back, sees the Empire's fallen, and it's like well, I've got to put this thing back together. And his way for doing that to make up all the losses the Empire

has suffered to its core of starfighter pilots stormtroopers etc he finds a lost um like collection of sparty cloning cylinders and he's like we're just going to start cranking out clones again and the implication when he says like we're going to do this everyone's like uh but you can't do that because he'll never like it'll take too long to make the clones like you will never have the numbers needed to make good the losses the empire has suffered And Thron's like, no, I can create a fully aged stormtrooper or whatever in six months. I can just start cranking out troops. And people are like, no, you can't because when the Republic did that, the clones lost their minds from the accelerated aging process.

Like it was so psychically shattering that the clones basically went for Cirque and there was a huge clone uprising. And so you can't do this. And this is one of the cool things of like, it's a bit like, I. I think Zahn was sort of implying that there's almost like a full scale, like imagine Blade Runner, but as a full scale like dress war between like an army of Roy Batty's and like the Jedi. And I was like, that sounds fucking cool. And also sort of again implies that the Republic was like clones. Hell yeah. This is cool.

What if we just had more of them and faster? I was like, yeah, all right, here we go. And here it was like, oh, the clones are all jaded. Django Fat. And the reason they're called the Clone Wars is because they were fought by clones as, like, the infantry of this war. But actually, it wasn't, it's kind of a misnomer. It wasn't about the clones at all. It just has that name because that's what we used to fight the wars.

And I'm like, the fuck? Well, this is the thing, right, that's so fucked up is in the original trilogy, they're called the Clone Wars. And what Yoda says is, begun the Clone War has. I hate it. I hate it. It's only one war. Anyway. So there are more coming? No.

No, no, no. This is the rewrite that Rob is saying is that the original trilogy, it's just nothing. It's like a fun phrase. It's an evocative phrase. There was this thing that was called the Clone Wars, right? Your father, you're not your father, sorry. Oh, yes. Does Obi-Wan say your father and I fall in the Clone Wars, right?

Yeah, outright. He was the best pilot I'd ever seen. Right, which is true. We've seen this. He's very good at driving a car. And we were friends. That's his car. Father and son.

Yeah, I still buy that, though. That's still, that works for me. Well, yeah, Obi-Wan is lying out as ass the entire scene. Yeah, the whole time. Exactly. That's the thing. Anyway, the way that that ends up needing to become this one thing, instead of the other thing that someone else dropped up, I see your frustration. I see your frustration. In the moment, I was like, I think the one explanation was cooler than the other.

Yes. And I think now that I've seen the Clone Wars, a bit. I'm like, okay, no, this is good. This is good. There's good things happening here. But in this moment, I don't know, kind of, like, watching it in the theater before I fell asleep, I was like, do they just turn

all the Clone Wars into fucking Boba Fett fan service? Because I'm about to fall asleep. Yes, they did. Yeah, that was my take-so bad moment. Speaking of falling asleep. They're all fats? Yeah. Speaking of falling asleep,

Obi-Wan fights Jango Fet Django Fett Jango Fett It's like a fun fight There I don't know I don't have any notes on that fight I had one thing

Yeah Was Jango trying to save Obi-Wan Like not try to kill him He's got him dangling with that fucking cable And he looks like he's trying to haul him back up Now could be He just wanted to emiss the coup de grace Or to bring out

He's a bounty hunter Yeah He cuts the I thought No, no, no, no, he cuts it off. Yeah, there's this, like, moment where he's, like, struggling, but because it's, like, a two-handed action, he needs to bring his other hand to do it, which is why it seems like there's a hesitation, but it's just, like, the struggle. Yeah, he, like, he hits the release on it, essentially. So he thinks he's dropping him to his death, but again, this is attack of the clones, and Jedi can fall really far as long as they can do a cool grapple-hook attack, they can get away.

It ends up being the case that Obi-Wan tries to tail Django, then Django spins it around on him because he's a cooler ship. There's some cool space bombs that make dope sounds. Also, I want to go back that the Changeling Assassin's ship or car in Corrassant also made dope noises. Just good sound effects throughout the, you know, I don't know. Again, watch that documentary, because it's like a bunch of these things are biplanes. that they recorded. World War I Byplane bombers and shit.

That's nuts. The little like centipedes that are poisonous is like running fingernails along like a ribbed hose and then the squishy noises are just like massaging a grapefruit next to a foley mic.

And there's a really great shot of them doing sound effects for the makeout scene with Anakin and Padme where you have these two wonderful foley artists. sitting there in the sound booth, just kissing their hands and being like, was that too wet? These are people passionate, right? And, like, giving a different smooch to a different part of their hands.

And I was like, this is amazing. Well, and one of the things that they end up saying in that part of the dock is, like, you find things while doing sound work. You just go out there with a microphone and you just, you need to find interesting things. You don't always have the sound already. You're looking for a collection of interesting sounds. And it's fun to contrast that with the CG stuff. where Lucas is constantly talking about how you're freed from the quote-unquote constraints of physicality, and you could just do whatever you want.

You could have an idea and just make it happen on the screen. You don't need to make props anymore. You don't have to, and it's like, no, all the joy of this old shit was that you found stuff. You found an old camera thing and turned it into a lightsaber, you know, like, anyway. You know, nothing more freeing than just going to a random CG artist and being like, could you make a thing? and that person is not Ralph McQuarrie. And it's just fucking Jim. And Jim is like, uh, I'll do my best, I guess.

I'm thinking sleek, reflective, because it'll look cool because we just got that technology. That sleek reflective ship looks so bad in this fucking movie, by the way. The Obi-Wan fight scene happens. He chases Django Fet. Jango Fet slips, slips away, and then almost beats him in a starfighter duel. Obi-Wan releases some scrap metal to make it look like he blew up actually Again, total inversion of the empire

asteroid chase Again, like the inversions, the Lucases They rhyme. And then he managed to chase Fet to where the separatists have gathered on the planet of geonosis. Meanwhile,

the love affair of Padme and Anakin It's getting hot Well it's getting so hot in fact That they have to go to a different planet Because he has a dream about his mom Being in trouble

Goes to Tatooine He's been having dreams For weeks And this is the other thing Where they're like Anakin you just need to control yourself Your fucking feelings You're supposed to be a Jedi

And it's like no He hasn't been dreaming of his mom for 10 years But they've never dealt with They don't deal with this With other Padawans right Because they ensure Aren't they supposed to fucking be to see the shit? But they can't anymore. This is the thing.

But he can. But he can. Because he's the fucking chosen one. They think he's a dumb kid. They think he's the chosen one. That's why he let them in when he was nine. That's why they let him in. Also, more importantly, they don't care. Listen, kid, your mom is going to die one day. They don't give a fuck. He's a, he's a caprice son full of that force juice. And they're like, oh, we're getting so thirsty. We crack in that. kid we're going to see shapes and the future but to natalie's point like this can't be the first Jedi that they've interacted with that's gone through puberty and like there needs to be like a part of the Jedi training that can like allow for that and we don't see any of it it's just like

they have nothing for teens want to fuck they don't have anything in the book for that uh that that we show i think i think the Jedi fuck I think that they do it Clone War certainly would agree. Yes. Yes. Obi-Wan is flirty as shit in this show. I cannot wait to get to it. But I don't think they have anything on the books for how do we train a kid who misses his mom?

How do we make this kid not miss his mom? Because none of the kids remember their moms because they take them in their babies. The thing I find so infuriating about it, though, is they are in order that believe in the power of vision. Right. And when a kid starts randomly, a kid who, oh, he's dreaming about his mom. He's the best also. He's like 11. That makes total sense. Of course.

But out of the blue, he starts having recurring dreams that do not seem like dreams of his mom being in danger and like suffering. And their response is to be like, that ain't shit. He's like, control yourself. You should just control yourself. Be mindful. Your thoughts betray you. This is the one bit, this part of it where they don't, where they don't listen to him is the one part of this arc that does resonate, I think, because he's so clearly right about her being in danger. And we don't even really get them.

arguing for why he needs to let go of attachment or anything like that he instead they just get the like it's just bad dreams also all dreams come to an end i think is what obiwan says which is like yeah okay damn sure uh also funny thing the rap on star wars uh a new hope was always that like lucas is just ripping off the searchers uh john ford's classic western which i thought was always overstated because like i've seen both there's like a sequence where the two were reminiscent of each other, but I don't know, it never felt like it was all, it owed all that much. But apparently Lucas

was like, I could make it a more literal representation of the searchers, and he just does. Like, he, like, literally, like, the lighting, he's just like, I'm gonna, you know, the first act of the searchers, I'm just gonna do it. And so we, we finally,

now the prophecy is real. Now Star Wars truly is the searchers, and Anakin is John Wayne's Ethan, just a murder. just ball of rage and hate. He goes back to Tatouine. Padme is there along with him. They run into Wado, who seems down on his luck.

Yeah. He could really use Anakin's help. So there was, there is a video clip of, like, I took, because it's such a good piece of animation, where Annie is incognito when he shows up and just starts talking to, starts talking to Wado. And Wado has no idea who he is and he just volunteers like, hey, you know, let me, let me do that. Let me, you know, fix, fix this droid that we saw in the, in the first movie. And he starts implying that he starts revealing like who he really is. He's like, you know, they didn't remember me.

And Wado goes through this moment of slow-dawning recognition of Annie. And it is such a nuanced moment for this shitty little character. And it captures something, I think, kind of profound that the movie doesn't really do much with. But Wado, like a lot of people who are higher in society and have a lot of privilege and power and abuse it, has a very different impression. of his relationship with his slaves than he actually had like he like for a moment

this Wado is a man down on his luck like his best days are behind him literal flies around him yeah but for a moment there you do see like a genuine warmth and affection and joy that like here's Anakin

and I remember this kid I love this kid and it's like no he was your slave and you two aren't friends. Yeah. But like Wado's saying

there being like oh man Anakin, yeah I knew you were when you were a little kid and doesn't think yeah and Anakin was nice to you

because again you owned him and like had power over him but like I just love the little animation we get there of like Wado kind of pathetically

needy for some kind of connection and warmth to his past because now his life's shit and it never occurs to him

Like, oh, my, Annie and I are not friends. Anakin is not my family. Yeah. Yeah. So, he's like, hey, where's my mom? And Bob was like, oh, I sold her a while. Like, hey, listen, new guy, seems great. Feeds her.

Oh, yeah, he freed her. He freed her. And they got married. I need a side. I really just need to say it aside. Because there, you can't. This is like a, there's a three options. you could only pick two of human experience

because once you buy somebody and then you marry them, you can't say the thing that you did was free them. The steps can't go that way. You can, yeah, you could buy them and you can marry them. You could free them and they can marry them. Yeah, that would be really a romantic freedom. Or you could buy them and then free them.

Do that. That's great. But you can't, it's no. You don't find it. romantic. You don't think Lars is a mensch? No. Also, the fact that, like, the context for this is that Anakin's been having dreams

of his mom, like, screaming and crying. And Waddo's like, oh, yeah, she just got married. And my stomach just fully sank. I was like, oh, my, like, I truly thought that Anakin was going to walk into a very different situation than he walked into in the family. Like when Anakin like first, I was like ready for like, him to fucking square up. And then this fucking guy comes out and he's like, oh yeah. And, you know, the rest of his history.

I'm Owen Lars and this is my girlfriend, Baru. We live with my dad. Yeah. For people who are not seen a new hope, these are end up being Luke Skywalker's. foster parents Owen and Beru are Luke's foster parents

yeah yeah we'll get there one day years years I have lots I'd forgotten

that this was I forgot that Anakin knew who they were and so I'd forgotten that in fact they are in fact

related to Luke Anakin forgot a lot really That's his uncle Uh huh As a step uncle Yeah exactly

Yes Anakin kind of is like I have I could not imagine imagine where Obi-Wan and my strange family might have gotten to. So I will say Star Wars.com, just to go back to Lars, to Clegg Lars, according to the now deleted page on old Star Wars.com, way back machine thing, he fell in love with her during a trip to the spaceport and bought her freedom. To the spaceport. He was a farmer. He came into town, fell in love them.

with her, bought her freedom, and soon after, quote, made her his bride. Was she down? Please, never. I hate that phrase. That's not my quote. Not a good phrase. They seemed to, they seemed to, in, they're trying to say that it was fell in love, freed.

But it does also sound like he went there once saw her and was like, she's hot. Yeah. Yeah. To Rob's point, when you buy people, you sometimes don't. don't understand the power dynamics there and perhaps shouldn't marry them. Yeah. We also never get a chance to see Smee's perspective here

because by the time we get to her, she's on the left. You don't think she loved working a moisture farm on tattooing where you could just be abducted by Tuskins at random. Just you're out there tending your mushroom garden and checking on the moisturizer. and she wanted a miles away from any of her old friends

or companions from the city she lived in I okay I'm willing to believe that being out there was better than being owned by Wano but in the the two hours and 20 minutes that this movie had to spend I could have had two or three of them of seeing her like happy or like enjoying that

living her cottage core dream yeah she had it like this is the thing as long as Anakin was there, maybe this is what changed. They had a lot of privilege. Like, she had a nice pad. Like, yeah.

Like, that little apartment was cute. Like, efficiency. And we know that there were, like, we do know that there was, like, a little community of people who were also all slaves, like that. And that part, like, it sucks that they were all slaves. But I do think it's a lot to be like, all right, you're coming with me now to my moisture farm. It's bad.

Well, and also, like, I mean, again, like, throughout history, there's been, like, even within slave societies, there's classes of, there's classes of slaves. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, she was a fairly privileged urban slave who wasn't doing a ton of the, like, manual labor. We guess, we don't know that. We don't know that after Anakin leaves, right?

We don't know what that life was. That's the thing. Like, probably it was less good because Anakin's very clear that it is me being so good at fixing shit that allows us to live this way. Right. Um, we should keep moving because the thing that ends up happening is that Anakin finds out that she's been kidnapped, and then rushes to save her.

They say, we tried to save her, and we lost, what, 30 people is what Lars says? 40 people. 40 people, trying to get her back because the Tuscan Raiders are so much stronger and whatever. It's their planet, man.

It is their planet. And this stuff does fall completely into the kind of savage tropes of Wild West stories. The Tuskans, who previously were of course called the sand people have always been a gross racist stereotype um and well also the tuscans are you familiar with where the tuscan thing comes from i now i remember

that there is there is now a canon answer for it that is not actually less racist right if memory serves fort tuscan is one of the first settlements on tattooing and got obliterated by the natives and that's how they've got the name Tuskins because for Tuscan is where they had first contact and like slaughtered a bunch of the early colonists. So again, like just layers. Also real quick, as he's chasing them down, duel the fates begins to play again.

I just want to ask, we've all seen that quote to Dave Filoni talking about the meeting of dual of the fates. Philoni makes the argument the duel of the fates, which is the very operatic song that plays during the fight between Darth Mall and Quigon

He says it is called Duel of the Fates because this is actually where Anakin's fate hangs in the balance because Quigon gets it Quigon is a more paternal figure he's warmer

he understands that the Jedi Order is kind of in decline something you would not think from that movie but after watching Attack of the Clones Quigon is at least does understand some degree of that stuff

in contrast I'd say Quayon kind of sucked, but like, then you meet the rest of the Jedi, and you're like, my God, this man's a flaming liberal. But he dies and is entrusted to Obi-Wan, who doesn't really want him, and is much more of a toe-the-party line Jedi. You know, Obi-Wan, that movie says, I think we just picked up another pathetic creature, talking about a child. And so, again, like, Obi-Wan, not a great mentor. And so, Faloni's argument is that the fates there are, is Anakin going to be raised in, like, a loving, supportive environment with somebody who will give him what he needs as a child and, like, validate his feelings? Or is he going to be inducted into this order that's all about, like, suppressing your feelings and transcending them? And so that's what the fates are in that movie.

And this became a viral thing on Twitter. People were like, damn, like, Faloni really gets it. I had no idea that was in the prequels all that time. The text of the prequels. And I do remember, I think the best pushback I saw on this was from Cam Cunzelman, who was like, if the argument is that him being denied a traditional nuclear family is like what guaranteed tragedy here, then Star Wars is fucking lost. Like it is probably better that that not exist.

If that's its ultimate moral. Also, aren't all Jedi children? like all Jedi children are but they love it they're taken so young they don't need it's bad I don't I don't buy that Filoni stuff anyway

but here it's echoed Filoni baloney am I right boom we're about to watch his show but here it is echoed and I think it is I think it is right though because once again this is a hinge moment where like okay what's going to happen from Anakin for Anakin from here

if he finds his mom and gets her out of there and she's safe things probably go one way that ain't what we get right we don't get that instead he shows up finds her just in time for her to die in his arms uh she seems happy oh yeah well she's she's so happy to see him she's pleased to see him yeah and that he's become a Jedi and that he got the better life that she was never going to have and and i mean if i had to go back and make the if i had to go back and say here is the point in Filoni's favor or something.

Is it possible to imagine all of this happens the way it does, except that he's been raised by Quigon instead of being raised by Obi-Wan, gets here, gets here late because the Jedi still don't let him do it, but is a different person, you know, basks in her love, has this final, is pleased to be there with her, lifting this burden from her and her final moments, taking some relief in the fact that in these final moments she could see her son and, and, you know, die, joyful knowing that he was raised to be who he is. I think that that's an interesting alternate world in which he then does not fall into becoming what he is.

And instead, what we get is what actually happens. He was instead, you know, mentored by Obi-Wan Kenobi, who never lets him give in to any of this stuff. The Jedi Council is so afraid of what it means to have attachments that they make him stomp this down. And so now he becomes, in fact, so attached that the only recourse he can see in front of him is to slaughter an entire village of people who, you know, did not have, really had no threat on him at all because he is that much more powerful than them, kills all of them,

kills an entire group of people, and then goes back to Padmay to cry about it. Also, which is, hugs him. It's just unbelievable that he really goes home, like back to Padmay. and it's like I killed everyone I killed men women and children

I killed everyone around me and Padmae's like eat a tough dick yeah like basically yeah like what is it like anger is okay

or something like that she's like everyone gets angry sometimes or something yes she does say that she does Oh my god And that's like the quote from this movie Is the other thing

Is that like Padmei anger quote Is like To be angry is to be human Is what she says to him in this moment And that's like That's like the fucking bumper sticker Of this entire fucking movie Is to be angry

That's why I think we're on fucking Anakin That's why we're Anakin We're Darth Vader Also it's the most edible shit I'm dying, where she's like, she has those mom response where it's like, it's okay, sweetie. It's okay, sweetie, yeah. And it's like, I'm sorry, he didn't just come home crying because he like broke his toy in a fit of anger. Like, he just wiped out a community.

And there's a part of him that's willing to say I fucked up. And her responsibility in that moment is to be like, you did. We have to call the Jedi Council immediately. you this is over between us like you killed a bunch of people I'm glad you recognize that that is it's important that you recognize that you fucking killed people and that was bad and I'm glad you admitted to me we're going to get you to help you need and instead it's well this is going to be our secret now it's amazing because this really mirrors a similar scene in

I believe it's the last Twilight movie part two when Edward is talking to Bella about his past when he was a newborn vampire and he talks that he basically killed all these men

who were like going to harass all these women and possibly you know do worse and Bella is like well you really kind of saved lives by killing people because, you know, you were protecting those women. And I just thought

about that in this moment because I feel like from Padmay, she's kind of okaying the whole deal because they abducted his mom. And not even they, the village, but like whoever it, right, it's like, like whoever is the village did it. But I feel like because there's this like justification of pinning it back on the mom, we can still continue the love saga. Anyway, one day we should do a Twilight podcast, but that's another story. Well, hold on, though.

I think if, I think of Annikin wiped out a campful of pickup artists, I think we'd feel pretty different about this movie. If If Anken wiped out a canful of pickup artist, he wouldn't have come home because he would have had to wipe himself out to. Oh, God, that's true. Oh, Jesus Christ. Oh, no. There's one left.

force physical contact don't break eye contact make her respond to your moves yeah it's what he does anyway give her a creepy smile yeah and at that point we're wrapped back around they go to at that point

they go back to the ship R2 has this message they forward the message they rush off to genosis where Obi-Ban has already been captured and where they quickly

get captured after the worst sequence garbage just garbage really quick Rob how did you like seeing the battle tech drop ships just all over this planet. Okay, I loved it.

Okay, okay. I like the drop ships. The drop ships are great. Look, again, so, there's a lot of, there's some interesting ideas about Gianosis, and you're like, boy, this all seems kind of squandered. And Clone Wars, the cartoon, appears to agree,

because they basically reshoot the end of this movie and are like, boy, you know, remember how that movie fucking sucked and none of this made any sense? What if it, did. What if it were awesome military sci-fi and we're like saving Private Ryan

but Star Wars? And then it leads into one of the coolest Jedi subplots about trust and stuff that we've seen yet. It's so good. We'll get there. That's actually not that far away from us. No, we will yeah, okay. So bad sequence inside of the droid factory

C3PO's head gets swapped. Yeah. Oh, what do we forget? When Obi-1 was captured, quick conversation with Duku. With Duku. Where Duku is like, dude. Quigon would have fucking agreed with me and Obi-Wan's like

you don't know what you're talking about and Duku's like I knew these guys a lot longer than you did and I'm telling you like things are bad the Republic is broken and it's not getting better

but he's working for Palpatine it's true so that's what I that's was it like a reverse psychology moment where he was trying to be like

I know something that you don't know which is that you're all working for fucking a Sith Lord and He does tell him. Or, I, like, for a second, I was like, wait, is Count Duku good?

And, like, why is Obi-Wan not, like, is Count Duku even working for Palpatine, question mark? Like, is this, like, a whole... I've been wondering who knows, who knows that Sidious is Palpatine? I think, I have to assume mostly everybody, because Gunray has to, because otherwise, why would Gunray when Sidious is like, hey, do the siege of Naboo? don't worry about it. I'll make it legal. You wouldn't believe that from any rando, you'd have to know as Palpatine has this play. I was curious about that, too, in the first movie.

The thing that Duku says is hundreds of senators are actually loyal to a Sith Lord. And so maybe it's the case that Cidius has convinced these people, I have a bunch of senators in my pocket. I can make the Senate do what I want, which does seem to keep happening. And they haven't made the connection that Cidius, who looks just like Palpatine is actually just Palpatine. But he says the law. But he says it's being run. Like it is specifically being led by a Sith Lord. And he says, he says the, isn't it, doesn't he talk about the, the two dudes from the first movie?

And he's like, they tried to join up with him once before and he betrayed them. And like now, like people are wary, like some people are wary of him. But like, that whole conversation was just, I. could not tell where Duku was falling if he was just like the kind of thing where you give all the information and you're like, but I know he's not going to do anything with it. I know he's never going to believe me, but at least like my conscious is cleared. Or like maybe it's fun to play this game with this Jedi or whatever. I don't know.

The read that I have just from this stuff is that he leaves the Jedi Order over the same shit that Quigon doesn't like, the same shit that Cifodias doesn't like. These motherfuckers don't do shit. These guys don't want to take a chance. They're too passive. We have to, like, be more ready to fix this republic. Also, the republic is clearly corrupt and malfunctioning, and I'm not going to, like, be its martial anymore. And then at some point gets brought in by Sidious, right?

But. Corrupt the same way that everyone gets corrupted, which is, like, hey, we can fix things. Hey, you need power to make things better. But Dougu left 10 years ago. No, we have no idea when. Do we know that it was 10 years? It was longer, I think. Yeah, it could have been longer.

We have no idea when Duku left. Okay. Okay. We have no idea, right? I don't know. I don't know. I felt like Duku saw the writing on the wall of Palpatine. Like, in this conversation, what was being evoked to me was that Duku saw the writing on the wall of like Palpatine coming into power and being able to control the Senate.

And that's why he left. But then... No, it definitely predates that. It 100%. Because otherwise, we would... wouldn't have had... But he was the senator. No, but, no, I'm saying that Duku left before Palpatine was Hyde Chancellor, for sure. Right? Right.

Or even a position. But Palpatine already had fools in his pocket by then. Oh, because he is a Sith Lord, and that's, you always have fools in your pocket, right? But this is, this is the thing that bothers me is, and I'm hoping we understand someday. Me too. I don't know. The Trade Federation are talking to their magic, like their friend on the phone who is, hooded Darth Sidious. But Darth Sidious is their guy inside the Senate

and is like, hey, whatever you do, I will smooth it over with the Senate. My implication is they would not believe that unless they knew credibly that this was a powerful senator, which means they probably have to know as Palpatine. But then there's all this other evidence that, like, Duke's remotely on the level,

he's saying that we have to break off from the Republic because it's already infiltrate, trade and compromise the shit, and we need to get out from underhead. But is that just the way he's trying to seduce Obi-1? And the answer is probably, yes. This is the thing that we, this is the echo, if it rhymes, this is exactly what Vader does to Luke in the original trilogy, right? He says to Luke, listen, the emperor is no fucking good.

You and I can rule this galaxy ourselves, right? And this could very well be that moment here. Because like, the thing, the thing that is so, when the dark side has written well, the thing I love about it is that it rolls the carpet out for you and the to the degree that you never leave it that you never you always have the

it's part of my problem with Palpatine as a character by the way is that it's so good Sith bad right it's so easy to imagine what Duku was thinking in this moment is he sees Obi-Wan and he suddenly remembers his like core mission and he convinces himself

this is an opportunity if I can get Obi-Wan on my side Sidious doesn't even know that I got Obi-Wan at this point and then Obi-Wan and I can kill that motherfucker and set everything right and that's the sort of thing that Vader believes about Luke in Empire that's the sort of thing that we see a lot in in AU stuff or in legend stuff

in which some Darth Lord of the Sith realizes there's some way to or not often the Darth Lord it's always the second in command who is like I can overthrow my master and enact my vision for the galaxy if I bring this person from the outside in and up, right? That's Kylo and Ray, right? Sure, totally.

It's the red room conversation. It's exactly that. Yes. And they do it except that they don't follow through with it, right? That's part of why that scene rules so much is because that's the scene that, one, it's just very good action and very sexy. But then two, it's like if she takes his hand and says, yes, that's a new ground for Star Wars because it's the Jedi says yes.

I do want to help you recreate it. I don't know. I would have been sick as hell. Oh, well. And I think the other frustrating thing is, what I mean by that is, ultimately, what are the Sith? Star Wars, to this day, still seems to have a very shaky view

canonically. Like, what are the Sith all about? And the answer that Jay J.J.A.R.R. We got shaky here with Rise of Skywalker. Yeah. Yeah. Like, it's pure nihilism. It's like, hey, hey, I'm back, and I'm here to destroy the galaxy. I put dongs on all the Star Destroyers

and they shoot lasers now and my dong fleet there's a million of them and they can shoot all the planets all at once with their laser dongs and they're so powerful and unstoppable but oh no a bunch of armed freighters have shown up and with the power of friendship

they're going to destroy everything also I have no political agenda of viewpoint at all like why do I want power because power rules I love dark force power shit it's great. I'm happy to live in this fucking dank cave with these cultists, mostly in a tube. That rocks.

This to me is power. Yeah. Anyway, that conversation ends. We get terrible factory scene. Don't even want to talk about it. It's just, it's miserable. They get captured. We get that sequence where Padmei and, and Anakin.

Yeah, she's like, I've been dying every day. She's dying. You make me want to die. And then they get brought out to a big arena. George Lucas has just seen Gladiator. He just saw Gladiator. I was like, yeah, me too. What?

But my shit's going to have a stand forever. Cartoons in it. Where I'm going to make Natalie Portman fight a cartoon. Who will conveniently cut her top into a really sexy crop top. They've all been crop tops, though. They've all been crop tops. Yeah, her belly's been killed in the whole movie They just get more cropped

Yeah, it does get progressively more cropped She does like some sick shit in this fight Like she's the first one to escape from... Yeah, I like her whole action sequence It's good in this bit Yeah The monster sucks The fight is the end of the movie in a real way

The monster sucks, yeah And then this fight goes on for too long And just as it's about to end Because they've been They've been Oh, we should know Anakin gets his lightsaber destroyed in the factory sequence, which is, which is why he doesn't have a chance during any of

this. Oh, yeah. I guess Obi-Wan has his, and it doesn't really help all that much. Does he have? I guess he doesn't, by them. Why wouldn't they take it away? Maybe they did take it away. He has to kind of perch on that pillar.

If you had a light, no, no, no, they did take it away. They did. Because I remember when the new Jedi's come in, they're like, here, do you do. Here's your shit. Yeah, okay. And then each of them grab one. Well, new Jedi show up, and they're like, whoa, tables turn, and you get like 50 Jedi show up to fight all these battle droids that pour into the arena.

Mace Windu cuts off Django Fett's head. Okay. Pause. That was nuts. Yeah. Jacob Fett's bad at this. He was going to do for a little bit. Just like Boba.

Yeah, you're right. He does shoot like one Jedi at one point, right? Yeah, there's such a high Jedi body count in the scene that, like, doesn't make any sense. Like, they just keep showing up and then falling, and then the circle gets smaller, and it's, like, who are all of these people they weren't in the council and like they're just expendable and then there's like one really specific moment where there's like a Jedi who's like four feet away from Jago Fett and Jago Fett just like shoots him point like three times and he spins off of the thing he's like oh no I got shot like what you're a Jedi it's just force field that

shit yeah according to according to the the best numbers that we have this is the thing that's not clear from these movies. There are 10,000 Jedi at this. Yeah, this is the thing. In the universe. Yeah. I thought they said there was like 47. No. So the reason you know this is because we know that there's a certain percentage of Jedi who survived the next movie. It's very low. It's 1%, which is about 100. There's 10,000 Jedi? So there's 10,000 Jedi. There's a couple things that jump out of me here. One, this should have been way cooler than there is.

Like the whole surprise motherfucker, the Jedi are already here and all the lightsavers are igniting. And I'm like, this should be cool. And yet it is not. Part of this because it all looks like shit. Again, it's not well lit. It really looks terrible.

The lighting doesn't seem to match the live action versus the CG. The fight choreography is indifferent because it's very busy, but it's not impactful. it's kind of weightless. Ali, you know,

Jedi are just dropping like flies, but is not clear to me how or why, like how are these guys getting beaten? The one guy we see each shit, yeah, he just kind of gets shot. And like,

yeah, he was distracted. But also, this is it. This is like your fucking badass bounty hunter just fucking killsteels Jedi. Like,

that's how he rolls. But here's the thing that also bothers me. Okay. So, Duku seems genuinely, like, baffled. Oh, we haven't gotten there. Sorry. Does Django die here or after the clones show up?

The Jedi show up. He dies. And they get fucked up. They get fucked up. And they all plunge into the arena. And then they get surrounded by the droids. And they're slowly getting, like, surrounded in this tightening circle. By the way, my suspicion, my suspicion is we've met cool Jedi this far in the history of

Star Wars, like, Obi-Wan's a badass. Yeah. These are, like, secretarial Jedi who were at the temple. Like, 10,000 Jedi were spread all over the galaxy. Right. And they're like, shit, we need to scramble. This feels like...

Who's nearby? This feels like 47 of George Lucas's friends that he was like, you want to be a Jedi-Mash movie? God bless him, honestly. If I ever get to do this shit, y'all get to be Jedi. Absolutely. Okay. Hell of you.

Or something cool. This is the thing is like, you can't send in like the Jedi actuary or like the Jedi HR director into a combat situation like this, expect it to end well. Like they haven't done a lightsaber training in ages. They're like technically still licensed, but yeah.

Yeah, they eat a lot of shit. They don't have to do the practical part of the exam. They can just do the text exam. They can just answer the multiple choice questions. They start baking the tests or it's like just go down the range. I'm going to shoot three blasters at you center mass. Just deflect them. We'll call it done.

It's great. Don't worry. You're never going to meet a droidica, so you don't need to worry about it. The odds of fighting a droid, you know, since the trade federation thing, anything that has to be as well. Don't worry about it. So, but then, so the Jedi are totally fucked

and then they're like, aha, but you didn't know about our army. And Duku also didn't seem to know about the army, but what's weird here is that Django Fet would have. Django Fet knew about Gionosis,

and the droid army being built for the separatists and he went straight there from the place where he's been living with his kid which is where this mysterious army being built for the Jedi where it is in open conversation around that base that this is a Jedi clone army being prepared

and he's just like okay well I got found out time to bring about the end game and flies over to Geonosis and then he dies Mace Windu cuts his fucking head off but he knows it all yeah he knows all

why like what was the play and who called it and who knew why is duku why is duku surprised so maybe didn't know what jango who ordered

then who ordered fucking jango to make the drones to make the clones he was just hired by he was hired by the the we don't know we don't know yet maybe we'll find out in six years

he was but the original jet I don't understand was the not Count Duku that's like I would be 100% clear the original there's no way that the original Jedi had the fucking bags to buy like a billion people oh time out sorry well so this is the thing

that I know from reading the Wikipedia do you ever just tell you what the fucking Wikipedia says about this shit do you want me to I'm sorry every time you say Wikipedia I just die I just don't know some of it I don't know what of this will come up in clone war

I want to leave it. I want to leave it. I want to leave it. I'm having a lot of my case board, Austin. There is a huge answer for who gave him the bag, and it's wild. So hopefully we'll find out one day. And if we don't, in the meantime, I'm just going to keep stringing my red yarn over the, you know. Sypho Dias.

Okay. Question mark, question mark, question mark. Red yarn connecting to Django Fet. Django Fet, arcing out to everybody all over. He knows it all. And yet he gets killed. So, yeah, for me. In front of his son, which is in front of his son, which is fucked up.

It's fucked. But somebody hears a Patsy and somebody's not. Yeah. There was a good scene in one of the behind the scenes things where Sam Jackson is hanging out with, why have I blanked on, with Ahmed Best on the set. King. A pair of kings. And they're holding, I think that.

I think that Sam Jackson has the lightsaber hilt maybe by then. And they're just like clearly, they're like, they clearly have some sort of like game running. You know what I mean? They're kind of like they talked about something already. And Lucas comes through. And Lucas is like, oh, hey, how's I going, guys? And that was like a little too Minnesota because we just watched Fargo. Sam Jackson says, so who decides what color my lightsaber is going to be?

And George is like, well, you know, it's kind of decided the bad guys have red and the good guys have blue or green. And Sam Jackson kind of leans in and he goes, no one has a purple lightsaber. And like that's, he's like, oh, you know, we could see. You know, maybe. Maybe we can see what happens. And he gets a purple lightsaber and it's sick. He is a unique lightsaber at this point in time in the Star Wars official movie canon. obviously if you were playing

Dark Forces 2 like me you'd been had a purple lightsaber All the colors of the rainbow You want a gold one like X-Arcun? Let me tell you, you got it. So, yeah, he kills Django Fett. There's a third action sequence in a row with the clones.

We get General Yoda. This one, yeah, Allie, what are you going to say? This part of the movie really confused me Because it was like, the last time we saw Yoda, he was like, oh, yeah, those clones seem kind of weird. I'm going to go see what's going on with that. And then the next time we see him, he's immediately bought in and is like, I have a war to fight. Let me take these clones. These are my soldiers.

I have the receipt here. I took the tour. They see. It says I have the Jedi Council signature on it. That's me. I watched the tutorial. We own these. We own these people.

These are our people that we own. I'm good with that now, by the way. I know slavery is illegal in the Galactic Republic, but this isn't slavery. They love it. They were created to fight for me, so they might as well fight for me. Of their own free will, they're like, let's go fight this war. We actually skipped the big political moment in this movie already. We skipped the biggest plot moment in the movie.

Oh, where they get the declaration to actually create an army? Oh, because fucking Jar Jar Jar. Well, they vote the Chancellor. There's an incredible. scene. Yeah. Oh my God. I can't believe

we forgot about Darjar. Also, we skipped that Jimmy Smith's in this movie, by the way. The movie almost skips

that. The movie almost skips that. Yeah, I know. And in the first movie, there was a different Baylor Gana,

but he gets cut. It's one of the deleted scenes. It's not Jimmy Smith. So, um, Bailergana is important because he ends up

being Leah's adopted father long term. Um, so, uh, what is the, the setup is basically he, Palpatine being like,

oh, if only there was someone brave enough. Padme Leaving is like I hate this army bill We shouldn't pass an army bill Jarger, you're my proxy

I got to go hide from the assassins Don't do anything I wouldn't do And he was like Misa, a big feeling about The trust you show in Misa And she's like, shut the fuck up, Jarger I hate you And he was like Misa not offended

Because Misa not read tone Very well And she's like great Jarjar Good job Keep it up. And then she fucks off. And then later, everyone's like, damn, we just need this fucking army. Oh, no.

You know, we don't have the votes to do this. If only someone were brave. There was someone. Only someone were so willing to court controversy and yet be so brave as to propose creating an army of the republic. And Jar Jar Jar in full Muppet mode, just like gets the, big eyes where it's like... They literally say, if only Padmae were here.

Yes, Padmae, great lover of militarizing the Republic. Real hawk. Yeah. And so Jar Jar, yeah. She's a big fan of destroying communities, we know at this point. So, yeah, she doesn't have any problem with that. If she was around, she would have been like, yeah, might as well. Uh-huh.

Well, she just would have had to hear one time from the fucking chancellor. Like, if he would have just, if she was there, he just would have walked her and been like, I really think I should be, like, the president of the whole fucking universe and that we should get an army. She'd been like, okay, like. I see, I don't think she would have because she's starting to wise up. Like, like, Palpatine's power is, like, good with kids, good with gungians. And that's, like, that's it.

Like, where is Palpatine at his most persuasive? Is this person a teenager in front of him? I'm dying. I'm dying. It's like, what if Bozo the Clown were Hitler? Deeply angsty young boys. Yeah, uh-huh. So, the thing that we skipped over before was that Jar Jar Binks, the counselor from Nabu steps forward, the representative from Nabu, to say that we should make, we should give Senator or sorry, high chancellor Palpatine executive privileges because things are so bad right now.

We got to cut through all of the rhetoric. We got to cut through all the arguments. We need someone who can make decisions. And we all trust this guy because we voted for him. Let's give him the final saying all this shit. Now, we are one year after 9-11. Yeah, 100% right. This is 100% or there, right?

Yeah, 9-11 happens during the production of this movie. Yes. But as we know, this movie was not finished by the time shooting was done. Much of it came after. And again, more of this ends up being in Clone Wars and didn't revenge. the Sith and blah, blah, blah, blah. But, like, yes, this is, we need a president who can, who can take action and do whatever he wants in the name of our safety. Lucas, obviously not a fan of that. Like, again, we've been over this. Lucas has his serious issues,

but is a very particular, for a very particular age of progressive politics. And I think that this stuff does represent that. It's very skeptical of the idea of letting someone take executive orders to make huge swings in a democracy like the formation of an army, which is what Chancellor Palpatine does immediately upon getting this. Like, I will, you know, uh, what, he does that regretfully accept this or, or something like that? But he promises to do the Roman thing where it's like, I will give this power back. I'll give it back as soon as we don't need it anymore.

What army was he thinking he was going to get? Yeah, weird. It was a fucking secret Jedi army. Yeah. Well, no, he knew about it. We know that he knew about it at this point, right? How does he know about it? Where did the spaceships come from?

I don't know. They bought them, I think they said. Like, we bought the, or they built or bought, I think, the finest arms in the galaxy. Okay. That's what they needed the money for, but they just didn't have troops. Maybe. Like an appropriations bill got passed. but surprised, there's actually crews for all this.

The thing I believe in all of these prequels is that Cidius knows everything. Like, he's in on everything from the jump on everything. When would they have gotten the troops if fucking the assassinator didn't get caught and they found the little dongle, the little poison nid? So the Jedi, but this is why the Jedi... That's what led him to Canobi. I mean, I'd have to forget the name of the planet to play. You know you're in a terminal death spiral when you can only run from one disastrous expediency to the next, and that's where the Jedi are at.

The Jedi found out about this army, and they're like, this seems sketch. And then they find out, oh, shit, separatists are raising a droid army on Geonosis, and a bunch of our Jedi are there, and we need to respond right now. And the Jedi just grab the army. Firm to my understanding, and at least this is what's heading into the Clone Wars cartoon, is that. that what is necessary to bring Palpatine's vision to fruition is an unwinnable war that will just consume the galaxy, which is why he needs a droid army on one side and a clone army on the other, they can fight forever.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, and this is also, this is why at the end of this movie, Duku does say to Sidious, the war started, this is a win for us, right? That is what he wanted. So anyway, God, Where even are we? We're almost there.

Jedi apocalypse now. Yoda's killed war. They love being generals. They're happy about it because now they have a social role again. Because now that they're, even though their weakness of the force has limited their power, the fact that they have become de facto generals. Oh, that's an interesting interpretation.

Oh, that's my rate 100%. That's why they lean into it so quickly. It's like, oh, shit. Oh, we're all criminals now. We're all, right, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. These are ours. Yeah, I mean, we are now the next thing we watch is going to have stuff where people

say General Kenobi in it, right? Like, they, this is, they become the commissioned officer. They're like, they're like, they're like, and not quite brass, but. No, they end up being the brass. They are the brass of this army, right? The impression I get, like, the reason that, like, basically all of them get their regiment. Like, they really task forces.

Like, they're not staff officers. But they make, but they make, they make, uh, large scale, strategic decisions about where armies go. I think it's a lot, I think it ends up being a lot of Jedi, making those decisions, right? We'll find out. We'll see a lot of Jedi engaged in street fighting in the Clone Wars. I mean, that's also true.

Yeah, yeah. But my point is, in this moment, we get them leaning into this role because it's suddenly they can reassert why they are so important and they're good at it, you know? Right, because they commissioned them from the first place. Yeah. That's also an interesting read to me because the final line that Yoda has where he's like, the Clone Wars have started was really fresh. for me because it was like he was so willing and ready to attach a name to this thing

that started he found out about 48 hours ago and just started using and he's already like yep we got it and like the you know the the wars are here great and like you know especially looking back on what we've spoken about now where like he he's saying that like it's a prophecy and like oh I definitely knew these clone words were starting I had this vision of this war Yep, here it is. And instead, he's like, ah, it started. I knew this the whole time. He's, once again, lapsing into the performance of Jedi omniscience, where it's like, ah, at last.

But isn't it like, isn't Yoda supposed to be playing the long game all the time? Like, isn't he that kind of character that withholds information? This is what I find so fascinating about this. So all our vision of these guys in the original trilogy is, through the lens of yet another young kid. Like, Luke meets Ben and believes everything Ben tells him about his father

and the past and all of that. And Obi-1 tells him as like your dad was so good and we were such good friends and he was betrayed by my student Darth Vader and nobody could have foreseen that. But you, Luke, you're amazing. You also have the force. You should

develop that skill and become a Jedi and basically bring them back and like kind of get vengeance for what happened to the Jedi. Like, that's kind of the, like, proto. The first thing Luke does with the force is kill in a military installation with like a million people on it, which is kind of awesome. Jesus Christ. I mean, they were mostly...

Which we see in this movie, by the way. The deunosons are the ones who develop the Death Star. I don't love it. But then Yoda... Wait. Uh-huh. Yeah. It's in the background.

Somebody who's like, I am going to basically cultivate this kid. and also doesn't want to train him because at this point he's a little gun-shy but like again like all these characters are glimpsed through Luke who just found out up with the Jedi just found out that he is also a chosen one and is very uncritical about all of this

until the third movie when he starts to realize like wait there have been a lot of things held back from me that were critical information and the answer and Yoda dies before he has to face that where like Yoda's like oh I'm old goodbye

pieces out, never at the conversation. And then Luke talks to Obi-Wan, and Obi-Wan's like, did I really lie? Or did I tell you the truth from a certain point of view? And it's like, no, you lied. Like, this isn't, this wasn't, like,

you're, this wasn't metaphor. You son of a bitch. It's a fake lie. But, anyway, Star Wars tradition, lies you tell teenagers, it's, you know, it's fine if it's for a good cause, bad if it's not. but so I think what's interesting about this trilogy is like Luke we all think these are like the legends of this previous era and we see them now in their moment in their context and they're all disappointing they're all they're all fronting like they didn't it turns out that air of omniscience that they sort of played with Luke it was a lie just as they're lying now and I think now we can see it

I think it's why Lucas is an app director, but this is such a meet your heroes type trilogy in some ways that I'm like, there's something here. This is also why Last Jedi rules is because we get those moments between Luke and Yoda and the old books and all that stuff, which all just really resounds much better as a sense of conclusion to this arc of Jedi history

when you accept that they were always, to some degree performing at being Jedi and that that performance maybe was useful at certain points but that it shouldn't be held up as being holy or perfect or necessary for justice which is what Luke in his worst moments when he's trying to defend those books falls into and then gets broken from anyway I just maintain that that this is this is the jokerification It all supports my theory This is the original Jokation actually

Yeah, this is the original Joker Well We get a cool helicopter Gunship Chase As they try to run down Duku Padme falls on I can't remember exactly Padma's in the helicopter

Just falls the fuck out Yeah She just fucking eats herself Because she fucking wants to die Being around fucking Anakin She's like I cannot believe This guy is what

does it for me. Time to die. And Anakin flips his shit and is like, we have to put the helicopter down. And Obi-Wan's like, shut the fuck up. Jesus Christ. Please, for once. And they get into it and he's like, what

would Padme do? And the answer is she would stay on, she would, like, she would chase this mission down, she would see it through. So then they go, and they corner Duku, and it's like, all right, Anakin's committed to the mission and they face Duku. And, and And Obi-Wan's like, all right, now, Anakin, let's team up.

And Anakin's like, Yolo! And he's gone. Immediately eat shit. Like, he is, he calmed down just long enough to be like, ah! And charges right in. The next thing we see is forced lightning. That's new to us. And second, his fucking arm just goes flying because dude who just, like, slashes him in half.

No, that doesn't happen yet. His arm gets cut off in the second when he faces him. It's the two sabers for a bit. He gets the two sabers because Obi-Wan gets fucked up by Duku. Because he's fighting alone, to be fair. He's fighting a great swordsman alone. Alone.

I love the way Duku fights. I love his cool curved saber. I think his style is impeccable. Does he have a curved saber? The saber itself isn't curved, but the handle is. So if you look up Duku's lightsaber, have you not seen this? Really? I did not notice that.

I guess I'm the only Duku's super fan. Yeah, that shit. That's tight. Do you see it? Yeah, I'm looking at it. He holds it like that because he wants to, it's almost more like he's fencing. It's, you know, it is a weapon from a more civilized age. He is supposed to represent that more civilized age.

Also, Christopher Lee rules, he doesn't do, again, in the behind the scenes featureettes, it reveals that though he has been in a lot of film sword fights, because that's like, this was his bread and butter. He was this sort of, like, a kind of, what's the word I even want to go for to describe those films, Rob? Because it's not B-movie, really. It's like... He was a genre horror actor in a lot of ways, but also he's just a creature of British film and stage of that generation, which meant you did a lot of stage combat, live, and for film. And the other thing was he was probably very good at it because he was also a commando.

Right. I forgot about this part of his life. Yeah, no, like, this is famously, Peter Jackson tells the story somewhere on the commentaries for Lord of the Rings, where he's trying to talk about, like, for a sequence where they sneak up and stab a guy. And he's like, and when you stab him, he'll be like, ah, and start gurgling and shit. And Christopher Lee is just like, that's not what happens. They just kind of sigh and sag and are gone.

And everyone realizes, like, that's right. He did command omissions during World War II for the precursor to the SAS, I think. We're like deep behind enemy lines that I think records are still sealed. But the implication is Christopher Lee like slit Nazi throats around Europe. Christopher Lee is proto-James Bond. The quote is, I was attached to the SAS from time to time, but we were forbidden, former, present, or future to discuss any specific operations. Let's just say I was in special forces and leave it at that.

People can read into that what they like. Oh, yeah. He fucked some people out. It's a lot. Holy shit. Anyway, now he gets to be a dark Jedi. And the choreography here is good. You know, shout out to stabbing Nazis.

in your 20s, being a Dark Jedi in your 70s. Also, I'll just say this about Christopher Lee. I think one of the things that a lot of the actors are struggling with in this. And I suspect this is one reason why British actors have so wildly overtaken American actors in terms of, like,

roles across Hollywood, is that I think a lot of the American tradition of acting was informed by, like, Brando and such, and a bit more of a inhabiting a scene and, like, believing is real and making it real in some ways

and I think if you come up in more of a stagey tradition that a lot of British acting schools focus on you're probably better prepared for this kind of work where you have to make things real

with your performance because in the moment like the set isn't real like it's not convincing you just have to sell it and the other thing is Christopher Lee did a lot of shitty movies that the likes of Natalie Portman

never had to Ewan McGregor never had to Christopher Lee did and Christopher Lee's one of those guys who's like there may be a shitty rubber monster there but I will make that I will make that monster real

via my performance and I think everyone else on this movie is struggling mightily with the fact that none of this is real and Lee just kind of accepts it and adapts to it we have to wrap this up so that fight happened

Uh, Obi-Wan gets overwhelmed. Anakin gets back into it, grabbing Obi-Wan's saber. There's a cool, like, double-handed sequence for a little while. And then, you know, he still gets beat here by, by Christopher Lee, because Christopher Lee is a mastery of the force in a way that even Anakin doesn't. Sorry, not Christopher Lee, Count Duku. Christopher Lee stabs him the way he stabbed those Nazis, uh, cutting off his hand. And then...

Can I just say... Yeah. The moment he cuts off Anakin's arm is so anti-climactic. I was so shook by it. It's just like, it happens in a second. I love that, actually. He's like, it's not a thing. It's nothing to him.

It's nuts. I love that Anakin appears to be asleep by the time hits the floor. He just goes, cratering. It just cauterizes it immediately. Yeah, totally. Light sabers. light sabers hide how little they are kind of like the Jedi order you're a trained swordsman you're a master of the blade

of the lightsaber and you find yourself next in a smash brothers fight you know that is what happens next like he moves up on this team Jedi approaches yeah Yoda shows up yep and you ever seen air dashing

Duku hasn't I It's bad Yoda's eye frames It's so bad It's so bad And in puppets to pixels They're like

We gotta be careful Because if we don't do this right It's got to look goofy And they say that like eight times And they don't do it right They don't do it right But I don't know what right is I think things begin to go wrong

With I remember When we came out of the theater As I sort of tried to gather my thoughts one of my friends said at the time, he was like, Yoda doesn't do pissing contests. And I believe that is true, but that is how this fight opens. It's like, they start squaring off and are like, let's see who knows more about throwing shit around with the force.

And they throw a bunch of shit around. And then it's like, well, what if I threw a big pillar? And Yoda's like, I'll move that big pillar. It's like, what about lightning? And Yoda's like, I'll eat that lightning and redirect it. But I feel like the pissing contract. would be if Yoda was also

creating the rule is that light side jeddyes can't do that shit they can't they can only redirect yeah they can't do force lightning because it's evil thank you allie all that hurts people

I guess it's direct action and they're not about that yeah like people get pushing they get healing and they get to be a little bit faster sometimes they can jump high They have a speed boost What else can they do?

I think there's a handful of other Light Jedi Power There's like some Social stuff Yeah yeah yeah Like mind control shit Mind trick Jedi mind trick stuff Yeah yeah

Stealth They can become like What about force choking? Evil dark Only evil people do that Only evil people can force choke But they could if they wanted to No

You have to be a little bit evil They don't know how That makes you a little bit evil If you're doing that, you are now slipping to the dark side. Yeah. All right. So the Jedi don't fuck. It's like a video game with a morality score.

And the more people that you choke, the more Sith you recover. Yeah. And it just keeps... What if you're just grabbing someone, but you grab them by the neck and ragdoll them a little bit? Say you're a little baby. And you woke up from a nap and you're in a prison chip. And you got a couple of stories. Stormtroopers, and it's not like you want to choke them, but you kind of want to smack them around.

These are the stakes. I feel like maybe if I were a baby Jedi, I would have to be real careful about how I use my force. I don't know. Right. Anyway, they do a hop-around battle fight. It's bad. So it is a pissing contest. It's a real pissing contest.

They fight to a standstill basically until then Duku says, I don't need to beat you. just need to put someone in threat that you care about, whatever, and drops a pillar on Obi-Wan and Anakin, they would have been fine. They got back-to-tanks and all sorts of medical shit. They could have dipped them in, healed them right up. Just mopping up the two Jedi, just like shoving the pieces into the bat tank.

They got robot arms and shit. I feel like one of them would have woken up and just, damn. Yeah. Like, you know. Spiders sense, boom. And then, yeah, you know. Exactly. The difficult thing about this for me is, like, I, you know,

thinking of Yoda's arc throughout all of the Star Wars movies and like what people want out of Yoda, who wanted to see Yoda kick ass? Like, they have a lot of, they have a lot of parts in that, um, uh, Puppets to Pixels thing where like, uh, Lucas keeps giving feedback to the animators for Yoda. And it's like, he's too sprightly here. When they did the puppets, they specifically made him, like, you know, look tired after walking for a long time. And you should invoke some of that here. But then it's also like, oh, well, then he, in the other movies, he was like 80.

And now he's not like, he looks more like 40. So it's okay that he's a little bit more sprightly. But, like, I just, that's not what we needed Yoda for. Like, Yoda's, he just was a know of bunch of shit. There's a perverse. side of me that is like yeah fuck him up yo like just do it

just do it just fuck him up I was like let's go he's doing it I just love a ball of green and just starts like windmilling flip around and just go up and down it just was I was I was cheering for him but I knew that

it was like absolutely bullshit that that was happening it was like a sick little thing for me could they conceptively conceptually have nailed it yes I just don't think this is that. Mace Window is right there. And that's who...

And remember, they'd already sold that character because all this shit was marketed. So I remember, I remember being excited to see what Captain Panaka was going to do in the first movie

because I was like, Captain Panaka is a fucking badass. He's a Naboo guard. And like, he shoots a window... No, sorry. No, Padmey shoots the window lock. Padma, yeah. And he just follows her in.

He does have that... He does like, like, punished Venom Panaca in this movie. because he's got the fucking Metal Gear eye on. Also, the thing we know about Mace Windu, that he's a master of Form 7, aka Juio, aka Vapad,

the most aggressive lightsaber style. This is how he can beat Django Fet so easily. Allie knows what the fuck it is. I see that grid. You know about the lightsaber styles. You know I'm sitting in. And the thing is, it does pull a little bit on the dark side. That's always made it a little bit like, ooh, okay.

And what I mean by that is sexy. It makes it, it's the sexiest lightsaber style, and that's just all there is to it. Only real bad boys. You know how to do form seven. He's mode seven, whatever. They leave. We cut to, I guess, Duke who talks to Cidius, right? Is that true?

Am I making that up? No, he does. And is like, don't worry about it. No, he's like, they have an army. Oh, right. But we got a war. And Cidius is like, it's all good. Oh, yeah.

Jill. It's all right. And then like, and then Obi-Wan's like, we won until Yoda, and Yoda's like, we have not won. We have not. The Clone War has begun. And then the Imperial March hits, and that bit still slaps because here it is. The Empire is here. It's just not called the Empire yet. And the ships, you realize like, oh, shit, the big ships kind of look like Imperial Star Destroyers. And the Stormtroopers look like stormtroopers. Or sorry, the clones look like stormtroopers.

and pans out and... And then they gave Annegan a deeply fucked up and creepy prosthetic. Fuck, I forgot that he gets married again. I left it off the end again. He gets married. He gets married. They're getting...

They're back at Lake Cuomo. And he is stroking her arm. God, every time he touches her, it's just nasty. It's so gross. But do you remember how Luke just got a fucking hand prosthetic? And it was like, you know, fine. It was like 40 years later. The aesthetics are whatever.

Yeah. But they do basically give him a skeleton arm that is now out there. It has some jewels on it, though. It's kind of cool. It is bright gold. I mean, if you're going to get a new hand, like, why would you get a flesh hand when you could be like, oh, it could look sick? Yeah, and you're controlling it with the force anyway.

It's a little tacky. Well, Anakin's a very tacky person. Yeah. That's true. Annegan has no taste. He's 19 in this movie. That's actually the most in-character thing for him, being a 19-year-old, just be like, yeah, let me get the Gucci hand on this.

Let me get that. Oh, it doesn't come in Rosegold? Ah, son of a bitch. This movie came out in 2002. It should have a ringtone. Like, it should, you know? Callback tone. Yeah, it gets them a callback.

But I think it's, I think it's a bit of a, it's a bit of a weird note because they're really, they're really heightening the, like, remember, Obi-Wan later says, you're more machine than man, which is like, Darth, which is gross. And it's gross. Like, the Star Wars has always had a bad relationship with, uh, disability and the ways in which prosthetics are stand-ins for the lack of humanization, which we've been talking about a lot this week because of cyberpunk releasing. Speaking of over-ambitious stories that struggle with issues of race, gender, and disability, before we go, I feel like we're at the end of this thing now. Yeah. Is that it? Do we have any other thoughts? They got married.

They got married. He did get married. I'm really fucked up over that. They didn't even go like, we should have. They didn't get engaged. They didn't get secret engaged. They got secret married. read.

I was watching this movie with a friend of mine, and in the moment where she confesses her love to him and is like, I might as well say this to you because I'm about to die, the mistake of that relationship is that they were survived. They could have died there together. It would have been beautiful, and they could have been in love. And like, I guess if you tell someone you love them in your dying moment, you can't be like, let's think about this but you could be like oh well I'm a senator and like you know maybe we should just wait a little bit Tuesday like you don't have to be like you don't have to be like let's get married

you can be like well here's my schedule I said some shit in the heat of the moment I'm not going to die you could fuck you don't have to get married you could date like if he was like let's date on the low let's go to the movie sometimes he did say that But I'm saying at this point He's an all or nothing He's an all or nothing kind of guy You just know that the conversation You know behind the scenes is like

Well but I've loved you for 10 years And I just lost my arm And you were gonna marry me when we were dying What if I die We should get married And she was like I'll have to kill another village I have to kill another village

If I don't get married to you Oh shit He's gonna fuck up Gangan City if I do not Jar Jar's head That'd be very funny But Padma you're the adult in this relationship Like I'm sorry but you literally are

You literally are the adult of this relationship In your mid-20s marrying a teenager Sorry, that's literally true It's a lot of experience That like in context For instance When you've lived 27, 28 years versus like 18.

That is a meaningful amount of time. Like, yeah, 10 years. I think she's 24, right? She's 24, 24 and 19, which is like... Wait, what? She's 24. So in the first movie, they're only five years apart? Correct.

Yeah, but still, he's nine. That's because they cast a child and they cast Natalie Portman. I don't seem right. They cast a five-year-old. I know. Yeah, it is. I know. And I, like...

That is the... He was nine and she was 14. 10 years later, he's nine. he's 19, she's 24 I've lived from 17 to 24 and I went through the experience of being 17 and be like I know everything and then being 19 and being like

what the fuck going from 19 to 20 and be like at 19 I knew nothing and then just doing that for two years Padmey don't fucking marry him and we know that Matt we know that Padmay's dated somebody else before at least

because she tells him of his own oh my God We didn't even talk about him how awful he was in that moment. He asked her. He asks her, all right, so like, who was your first kiss? This is post their first kiss and her being like, no, for real, we cannot date. Yeah, this is them in the meadows. Right? Like, this is right around the fascism conversation.

This is the lead in to him being like, well, I couldn't be a politician because I'm a fascist. And she's like, teased me. She's like, don't tease me so. But yeah, he asks her, like, oh, have you ever kissed someone before? Like, other than me? And she's like, actually, yeah, like, at summer camp, like, I fully... At politician camp. At politician camp where all the fucking nerds went.

Even though I've already been queen for, like, 10 years, I'm going to. Yeah, I might have been. been queen at the time debatable so um yeah there was this like cute sexy other 14 year old or whatever he was an artist and was and then he's like stop talking about him and i was just like you ass it's like it's so it's so toxic it's actually like why include that why I was your first, right? I was your first. It's that whole thing.

It's like, oh, so you, oh, so you. Oh, so you're a slut. Is that it? You are a fucking. Like, this is it totally the vibe this fucking kid is up. It's like, what's your body count? What's your body count? You don't need to know mine, but what's yours?

What's yours? And she's like one. And he's like, okay, so you a ho. And I was just like, dude, it's just unbelievable. Also, I'm just imagining this relationship. found it on nothing. Nothing. Just like...

How many times? Hey, uh... They met for like literally four days. Man, remember that time that we were in that droid factory and, um, it was really intense. Boy, that was, that was magical, huh? Yeah, it was. Man, remember when, um, you came to tattooing and, uh, you met my mom? She died, of course, later.

I killed a bunch of sand people because of... But, uh, remember when we met? Oh, it was great. That was great. Hey girl, it was really sexy when we were about to die And then half of your shirt went away That's the other time that I knew that I loved you And not the time that I first met you

And thought of you every day for 10 years I met you for a week And then thought of you for every single day For 10 years while you were busy running a country And I don't know why you didn't think of me For 10 years And I just don't see Why we shouldn't be married now

So what I will say, that's exciting to me. It's not exciting to me, because this episode isn't good. I don't like the episode I'm about to talk about. But I think in the first season of this show, we get to meet a different one of Padme's exes. Love that. Get ready. Get ready for that. I think the episode's okay.

Because I think it brings out some of what we're talking about. It does. Like, oh, this guy's not okay with that. Yes. But yeah, no, like these kids, these kids, these. kids need Netflix, too. That's the other thing, is, like, just need to glue that relationship together with, like, okay, you know what, like, what's a really long-running, like, what can they really get into? Like, what's, is friends on the hall in that? Like, they should just, they

need to, like, uh, 10, 11 season long run. They really need to. Well, well, dinner's ready. Time to, you want to watch, uh, you know, want to watch, uh, it's like your gym and I'm Pam. It's, it's just like us. Obi-Wan is such a Dwight. He's such a Dwight. Oh, my God. So they're married. That's all we know.

That's all we know. That's the end. They're married. There's nothing left. Which is, which is the most ominous thing is like this disaster of a relationship is now official, but it's secret. And it's going to go. real well from here um how is the who is the guy officiating how is he down with this also r2d

there and cp3o what is his name c3 p o c3 p o 3 p o if if my ex president if my ex elected queen was like hey i'm marrying this jedi hero i'd probably be like that seems legit i don't know i don't know what I didn't just see this movie everyone knows the Jedi aren't allowed to get married oh there's a lot of people who don't know much about the Jedi that's been established we were like so what's up with the Jedi so maybe this dude's like that seems fine but I feel like that's kind of one of the things that would be like you know what they say about Jedi can't get married right they're they little freaks oh my God But I don't know, like, I feel like that would get around, that, like, they can't get married.

Yeah, well, apparently it was, it was officiated by, quote, a holy man. That's all we know. It's just, well, time to get ready for my life day ceremonies. Goodbye. My work here is done. You kids take care of each other. Begun this marriage has. Oh my god

I also don't know how a CP3 is gonna not You keep saying it CP3O It's so funny to me I don't know how C3 It is so late Isn't going to spill the beans on this Uh huh? Well he talks a lot

In a rose covered arbor overlooking the sparkling lake Anakin and Padmay stand before a Naboo holy man 3BO and R2 stand by watching As the Holy Man blesses the happy couple and amid falling rose petals Anakin and Pad may kiss dissolve to exterior galaxy space

end credits over stars the end there we go that's that's it space so joints aren't people no but is the implication

here that like they're the witnesses they don't have these laws sure they're just there because they're their They have the laws. They have Jiz. They have these laws.

I think the nature of Jizz is that it's kind of a free form, kind of bopping art form. And so I think where there's Jiz, there is no law. Yeah. There's just the beat. There should. There has to be a lot of break a law. There has to be a lot of break. You've got to have rules to break them.

Sound like a sick. Can you believe Figured Don played their reception? also what's their game plan here is like okay we're married when are we getting you got to keep getting a sign to be my bodyguard indefinitely oh no I got can you believe someone left a note with a knife through it on my door again I need I need 24 7 around the clock protection from Anakin I will say this does end up being one of the interesting things about Clone Wars as a show is how do they how do their paths cross when can they steal moments of affection with each other just does this is this is a focal point so yeah and I don't pretend that they had a good start I don't want to spoil things too far ahead but when we get to revenge of the Sith we immediately find out that they did not have a plan and this is a bad idea because because because because Because we'll find out.

I'm glad to hear that. I'm so excited to be more Jedi soon. Is that where things begin? Is that where the rubber meets the road? No, you'll see. We'll see when we get that. All right. I can't wait to find out what happens in this movie.

Like, I know that, like, again. You know the big stuff. I know the memes. And we're not watching that. That's it. Just a reminder to people listening. Next time we are watching the Clone Wars. No, we're living the prequel trilogy behind.

Yeah. We are now going to turn into our main topic. which is the Clone Wars. I've never seen them. They're not what you would expect. It's not what I expected when I was a kid. And I thought, here come the Clone Wars. And I was like, oh, it's fought by the clones?

I was very upset. I told you about that. But anyway, we're going to leave, we're going to leave that off for a little while. I think, I'm not sure what all this is being recorded, but I think we're going to be getting into the Clone Wars at the start of the new year. I believe that's true.

Or maybe, I don't know what our release schedule looks like at this point because we're recording us in advance. You can already date that I, we're recording us on the 9th. And so I believe, I believe it will definitely be in the new year. I just don't know when in the new year, the first episode, the third episode will come out rather. But we got to watch that Clone Wars moving. Correct. Oh, fuck. Are we doing that first?

Yeah. Yeah. That's how it starts. Oh, okay. That's how it starts. Okay, so that's where we're watching next. Yes, correct. And that's only an hour and 39 minutes.

Love that. So that podcast should just be like three hours flat, is my view. You know what? This was always going to happen. We would do one. This is a very dense movie and it's a very bad movie. And it was so much fun to talk about. But we're going to be kicking off the Clone War soon.

Until then, please rate and review us on the podcast platform of your choice. You can find me on Twitter at Rob Zakene. Allie, where can can people find you? You can find me over at alley underscore west. on Twitter.com, sorry. You can also listen to me in Austin on another podcast we have called Friends at the Table. Austin is frozen. I was like, wow, just giving me nothing.

Just like completely flat, like uncommunicative reaction. Austin says goodbye because connection finally died. Natalie, where can people find you? You can find me at Natalie Watson. On Twitter. We hope you'll join us all again for the Clone Wars. But until then, may the Force stay far away from you. That is my feeling.

I don't want nothing to do with that shit. Force could be with me a little less. Mamas don't let your... Bees grow up to be Jedi. He used to grow up to be Jedi? Oh, my God. I don't know. We're going to be able to be.

I'm going to be able to be. We're going to be. I don't know. We're going to be. We're gonna be. Woe-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-a-k