A More Civilized Age: A Star Wars Podcast - 03: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008)

Episode Date: January 13, 2021

"You'll have to do better than that, my darling." - Obi-Wan Kenobi Finally, we have arrived to the Clone Wars. At least, sort of. Today, we tackle 2008's The Clone Wars, a prelude meant to introduce the audience to the then-upcoming TV series. Join us as we meet overeager Padawan Ahsoka Tano, ambitious Sith apprentice Asajj Ventress, and a pair of Hutts who've left us with... mixed feelings.  Next Time: Episodes 1-4 of The Clone Wars. Show Notes Star Wars The Clone Wars: Producer Catherine Winder Interview Clone Wars proved a galactic task for production team Early designs that would lead to Ventress 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)

Let us return once more to a more civilized age, a Clone Wars podcast. I'm Rob Zakni, joined by Ali Akampura, Austin Walker, and Natalie Watson. Begun the Clone Wars have, and we're diving right in. into the action with 2008's The Clone Wars movie, which picks up shortly after the end of Attack of the Clones and years before the final fall of the Jedi Order in Revenge of the Sith. To set the stage a little bit, this is a movie that functions as a theatrical pilot for the TV series, though a lot of film critics reviewed it at the time felt it was a little bit more like a commercial than anything else. And I think that's maybe where Star Wars just

kind of was in 2008. The prequel trilogy had left the universe feeling creatively kind of exhausted. And as Natalie pointed out a couple weeks ago, huge portions of that film felt more like marketing for tie-ins than vital storytelling. So I think I'd have to concede that if I did not know there was a great TV show coming after this, I'd sympathize with a lot of those measured or critical reviews of Clone Wars that came up back in 2008. But I am curious, and I'll throw out to y'all now.

What did y'all make of this movie? I feel like the past couple episodes I've continuously said, I wish there was a movie before this. And I feel like I've been finally given that, and I regret asking for it. Because, I mean, I don't know if I regret asking for it, but I just feel like this is

like this I got what I asked for in the most literal sense this is the like pre this is setting the stage for whatever is next to come and it is really just that it is a lot of setting the stage

a lot of introductions in a way and I just like miss the levity I can't believe I'm saying this but I miss attack of the clones. I miss the drama. I missed the, like, the weight that had. And I just didn't feel it in this movie.

There was, when I was watching this movie, when we got to the revelation of what the stakes were, I was like, excuse me, this movie is about what? Our heroes are saving who for what? What's going on here? And that was a little point of frustration for me. And yeah, I don't know. I appreciated it because it's fun to look at.

I think the art direction is really nice. The like hand-painted planets and these like really like sharp looking but like cohesive like people and ship designs and everything is really interesting. But beyond that, I don't have a lot of. I don't have a lot of compliments this fair. So I think barring Rob really surprising us with positivity on this movie, I may be the highest on this, but that might just be a matter of expectations. You know, I know that what's to come in Clone Wars, and the Clone Wars has stuff that I really like in it.

But I've also seen more Clone Wars than, I think, Allie or Natalie. I haven't seen a single episode. Right. So I know that there's a lot of kind of crud, especially early on, which is to say mostly it's a kid's show it's a show for 12 year olds that eventually earns an older audience and also starts to do the thing that great children shows do

which is treat the children with respect and understand that they can tell stories a little bit more advanced on what they start off for and so given that things like what the main like MacGuffin is of this movie didn't bother me so much because even though I think that it's like a vehicle for a bubuffer

of like body humor gags that I don't think are particularly good. It's still grounded in something that I fundamentally like. And so we can talk about that when we get there. So I was a little bit higher on it. And like Allie, I think it's like a really pretty film. I like this visual style quite a bit. I, which is funny because at the time I thought it looked like shit. Like I remember thinking back to watching this show or seeing the like the trailer for this movie or seeing some of the show on TV at the time and thinking it looked terrible in comparison to something like Pixar or, you know, anime, which obviously I was a big anime nerd at the time. And I still think that like it doesn't hold a candle to like well animated anime from the late 90s and

early 2000s before everything got into CG territory, or the kind of like contemporary mode of anime. But I think it has like a really distinct look and I think maybe my fondness for it now has recolored, some of what I appreciate here. So I'm, I'm, you know, I liked, I enjoyed the process of sitting down and watching this more than I did the previous films, despite there not being as much to claw at as in attack of the clones or, or, uh, Phantom Menace. So I'll just say, um, I ended up, I like it. And I think my entire experience of, uh, watching this and then I'm starting to rewatch some of

the early episodes. There is more to these early stages of the show than I initially thought there were, and I think that's true here as well. But at the same time, I think this is, I don't know, it's strange. It'll be interesting to talk about this in relation to the opening episodes of the series, because in some ways this is more polished than the early parts of the series, but in some ways it very much isn't. It is still behind where the series I think will end up by the end of its first season, if not halfway through. So I end up kind of in a mixed place with this. I think there's some really high highs and some really cool beats to dig into, but then also

there is the fact that a lot of this movie is kind of dramatically inert in my view. But before we get into the movie itself, I think it's worth acknowledging straightaway that both this movie and the series are preceded by another cartoon called the Clone Wars made in the early 2000s by Gendi Tardukovsky and so as we often do with Star Wars we're immediately confronted with these contradictions

in canon, origin, continuity. Austin, I know a lot of folks have been curious about how we'd handle the Tardikovsky Clone Wars. So what should we know about that series before we get into this movie? We can't say how we're going to handle it, because I'm not sure we know. I have an idea for how we should handle it, which maybe we can talk about off mic,

which is to say we should handle it at some point. I think there's a really proper point to inflect and to do it maybe. And maybe to cede that a little bit, it's worth knowing that what it was, which is this is a 2D show, you know, hand animated by, led by Getty, Tardikovsky, whose work you might know or be familiar with from shows like Samurai Jack, and I believe worked on Powerpuff girls also. Maybe I'm wrong about that. No, I'm right about that.

And that style, Dexter's Lab, like that de facto Cartoon Network house style that you know super well, was a supervising producer on Billy and Mandy. Like that whole era of, you know, animation from Cartoon Network bears Tarnikovsky's touch at the very least. Um, and, uh, the Clone War series in 2003 was meant to lead directly into revenge of the Sith, the third prequel movie to the degree that like literally it sets up the stage for the opening action segment in, in, uh, Revenge of the Sith, right? Like, it leads straight up to the moment. Is that retroactively or is that? No, it precedes it. It comes out like the summer

before the, whatever it is, like the, in the, in the lead up to Revenge of the Sith, you could have, that whole year before, basically, starting in, so Red of the Sith is May 19th, 2005, and the last Clone Wars episode is March 25th, 2005. So, like, basically goes right up to it a couple months before. It's such a different thing in tone, and yet also does set the groundwork for this series to the degree that there are certain characters who are first introduced in Star Wars, the Tartikovsky series. It's a, I say series, but it's something you could.

watch in one sitting it's about two hours long all said um the initial episodes were a few minutes each and by the end of it the episodes were instead uh you know like 12 minutes each or something like that um uh they were originally things that could that could run almost in between shows on cartoon network that good cartoon network model exactly totally just get high as fuck and just let the experience wash over you just yeah see what they do with it um the there are like some key differences about it. I don't, we don't have to get too deep into it, but the long and short is it presented an even more,

um, it overemphasized the capabilities of the Jedi even, even in a more grand way than the prequels have already done. You know, if we talked about, you know, uh, Anakin and Obi-Wan jumping from car to car and Corrassant as being a deviation

from previous Star Wars stuff, this is a, a series that has like Mason, do fighting hundreds of those big rounder, uh, battle droids, hundreds of them, Without a lightsaber, no problem.

Over the course of it, it becomes more and more like the Clone Wars show that we're kicking off kind of watching today. And again, like certain characters get introduced their first. Assange Ventriss's debut, Ventress gets debuted in Clone Wars, a character who I don't think we've seen yet. I don't, Grievous isn't like in the background on this, right? He's mentioned in passing or something. Well, they say that, like, all of the Jedi are pre-occupied with General Grevis. Okay. Then, yes.

So he gets introduced in this 2003 series for the first time. There's a character who does not get mentioned ever again named Durge, as far as I know, never again, who vores Obi-Wan Kenobi at one point. So that's just a thing to know. I'll keep that in mind for later. Anakin eats some bugs. It's, it's, there's some high highs. We should watch it at some point. But even, even coming into this.

this, it was clear that maybe it tonally was not where Star Wars could be for a 22-minute serialized story, the kind of level of action that was happening there was so stylized. It was really fun, but it's so stylized that for something like this that wants to ground the action a little bit more, at least, you kind of have to say, like, well, okay, well, Facebook do can't fight 200 battle droids without a lightsaber by himself, surrounded. Um, uh, like, you need to let that live in the legends canon, even though at the time, the legends canon didn't even exist

because this was pre-Disney acquisition. So, I don't know, like, that's kind of the lead in here. And the thing that's so fascinating for me, and when we get there, we can talk about it, is like, how is it that this carries and covers the same period of time from Attack of the Clones to Revenge of the Sith? How is that stuff framed?

How is it framed as Anakin becomes, you know, grows as a Jedi Knight? that's another thing that's in that short series is Anakin becomes a Jedi Knight which by the time we start this film he's a Jedi Knight he's no longer a Paduan and so like things like that are covered in that series which sadly is not canon at all anymore

so like whatever happened there is just you know there are legends we tell about how this stuff happened we don't now have a moment where Anakin becomes a Jedi Knight on the books as far as one never got bored well we'll find out we have a lot TV to go through. I bet he gets bored once in this series, right?

I hope so. Is he a jet? Because at, yes. He is referred to as master Skywalker. He's a Jedi Knight. That is Asoka calling him master as in, you are my master and I'm your Padua. Oh, so it becomes like professor.

Like that doesn't mean you a tenure. That doesn't mean, like you were just professor. Correct. Yes. He's not a Jedi master. He is the master of Asoka and a Jedi Knight, which is a weird. You know, but we do this with words all the time. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I was just curious. Yeah. So that's the Tarnikovsky thing, which is, again, three years before this. So, interesting. It does tie into this directly because the success of that series is one reason why this entire effort happens. We're going to get to a lot, a lot of the different members of the creative team on this. We're going to end up touching on a lot of this. Like, obviously, we're more discussion of Dave Filoni as he emerges.

as a more and more central figure in modern Star Wars. But I think here at the start, the name on my poll from the credits as one maybe most critical to pay attention to is Catherine Winder. And she is the producer on this. And she's also somebody who was kind of tasked by George Lucas to both get, to help get Lucas film animation off the ground. And then also to execute a 100-episode order for a Clone Wars cartoon series that, by the way, a 100-episode order. I don't know if this is unusual for animation land.

It is a crazy order for TV series. It's the dream, right? You're in syndication. You're in syndication from the jump if you get 100 episodes, right? Yeah. So people don't know, like, that's the – getting to 100 episodes historically has meant that that is the marker that you need to then resell the show. show to a cable channel like TBS or something that will then activate a long run where you're going to get royalties off that if you're an actor in the show, for instance, for a real

long time, and it like makes it really bankable. And so the idea of green lighting 100 episodes just like off the bat is wild. But also it's Star Wars and it's Star Wars even post prequels is still Star Wars. Yeah. And I'm still kind of impressed by the decision though, because like even like, even like, We see a lot of these companies that do not need to sweat the budget for a cartoon. They do not need to worry about that. They will still not throw good money after bad, even if they can afford to run the loss.

And so this notion that you're kind of saying, not only we're greenlighting the series, but we're going to give you the longest runway possible. You can basically fly the spruce goose off this thing if you need. I imagine that changes the way you approach things. Because if you look at the first season of a lot of shows, you've got to start with a strong pilot. You've got to pull some rabbits out of your hat around sweeps week and get those ratings. You've got to worry about a lot of stuff to, like, hit key milestones in your series. And that maybe at times to the Clone Wars detriment is not something this team needs to sweat very much.

But nevertheless, it does mean that they can map out a pretty long master plan here, for how this is going to go and that might contribute I don't know I'm curious to say how it plays out but it might contribute to why this show often delivers really well on longer plot arcs but I think the

the real linchpin of this thing is Catherine Winder who is the producer and ends up being from interviews she gave around this time and interviews with Filoni she kind of becomes the hinge point between Lucas

and the Clone Wars team. And I think there's a lot of different types of producer you can be, but I think this is definitely a recognizable model where part of what she has to do is reading between the lines, it sounds like a big part of her job

was to be a buffer between Lucas and the writer's room. And the other part of it was to make sure the writer's room, which was full of Star Wars nerds did not vanish up their own asses and kept their eye on the prize and I think one thing that jumped out at me

in the interview she gave before this movie came out there was an answer she gave that just seemed like such a classic like this is how people sound after they've worked with Lucas for a while she made these remarks she said working with George as you can imagine is really fascinating

he takes a while to get to know and build trust with but as he gets to know you he'll speak up more and more, and he's dead on in terms of his comments and his notes. And I just feel like once again, we have somebody sort of alluding to the fact that, like, this dude is maybe, like, retiring and shy to the point of being a little bit maddening to work with. And then, once you get past that, holy shit, this dude has got opinions. And they will, they will drill down deeper than you thought.

I'm curious. You know, she's someone who is super important to get the show off the ground, and then my understanding is leaves midway through the first season, as I believe Faloni kind of grows in importance, which is ironic since Faloni himself comes to this show after doing just the first season of Avatar, being part of that writing team, where I've seen, you know, people talk about his role on that show being very similar of like table setting, making sure things are running well, world building, that style of thing. The proof, you know, kind of cutting his teeth on, not cutting his teeth on that, because everyone involved in the show has a long history and animation.

I shouldn't say cutting his teeth on that. But, you know, a similar relationship, perhaps. So I think with all that in mind, we might as well sort of dive into the Clone Wars movie. And before we do that, we can just talk really broadly about the plot here. The first act showcases how rapidly the Jedi have transitioned to frontline command of the Clone War, but also how unprepared the Republic is for fighting a war of this scale. We also really quickly meet Padawan Asokatano

as she goes to join her new mentor, Anakin Skywalker, and they quickly fall into a very easy buddy comedy dynamic. Are you in Sky Guy? And Snips? Sky Guy and Snips. Sky Guy and Snips. Get ready. I watched this movie twice and I still don't know

when Snips happens or where it comes from. I get. He's like, you're so snippy. That's where it comes from. Yeah. It comes from a writer's room where someone says he should call her Snips. that's fun yeah don't don't love it but it's fine

the second act involves a dangerous and bloody rescue mission to recover Jabba the Huts kidnapped son so that the huts will open vital supply lines to the republic's fledgling war effort on the outer rim naturally Count Duku is behind

the kidnapping and quickly tries to convince Jabba that the Jedi or the real party's responsible and Jabba just continues to be the galaxy's least impressive crime lord by immediately like whatever like God I hate

I hate collapsing everything down to Donald Trump at the same time that reputation for like whoever is the last person in the room to tell him a thing is like what he does

and what he believes Java is like whoever files through that fucking throne room Jabba's like Ola Mullah and immediately he's like yeah

I totally buy I totally get what you're saying I'm picking up what you're putting down baby and so like Java just gets fucking rolled by Duke

the galaxy's least convincing and sincere person. As long as you're calling him Jabba the Wise, like, you're in there. You've got his ear. Like, it's just, it's so funny. It's so fucking hilarious that...

You can't do it. You can't no-sell your villains. You have to have your villains seem competent. Otherwise, beating them doesn't make it, isn't interesting. Well, I think there's a really interesting framing for it, Because the way that they introduce, like the setup for right before introducing like Jabba's plight is the innocent become victims in a lawless galaxy. Crime Lord Jabba the Hutt's son has been captured.

That child is innocent. That child's innocent. That child ain't do nothing to nobody. He's not, he hasn't done shit. That's baby Yoda right there. That's, that's really the setup, I think. But it's just, the fact that, like, I think they're playing Jabba in a way that's like, ha, ha, like, he's a crime lord, but he's also just, like, innocent in this whole, like,

Lala's world we live in now because of fucking separatists. I don't know. It just, it feels like. This is why I say that you can't know sell them, because like, they're the third faction. They're the third major faction in the galaxy in this point. The HUD syndicates are as powerful as the Galactic Republic or the separatist, or at least strong enough that trying to just conquer them in the middle of a war would guarantee a loss, right? So there are a spoiler in this two-way fight. And you have to make that seem meaningful, right? You need some sort of sequence in which they're actively turning away, you know, Republic vessels somewhere, pushing them back, not letting them use their trade routes.

You can't just let the bounty hunters that they've sent to recover Punky Muffin, the baby, get killed off screen. Like, you have to at least give them some bite. Otherwise, the criminal angle just seems like there's nothing there. There's no reason to worry about them if they can be so easily manipulated or pushed over. all of their weight is held off screen and in like passing dialogue like they hold the outer rim which is the only way that we are going to sway this war is if we get access to their roots on that if they if they grant us safety so like theoretically java may actually be participating in because what is guaranteeing safety like is that reinforcements is that just like allowing the trade them to pass through the the the roots at themselves. But like, this is the deciding factor for the outcome of the war right now is gaining control of the outer rib. As the, as the film sets it up. Yeah, totally. And Jabba's just list like fucking whatever dude who's just like, go get my kid from the place. And

he's got fail son vibes. Yeah. You're right. It's like he's, he happened to be the first son. He happened to become the leader of no you're right he inherited this if only there was a series that would one day give us more into the hut cartels there is it's clone wars we'll get there unfortunately it's also clone wars which means the other huts we've encountered perhaps in this episode might show back up we'll get there he's just such a set piece like he feels like a cardboard cutout of a character that just was like placed there to like be careful he'll come for you fucking pull up. Jabba holds grudges.

Java holds grudges, yeah. Be careful. Natalie's going to end up in carbonite. I'm sympathetic for Jabba in this conversation because he's like been hit where he's hurt. Yeah.

That's his boy. That's his boy. He has to do some. Like we're yeah, we're seeing Java like out of form because he's so stressed about his child. That's true. You know, he doesn't see,

he's on the back foot here in a way that we've never seen Java. before. It's the same way the Jedi have lost the ability to see the future. Jabba without his baby has lost touch with his crime sense. Yeah, his personal dancers aren't doing it for him without punky. Yeah.

That's act two. All of that sets up the film's final act. The rescue mission is completed. Duku and Skywalker duel in the desert of tattooing and Padmey Amadala uncovers the real inside hut within Jabba's organization. I don't know how you pulled one over

on Java, but somehow someone could do it. By the end of the film, the Huts will be supporting the Republic, enabling their overstretched military to stretch a little further into conflicts in the distant outer rim, dependent now on a corrupt criminal

empire. Normal Republic. The glory days. So with all that in mind, let's get into it. It's probably worth saying really quick. The other big final beat here, sort of this is the sort of Anakin gets married of this movie

is that Anakin commits to being the master of Osoketano. Like that is the the core conflict of this thing actually is will Anakin step up and become a master to a Padawan when at the start of the film

he wants less responsibility, not more. Or he wants more responsibility to do violence and less to have to be responsible for other people. He wants to be, hmm, he wants the responsibility to send people to their death

not to ensure that they grow in prosper. Imagine though if you had a surrogate daughter who also wanted to deal that kind of death and wield that kind of power. Just imagine how much you bond. And that's what happens. Yeah. All right. So I think one of the things that jumped out at me though right at the start is in terms of setting a tone. So it opens with sort of the Star Wars, you know, splash screen, the, you know, crescendo a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away. But then instead of going to the crawl, we open on radio chatter

just an overwhelmed radio net of clones calling for support asking for help people getting killed on the air is like radios cut out and it's very like

this is a classic like war movie motif and it's immediately like I think kind of a statement of purpose up front that like okay this is

we're not doing the crawl thing here we're going to be channeling other war movies and this entire first act is going to feel like and into the second it's going to feel like a war movie at a lot of key moments and a lot of it's going to be about the beleaguered war that a lot of these clones are fighting

and the cost they're paying for it and so I thought that was interesting just right out of the gate we get that sort of tonal marker as it were and then we are into we're into the setup for this story right um we are into the decision to back to the decision to rush to the aid of uh job of the hide oh they they also do the clone wars thing right of the rapid cut of like we get the announcer after the narrator yeah yeah um who's that who's the actor because he's one of the that's tom cane i want to say um who also voices a number of other characters in the clone wars including i want to say are our are our kind of proto-imperial officer.

Yelaren? Yeah, yeah, Yelaren, who was actually from the original Star Wars film. He's like a background character who is retroacted. What? Who got that name from a card game. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll find him. Give me a second.

Yeah, Wolf Yelaren is the name of the character. And in one of the, like, 90s card games, he's, like, listed as, like, Imperial Intelligence Officer Wolf Yilarin, and that's where the name comes from. But yeah, he's just like in that fucking movie, walking around in the background with his big white mustache, because he's an old man by that point, because it's the future. And so they were just like, yeah, that dude looks cool.

Let's make him our admiral in the Republic Fleet. He's got these strong, like, David Niven vibes of old British actor. Like, basically this guy looks very Royal Navy, circa 1938 or something where seems very competent, very by the book, who knows of it. Also, he's our Yoda. So Yoda, Wolf Yalarin, Admiral Yalarin,

and the narrator. Oh. Wild. Interesting. There's a lot of double and triple and quadruple duty done by the vocal talent in the early stage of the series. I watched a behind the scenes thing

in which the dude who does the voice for like the battle droids and also God, someone, Grievous is the same person. And so there are sequences where in the booth he will be talking to himself basically. And then like multiple battle droids. He'll be doing like one battle droid voice,

another battle droid voice, grievous yelling at battle droid one, battle droid two being like, oh no, or whatever. So it's good. Shout out. I'm happy for him. I also love the, so to set this up,

How does Java's kid get kidnapped? An awesome squid ship comes in from the space and swoops down on Java's sail barge and just slurps it. Just like, and like that's how his kid is taken. And then we rush, you know, then we rush to Java sending out this call for help demanding that somebody come rescue

rescue his kid and that leads us to a not really a debate but we get once again there's the Jedi Council hanging out with Supreme Chancellor Palpatine and they're like well what do we want to do about this and Palpatine's like you don't have a choice

like you gotta do it and my reading we must help Java he says which is so funny before anyone has like a chance to say anything Palpatine's like, well, let's do it, let's do it, this is crucial. And can I just say that Palpatine is looking more evil than ever, and nobody suspects it kills me. It just, I don't know.

He's in. Isn't that cool eagle nose going on? No, he's got, he's got like the dark bags of evilness. He's the, he's the supreme chancellor. He's tired. He's tired. Like under eye cream. I have, I have, I am literally the queen of eyebags, but it...

You're not responsible for seven trillion people or however many people exist in the galaxy. But isn't there a, isn't there in Star Wars universe, isn't there like a physical mark of people getting evil? Yeah, he doesn't look like the way he does when he gets evil. You'll see when he gets evil one day. It's different. It's on another level. Also, he's in the room with someone who, whose face looks like an open wound.

So, like, what are you going to do? Plow Coon is there. Who I love deeply. He does. Well, here's the thing that I meant to tell you last time. We didn't talk about what George Lucas says about people who like Plow Coon, did we? What, no. No.

You're about to hate Plow Coon. Right. Rather, George Lucas. You're going to love Plow Coon. I can't find the specific quote, but to paraphrase it, I believe he says that anyone who likes Plow Coon is a deviant. yeah and that's what I said I said yeah that's right

I'll wear that badge on my fucking chest put a finger to point that's also a good point like yeah who the fuck are you to call him a divian George yeah you fucking made him you fucking normie no man

you know he didn't someone in the back in the back I know but he said yep check that's true he did say yep check Look, propriety is putting Carrie Fisher in a slave girl outfit. And that is That's acceptable kink.

Yeah. All right. Says George Lincoln. So, yeah, but I do think like Palpatine once again kind of forestalls any debate here. Like we just got to do it. And my theory here is that Natalie, you're sort of mentioning

what does it mean to get Java onside? My suspicion here is this is kind of an illusion to like famously the Allies in World War II cut all kinds of deals with the mafia and it was kind of two things they needed to accomplish. One was that they were terrified

that the mafia would shut down vital ports across the U.S. basically. Whether or not the mafia actually had that kind of control is debatable I guess but like that was a theory was like

oh the dock workers unions are sort of rife with mafiosi and if the mafia isn't sort of mollified uh then like things are just going to slow down on the docks and things are going to get fucked and the other part was they're invading italy right so like seemed useful my guess is like having the hotson side just means like you basically are you don't have to worry about all kinds of shit being stolen from depots on the way out to the other rim it makes a lot of sense it makes perfect sense why they need the huts on their side. It's just like

it's being determined by Palpatine who is like who hired Count Duku who kidnapped the kid who is now like it's just this whole

elaborate scheme. But the thing that kills me is that Mace Windu as they're like walking out of the room is like there's more to this than it seems. And it's just like will then do something about it?

You know? Like, I just don't understand how you can sit there and fucking, like... You ever have a to-do list you just need to cut bait on, though, and you just don't? Like, the Jedi, like, Mace Windu has a notebook. Something has to be your bottom thing. Yeah. Yeah. He's, like, figure out where Clone Army came from.

And just keeps getting pushed down, and he's, like, respond, send reaction for us to Christophis. And he's like, got to do that before I can really tackle the Clone Army thing. And it just seems falling further and further down. Like, sometimes he's sitting there and thinking, man, where did that come from, though? I'm going to crack into that mystery at some point, I promise. But shit, the huddling is stolen? Okay, well, I think that's the boat they're in is a whole lot of reaction. I feel like this early in the movie, it's like, the Jedi seem busy, though.

Like, why are they even taking the call from Jabba in the first place? Like, you can see his, like, slave handcuffs in the background of the soup call. It's like, I'm busy. We have a war going on. we don't I'm not cool with you you're you're a criminal I'm good the Republic does business with the powerful that's all it is I just think you have to take Java's call you have to if Tony Suprano calls you you pick up you know if Corleone is on the other line you don't say you you have to take the call you have to take the call

Jabba is replaced they don't even take Jedi money on like they don't hang out they well maybe if you do this favor he will take Jedi money and boy I mean that's literally I mean that's why I like this is because we know that what's happened here is the Republic has failed to address this problem for centuries presumably

as the hut cartel has grown stronger and stronger throughout the outer rim and now the chickens have come home to roost because now they need to move out there and they can't do that because they've completely abandoned that part of the galaxy to slavery and crime for so long that now they're forced

to deal with this dude, right? Like, that's the thing about this that does totally work for me because that shows the problems endemic to the republic to begin with. If they had done their fucking job and freed Anakin and freed the slaves on tattooing

and pushed back the power of the huts, none of this shit would need to happen. They'd already be there. And you'd have less separatists because that would indicate that you'd have a republic that was actually interested in what's happening on the fringes of its society

instead of just what's happening at the galactic core. And they don't have that because they're a bunch of fucking corrupt bureaucrats who are lining their pockets. So, you know. I mean, that's the thing, though, is because the Jedi served the Republic,

who is Palpatine. So it's just, it's all in the plan. It's all according to plan. Why do the Jedi serve the Republic? Why is... That's happening right now in the High Republic. That's the new series of books and comics that are coming out. That is, like, how...

of the Jedi. It's 200 years before the first prequel movie. I mean, so, so far, the clips I've read, make it sound, I don't know, I'll have to read those books, is what I'll say. I mean, it seems like a decent gig, though. Because, like, you're basically

the shadow counsel to every decision across the galaxy, and everywhere you go, you have, like, pro-consular power to just dispense with shit where, like, oh, I'm a Jedi, I'm here to bring justice to whatever problems you all have out here. I just got here. I don't know any of it. So that means I'm a

arbiter and y'all are just going to have to eat it um that sounds great like who like i mean it doesn't but at the same time having that kind of authority and power and like being able to convince yourself this is all the good that'd be a good that seems like a decent gig um so but the other thing i like here is that it kind of fills in a gap in that the republic wasn't ready to fight this war they had this clone army that was just what hey what's this clone army doing here But that doesn't change the fact that they were not set up to deal with a full-fledged civil war happening across the galaxy all at the same time. And so it's kind of interesting to see them in the stage of they are still scrambling to, they have an army. Can they supply it?

Not really. Can they secure supply lines with warships? They don't really have enough. Where's the front line? Kind of nowhere. It's just a bunch of flare-ups happening all at once. And so this movie does have this vibe of they have a lot of resources, but they haven't. really mobilized yet.

They don't know what is going on and that is why when they're trying to figure out, well, okay, who can we send to go get Jabba's son? The answer is nobody. There's not, like, all the Jedi are gone. They're all off fighting of these various, like, brushfire conflicts. The only ones

that seem like they'd be a good fit for this are Kenobi and Skywalker. And they are stuck fighting on Christophis and... Well, according to Yoda, they've got it down. Like Yoda was like,

Yoda was like, oh yeah, they just took the planet Christophis, they'll be ready to go. And it's like, they extremely do not have Christophis down right now. So they did, and that's the thing that happens,

right? Is that like they don't know how to fight a war. They trust when someone says, we got it locked down because they sent a message saying, we got it locked down. And in the time it took for them to get that message and have that meeting,

the droids came back. The separatists reattacked with a large, force and they lost it right well yeah and i love that i love this next scene that happens where yoda is like look we just need to pull us we just need to get those guys off on this java assignment and so they go to ularin who's there basically doing a really rapid resupply because it's like uh the christophis's operation is turned back into a full-on fight for this world i was sent back here to rapidly pick up supplies and reinforcements and rush back to this uh now pretty serious battlefield and support

the clone unit there that's under Kenobi and Skywalker and Yoda is just like no you have to get the message to them now and this is interesting right from the start there's a weird vibe between him and

Yularen where Yulian does something that like if you've ever done something on a protest or if you just like made clear like hey this is on your ass if I do this I am not doing this you are making me do it Ularin first tries to say, just let me restock, and I'll take my, like, it'll just be a short delay, I'll bring my resupply, and I'll deliver the message. And Yota's like, no, you got to go now.

Take a courier ship, take a messenger, and go. And Ularin kind of testily says, I understand, sir, I will personally take an unloaded ship to drop them off. Then I will return to pick up my reinforcements. And it is a, I will personally do this dumb fucking thing. You are making me do. An unloaded ship. An unloaded ship. This makes no sense.

But fine. We will do it. And you know, it's like, cool, just do it. That's a really good line. Mm-hmm. Really quick. I know I'm distracting. I wouldn't do this unless it was important.

I found the correct quote about Plokoon. It's distinct enough that it's worth raising. Okay. Henry Gilroy, who co-wrote this film and is a writer on the show, and I believe a producer on future Star Wars animated stuff says Plow Coon is so inaccessible on the outside he's so weird looking in one of our story meetings George Lucas said only a person with a diseased mind likes Plow Coon that is worse that was worth digging up Boston it's worse it's worse it's worse it's worse

wow Lucas has shots to fire he does I'm taking I don't give a shit I have a bullet he eventually said apparently George was eventually very impressed with with the way Placoon was brought to life, quote, unquote. George needs to expand his horizons, is what I have to say. George has seen Plowcun with that mask off yet. You see that full face, the beauty of it. That's what I'm saying. Anyway.

Yeah. So we go to Christophis and our first glimpse of what this whole war looks like. I think there's a few things that jump out of me in this first battle sequence. first is that boy the lighting's kind of flat like it's it's kind of impressive but also it's kind of rough

there's a lot of like really similarly animated clone troops out there I don't know this is the first big set piece battle and it feels very I think we already made this I already brought up reboot once

when we're talking about the attack of the clones but again this has sort of those reboot vibes of like, oh, this is a really sparse backdrop and you're just kind of having these models basically fighting inside a giant, you know, a blank set in some ways with a skybox. Right. It's a stage, right?

It's a stage piece, right, right, with a skybox around it, basically. And the skybox is almost abstract in some ways where it's just, it looks like, it looks like a video game, like if not a skybox, and almost like a repeating background in a side scroller or something where it's like here are a bunch of skyscrapers one after the other indefinitely in a circle around this space um again i don't mind it so much because i think so much of what works for me in the art style is about character detail is about the way the character like their hair is

what the fashion is on some of the characters i really like this um the tank commander for the separatists here and and uh his like interesting like multi-layered top robe piece around his his shirt there's like stuff there that really works for me and and i so i ended up not minding the like admittedly very flat lighting in the sequence that much i think i would like this art style a lot more if like the flow of animation itself didn't feel so rigid where i feel like it accentuates like the harshness like the harsh angular feel of the art itself in a way that is just like hard to I don't know I just feel like very like stop and go with it sometimes but I do appreciate the fact that it is very on like on its face trying to establish itself as its own

thing and trying to establish itself as this like very distinct this is the Clone Wars feel this is the Clone Wars art. So I respect it in that sense. But I think there's still something that's a little bit jar. Maybe it just will take a little bit of getting used to. But it also take them a little bit of time to get it right, right? This is the first thing they made. And Lucas came into them and said, don't you dare make it look like Pixar, right?

Lucas said, don't make it look like Pixar. And he had another touchstone. And I forget what the other one is. but basically was like this needs to look like its own thing we can't lean too hard and into any established space because if we do we're just going to get that comparison over and over again and he knows that you can't make a TV show that looks like a Pixar film yeah absolutely too expensive honestly yeah totally yeah I think um there's an article you linked Austin that like you could boil down the Star Wars movies uh or at least the prequel trilogy to 50 million dollars per hour of film uh this series is $2 million per hour of animation and that might sound like a lot

but for this kind of animation it just isn't and it's certainly not for hitting the production values of Star Wars and I would say as the series goes along the models evolve, they get more detail, the textures get better, so do post-processing

effects I would say or process effects I guess I should say because it's not a real-time rendering the way a game is. But it gets a lot more sophisticated. And I think in season two, I start to feel like, oh, we're more approaching what this style was pointing towards. And now it kind of looks properly alive in a way that here it's still very Mr. Potato Head in some ways of how the models come together.

Like, I'm sorry, Obi-Wan's beard weirds me out, man. I love it. I love the weird vertical lines in it. It's so fucking weird. The thing to compare it to is the other thing that Lucas didn't want it to look like, which is Beowulf from 2007. And I think this is like a totally, like, you should look at what Beowulf looked like to look at what non-Pixar CG art films looked like, not art films. Beowulf 2007 was not an art film. But like, of the two, which one of these stands up still, and it is Clone Wars, Bayowulf 2007 is a nightmare to look at.

um everyone has the most like dead faces and they're going for a sort of animated realism that is just too fucking much um so so yeah yeah that's that's some polar express nightmare time oh yeah 100% 100% anyway yeah um the other thing i'll just say here um we get a taste of battle sequence we see some bickering between anakin and uh and obi one but the thing that jumps out at me is um boy their tactics seem to get a lot of clones killed like the tactics at first glance don't seem to make a lot of sense to me until you start to realize oh this is all about setting the Jedi up to do their Jedi shit and everyone else is just there like you just you just need to create spacing for the Jedi to hit the three and take out the high value target

and everyone else on the floor can just get killed and that is that's kind of seems to be their preside like the clones have ranged weapons they fight sort of in you know lines and columns very very old school they use cover when they're given the chance but the Jedi are just like let's go get them let's charge men and like the clones there's a point where they charge a bunch of clones and I think they like at one point one of the one of the clones tries to punch a droid and just gets worked yeah humans are more creative you know so yeah and they don't they don't have like heavy weapons to take out the separatists like mecks and stuff so their whole job is to just like let the Jedi go deal with the heavy equipment while we just eat shit do you want to

know how many do you want to know how many droids and clones there are in this conflict all said because it's telling about what they expect us to believe No, the total throughout the war So at the beginning of the Clone Wars The Camino wins

The Camino wins, I think that's right, produced 1.2 million soldiers Towards the end, there's another 5 million coming So it's 6.2 million In Star Wars Rebels which is very far away from us The droid, a character notes that the droid army in the war outnumbered the clones 100 to 1, which means there were 600 million droids and 6 million clones. So that is the world of big fake numbers we are dealing with here, which is to say, how do you even start to unpack any individual tactical enterprise without.

at those numbers you can't i would say at those numbers austin you can't be doing with the jedi are doing with their clones you cannot be like all right you just follow me men let's get them and like lose a shit ton of clones that way um and we get even a little taste like so the jenni are just kind of you know is a clever little tactic where um aniken uses jump troops to launch into their midst uh but really the only thing holding the the droids at bay are is artillery. I kind of have to say, compared to the Jedi who are like,

let's just go, hey, let's charge the droids. I kind of liked the separatist C.O. Who's like, oh, we're just getting wrecked by artillery. This is a point. Let's pull back. Let's fire up the Jennys.

And we'll come back once we've got shields. And I'm like, man, I'll bet the clones would like to work for a guy like you. Like, that seems like a more responsible approach than like, oh man, what if we just beat our foresight? heads bloody against this wall. Let's just do it. Or Yalarin, for that matter, right? Yelaren

clearly has a different relationship with troops and tactics. But we get rid of these Jedi and can build something grander than a republic ever was, you know? Yeah. Yeah. We're thinking about. Yeah. The Venerification continues. Yeah. Uh-huh. Much to think about as Yelaren stares over casualty figures from Christophis. So that battle kind of wraps and we meet the messenger from Coruscant and it's Asso-Katano and Obi-Wan has alluded to the fact he expected to be sent to Padawan imminently. And she gets off and she's like, it's nice to meet you, Master Kenobi, but actually I'm Anakin's Paduan. And so we get a full, like a lot is compressed in the next few minutes between the attacks here. as Assoca finds her bearings and everyone started debating about what to do about this fight on Christophis.

Because her message is, you guys got to leave and go get Jabba's son. And they're like, literally we can't. One, there's a blockade. And two, we can't just abandon these forces down here. We got to wrap this fight. They have to hold the line open for Ularin's fleet to get a message out and it fails. So Ularin just has to physically take the message back to Coruscant. And so now, Asoka's marooned with them.

Uh, and what do you think of this? We have an entire introductory sequence of just getting a Noah Soca and her relationship with Anakin, but also just about like where she views her place in the hierarchy of the clone war. I think it's really telling the degree to which she is excited about getting to fight some battle droids. Like, obviously she is written to be a sort of like, the POV character for your young audience who is going to go home and play a video game starring Asoka eventually, right?

I want to buy toys and like pretend to be that they're the young Jedi who's being brought on board. I want to see she's 14 or 15 in this in this film and is like very much supposed to be like the cool teen Jedi. And so for me the most interesting thing is the degree to which she is like already militarized in ideology and in like self-view. She is like, I can beat the shit out of these these droids actually Sky Guy and it's striking the degree to which that is her character

at this point yeah she's like a great kid she's like a great kid character but I it really stands out that like the first conversation she has with one of the clones is like technically I outrank you right which is like

I mean if you're an adult you're I suppose you're more understanding but a bad vibe She's pretty insufferable Yeah You know the Where's that come from?

Great question Who taught her that she was better? Yoda's already talked about In that previous movie Like the Jedi are getting arrogant And here we made Asoka And we know like Over the course of that series

Asoka's a good egg Like all things considered This is definitely Kind of your archetypal Good Jedi But even she rolls off That transport being like I've been here for 30 seconds

Why don't you move these troops over here? That's a better position. Oh, oh, you don't... Oh, Annen Skywalker told you that the troops are fine where they are. Fuck you. I'm a Jedi. You do what I say. And Rex, again, like, poor Rex.

Hey, we met Rex, by the way. He's going to be a major character. Blue helmet, keep an eye out for him. He's going to be pretty critical. He's one of the major clones. Poor Rex, very diplomatically. It's just like, well, nothing outranked experience, in my view. Which isn't quite...

It isn't quite shut the fuck up, kid. But at the same time, it's also like, you know what? Like, let's sort this chain of man thing out after you've literally done anything. But she eats it up. She's like, all right, time to go get me some. Bye-bye. Off to grind. Time to go fucking kill people.

Bye-bye. And she gets her wish because right at that conversation ends, the shield bubble appears down the street. By the way, I tried hard to figure. out what the geography of the I saw this battle is. I don't think it can easily be done. There's a few places they revisit, but in terms of the wide shots you don't get a strong sense of like

which of the streets. It's weird. In terms of the fighting, it all feels like they're marching up and down the same street. They're not. Yeah. They're not. Yeah. Oh. Oh. There's like a V shape at the far end, which complicates it a little bit.

The big fight happens on one street. The street where they like hide and the shield passes over them. Um, which I like, which like I, I generally think that this sequence is more coherent than anything in attack of the clones action. Oh yeah. Like battle scene wise in a way that's like, okay, thank God. Like someone, again, in one of those interviews, um, winder, winder does say, like, we did not, we were more editing focused than, than storyboard focus. But I feel like this was storyboarded out enough to where the very basic, like, premise of this fight, which is, we. have artillery. We can't fire the artillery because they have a shield. They have tanks. That shield

is expanding towards us, letting the tanks get close enough to hurt our artillery. Someone has to get through the shield and then turn it off is like coherent, objective based. You understand the stakes of this fight compared to like the three bad rolling action sequences and attack with the clones where the objective is like kill as many things as possible and survive. We're like that there's no there's no weight to to the fight there there's no there's no logic pulling the action through it whereas here you're already at least thinking about a set piece that doesn't just mean you hit add a hundred troops in age of empires and see who wins the fight which is like what the attack of the clone stuff felt like you know this at least has has geography even if

it's dream geography even if it's not super clear like the very basic sides and it's like you could do the abstract map even if you couldn't do the literal map if that means makes sense. Yeah, it does. And I think, and what's heartening here is I think this is, this lack of clarity is unusual for where the series is going. I think they actually get better at creating a sort of mental geography of these fights. This is them finding their feet. With the shield coming in, that changes the complexion of this fight. They're going to be in deep trouble. We see kind of the Kenobi-ish passivity in the face of that. And then we, this is how Asoka ends up getting on side with Anakin, she's like, what if we didn't just wait for the end to come?

What if instead, we just went after that shield generator and wrecked it? And Anakin's like, hell yes, I love it. And he still pulls some rank, but they're like, we're going to figure out this scheme together. Here's the thing, their scheme sucks. Roger Ebert, in his review, I think pretty much he says something. The trick that Anakin, this Padawan learner, used to get behind the enemy force, essentially they hide under a box wouldn't have even fooled anybody in a hop-along Cassidy movie especially when they stand up and run with their legs visible but can't

see where they're going and you know not the not the most clever ruse de garre i've ever seen i must i must say well the lead in star wars bugs bunny like that's the thing they're doing but the lead into it is if we can't like we've got a uh so i forget who says what, but it's something like unless we can disguise ourselves as a droid, we're not getting in there. Oh, I swore they were to fucking do that. I swear to that. I was like, all right, they're going to suit up

in some really cool way. Like, they're going to, I don't know, maybe. I was like, does Asoka have shapeshifting powers? I don't know what the fuck is possible in Star Wars, but maybe she's about a shapeshifted to a droid really quick. But no, they get in a fucking box. They run into those cool, they run into those cool, cool, like, very cylindrical

droids towards the end of this, too. They would have been dope if they had one of those droids they just got in the top of. Yes. That would be cool. Yes. But I just, it's... That's a, it's a bad line.

Like, that's a line that needs to come out of your draft if you're not going to deliver on it. 100%. You know? 100%. Droid's... Droid's coming boxes. Therefore, they think this box must be friend.

Yeah, and so that's kind of a plan. They just sort of like hide in a box. It's very Calvin and Hobbs. In the meantime, make this work. Obi-Wan is kind of leading this doomed defense of the, like, just dense street fighting, more clones, just getting worked. And he concludes, we're not going to get anything done here. This whole thing hinges on this attack on the shield generator. I'm going to surrender.

I think I've got to say here, because they're the protagonist, like, cool, yeah, Rocco and everything. Uh-huh. At the same time, if you're talking about, like, what is one of the things that leads to spirals of, like, increasing brutality in a war? It's probably fake surrenders. Like, in terms of, like, throughout the history of warfare, when people start pretending to surrender and then killing people, the thing that happens after that is people trying to surrender get murdered. And, like, this is just how it goes. And Obi-Wan's first thought, because the Jedi haven't fought a war in a while, he's like, what? What if I said we were not going to fight anymore?

And then we kept fighting. Pretty good, right? Pretty good. Got him. I think that he at least is like, I've got a loophole. We'll talk for a long time. And while we're talking, anybody can use any gun they want. But once we're done with the conversation, then we're done. Let's talk about how you're going to clothe our soldiers that you put in prison.

said, thank you. And it's a master plan. It has one of my favorite lines in this film, which is Obi-Wan says, might we have some refreshments? And the dude points to this little, like, bottom-heavy pear-shaped mouse-roid thing. It says, you, bring us something liquid.

Which is, blah. Love it. Great. Also, I got to love. This animation studio just got off the ground. This is their first thing. We have a scene where Obi-Wan is going to take a big sit from a mug and I'm like hell yes

might as well just face your fears right at the start dude get out of the way so yeah the little the little trick works Asoka and Anakin

do take out the shield generator after she leads them into a droid minefield the separatist general is like you were lying to me I hate you that was mean That was kind of mean of you

It was kind of mean Little rhinoceros guy Scottish rhinoceros That guy is great Yeah deserved better And in the middle of all this It's all kind of mooted Because it turns out

In the middle of all this Yoda had decided We really need to get moving On this whole Java rescue This whole hutling rescue operation The scout troopers Know where the kid is Now he's on a monastery

I have this different planet Here's the thought What if we use that reserve fleet that we've got and just went and wrapped up the fighting the Christophis, and then we could send the other Jedi. Which begs the question.

Yeah. Well, I just do that. If you just had the fleet. If you had it, because you don't know, you don't know where, that's why it's a reserve fleet, Rob. You don't know where you need to deploy it. If you deploy it here, then you can't deploy it somewhere else. Well, Yoda thought they had it locked down.

Yota was like, they've got Christophis. They have that planet. So it's like, Yoda is operating as if, I don't know, Anakin and Obi-Wan are just like, all right, good job, everyone, we did it. Like, let's go. Well, this, I think all of this does point to a problem that Star Wars just keeps making worse, which is time and distance being extremely fungible in ways that make it harder to establish dramatic stakes. because like if you have a thing where you're like oh man like Christophis is X amount of time away and help I can't arrive in that time but in the Star Wars universe you just start to realize like nowhere

everywhere appears to be a couple hours away from everywhere else at most and sometimes a few minutes away and I think that is kind of an issue I think one of the things that felt may be bad about the new trilogy and even Rise of Skywalker is that it fully leans into that notion of like distance means nothing in this universe and so it does lead to a situation where like oh we couldn't possibly go help at christophis it's we just got to keep this reserve fleet and then it turns out it's like moving your reserve fleet from the garage to the driveway it's like i don't know they're there doesn't seem that bad uh but they win the fight and that kind of leaves things in an interesting

place where um anakin and asoka have reached a bit of an understanding asoka's got the stuff that that Anakin wants to see, which is a certain recklessness and boldness. And they are set to go on this rescue mission, and we're off to act two. Before we move off, Act 1, I just want to sit, while we're talking about Azoka, because I think it wraps, there's two things I want to talk about that I think wrap back into what we were just talking about, which is there's a part of this movie that was interesting to me in that we see something that we've spoken a little bit of, but about in the other episodes, in terms of like Jedi mentorship, we see that like this was a

deliberate action from Yoda to give Anakin a Padawan so he could learn more about responsibility and attachments and detachments and stuff. And I think that it's cool that like built into the mentorship is the like, oh, you should make attachments in the people and you learn that through them graduating through this process. It's cool to see that I'm just It is not cool to see that on screen. You go to making these decisions where the tensions of the first act are that there's a war going on, but Obi-Wan and Yoda left each other on red, so they have no idea what's going on. Like, Assoca is a child being sent by herself to send a message in an active war zone.

She has, like, a lightsaber with her, but Yoda doesn't know any of the shit that's going down there. Like, that's so irresponsible. Well, not a youngling anymore. I'm not a fan. You can soak off, like a child soldier, yes. I would also just say there's one of the aspects of this. There's actually two things that really kind of freak me out here. One is that this entire thing is framed, why are we sending Asoka?

Because Asoka's a lesson for Anakin. Oh, so what's Asoka? It doesn't matter. It's important that Anakin learned something here. The other thing is the last exchange they have is the ships are lifting off. Again, like ships lifting off and Yoda's sort of revealing some hidden information that is key to the other characters as they leave. Classic Yoda move.

Yeah. He sort of, he says, you know, letting go is the lesson that Anakin has to learn here. And once again, it's kind of like those Jedi mind fox where it's like we're going to give, I still don't trust this Anakin kid. I'm going to give them something to really bond with and then I'm going to be like time to let it go Anakin and the entire thing reminds me of there's like a recurring urban legend

about like just various elite commando units it happens again and again I think it's famous like was associated with maybe the Nazis but I don't think it's ever documented where it's like they give you a puppy right and you raise the puppy and then your initiation right is kill the puppy and to a degree like this is what the Jedi do

it's like all right Train this person now, cut them off. I mean, the idea is that, like, they're not your student anymore, and you, like, still see them in the Jedi cafeteria. Like, it's not that. Yeah. Yeah. I have, like, such a mixed feeling about this as a former teacher, because if you asked me, did teaching, did my students teach me something? And the answer was like, yeah, absolutely.

Like, I gained as much, if not more from the experience of learning how to be a teacher than any student of mine ever did. And so I think that it's, I do think, this is practically speaking, there is something to the, hey, let's get, let's get someone like Anakin something to make him step out of the perspective he normally has and give him the responsibility of not just being in command of someone, but being invested in someone's growth. I think that's an, that is a valuable and useful way of thinking about how to handle young teachers. Like that is part of that process. But I didn't teach anyone to go kill people in a war zone. I was that was not part of it and so and so like I think that this dramatically change to mentorship situation but again I think it reflects centuries of what the status quo with the Jedi have been there have not been Jedi Wars in this setting for a long time that we know of yet anyway and so given that it's like they are they are kind of groping in the dark at what it means to be good or to how to apply their established paradigms to this new war world and not necessarily doing a great job of it.

You know, also, I definitely bet there's pressure to be like, yo, can you just pump out some more Jedi? You're really good on the battlefield. Who can you send out there? Yeah. And Osoka clearly has been trained for this. Right. They're waiting on five million more clones still.

So in the in between, you got to get a dozen more Jedi at least. I think it's interesting that like that in reference to something that we were talking about earlier we're talking about like this new generation of Jedi and Asoka being this kind of entitled like entering the battlefield feeling secure in her combat skills to just fuck shit up you know already questioning her superiors in her. age, if not in rank, their expertise and things like that. This isn't like, I read it as a reflection of young Anakin being like very full of himself and confident in his powers, confident in his abilities, wanting more, wanting more experience, wanting to prove himself. I mean, that's like Asoka's whole, for this first I think it continues throughout the movie, but for this first like battle scene, she's constantly saying to Anakin, like, why

won't you trust me? Like, I want to prove myself. This is how I can show you. You know, I saved your life. Like, and it's, I get it that it's like, for me and this, what the movie is trying to say is like, look at this kind of like reflection of young Anakin. But to what you guys were saying, earlier is if if this is like what the what the attitude of like new Jedi are in general then how is Anakin I don't know I just feel like we give Anakin so much shit for being like entitled and he's the chosen one so it feels like he's got like a little bit of you know credibility on that

front but if that's the general attitude then how is Anakin that different I don't know I just don't see him as being other than the whole like really into the darkness thing. Like I don't I just Yeah. If Asoka's supposed to be this like reflection of him

I don't know. I'm just I don't see. Well like the thing I think about a lot with her is she was she was she's 14 now. The war started a decade ago. She has never not known a world of what the Jedi were was soldiers. She's a reflection of the Jedi order

in the age that we're in in a way that Obi-Wan is not, right? Obi-Wan came up, and I think it's actually, it maps very clearly to the sorts of scenes he's in, and the sorts of scenes he's been in, like, Attack of the Clones. What are the scenes we get from Obi-Wan? Investigation, weird film noir stuff, comedic diner scenes. Here we get him sitting down to negotiate. That's old Jedi shit. That's the shit that, like, literally, if you go read the middle-grade books where he

and Quigon are going from planet to planet to kind of stop stuff, stop, you know, a dark Jedi and deal with local politics, like that's what they're doing. They're doing this sort of like, oh, we're investigating mysteries or da-da-da-da-da. Anakin is like the Supreme Soldier, an incredible pilot in a way that no one else is a great fighter. And Asoka shows up and she has those skills down and none of the Obi-Wan like soft skills on deck. And I think that that reflects two different eras of what the Jedi are, which is, which again is part of, I think, why. the, you find resistance in people like Yoda and, and the other Jedi masters is they might know how to do that stuff. And in fact, I think that they're desperate to do it. We've talked

about this already. But they all are romanticizing an age or what they were was quote unquote peacekeepers, meaning someone who like drops in solves a local dilemma and then leaves solves a local dilemma tossing those scare quotes on and then leaves versus someone who is leading of war from the front, which Anakin is very good at. So I think there's a hypocrisy or like a, there's a kind of double bind here where on one hand, he's very good at what the Jedi have become in a way that scares them because they at least remember a time when this wasn't what the Jedi were, or at least not as openly were, you know, not in the same exact role.

So I don't know. I get where it all comes from. And again, I also have the advantage of like having seen where this show goes a little bit. I think we'll continue to get into it. I'll note that the Tartikovsky series gets into it a little bit. There's a fight scene with another character where, you know, Anakin gets so violent and dark in it that we get like cut-ins of other Jedi feeling it from across space, right?

So heavily is he drawing on the dark side so much as he wants someone else to suffer, right? And I think that ends up being the angle on which so much of this ends up turning. and it's also where he's at his best in some ways. It's how does Anakin relate to human suffering? There are times when he is the inflection point for having a conversation about how what the Jedi should be doing is intercepting and stopping human suffering, trying to get in the way of it.

It's why, in a later scene, for instance, I don't think of too ahead of myself, he does not want to leave clone troopers behind with the ease that someone like Yoda or Obi-Wan does. But there are also moments less so here, but I mean even when he's talking about the baby where he's the one who's willing to say like actually I fucking hope this baby dies

and I hope job is real sad about it like suffering is part of the way he sees the world who should suffer and who shouldn't is key to the way he interprets justice and that's not the way the Jedi interpret justice the Jedi have this like much different relationship that has nothing to do with suffering but has to do with I don't know if it's Kantian ideals

I don't know if it's like I haven't sat with enough of the Jedi shit to be like, well, what they're definitely not interested in is interceding on behalf of those who are suffering so much as they are, or let alone making someone suffer. They are much more interested in something a little more abstract than that, where they don't necessarily want to name it. So I think that ends up being the big, the big axis on which, axes on which people like Yoda end up judging Anakin because it suggests, quote, unquote, attachment that he cares that some people might suffer or that some people should.

Right. So that's my read. Just one day I'll call out here. I'm not clear how long after Attack the Clones we are. This is, I can give you a specific date. I just looked it up. Battle of Christophis is 22 BVY before the Battle of Yavin, which is the still accepted fan timeline. A new timeline was attempted to be created from Rise of Skywalker.

22. Geinosis 1. I think this is the same year. Yes. I think First Battle of Geonosis is also 22. Correct. So we're within that same year still. Yeah.

At a year, I believe, is the same amount of time for them as it is for us. I think of the year is 365, 24 hours. And they speak basic except, apparently, for Jabba the Hut. Yeah. But his uncle can. Yeah, sure can. Can he ever? So we go to another.

kind of war movie set piece this time kind of a very we just finished this wave of like World War II movies in the 2000s it's very much drawing on that where you get the clone troopers aboard their assault transport heading in for landing

and it's a cool sequence where they begin like all the transports have like kind of oh yeah before we get there we get them on board the ship before they get there and we get the first look at clone self-expression because we see Rex, I believe it's Rex, who has just the basic military crew cut vibe.

But we see people with like the double Mohawk or bald or silver gray hair. And there's horny nose art on one of the spacecraft. There sure is horny nose art on the fucking ship. I sent that to Allie immediately. You didn't notice that? It's horny as shit. So imagine a twilight dancer, but like her brain tales go on for days. I'm imagining

Yes I'm going to send a screenshot I have to give a shout out to Teth here That looks amazing The like pink Trees against the pink sky Looks cool as shit Teth is also a pretty good

Star Wars place name Better than Christophis Because I stumble over Christophis Every time I want to say it It feels like that back syllable Should be something else Anyway yeah check out that nose art Of horny Twilek

In clone armor This is great. Uh-huh. This is legit great. I love it. Oh, my God. That's what that was. I thought it was like some, like, some, like, graffiti, like, just a random, like, tag.

I didn't even. It's not the only one either. Now that I'm, like, looking at the scene, there's another one in the background of, like, a Twilock, I think, looking over her shoulder. Oh, yeah. It's like her back. Yeah. Uh-huh. Yes, 100%.

And that ship has, like, the. the kill count on the side of it that stuff's good that stuff's all right i don't know i'm here for it yeah that's really good i would say continue to watch the aesthetics around the various clones and the various units that they're they're associated with

uh now did you have a question about this scene before because you were going to say before we moved off the clones my question was clones have different haircuts question mark because i think i i mean i guess and names and names that was another thing from earlier i was like why are they

Why is that guy Rex? Why is that guy Cody? I thought they were going to be numbered. Nah, that shit comes later and is interesting. Right? Because you're thinking of Finn being a number, right? Yes. Yeah.

Well, that distinction is like, I think this is one of the most important distinction with world building is. The republic on its way to authoritarianism, the republic that's oppressive, is not yet still an empire. It's still not yet, you know, literally authoritarian at that way, right? the further sort of erasure of personal identity is one of those mile markers on the way to what becomes the empire or even it might even happen post empire. I'm not 100% sure. But like it is it is an interesting thing to separate those two things out. And also then to say, okay, but why do they get that ability? Why are they given the ability to be to call themselves Rex or Cody to have different hairstyles?

to what degree is that an insurance policy that they won't turn against you because you're giving them what feels like individuation some degree of self-expression some degree of selfness separate from everybody else because they live in a society where the self is prioritized and blah blah and that's what they're supposed to be defending and like that stuff is like really potent for me in a way that that I'm excited to see more I would also say it's not just a mile marker though in some ways because you have like it's important to the Jedi in some ways that the clones have some humanity and individuality. And, like, right out, like, the first episode of the series, we're going to see a lot of how the Jedi sort of selectively deploy individuality with regard to the clones. Whereas I do think by the time you're in that

stormtrooper period, it's all about you're taking humans who are individuals and not sort of background and you're crushing that individuality out of them, and you're doing that by denying them names. And so it's interesting that, like, it's two ships

passing in some ways where you're trying to achieve the same level of dehumanization or similar levels of dehumanization but like from different directions well this feels in conversation with the first time we meet

the clones when Obi-Wan goes to the clone planet and meets all the Django Fets and like where the camera like moves above the cafeteria and all of them are eating in unison and

in like the exact same movement, except for one guy who's like, I can't get that scene out of my head where he's like looking around and I was like, oh, this is the dissenter or something. And it's just not. But it's a great shot. But it's a great shot. But I could be. We could find out. Couldn't we? Couldn't we? But it's just I feel like, again, I'm kind of like left to fill in the gaps a little where I go from all of all of these individual human beings eating in. almost exact unis, like rhythmic unison together to, like, they have different haircuts and they have their own names and things like that. I'm just like, how did we, like, who, when, when did, when does that sort of self? Post-Kamino, presumably, right? Camino, the comminans deliver drones or drones, hmm, clones, hmm, makes you think, clones that all look alike. Yeah.

And then, at some point after that, they're allowed to have different haircuts and encourage to take different names. And there are real answers for the stuff that we will get momentarily, which is why I'm not like, I'm trying. I'm not even, it hasn't even been, Battle of Genosis was a few months ago, question mark. Like, yeah, probably. So, like, they've been on their own, I don't know, it's just, it's a dear- Natalie, the wheels are coming off this so fast. You would not believe it. And you will not, like, by season two, you start discovering, like, clones start popping up in weird contexts that imply that, like, the minute you began deploying them, the whole thing began to fall the fucking.

apart. Totally. Like, yes, we are going to have stories about AWOL drones. We're going to have stories about drones. I said drones again. Clones that don't want to follow orders. I think it's important that they show up in the same scene with nose art because, again, it is about the ways in which self-expression are deployed in military contexts in order to maintain morale. And like, that is, I do think that this is a space where this storytelling team was doing something that they specifically wanted to do and not just sort of like, well, I think it would be a good idea if we, and maybe there is just this material. concern for them as making a show. It's probably better if we make one of them named Cody and one of them named Rex and one of them have a different name so that we can differentiate them when they're on screen, right? But I think that they are actively doing something that we'll continue to see for the next, you know, seven seasons. No, I'm here for it. I'm just like, it really makes you think. But I do, I do like this landing sequence where, like, they take the ground fire from the monastery and, like, the slats on the landing. ships like snap shut to bring the armor back into place and you have a cool moment where like they went from being in the air in the sky and like being able to see what's going around to they're just like entombed in these like coffin like drop ships and like the light is sort of burning red the ship's shaking as it goes through a base of maneuvers and then they land light goes green and everyone runs out into a complete complete chit show um it is a really bloody uh air

assault that they've landed into the clones are just shalacking them from above i don't know where these walkers the republic have came from so there's a vertical wall up to the the monastery and you're like that seems formidable and indeed it is except the old republic has walkers that can just walk up like in the old batman series uh it's like adam west just sort of going up this side of the wall on these walkers. I don't know where they came from. I also don't know what...

They just seem so much better than ATATs. Like, damn. Like, that walker just, like, climb that like a cat. They're low to the ground, which means they have a better center of gravity. They're just better. They're just better than AT80s. Yeah, I like the ATAT a lot.

Well, the Empire, though, rules through terror. They just want a thing that looks formidable more than they do. It's something that's effective. But, yeah, so really quickly, they handle these clones. We get a glimpse of Anakin being very showy in terms of

what a badass he is, and he is. But Asoka also showing that she's got some serious game and has Sky Guys back and can sort of exceed his expectations. They've taken the monastery. They're here to rescue the hutling.

Mission accomplished. They meet the sketchiest Doorman in Star Wars. They meet one of those droids, you know, the bug-eye droids? I don't know what they're called, but he's like, oh, I, you know, we were taken over by these battle droids. The hutling is in the basement, in the dungeon. Thank God you're here.

There's definitely no one else around that we need to worry about. And Anakin and Asoka go get the hutling. But obviously this whole thing is a trap. And this is where we meet Ventris. The two background details on Ventris. The first is, at this point, if you're watching this, having watched the Tartikovsky show, you would have seen Duku having recruited Ventris from a battle arena. She's in an arena with like a dozen other big, fucking tough monster dudes and beats the shit out of them.

And then more show up, and Duku is impressed. And so gives her lightsabers. And she continues to kick ass. She was someone who clearly had the force, had mastery over the force or had the use of the force from the moment she's on screen for the first time, but has not necessarily yet, I believe, trained with lightsabers. And yet, it is very good with them, you know, off the bat. The second thing is she starts, she first shows up in an art book for episode two. though in that art book it sounds like they're talking about

potential characters for episode one or episode one or episode two she's originally designed or her design is originally part of a set of potential like women Sith Sith lords who could have shown up instead of Mall in one or potentially not maybe instead of Duku

but alongside Duku or something else in two the kind of design and art team on Lucasfilm there are people there who are like we really want there to be like a cool lady Sith because that just hasn't happened yet and so that's kind of her origin

I believe it was Shane Bettenhausen who people might know from the games industry sent me a bunch of screenshots a few weeks ago about this while I was live tweeting attack of the clones and that art is just so good and like all the variations

on who she like where that design comes from originally are so good so people can try to look up Shane Bettenhausen messaging me on Twitter and you'll find the screen shots that's all uh they're great i find um ventriss's introduction is is there something in the uh in the earlier cartoon okay here it is ducu says you'll get your chance at revenge suit enough for what is ventriss's revenge i think it's about a defeat handed to her at the hand by the hands of of aniken um aniken beats

the shit out of her on Yavin 4 in that Clone War show. She is the person who he beats while drawing deeply on the dark side and tosses her off of a mountain, presumably to her death, apparently not to her death. So I suspect that that's about getting revenge on Anakin for that. Okay. Word. I was curious about that. I'm okay. Yeah. So, sorry, did you have something? No, no, no. All right. Yeah, so Ventress is watching all this and is poised to spring the

trap. Part of that trap is Duku showing up at Java. and being like, hey, I've uncovered the plot, the Jedi have hatched against you. And Jabba's like, gasp, shock. I demand proof. Duku walks in right after Obi-Wan. It's so funny. And how does Obi-Wan not sense, like, dark vibes in the neighborhood?

This is one of the first things you learn as a dark Jedi, is how to cloud your presence, It's 100%. Only one nose to the minute when Anakin leaves the planet, but can't be like, there's some stuff afoot here. That's because Anakin is so loud. Like, Anakin is just, like, really bad noise that you can never quite tune out. Next to that, everything else is just kind of like white noise.

You don't hear it. But Anakin is like a truck driving by. Makes sense. Second point. Sorry. Uh-huh. But Duke who is a mastermind, evil guy. very smart

very generous your being cannot figure out how to get a job of the hut on his side besides getting this weird camera phone

of Anakin putting his son into a backpack like that was fuck huts it's also it's also the fucking biggest

unforced error that happens I guess it's not in this conversation it's a later conversation so I'll save it for you know I'm just

to say it now When Ventress is like, they killed him. They killed the fucking the little guy. You didn't have to say that. You close off so many possibilities the second that happens. You could just say that they kidnapped him because at that point, you're coming from good faith. You think it's been kidnapped. You don't necessarily have to say that he's dead.

Because then if he shows up not dead, then it's clear you were fucking lying. So I think this is all stemming from the fact that this whole separatist mission operates on like just toxic work culture. And everyone is like, oh, things didn't go right. I better not own up to that. I will just tell some, like, fabulous lie and hope I can make it true before I, like, called the carpet. It starts the Duku being like, I have proof. Where is it? And Duku's like, it's on the way, big man.

Just a few minutes, don't you? Don't worry about it. But trust me, I know. You know, indirect to spec, I'm going to leave your palace. I'm going to come back in a few minutes with a, with a, with a, phone with a camera with a little video tablet and you'll see uh let's just run this again you'll see what i mean for sure we're getting it right now it's loading downloads on tattooing am i right yeah uh you all don't have you all have 5g yet a couple of things here the first thing is a question which is

i gestured at this before what do we think about the fact that job of the hut does not speak basic and we don't get subtitles which instead it's all translated through a droid through a like a c3PO adjacent model and it's not mistranslated but his dialogue is written to have kind of stuff either alighted or translated in intent

not literally because he'll often say someone's name that doesn't come through or he'll say something that's very clearly a borrowed basic right totally and then the motherfucker doesn't say Shlimo you know what I mean he'll say Duku and instead the guy will say

you know someone else da da da and that That's not, so I'm curious what you think about what is happening there in terms of meaning making that we have this crime lord figure who can't speak the language or who refuses to, question mark, speak the language of everybody else. What is the, what is the thing that's happening on screen there for, to us as the viewer? In a better world, prior to Duku, like, revealing that he's the one that captured the kid and everything like that, I had a hope that Jabba, was actually a wise was Jabba the wise

and was like this like he like this is his weight this and I felt like oh he's pitting Duku and the Jedi against each other they're fighting over Jabba it's like the two it's like the lover's quarrel

I'm going to let these two fight over me for my entertainment and I was like go ahead Jabba I love to watch you do this I love to watch you watch this The castle's in the sky you built. Oh, man, this is the part where Java's going to be awesome, right? I can't.

I was almost here. Oh, man. Java's going to get you. I've been waiting since episode one. In that world, is it that you think then that the non-basics speak, the non-English vocals, it's supposed to be a marker of, you're hoping it would be a marker of, like, wisdom or power because he's not stooping to using the same language as everybody else. Like, he's aware of the situation.

Like, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's his. choosing to speak in like a different language in order to not reveal his own and it's like he's talking about you he's very clearly talking about you but his translator is not going to like let let you in on everything do you know what I mean where totally you know when you like I don't know I'm multilingual I talk shit in other languages all the time and like you know some people don't know that. And, like, that's kind of the idealized version of this for me, but I don't think that's what they handed to me. Yeah. Yeah. I'm always skeptical when stuff like this pops up because English audiences, you know, the Anglophone audiences have very

particular relationships with foreignness and with certain types of speech in terms of it representing, you know, believability, credibility or, you know, likability or, you know, likeability or trustworthiness, stuff like that. And so it's interesting for me to see this happen for all the reasons we already said. So we don't need to belabor it. But I'm curious to see how that continues because, again, we will get a hut in this movie who speaks not just English, but a very particular mode of English. So do Jabba the Hut speak English in the original chilies at all, though?

No, definitely not. So, like, again, they're in that. Like, they have to do that. But I'm even curious about what we take from Lucas doing that to begin with. Do you know what I mean? Oh, sure, sure, yeah. Bip Fortuna, of course, was Jabba's, the male Twilac with the rose, was the kind of translator. I think this all sounds from the fact that you were setting up the gag of C-3PO translating Jaba's dire announcements into C-3PO's, you know, like when he reveals Java sounds a certain way, and he sounds kind of ha-ha-ha-amused, and C-3-Po is like, he sentenced you to die in the pit of the mighty Sarlac.

there's like kind of a oh shit one ironic twist but it does kind of paint you into this corner of like jaba just never speaks basic even though everything works what does and so you end up in this position of uh you know he becomes the um exotic warlord type figure that you can't fully understand you're always talking through this interlocular um it's it's not great it's not great two other two other quick things on in this and this in this area of the film. One is we got our first taste of like droid humor, droids talking to battle droids talking to each other. I forget even what the joke is. Oh, it's the one who's like peeking down over the tall mountain and is trying to like get a shot at them and then gets like knocked over and falls down. We're going to get a lot more of battle droid humor going forward. A lot of Roger Rogers said in different sub like slightly different voices. And I kind of like the battle droids. I think I'm okay with them. As far as comic relief characters go, they're fine.

The battle droids. It's a joy. Why do the comic relief characters have to be so disposable? Because that way you could do physical comedy with them. That's why they're funny. They're vaguely aware of how fucked they are. And like the humor is the humor is the droids are deeply fatalist in part. I like that.

They're kind of lazy because they know it doesn't really matter. They know they kind of suck their jobs, but they're there to die. So relatable. Like, they don't really go the extra mile, because it's like, I'm just going to get... Well, and they haven't been indoctrinated. They're not the clones. They weren't raised from birth to love the Republic or to love the separatists. They're just like, I guess we're out here now.

They're going to shoot at those motherfuckers. They fell off coat rack five minutes ago. Yes. Exactly. One thing I did want to call out here is that while they are on their way to rescue Java's kid, Assoca and Anakin do have their first real conversation where they sort of like he asks why is she so like gung-ho why what is she kind of like why is she always uh kind of a leaven why is she what is she always trying to prove and he sort of expects it it's going to be her trying to just show off like her power explore her prowess but instead she kind of owns up to the fact that she does know she's young uh and she's trying to prove that she belongs here as a past Padawan and as his Padawan. Like he's, you know, there's already the implication that Anakin's already been sort of

marked as a special Jedi. And so, Asoka kind of owns up to the fact that she is trying a little bit harder than maybe she should because she is dealing with a bit of imposter syndrome over this situation she finds herself in. And Attigan handles this really well where he kind, like, he empathizes with it. He shares his own experiences. and it's another of these scenes where you're like, man, Anakin's a good guy.

Like, I like Anakin. Like, Anakin is relatable and doing the job the prequels did it. Yeah. Already. Yeah. This is, like, this is why people would like him and why it would be a shock to see him turn bad, whereas attacking the clones is like,

this kid's no fucking good. Let's just, let's get rid of him now. To that point, one of my favorite things about this set of sequences is the fact that while she will open up, well, they can talk about certain things. There's one thing he will not talk about throughout this entire middle part of the film, which is why he doesn't like huts and why he doesn't want to go back.

Why Tatooine is not such a glowing reminder of home, a place he's excited to go back to. He will not open up about that stuff with her. And that is like where the like all of the hut hate comes from is he grew up as a slave on a slave planet run by the huts. and I love that there is this distance between them still it's such a quiet thing that they don't they don't over call attention to it he's not ever model he's not like I can't yet tell her about my hatred of the huts

because of my time is a slave boy on tattooing but it's there and he further can't talk about it because it's connected to the thing he did that nobody can find out about like the thing the thing that could open the door to him healing over this is tied to the fact that there's something he's carrying around that he does not think he can come back from fully and all yeah yeah no i mean it's very it would be very un jedi of him to like wax on about like the pain he feels about his homeland like that would and especially if he's now

taking this role as like teacher mentor to a young patawan who's like very you know j Jedi oriented in terms of like her attitude and mindset like that i could he's not trying to be cool teacher he's not trying to be like you know they told you don't form attachments but let me tell you about this one attached my phone it was with my mom and she died and I killed like 38 people about that men women and children slaughtered them like animals I'm a real one you can come to me for your problems then I got married don't tell anyone then I got a secret married to a senator she's gonna figure out though she saw the way they looked at each other through the virtual thing she saw that oh yeah

so the ambush has sprung and obviously as we're used to saying clone troopers just get worked but a really interesting thing happens here that I am curious what people's interpretation of it is so ventress has cleaned house killed basically all the clone troopers except at Rex rex sort of got knocked out but he tries to he tries to assassinate ventress basically as She, you know, moves into the monastery. And she disarms him. And then she does the fucking Jedi mind trick to make him call Anakin and be like, yo, you need to come up here.

And, you know, things are cool. We're ready to roll. And so he does it. He radios Anakin. And he says, Anakin, you need to, you know, come up here. We're ready to, we're ready to go. and immediately Anakin realizes

Rex just call me Anakin and Rex doesn't do that and I'm curious what you think happened here because for me this feels like are the clones are susceptible to force control as people think

my reading of this is Rex deceived her and found a way to subvert her order in a way that we get his message across well at the very least complying with her and not getting killed but maybe he's never under control at all but nevertheless to me there's some sort of interpretive thing that happens here that he sends the message in such a way

that Anakin's going to be on full alert and he knows something's gone wrong and this is your first intimation that like yo the clones and the force it's not as simple as maybe you thought yeah this scene definitely stood out to me because I was like I because in the earlier movies they were like like, oh, you can't force mind someone who's weak minded. And I was like, can the clones be force-minded? I thought that they couldn't because I think that if you were a Jedi person and you

were going to put in an order for a bunch of people to fight in a war, you'd be like, not that one. Make sure they can't do that one. Make sure their minds are strong. Don't worry about it. Just, yeah, hit the lab. Take care of it for us. I mean, this will get back to a big question as to like who made the order, who set up the, like, rules of what they were looking for, which does give us an opportunity to quickly correct something, or not even a correction. But we do know who picked Django Fet. Django Fet was not picked by Cepha Diaz who made the order originally. Django Fett was picked by Count Duku, aka Darth Taranus, which is the name that's used in a sequence.

But we only hear Darth Taranis twice in that movie. It's once is when he picks the – Django says a man named Tyrannis. is who hired me. At the very end of Attack of the Clones, Palpatine Sidious meets Duku and says, ah, Lord Tyrannis, you did. I just knew it was him. I knew that, I knew.

Which probably means also picked, was able to deliver the specifications. And so if one of those things was can't really be force controlled, not your mind controlled, then, yeah, we're seeing the first steps of that now. That's the long game, isn't it? Could be. There's something else I lied to to things.

and I shouldn't have because there's one key thing the ambush by Ventress unfolds in two stages first she drives everyone inside and then she does this final assault but the way she does the first part of the ambush

the initial assault is right after Anakin is wedging that fucking huttling inside a backpack to prepare to go off to tattooing that's where Ventress is there with the phone TMZing the entire thing

and Anakin is like boy I hate huts God let me tell you how much I fucking hate huts They're the worst. They stink. They're stupid. Oh, they smell like doo-do and I hope they all die. I hope Java especially. Fuck that guy.

And she's like, cool. Click and sends this clearly out-of-context conversation to Java. And Jabba's like, people know like me. And he's just appalled that like anyone that speak that way about a hut, especially Jabba the Wise. Especially a former slave. Mighty Java. So do you think Jabba knew it was like Anakin won that pod race that time?

Or do you think that's like such small potatoes? Does this guy seem like a java falls a lot of way in the old memory bank? I guess not. In my heart. He was at that race though. He was at that race. He knew that that guy had beef with a child. For him it was Tuesday.

Didn't he get drunk and like, I'm pretty sure. Did he fall asleep at some point during the race? He might have. Probably. I feel like... You think of Rob watching Attack of the Clones. He had a big dinner that day. I ate so many slugs that day.

Ten years ago, maybe he was a different person. He was like really following the scene. You know what I mean? He was checking the updates every day. He was on the blogs. It was a different situation just generally with pod racing. It's hard to be king. So he remembers those days fondly, but not the specifics.

You know, red cup in his hands every day. Um, I just want to say something while we're here on Java and his child, I'm, and I'm probably going to say this again in this podcast because it's a Clone Wars podcast. I'm allowing myself to say this multiple times, but if I'm ever watching a different Star Wars property and I'm enjoying myself and I'm, I'm, you know, cozy and I'm understanding the stakes, and I'm expected to care about Jabba's middle-aged son just out and about in. the Star Wars universe, I'm, I'm done. I'm not doing it.

You can't bring this one back. That's Allie's, that's Allie's hang up the lightsaber moment. Everyone has one. Everyone has the moment that they hang up the lightsaber. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm not trying to see Punky come back. You know, Allie? I mean, the Obi-Wat show is coming, right?

The Obi-Wan show is coming. It's not unheard of them. What if Obi-Wan and Punky have to journey the stars together? There is at least one episode where this baby's going to show up. I don't know what the context is. I don't know. Maybe it's just in the background. The Clone Wars is fine, but, you know, we're in 2021 now.

Yeah, yeah. If I'm watching the Mandalorian season three and Punky comes through, I'm going to be upset. I know that about myself. Yeah. I appreciate that. And you're right. You won't be like, but I know where Punky came from originally. which was

The Clone Wars movie Yeah The Clone Wars movie What's the name of this planet again I've already forgotten the name of this Taft Are we still on Teth? Teth

Teth Teth I just wanted to note One quick thing about it I love that it gets I love that it becomes night on Teth I'm trying to remember The last sequence in

I guess like when we were on Tatooine in episode one We got a day night Like thing And we're like oh yeah It's daytime now it's night time But like hey they arrive there And the sun is like sort of setting

and everything's this kind of beautiful pink and gold. And then by the end of it, it's night time. And it's like a small detail and a cheap way to reuse assets and make it look like good again in a different way. But I love seeing... Totally. That stuff is really cool. And I think that is using what they have pretty well

to get a different feel for their big set pieces. We get the same thing on Tantuan, right? We get a day-rise sunset and that night scene. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. you're totally right yeah so Obi-Wam

was going to go help out Anakin he does he arrives in the middle of this with a small task force Anakin and Asoka are like

we need to get Anakin keeps being like I want to kick these guys asses and help my clone friends and Asoka and they get into this again we are back

to this thing that we saw in attack of the clones a mandate argument where like they both have different interpretations of what their orders are.

And both definitions are kind of self-serving for what they want to do. But Asoka, I think, has the right of it. She's like, no, our mandate is to seal up this huddle line. It's like, everything else is secondary. This entire operation is happening so we get this fucking baby back to Jabba. And Anakin's like, well, no,

they didn't say we couldn't stay here and fight a full-scale battle until we beat Ventress and get all the clones out safely. And Assoc is like, that is not what our orders are. dude we gotta we gotta go but that's classic aniken he wants to help the people in a circle he wants to help the people he sees he sees their suffering when fucking padmay gets yeated off the ship and he's about to jump out after her he has to be talked down like he's

constantly at odds with what his orders are he go he his orders were to like stay on that planet one time and he went and picked up obi one went to go save oban cano and he it was good that he did that in the end probably but i'm curious to see how asoka's okay so ianagan has so far been pitted as he defies orders but it ends up being for the better anyway so if osoka's like i'm following the orders and it's better, like, I'm just curious to where that dynamic goes. If, like, Asoka is now the new fresh face who's like the contrarian, the combat, like, combative to Anakin's normal, like, I'm just interested to see where that goes. That's my piece. Thank you. Fair.

It's interesting. Sorry, just there's one more thing. Because, like, it's an interesting foil, especially in this mission, because, like, Anakin is getting a really bad deal here. There's, like, a specific moment, and I wrote it down, and I, Obi-Wan says, Anakin's experience with the hut should help. And I wrote it down in all caps, and then I wrote help in red letters, folded in italics. Because, like, what the fuck is wrong with you? How is that, like, yeah, oh, yep, his mom grew up there.

and he was a slave on that planet. To know the hans is to love them. Yeah. Obi-Wan to the point was like this Anikin's slave dude isn't shit. Like he knows Anakin's childhood. He was there. He was on the ship looking at the flood. But he was on the ship the whole time.

He didn't see that shit himself. It's just a very, like the jet, I just. That's why they shouldn't have left him on the ship. Yeah. I said it was a waste to leave Obi-Wan-Kinobie on that. ship. He should have been out there on the street. Just one pediatric therapist, I think.

It really helped the Jedi out a lot. A lot, a lot. So, yeah, so I think we do have that tension of Asoka can also go rogue a little bit when she thinks things need to be done, but also has the big picture. And Attica, very quick to tunnel vision. But Asoka does carry the day. There's a great line

She's like This hut is turning Every shade of green But the one he's supposed to be We need to go And right as they're having this argument It's either here or Maybe they have a couple arguments about this

But they're standing on the rear Landing platform of the monastery And the huttling Goes ah And points And they look And there's another There's another landing day with a ship

waiting there. And Assook's like, hey, way to go, little hutling. And I kind of love the baby hut. The baby hut's kind of like, hey, don't worry about it. It gives her kind of a wave. It's kind of cute. I like that. I'm all right with this hot. I don't need it to be the center point of drama, but I'm all right with his little baby slug hut. It's kind of good. He can hang. Yeah. Chill, can hang. He's sick. Also, we get. So just a close. this loop they go to the platform and we do get a great comedy bit of that caretaker

that caretaker droids been on this whole thing trying to bear face his way out of this where he's like oh it's so good you're here oh my god I just I fled here when the battle droids came back out and I was just getting ready to Lee

you know so terrified at this point the battle droid comes down the stairs and is like sir where do you want me to put this They have to, they kill everyone there Including the caretaker droid The so-called caretaker droid I have a theory Yeah

What if Because of baby hutlings Experience with Asoka And Anakin Who maybe the huddling Finds out later that The huddling knows that Anakin is from Tatooine

Right And maybe the huddling will grow up and become the new huddling the hut of the town, you know, and will stop slavery for everyone because he's. Because he saw, he met Anakin and Anakin saved his life. and gave him medication when he needed it. And maybe things will change on Tatooine in Obi-Wan Kenobi the series. I don't know. I have faith. Natistadl is here to teach Alexander the Hut how to be a wise hut.

And it's going to work. He just needs a good model, good talking to, some moral instruction. Will you still hang up your lightsaber if that's the hutling's return? We know it isn't because we know that Jabba the Hut is still in control. Always in motion is the future, Austin. When the, when the Obi-Wan series happens. What if he killed Java? We don't know if the Hutley died.

He's a usurper. No, we know who kills Java. Leia kills Java. Chokes him to death. Okay, I need a re-watch. It works out. I don't know where where punky is. Who replaces Java?

I don't love the answers. we get, but maybe ultimately a little huddling will come. Like, look, the current direction of Star Wars universe is everybody's getting a show. So, little pumpernickel where the fuck his name is, is like surely the adventures of Pumpernickle, the Hutt, that series is coming. I can't wait for a podcast about it. I'm just saying, don't give up on him yet, you know?

Hey, I have a question about a scene. Why doesn't Obi-Wan ever just try to call Anakin? Because they pass each other like three times in this movie, like seconds apart. Including Obi-Wan lands on this fucking planet just as they're basically leaving. Because Obi-Wan's fake in the force shit. Obi-Wan's like, oh, I know he's here. I know it. I can feel him.

He's somewhere. And then the instant Anakin's off the planet, he's like, oh, no, I felt that. I know you felt that venturous. I felt it too. I mean, speaking of Ventris feeling. I think that's why Obi-Wan's distracted here. There's clearly a history. He has some stuff on his mind.

He's seeing this lady, you know, not really think about Antiquette too much. The two of them do not meet in the Tarnikovsky series, Assas Ventris and Obi-War. but you would not know that by their banter and flirting. They have a story that's yet to be written. Oh, yeah. Uh-huh. Do we get into that? Do we see their backstory or are they just flirt more?

I think they just flirt more. Okay. But it's all really incriminating. It's all extremely incriminating. Yeah. She takes off her skirt during this fight. She does do that. Yeah.

And uses it as like a cloak attack. Yeah. It's an offensive undressing and she's a master warrior. She disarms him She shouldn't have him dead to rights And doesn't finish the job She does She's good at that

She's good at it And I feel like maybe She doesn't kill him on purpose Because she enjoys the process Of dueling with someone as attractive And fun to fight As Obi-Wan Kenobi She likes the banter

Maybe She does She does She's actually a different slight She's out to avenge Like that's just put that out there too Like maybe there's You know

Like Didn't call her back Turns out you You thought you were like The main squeeze But maybe not Maybe there's a princess Somewhere

Stashed across the galaxy And when you learned You know You just had to boil that rabbit Here's the thing with the Sith Is that passion Leads to strength It's true

Thank you So you keep Obi-Wan a lot Around You feel very strong feelings for him and you know you get stronger in the process well that's actually Obi-won strategy during this fight he just nags her like the whole time he's like I don't even fucking know what he says but he's like he's saying shit like you're angry aren't you I don't know darling yeah he does straight up call her darling and and if

she's a Sith then her getting angry makes her more powerful. And he loves it. I'm just saying the vibes are weird. I think the vibes are right. I think the vibes are right on track. I'm loving these vibes. Vives are on.

It's fun. Let all we want to have some vibes. You know? Let all we want to have some vibes. And that's why he can't call Ackin. Because there can't be a phone in sight. You're right. It's true.

Uh-huh. 100%. Just a quick note, I like that she has two lightsabers that can combine into one double-sided lightsaber. She's like, Darth Mal Who? I'm on this. So as I was watching this, my brother comes in the room and was like, how come he says nothing. He watches it for like a minute or two as the fight sequence is going on. And then he says, how come the Sith get all the cool lightsabers and the Jedi get whack ones?

That's true. I am also asking that. Traditionalists versus, you know what I mean? Like the Sith are all about experimentation, all about trying new shit. The Jedi are very reactionary. They are very conservative. They really believe in the old ways. I say that, but like, you know, Assoca does fight with like a cool backwards style.

But that's her, that's not the lightsaber. That's her fighting style. No, but that's an official style. That's like an official style she learned from Jedi. But the lightsaber itself. isn't distinct in that same way in the way that

ventriss's lightsaber is lightsaber but make it design yeah add some aesthetic to it for fucking god's sakes I've seen the lightsabers out there they look like shit give us just keep going go back and listen to the Q&A episode

you know we don't like them so the thing is they got to get this hot to a doctor They're going to try to get them to one of the cruisers that just showed up with Obi-Wan Not so much. Why is the hut sick? We don't know. He's a little baby.

Babies get sick. He's a slug. He's his father. Climate controlled. And was kidnapped, taken away by, from, yeah, from a jail cell. And left on a cement floor. God knows how long. I would be sick.

I figured it was like another long game from Duku where he poisoned the little baby. baby. And so that once Anna can, if, like, if all else fails, once Anakin delivers the kid, the kid's going to, you know, die on Java. You just keep inventing better plots for the villains of the series where you're like, what if, what if this guy didn't suck? Like, what if there were just a little competence here? Yeah, I think that's actually a really good idea.

I think Duku, if he had it to rerack, Duku'd be like, maybe I should have put a slow acting poison in the hotline. Unfortunately, Dr. Dukk couldn't have anticipated Dr. Droid, the best character in this movie, who is not a droid really, but a projection of a droid in an automated... It's WebMD, like, downloaded onto your ship. It's an encyclopedia. If WebMD, though, were like the spirit of a doctor who, like, treats criminals who can't go to real hospitals for... Dead-ass.

Like, that droid has... He has strong underworld, like... He's a veterinarian. He's a veterinarian. Yeah, she's actually a veterinarian. You don't want pills? Okay. These are for a horse, but they should work and cut them in half.

These deliveries are so good. It's so dry and so, like, to the point, I love it so much. The bit where he's like, if you have any problems, you should call an actual doctor. That killed me. He's great. My favorite thing of this is the Natalie version of this, where this is Duke's master plan of poisoning Jabba's son, and then the cure for this poison is an altoyed.

But that would be, I mean, yeah, it perfectly fits in. It's Duke who's thinking so far ahead in the long game. He's not in the particulars, unfortunately. Yeah, he's not thinking about over the counter. He forgot about a set of menophenyphins. He forgot about the Tylenol on deck. I just need to lower that fever, yeah. Well, if this thing was so effective, though,

it is a shame they had to try to make that landing in the middle of combat aboard that cruiser and got all those clones killed when they lower the shield around the hangar and immediately a bunch of droid ships just like kamikaze it instantly and kill everyone there. It's rough.

I was like, I was half expected. for that whole cruiser to just blow up. And Anakin was just like, well, can't go over that way. Turn around. You turn. It's just like completely nonchalantly. I was like, people just died on that ship. That ship is going to blow.

Just clones. They're just clones. And probably a few recruits who are in command. Don't worry about them. There's a wall on Corsat, someone with their names on it. It's fine. So we get to tattooing. and we get to

speaking of walls Asoka tries to get Anakin talk a little bit about his feelings returning to tattooing they are not great let us say and it's a very funny thing

about this movie very soon after the line I think takes on an extra resonance he sort of says to himself as they're approaching the planet I swear to myself I'd never return here

and imagine how shitty that is and the real like now you are fully fate's plaything where you went back here to save your mom didn't arrive in time just got there in time for it to die in your arms then you rage out because you're super empowered like teenager uh before you can really like before you can stop yourself or even think better of it or maybe you did actually implies he actively chose to kill

everyone in this in this camp and he's like boy that was bad i shouldn't i shouldn't have done that I feel weird about it. He leaves. He's like, I'm never going back there. We're like three weeks later. Yeah, that's like unbelievable to me. Like that, I mean, he keeps his cool pretty well, all said. Like, he comes back and he's like.

He doesn't slaughter a single child, so on screen anyway. This is our first vision of the, like, the tortured Anakin that we wanted, though, right? Like, this is really the only time that we see him kind of. struggling with his expression about this stuff. You know, we never get to regret with it, obviously. But there is a moment of like, oh, fuck, I'm here, which I appreciate at least. I'm surprised it took this long in the movie to get tortured Anakin. Yeah.

Yeah. They know they have a lot of runway. That's true. They have 100 episodes who it's already paid for. Yeah. And so, yeah. And Attack of the Clones tried to do that. but never did successfully. Yeah, I bet they were like, we can't do that shit again. We have to give you likable Anakin first.

We really have to sell you him as someone who people would enjoy the presence of. And so that's interesting. That makes sense. So, yeah, so Jabba, though, is not expecting the Jedi to show up with his kid. He is expecting the Jedi are in on this plot. Duku has volunteered to kill the Jedi. He sends out Assassin. droids that we've not really met yet. But first, they're pilots. And they fly really cool

Cylon-style ships around to ambush Anakin. But the main thing is, Anakin and Isocanau are doing a job for a hut that no longer wants them to be doing this job. He's already turned on them. And so we cut to Corrassan. And Padmey wanders into the middle of a phone call, basically, the Palpatine is having about this whole situation. And we get to... get, and this is going to be a motif, an example of Palpatine framing things in interesting ways. He tells Padme, I'm afraid the Jedi's efforts to strike a secret treaty with the Huts have gone terribly wrong.

And it's like, oh, it's the Jedi's plans to strike the secret treaty. Like, we saw him earlier in his movie where Jedi were like, I don't know about this, and he was like, you've got to do it. There's no choice. We just got to just got to make this thing happen right now. And now Pan May walks in and she's nervous about what's going on, knows the Anakin's involved in somehow. And Palpatine's media like, you know, those Jedi, just making a hash of it again.

Yeah. And specifically, I want to say, uses information that Palpatine shouldn't have because he just got all the information he's supposed to have had from Obi-Wan and Yoda a second ago. and he's talking about some shit that he would only know through Duku but the speed with which he like switches to that mode is very impressive honestly

because like Yoda is on the other side of a door and he's already like I can spin this my way yeah and so Padme is like I've got to sort this out and so she goes to Grim Fandango's Rubikava she's got to sorry she's like I'm going to sort this out

there's a hut crime Lord here on Corrassan. He's part of Jabba's family. I'll go talk to him. I need to go to the Corrassan Underworld. And we get a jazzy jizz track. That's what jazz is in Star Wars. It's our first jiz. It's our first jiz.

Oh, man. It's our first jiz. Oh, it feels so good. We get beautiful Art Deco Art Deco Corraceant. We got a jiz band playing and we got a club. We got a night time, a nightclub, jazz jizz scene. It's jizzy in here.

that was one of the titles we didn't go with was it's jizzy and is it jizzian here or is that just me um who wants to talk about zero the hut i can't i couldn't possibly so i mean the hut cartel i think we've always wondered what are the other huts like yeah is this does this meet everything you imagined here is the the note that i think i sent y'all days ago which I would say if I hadn't

also researched it I would say is maybe too generous but what I said was unfortunately whatever thing

as I liked came adjacent to a character whose voice is a cut rate Truman Capote impression which is a

reference I don't think even plays with the modern audience so it can really only be understood

by our move as being weirdly homophobic what were your notes Rob? My notes were just Gay Cartman Yeah

This character is doing A Truman Capote impression Which is something that Lucas Specifically stepped in and asked for Of course he did So fucking weird For people It's so fucking weird

The team The production team Loves this character so much They were excited to have him Return in future episodes So get ready for that. Same voice actor?

I believe so. This is this character. And the thing is, Truman Capote is a real person who really did have a voice quite like this, if not exactly like this. This person I think does not do

the credit to it. To Truman Capote, who like is a remarkably charming and interesting person in interview and stuff. He's urbane. Like, there's an affected voice, but it's also incredibly urbane.

And witty, like, every reference Seymour Hoffman at one point during this movie. But, like, if you want to see someone channeling Capote, watch the biopic he did. Like, it's good. It's a good movie, too. Yes. It totally is. It's a great film. And so, like, yeah, the thing to know about Truman Capote is, Truman Capote is from Louisiana, grew up in Alabama.

Then moves to New York becomes a fiction writer and a nonfiction writer. It writes in Cold Blood, which is, like, Like, you know, one of the de facto books of the kind of new journalism movement is the sort of person who goes on, you know, talk shows of the 60s and 70s to, you know, kind of, you know, hold court a little bit. Is a slower speaker than Zero is? Is a more considered speaker than Zero the Hut is? And is not an evil crime lord is one thing, right? and is, of course, throughout his life, parodied Capote is, you know, his voice becomes a stand-in for queer characters throughout Hollywood and television, you know, productions, and is often used as a cheap, quick joke to make fun of gayness more broadly. And so to deploy it here, and then also to deploy it not with a similarly urban, like, this is not like, oh, wow, there's a Jedi who is styled after Truman Capote.

some sort of like Jedi librarian or something. It is a super sleazy, backstabbing crime lord who is like low even for a hut, for a hut cartel leader. Fucking sucks. The first thing that we see, Zero do, is being giddy over the ability or over the opportunity to kill one of his most loyal and strongest servants, a bounty hunter who has failed him for the first time and sends him to die. So, like, if you're going to deploy a voice that has the, that refers to a real human who has, who is like a real, not only a real person, but a real person whose own voice has been used to mock queer people like the person whose voice it belonged to, you got to fucking do better than this.

You can't come out swinging with, let's use the voice of this cool person for a fucking slime ball and get to leverage all of the homophobia that goes with it. And it sucks. Also, Rob is right. Absent of knowing who Truman Capote is, it does just sound like stereotypical, quote-unquote, gay Cartman voice. And it sucks that he said that because for the rest of the movie, it's all I could hear. Well, and because he's a dumbass in the way Cartman is.

And like this is why I can't, the cadences don't fit Capote. They fit Cartman. The whining, the whinging, the whinging, the, Just everything about them. Also, um, this is a hut that at the very least appears to be dressing in drag.

Um, set aside the fact the hut is purple with phosphorescent, um, like lines traced on them. I don't know if that's how huts to just be with like, you know, okay, there, like some huts have bioluminescence. Maybe I would buy that. But it does kind of feel like this is a hut that, you know,

Per Nettel do, this is a hot with an aesthetic. And also is wearing, I think, like, a flower in, well, it's not hair, but it would be where hair would be. Kind of a feathered, uh, like a flapper. It's like a flapper. Yeah, it's like a flapper. Flapper is right. Yeah. Yeah, totally.

I mean, all of the things in conjunction with each other, I think, just make it extremely damning. and, like, just, this is not the, like, I don't know. If George Lucas is approaching it as, like, homage, it absolutely is not fucking landing. It's just, it's so deeply uncomfortable. And just, it's such a caricatur of, like, there's nothing, I don't know, there's nothing substantial here to, like, it's just, it's, Too bad. Yeah. It's definitely a point at the movie where you're like, oh, we're doing this now.

I didn't realize that I was going to be doing this today and I don't really want to. I'm trying to just watch Star Wars. There's only 25 minutes left in this movie. Can we just not introduce this? We had to. We had to introduce this now? Okay. I do have one thing to say, which is that I, shout out to C-3PO, who is like,

I don't go to this part of town. and shout out to C3PO's Twitter who tweets constantly about how we need queer bars that aren't bars queer people should have quiet places to hang out That is 100% C3PO Shout to C3PO The actual representation I need in Star Wars

No yeah I think the thing I'm gonna add just a little bit here from Wikipedia That adds to the like they didn't know what the fuck they were doing Following the release of the Clone Wars films Dave Filoni commented during an interview with MTV News that Zero's sexuality was, quote, ambiguous, leading media to speculate whether Zero was the first LGBT alien in the Star Wars franchise.

Faloni stated, however, that Zero was biologically asexual. However, this was later contradicted when Lucasfilm Story Group Pablo Hidalgo revealed at the Celebration Anaheim event that Huts have separate sexes and canon, no longer being hermaphroditic as they were in the Star Wars Legends continuity. Just a lot happening. I love representation. I mean, obviously, he can't be gay because Hots notoriously reproduce asexual. You've seen Jurassic Park.

They're kind of like that. They're kind of like that. Oh, wait, sorry, no. Correction, that's not true anymore. That's only true in legends in the legends canon. It's a legend that Hutz are hermaphroditic. It's not true. Now that Huts have sexuality, who can say whether or not Zero's gay?

Zero's going to be a prize this year. Put Zero on the fucking way. Put him in the brain. The thing is, like, imagine the version of Zero who has this look and who is not the fucking scumbag asshole that this character is, like, I am fine with there being a hut who has flowers in their hair and who... Truman Capotee Hut is not a bad idea. No, it's sick. Truman Capote Hut would be like a sick writer hut who doesn't want to deal with the crime lord shit. That's a dope.

Okay, I'm in. Let's go. Unfortunately, not zero. Actually, just imagine how effective it would be where, like, Zero, because he is a nonconformist, is the smarter, way more competent HUD who, like, is holding his entire fucking thing together. And the only way he can wield that power is in the shadows, and, like, behind Java's back. And, like, this is his play. Like, that's a, that's a, that's a, like, a tragic, like, here comes Padme, like, just walking to the middle of this plot that was going to work. And, like, it gets all fucked up.

but instead, no, he's gay Cartman, and he's just, he's, he's, he's terrible. Also, again, the specific is he was not even supposed to be speaking English or basic. He was supposed to be speaking how he's into a microphone, which would then translate his speech into English. But, uh, apparently that, that idea was dropped because younger audience, because producers thought younger audiences wouldn't understand that there was a translation device, which is the most stupid, shit. But they're going to get Truman Capote. They're going to get Truman Capote out of this. I guarantee I'm putting my name on that. My name is George Lucas.

See, this is the same shit when you worship Spielberg and you're like, Animaniacs could pull this off. And it's like, but you're not being animaniacs, George. You never did. Totally. Totally. I mean, you have to remember, George Lucas is someone who names a planet in this world after John

Stort. So like, that's the person we're dealing with here. What? Oh, yeah, you know about Stu John, the homeworld of Obi-Wan Kenobi? You know what? I don't want this shit. Oh, my God. How many more episodes of this series are there? It's George's world.

I think you said 100. It's George's world. We're just living in it. Yeah. We're just living in it. It's true. Like, there is a direct line from George hired all of his friends to be the Jedi in attack of the clones in that battle to now we have the John Stewart planet and Gay Cartman, and it's just, it's all terrible.

And also, none of this is well plotted, because let's walk through what happens real quick. Padmey walks in, she's like, hey, it's coming to my attention that you think the Jedi are behind the kidnapping and puttling. And Zero is like, you got to go. Like, fuck off. Like, no, I don't care about this. Like, you got it wrong, please leave. But then instead of letting her leave, he takes a prisoner. But doesn't actually...

If he lets her leave, it's done. Yeah, it's done. Yeah. But instead, he's like, no, we can't. She's too close to the truth. So he holds her prisoner in a big old cage. With lots of holes. Yeah, lots of holes.

So then she gets loose while he's on the phone with Duku being like, oh my God, Pan makes here. Pat makes here right now. What do I do? You said to text? There's that texting in Star Wars? He's in full Trade Federation

mode where he's like You didn't say this was going to happen and how Padme Amadal is here And so Padmay hears

him being like She just can't find out About the way We kidnapped John the son We're all hell's gonna break loose And she's like Whoa they kidnapped

He couldn't go into a different room He couldn't go into a bedroom He couldn't go into a hallway You know what I mean You were to take a call like this Don't do it on your throat throne. He's basically on a stage.

He's on the stage in the open bar area. It's a music club. The Jizz players are playing. They're still there. They're fucking heard it. Did you hear that? He fucking woo- I'm going to hit my bag of a fucking ducu.

So she hears it. And Zira's like, oh no. Take your prisoner but harder. You better this time. They take her back. They take her back. to the prison cage. You know what I mean.

I would like to call out a Star Wars moment. Yeah. Please. Star Wars moment happened where a female character is her costuming is stripped slightly less to her to be more hot. Just a little bit more hot. It's true. Oh, what happens here? As she's escaping the first holy cage, the Troy.

Not in the sanctified consecrated sense, but in as many holes. The droid reaches out after. Also, she doesn't bother to grab his gun, I noticed. But as she's leaving the cage, as she's passing through, the droid reaches out and clamps onto her cape. And there's like a struggle that lasts a little too long, in my opinion. It's a little overdone. It's like, we got it. Okay, move on.

He rips the cape off, and now her, like, hot little outfit is on, is just better viewed, I guess. I don't really get, like, it wasn't, like, the crop top reveal of attack of the clones. But it was just like, let's take the cape. I don't know what's with this movie in capes. I don't know. I don't know. But, like, she also has a second thing that must come off, right? Because she has, like, the hood and, like, what do you call that when it comes just like a cowl, I guess?

yeah like it's not quite a mask and that gets pulled off at some point too it just comes with the cape it does no she gets pushed later and it comes off second twice I don't know but it's not even I don't know at least give her a crop top again if you're gonna be I just like it just didn't even go far enough fucking ventress took off her skirt like do you think they did all of this just because when they see Padme later and she's like standing to the side and you can see

how fucking jack she is you know let's take the cape off to get the Padmae booty shot later when she's on the phone with Ann again we need to see that hourglass come through

so she's taken prisoner again her phone rings and she this bit does make me laugh she's like oh no whatever you guys do

don't answer that phone please don't answer that phone please do not oh no it would be so bad if you answered that phone. I'm begging you. Just don't. And like the battle droid is like, I'm going to answer this phone.

Well, the battle droid's like, what is it? I don't know. Right. She's like, don't touch it or something. And they're like, boop. And three PO's there. And he's like, hey, what's up? Well, that's not how 3PO rolls.

But, like, 3PO is like, Mistress Padmay, what's going on? What's, what's is up? Yeah. And the battle droids like, ah, what's this? And 3PO, the hero of this movie doesn't even smartest character may be in Star Wars

to date, immediately infers a whole lot from this one moment of like, you know, battle droids just picked up. Battle droids just picked up Padmey's phone. That doesn't seem right. I know where she is. I know where she went. She told me. So... Oh, Padme also yells it out.

Okay, so... She's like, I'm at fucking Zero's house. Come get me. Come get me. Come pick me up, Mom. By way The vibes are off Pick me up 3PO's like I'm gonna talk to the clone army

And the Jai And we're gonna get this It's gonna be fine Yeah As a note They did get Anthony Daniels to do 3PO here They did get Sam Jackson to do

To do Mace Wind do They did get Christopher Leita Duku Those are not the people Who will be playing these characters Going forward But they did get them for this movie For the tiny bits of this movie

Glad they showed up. Duku has quite a bit of screen time. We're going to get to that in a second. Yeah, he does. You're right. You're right. But I also have to say, like, the voices they got to sub in are also pretty good as the series goes on. Yeah, I think everyone.

And also voice acting is a different discipline. And so, in general, I think you're probably better getting to a voice actor. Yes. Yes. But no Frank Oz for Yoda is an interesting thing. And I wonder if it's just like the quantity of work necessary would have been too high for Frank Oz at that point. I don't think Yoda has that many lines. No, I mean in the show writ large.

Like going forward, we don't get Frank Ozziota throughout this show. They might not have Frank Oz money at that point. That might be late. Yeah. Yeah. So that whole thing goes bust basically for zero. This is all intercut a little bit with what's happening on tattooing, but we're just dealing with it in the block here. Zero gets busted, basically, in all this.

and exposed for what he's been up to and so he tries to do the I was being forced into this plot against my will and ultimately he's going to be forced to fess up and get the Jedi off the hook and so that will be sorted out if they can just get to Java but they're ambushed in space

they crash land and they have to start walking across the desert we get some great shots of them journeying the sunset one It's so sick. It's so good. It just looks good. Her trying to pry.

Yeah, we get my favorite Anakin line in this movie, which is just perfect, brooding, tortured Anakin delicious content, which is, the desert is merciless. It will take everything from you. Gosh, just like. Just stunting on that garbage sand line from attack of the clones, where it's like, no. You want to talk about, like, how a guy, like, what it is like to just hate the place you are from. Let me show you how it is done. I also think it's just, like, such, uh, like, a poignant.

I just think it's, it's such a poignant moment for me because it just shows the, like, how deeply Anakin feels in contrast to, like, Asoka's sort of young, like, I'm hyped to be here. I'm like ready to fight I'm ready to do and like this is like Anakin's like dude shit you have no idea how fuck shit is like across this entire galaxy like get prepare yourself for just seeing crimes against humanity for like the next you know however long you're a fucking Jedi because you're just going to be seeing that constantly and I just feel like it just like it places Anakin in a place where he's just like

I it's like what you're saying earlier Austin of like this distance between them like this this remove is just so good and like I really hope that Asoka I'm I'm really curious to see how

Osoka plays like up to that and tries to like confront it or how that affects her worldview or like how she, you know, as like a young Padawan, like, just now venturing out into the galaxy. Like, how will she react? Like, is she an Obi-Wan? Is she an Anakin?

Is she, uh, quigon? Like, where does she fall? And, like, how does she, like, create her own lane? I hope that she creates her own lane. I don't know yet, but, yeah. So anyway, that's my favorite tortured Anakin moment. So they sort of journey through the desert and are ambushed eventually by Count Duku. And we get a series of fights here.

Anakin realizes that Duku is coming for them and sets up a little ploy to send. He sends Asoka off with the hut and he just pretends to be carrying the hut while he gets in this huge fight with Duku. And it is This is a scene where the proximity to attack of the clones Yet again does not quite feel palpable here A couple weeks ago, Duku sliced off this guy's arm Yeah And it's clear they have some backstory

But it does not feel freighted the way it probably should Them seeing each other here But we do get We do get kind of a classic good Jedi, dark Jedi fight here where Duku, they're partly fighting, but also it is a lot of Duku probing around Anakin's psyche for the soft spots. I'm surprised we don't get like an Anakin arm moment.

Yeah. We don't ever see the robot arm here, the perspective, right? I just thought about it. Like, I had completely forgotten that that happened. And I'm just surprised that there's no like moment of reflection or like any sort of like tension with adjusting to like the robot. robot or like any sort of engagement with that at all, especially, as you're saying, Rob, like now confronting the catalyst, the cause.

Yeah. I wonder if that's something that'll come up. I'm trying to remember. I don't remember from the Clone Wars. I know in the Tartikovsky, we do see it a couple of times more than once it shows up. In fact, I mean, my least favorite part of the Tarnikovsky thing has to do with directly representing the the his missing hand as a sort of metaphor for the force and and tied to like a local tribal belief about the force and a missing hand a phantom hand actually um and that stuff doesn't super work for me um so that that that that show 100% gets into it i can't remember if we're going to get more of that to come here i would imagine so at some point it's just it's interesting given that that the in that producer interview that you linked with

Catherine Winters when yeah um the the one thing that she says that like stood out to me the most is she says her goal with the clone wars was to that kids will understand cause and effect and I wish I would have heard that like going going into the movie rather than coming out of it, but I just, it's, where is, like, I'm so lacking, I think, that relationship of cause and effect specifically in this film. And I feel like it's, maybe it's more so that, like, here's, you know, the effects will come in like the next hundred billion episodes of TV that we'll watch. But I just find it really interesting that that's her framing for the Clone Wars.

It's not especially big here in this film, but I do think that that's, you could see how you get there when you're talking about the long term cause and effect of why does Anakin become who he is eventually? Why does the Republic fall, blah, blah, blah, right? Yes, I think, I wrote that line down too, because I think the series broadly does deliver on that brief. Like, but not. I do think the series does. I just don't know that this film was zero. Well, because this was an arc that was pulled out to be made into a movie. Like, that's one of the things is Lucas saw, sorry, this was, part of the background of this is

Lucas was seeing the episode cuts coming back and was like, these are great. Like, you guys are crushing it. We should promote this with a movie and just make a proper movie with this and we'll release it in the summer. And so, on the one hand, cool. On the other hand, now they had to make a movie while they were also. So concurrently get in the show run. And months earlier. Right.

Yes. Whatever that September date was was probably locked for the show. And this was supposed to potentially be parts of early episodes. Because the way that they talk about it makes it seem as if it's not as simple as these were the first three episodes. So much as these were episodes that then were reconfigured into being the first three episodes, which might mean that like the Battle of Christophis may not have clicked in so neatly with the Zero and Baby Hut stuff. Well, especially because Christophis, I think, is a place we see again before too long, or at least a planet very similar that is involved in, like, dense urban fighting. So, like, once again, there's, yeah, like, I don't know fully what happened there.

I think this is also one of the reasons that Winder, like, she moves on, is that she's a producer's producer, it kind of sounds like, and was able to do something like, yeah, okay, I will stand up an animation pipeline and begin to plot out the first. first season of a TV series and you want to make a movie on top of that too i will make that happen i will figure out a way to make all these plates been and when when that's your skill set running a show isn't really what the best use of your talents maybe after a point i think that's why i think her arc since then has been leading a lot of initiatives and new efforts and standing up new

studios i don't know if they all panned out but it does seem like this is somebody who like what they excel at is managing these really complicated projects and carrying them off. And throwing a movie into the middle of launching an animated series does seem like the Kobayashi Maru of animation. I just have a completely unrelated thing. Well, I was trying to confirm whether or not the arc that you're talking about, Rob, does in fact take place in Christophis. And you're totally right. We will be back to Khrostasis, which makes the timeline very weird because I'm not 100% sure what the situation

is. But along the way, I found out the name of that general that Obi-Wan negotiates with. Yeah. Do you get any guesses? I'm going to give you a great one here. Belmar.

Oh, come on. His name is worm loathsome. Worm, W.H.O.R.M. Lothsome. O-O-A-T-H-O-A-T-H-O-O-A. Get out of here with that dark yicky shit. Saddammit. I actually was wondering

what his name was to write it down and they just, I don't, I don't think it's... No, they never say it. Why do this? They definitely never say it. Why? So that somebody can be us

and one day look in a fucking Wookie-Pedia for this dude's name, it'd be like, wow, got him, like after the fact. Like, who the fuck? You really hand. I handed it to him, George. It's fucking ridiculous.

So, Duku gets the best of Anakin, and then it turns out Duku actually has fallen for a trap. He slices the backpack that they've been carrying a little hut around in, and Rocks fall out. And Anakin, even though he's been defeated in this fight, is kind of like, you know, we got you. We tricked you, and he sort of flees and leaves Duku out there in the desert. But Duku says, look, your prentice is just running straight into a trap.

She's never going to get to Jabba. And she does come across those assassin droids that we met that are genuinely, like all the other droids, are very, like, wallie-ass or the little scarecrow-type battle droids. None of them are particularly menacing. They all look, they're very cartoony. these commander droids whatever they are have like Terminator like T-800 vibes and they're very creepy very skeletal and she gets in this full like not down dragout fight

like basically at the palace gates and all this shit just looks great like just fighting in the desert night the three moons in the sky like it just rocks more of this please I'm begging you show it just like it scratches the itch for me and it purely like you know just like a sensual level of this is a beautiful thing i love the sounds i have great

nostalgia for the the way that a star wars fight scene is scored for the sounds of lightsabers and blasters and and this stuff just leans in all the way so it's like it is not a high-minded love of this outside of thinking oh wow yeah this is a pretty well composed series of action sequences again i think better than anything that has been in the prequels thus well not as it goes duel of the fates. I don't think that the lightsaber fight in the, I think that that is probably still a high point for a lightsaber fight. But certainly better than anything in attack of the clones.

I think this stuff is all very good in terms of just raw, looking at, looking at Jedi doing shit on a screen, you know? Yeah. I am surprised that Anakin doesn't hear Asoka yelling out to him and doesn't sense at all that he is in distress and just waltzes up to the fucking palace doors and is like, where is my bad one? it's a clear choice why why do you think we that they do that because like it's meant to be very clear that she's calling and he is not responding and not hearing and not sensing but earlier in that same sequence he 100% senses ducu from miles away he's the one who when the sun is setting says i sense the dark side here um and it is true ducu is there but does not sense asoka in danger just down the hill from him um that's an interesting contrast i'm curious what y'all think

Well, it's like him giving in to his anger and frustration, right? Like, this is the lesson with Anakin. Like, there's even a line where, like, Asoka's like, you know, when I tried to feel calm today, everything went so much easier. And Anakin is, there's immediately equipped, it's like, we'll try to be calm with this because they reach space. And there's a big battle happening. But it's, you know, I think that line was there for a reason. And it's because we see Anakin breaking that. in a really big way towards the end of this where it's like, oh, okay, the stakes of this should

be settled now. We've dealt with Duku. We're going to see our heroes meet up again, and it's going to be chill. And instead, he just, like, rushes to Jabba the Hut and fucks it up and pulls his weapon out and, like, oh, and he just doesn't think things through, and he's so angry, and he's had such a bad day. Yeah. It's true.

I think the thing that holds me up is that he's supposed to be like especially in tune with like suffering or maybe it's just that he hasn't formed that connection. Like he doesn't love Asoka like that yet to like sense her distress. Right. He doesn't have that force connection to where he can be like that is Asoka who is in trouble right now. He just met her today. yeah it's been hours ago right that's very true um and also like a thing we haven't said is he might not the prophecy might be bullshit impossible what do you mean like how does this imply that oh oh that like um the the ways in which the jedi uh part of what natalie is saying is like

he is he's supposed to be anican skywalker this person who has this deep different connection to the force than what other Jedi have. And yet here we see a very clear moment in which he's unable to sense someone not only reaching out with the force, but literally calling his name from down the hill. Like, I've fallen down hills deeper than this in my life. You know, anyone of us would have clear-headedly heard our friend down the hill be like, the baby, the baby is down here. Rob, Rob, I'm at the bottom of the fucking hill.

And so I think it's, it's worth saying that like, what, the ways in which we have talked about Anakin potentially being the one who will quote unquote bring balance to the force, which is all we've heard about in terms of that's what the prophecy is. The prophecy is the one who will bring the force back into balance. There's lots of jumping into conclusions about what that might mean or that it definitely will apply to Anakin Skywalker.

Whether it does or not is a long-term question of interpretation, frankly. But the big things, there is just like, does that mean that he's good at connecting to people? Does that mean that he's good at killing people? Does that mean that the force moves through him in a specific way? Should we assume that that means that he has like top skills and all of the different attributes? Do you know what I mean? Like, I don't necessarily think that that's, that's the case, or rather, I think it's important to have moments like this where we see him unable to do something that seems simple with the force

to underscore the fact that chosen one or not, he's a particular person and not just like create a character with the skills all set to one country. That's true. And I think that actually the fact that he rushes to Jabba plays into that

really well because he's like this is the head of the crime syndicate that enslaved him and his family. Like I see it it makes more sense to me now that like he would head straight there because of course the point like the point of content like the the action is happening in this like this is where the locus is because why would it be anywhere else if job is involved like that's that has to be where things come to a head because he is like the source of evil or whatever or is the true okay so can we propose an alternate reading of this That's darker still.

Oh. He hears her and he ignores her. Whoa. No, no, no, no, no, no. Because he's going there specifically. I'm not. Uh-huh. He's specifically there and be like, where's my Padawan?

I'm here to save her. I'm here to save her. That's what he says. That's what he says. What, Anakin Skywalker can't lie? He didn't want a Padawan. But he would come in and be like, yo, Jabba the Hut. It's on site.

He would be like, where's? But no, now he has the excuse. He shows up. He's like, where's my Padawan? Not here. Draws the fucking saber. He says, I was here to negotiate. He has witnesses.

He said it. He said I was here to negotiate. He knows there's camera phones. Yeah. People could be recorded. He knows his camera phones. They say, you're here to die. If Assoqu doesn't come through that door right then, Java's dead.

Java is done. Here's the thing. I have, I could support this because his, his, his attunement. to the force is so, if he's the chosen one, then he knows Assoca's going to be fine. He knows that she's going... There's what I'm saying,

we don't know that, though. We don't know that that's what being the chosen one means. I mean, doesn't, like, doesn't it, though? We don't. We have no idea what that means. But that's why he's so good at being a pod racer. Because you can see the future. No, that's hearing people call for help.

Yeah. A hundred percent. So, I mean, canonical, if we believe... But this is the argument that we use for why Quigon Jin makes the mistake.

this is this is the Cato question when Cuygon when Quigon jinn makes them makes the fatal error he does it to set Anakin on his this is what we came to a conclusion and Quigon is fucking wrong this is the thing or like that's okay so according to what I think the canonical read on this is the thing that makes him the chosen one is he kills the empery in a bunch of movies it's irony right exactly he happens all of you some fucking balance yes exactly The force conspires and laughs at us in such a way that, of course, at the very end of it all, after making millions, trillions of people suffer under the empire, he's the person in the room

who has a change of heart and throws the emperor down a fucking energy shaft to kill him and quote unquote bring balance back to the force by overthrowing the Sith and bringing us back into a new republic after the followed one. And that was the, that was the read on that shit for a long time. time for at least until the new trilogy right um and so that is not like that is not like becomes a great sage who understands the force in a meaningful way that is not has force abilities about connecting to other people person to person a weight on a scale yeah it's just exactly yeah he's the last bullet in the chest that's what he is right not my aniken

Iyneken can feel that force deeply. So all the The other thing I'll add here is that literally the scene is echoing his race to save Shmi. Like once again he's on a speeder bike racing to save someone he cares about cross tattooing at night. And so I mean this is one of Anakin's character flaws. The minute he feels people who cares about are in danger, he tunnel visions and lose Loses all sense of perspective All sense of awareness

And he becomes just a missile fired At whatever he thinks the target is And so he doesn't I think he doesn't hear Asoka Because like he can't He is like just full Like blood is fully up He's already like Java did this

Java you know Like Java set this in motion I think the other thing I'd say here Is that there's two things that are accomplished One Nobody needs to rescue Asoka she's badass she kills these and we will see these droids later in the series

these droids are not to be trifled with and Assoca waxes three of them so like well done Asoka two I do think there's something about like if you want to talk about a metaphor for waiting for the Jedi to help you it is Asoka calling out for help and watching him sail by

because that is ultimately what the Jedi do they will disappoint you when you need them the most the Jedi will let you down it's not that they won't be there it's that they will not care. They will not help. And this is sort of a first taste of that lesson. Like, well, you're no longer in the Jedi Temple. This is how we operate out in the wild.

How do you like it? Being a Padawan, it's harder than I thought. And then that's the thing, right? She gets in, she, you know, saddles up next to Anakin. It's like ready to throw down. They're ready to go. And then it's Padmei who stops all of the people in that room from dying. If Padmaid doesn't call with that last second, like, here it is, here's the actual truth of the situation, I figured this shit out, I did some PI work, everyone in that room is dead except for Anakin and maybe Asoka, maybe Asoka makes it out.

I think she's capable, but like the numbers game is just rough. You know that Jabba has some monster right under them underneath that cage floor, underneath that great floor. Someone might die today. But yeah, Padma steps in, which again is like such a very clear. representation of what that relationship is and the ways in which to some degree Yoda is right here can we surround Anakin

and this is the core contradiction of the Jedi right hey what if this motherfucker formed some attachments and it cooled him down what if he had a paddle on is what Yoda says and what Anakin knows is Padmay can help stop me from doing things I don't want to do wife guy he must become yes

I so I so wish that we would have gotten the, like, Padma, I know that this comes from like three television episodes or whatever, but I really wish that we could have moved up the Padma B plot. Like, it comes in, it's so late. It's in like the last third. And she, like, I wish we had that, that real detective feeling. Like, she really uncovered that shit. rather than she fucking overheard the phone call and then used, like, CPO's phone to call, you know, fucking Java. Like, I just, I wish that felt like it had, I don't know, it just felt so, like, here's the perfect little bow on top of it all to, like, tie it all together and just send it off.

This feels like, this feels like a television movie to me. It boggles my mind that this was a theatrical release because so little of this feels theatrical and it's a drama. And it feels like a television arc because you have these like three distinct acts that are moving. I don't know. It just... And they're totally disjointed.

Like we got the battle on Christophis. That's all battle. We've got all the shit. on the monastery. That's maybe two episodes, I don't know. And then we've got tattooing all the pieces coming together while Padmei saves the day doing this detective case. Like it totally, yeah, it does feel like this is what happens when you take sequential episodes and just like make a movie out of them. Yeah.

Totally. I'm curious what the other kids movies were that year in terms of like, what we're, parents competing with that summer in terms of other stuff to go take kids to. One of them was apparently Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, which is not a kid's movie, but Kung Fu Panda, you know, would have probably been preferable for lots of kids and parents that summer,

right? Yeah, this is a wild year. This is a wild year. What did we get? We get Dark Night, Twilight, Iron Man, quantum solace,

I know what theater I was in. Uh-huh. Yeah, this is a wild year. Incredible Hulk. That's a good year. Yeah, this is a lot of franchise being launched. Yeah, totally. Oh, God, this is basically the year that, like, modern holiday would begin.

Yes, 100%. Taken. Quigon is busy, busy saving a kid in Taken. I don't know. Pineapple Express wanted. Speed racer. Did you say what? Did I say what?

Speed racer. I did not say speed racer. Speed racer. Yeah, that's kind of, the dark night comes out this year? I said that one, yeah. Oh, sorry. Owns the summer, right? Yeah.

And Twilight. That's where the kids were. This is a nuts year. Mama Mia. Wow. Yeah, Mama Mia. Yes, man. Jumper.

Hellboy, too. I remember the theater I saw most of these movies in. Wow, wanted, iconic. Instead of gearing up to watch the Clone Wars cartoon, I was on a bunch of forums trying to get the backstory to Cloverfield this year. That's what I was doing in 2008. That's a little peek into the past. Yeah, just a little lower.

Piecing together, like, where that monster come from? Well, did you know? The footage at the end, where the little, like... You didn't follow any of the, like, marketing stuff around there where it was like, here's these slurpy company shirts that you could buy, and everybody was trying to, like... It's a fun time. What a weird.

Good internet time. And just think, only a decade later, J.J. Abrams would instead be trying to end Star Wars forever. Forever. Literally just lay waste to her. But George Lucas make a Cloverfield movie.

Yeah. Point of order. Just make a Cloverfield movie. Those things have that style. of like anthology feel right he can do it yeah uh so yeah so the call comes through all misunderstandings are cleared up zero's like oh java i didn't i fucked up i know and java's like we'll deal with you later and apparently we'll be treated to his more of zero down the road so it's to be put to death uh but yeah so all misunderstandings are cleared up uh java formally like announces

that he's going to give the the republic passage through hot space he's going to support their war effort the entire thing ends with the clones drawn up in ranks almost like a wedding you know the troops drawn up while the heroes walk

you know down the aisle Java stands there at the altar basically with the with the baby and the the alliance of seals and the war is ready to truly begin now that the Republic has secured its internal lines of communication and can go fight where the real action is, which is all these breakaway separate estates, sort of spreading in the outer rim.

And we get a call between Duku. Between, yeah, Duku and is he calling? Is Ventriss? there or is it just him and she hangs up that's right yeah i can't recall the like the order of operations there but but he says to he says to palpatine he says to sidious like oh dan the july had those supply routes our fight's going to be more difficult and and uh what palpatine says is allow the july that their small victory my friend the engines of war turn in our favor which is just like the whole thing is in your favor the whole like it's going to be so hard going forward to

unwrap, when is it that Palpatine is happy that something is going well or going bad? Like, in his mind, was either of these outcomes preferable? Or did he want the separatists to win this one to make things harder? Right, right. But like, does he have particular outcomes for each individual ploy that he would prefer to happen? Or is it, as long as the war is in a stalemate, I'm good? Yeah, I think his game is distraction right now. And, like, I think it calls to, like, a lot of the actions that he's making, a lot of the things that he's, like, micromanaging, the way that he's, like, I mean, I know that it's Yoda who says it, but for, for Obi-Wan and Anakin to be pulled off of the front lines, the literal front lines, to be dealing with this, like, hut thing, which, you know, is, is an important, like, strategical win, but certainly is not their best use.

And, like, you know, it takes a little bit of their time that they could be used elsewhere. Who knows what's going on to Christophis while they're gone? Right. Yeah, exactly. I feel like he's like, oh, so the deeper that I can drive the Jedi into this war and making them micromanage and getting this like overboiling sense that they can't control. That's all good for me, baby. And I think that's where his mind is.

Do you think Duku was on board with that? Or do you think Duku is like, fuck, we let them, they got one up over on us. Because we know Duku knows that, who Palpatine is and like that they're playing both sides. But do you think Dukes so. But he's also a patsy at some stage. Yeah. Yeah. Do you think Duku at some point is just like, I want to get a win?

Like I know it's okay that I took this out, but I wanted the dub. I think like, every Jedi killed is a Jedi we don't have to kill later. I think Duku is like sitting at the chess table playing. playing chess and Palpatine has money on both sides and like somebody in a discord that we're in

who is a big Palpatine fan I can't remember what Big Palpatine fan said that like their conception of Palpatine is that he's just like constantly rolling with it like he's just like

let's like just like throws shit out there and just sees what comes back and just like rolls with the punches and it's just like having a great time the whole time through. Meanwhile, like in and I think this plays into like

my consumption of Duku who's like so focused on like placing pieces in specific places and so focused on I like to think of it as the long game but like just so focused on like positions and like where will people be and like how can we move people's like allegiances

around and things like that and Palpatine is just like sitting back and just like Hannequin and and Obi-Wan are the only two that are available to do this great plays into my game like it's like totally just like I mean even like when when Padme goes down to the to the to the to the jiz bar she's like he's like don't go and like either way

it'll work out for him if she goes and gets killed great that's something off his list if she doesn't go great she's not going to intervene with like whatever the fuck he's got going on so I feel like that

idea he's playing a chess game against himself where he wants to lose all the major pieces on both sides and just wants the pawns left, right? In whatever fucking way it happens. Yeah. He's,

vibing, honestly. That's the thing, too. Like, do you think that he's, because I kind of know about Sith stuff and, like, the rules of two, is that a thing that's... Because there's so many Sith people now that that's, like, not a thing, but there's a Sith thing of, like,

oh, there's a master. Okay. You put your finger on the thing that's... No, but I don't know. Because it is incoherent, because here's what I hate. Here's what I fucking hate. Okay. Tell me.

Okay, I think if it seems to me, like if you just push, you're just like, okay, Star Wars lore points in this direction, evil equals just pure nihilism. That's what it boils down to. It's like, what does Palpatine want by the end? Well, at the end of the JJ Abrams movie, apparently just wants like mass death for everything and like this rules actually. I love it. I love that I've been living in a VAT for the last 50 fucking years. Like, it's been great. I'm not owned.

This is all part of my master plan. This is good for me. But if you stop the clock earlier and you say, well, Palpatine, before the destruction of the first Death Star, this is him arriving at what he wants, which is a political order where he is unchallenged. He now has the supreme terror of the Death Star under his control, and that was his end game, is pure unchallengable power. You can sort of, that sort of makes sense. He's a tyrant in this recognizable way. But then you throw this Sith shit into this. And you got two things

But then there's Dark Jedi Are all Sith Dark Jedi And are all Dark Jedi Sith? No. The answer is no That's a hard note. Right. Ventriss is not Sith. Well, this is a question.

The question, if I'm Sidious and I know about Ventress, does he know about Ventress? Does that come up in this? Do you ever say, I've sent Ventress to go do this? Regardless, the question ends up being, and this is we talked about this before

with Obi-Wan and Duku is a common thing in in the lore in you know EU stuff in prequel or in like you know older public stuff for instance is a a middle tier dark Jedi Sith character brings a board in their own apprentice in attempt to get the power they need to overtot to you know topple their own and usurp their own master right and so there is one way of reading this that is there's always a rule of two until the number two decides to kill the number one and sometimes to do that they bring on a number three and that's not in the rules but it's the fucking Sith and you know what I mean and that sort of thing ends up happening a lot again in other other you know kind of adjoining fiction

I think that the the question ends up being with some of that stuff and again clone wars is going to get deep into it is like where is that line between Sith and just Dark Jedi or Force practitioner or which of the dark side or all that other shit. And I think part of the thing to understand about Ventress which you only know if you know a little bit more than

what you should know at this point is that she's from Dathamere. And so she already has a certain... That's where the Force Witchers come from. It was, it's actually the home world of the mighty rancor from Return of the Jedi. And

the Jedi have only visited once, but it's actually a different relationship with the force they have on Dathemaire. They're witches, and it's actually a matriarchal society, and the mark of a dark Dathamarian force witch is the fact that their rage, when they unleash themselves to the dark side of the

force, cause them to burst a blood vessel below their eyes, which makes it ironic that you were talking about, like, you know, the bags of evil below the eyes, because this is in fact, canon, well, in the legends canon, it is canonically the marker of a dark Dathamarian force witch. And so the

They become knight-sisters at that point. That's their proper name. So, you know, they're not like Sith, but they're completely divorced from this entire Sith Jedi continuum. The Dathamarian Force Witches, or the Force Wishes of Dathemaire, if I'm being, you know, fully accurate here and giving them the proper respect. It's a different tradition, really, a different relationship with the Force.

The type of thing that is sort of suppressed and erased by the Jedi hierarchy. That's actually right. I hope that clears it up. Full points. So my point is, the thing that was adventurous that's interesting, is she comes in with a history of being a force user without necessarily being tied into the Sith

proper and we will learn more about her history and some additional some additional characters but yes it's a bullshit rule that everyone breaks all the time is the answer. Yeah but the reason I bring it up here because it seems like

and with the Palpatine Duku situation is that like Palpatine's interests are self-preservation. He's setting the stage, he has this war going, he knows what the war's end game is, and he just has to make sure everybody gets him to the end, and that he survives at the end. And then, because he's a set guide, he knows he always has to watch his back, and he has to trust Duku, but Duku's going to want to kill him one day. He has to make sure that he is not, like, actually supporting

Duku in any, like, foundational way and also, like, make sure that Duku is, like, distracted with us of shit. Can't build his own power base. Can't, for instance, start trading his own apprentice and we know the other thing palpatine has to start doing is getting a ducu replacement going because your apprentice is good enough for as long as they think that they're not too big for their fucking britches it's time to bring up a number three to be because that's the thing you know who else also has a second apprentice is palpatine his name is anican Skywalker he just hasn't said the word sith to him yet you know but i think it also does point to yeah the the the point about palpatine uh rolling with everything

I think is a good one where like you didn't know Anakin was on the horizon I don't think he did I don't think of the start of Phantom Menace that he was like I have somewhere you can't we can't have this conversation without talking about the theory there is a theory that that

Sidious 100% knows that Anakin is on the horizon how we'll get there one day all right but I would just say like to this point he seems like a guy who's like he's having a great time at the roulette table and he's putting chips down on every single bat and it's just like no matter what happens i'm gonna win and but it's

kind of absurd because it's it's it's gonna be like it's it's a slow fucking process right like thank god aniken shows up to break the stalemate because i think the it does feel like the missing step in all this was like okay but how do i finally make sure all this breaks in my favor at the very end and i have the sort of trump card uh in my back pocket because so far what what Palpatine seems very good at is just stirring a lot of shit and then being like yeah enough for that to happen oh the droid army was exposed like kind of early and the Jedi you know that's all part of a master plan it's great as long as

no one knows that he's Lord Scythius what's his name close enough honestly Lord Sidious Lord Sidious he's chilling like he as long as he is one or the other, he's, I mean, especially as long as he's like the chancellor in power, he's really fine. So it's all just, I don't know, it's just a show to him. He's just watching the ponies go around the racetrack.

True. But the Republic's not going to be fine. I think it's, a thing I like about this last shot is it's triumph that the music swells, the whole team is defeated evil. What have you done? you've secured the ability to march legions of droids to the frontier where they're going to kill

in your civil war or clones not droids right in both yeah clones sorry but yeah so this just like we're just going to move this we're going to push this catastrophic conflict out to the imperial periphery and all of this now

is being undergirded by one of those lingering problems that the republic probably should have dealt with but never did and that's one reason why maybe it doesn't have legitimacy in a lot of people's eyes now they've basically formally allied themselves with the huts so now this is one of those lingering problems where in an ideal world maybe the republic should have dealt with the huts but now they're dependent on the huts and the huts have a friend in the republic which is probably not where you want to be but i think this is kind of where a lot of

this this movie's kind of pointing where a lot of the series is going to go you'll you'll come to a thing you'll be like hey yeah they won they did it it. What did they actually win? And what are the ramifications from this? Here, a lot of them are not great, right? It's an ambiguous victory. Totally. I think on that note, we are ready to get into the Clone Wars TV series. We'll be back in a couple weeks to tackle that first episode of the series and the first story arc. We're going to be dealing with the malevolence three-parter in one block and hopefully I'm just thinking about how long that episode is probably going to be

but you know what I'm going to run such a tight ship you won't even believe it that those episodes those episodes will fly by we're just going to get done talking about the stuff that we've been talking about right like the thing that I hope happens and suspect will is like there's only so many times we can say okay well how's the rule of two work with the Sith or do we think Anakin is secretly dark side you know what I mean I know, I know. But also, like,

it may not be there yet, because we have a lot of preliminary stuff to get through. I know, I'm like 37, and I'm like, I've been having these conversations, like, since I was a teenager. So, I don't know. This is our last time, Rob. We're getting them out, one more time.

We're getting them out. For all those who were, who have never seen it. This is the last dance. Here's what aging nerds grew up doing. So what do you make of the rule of two? What do you think about? Do you think the force works?

What do you think? The force? exists? You think it's fake. So do you think all the Jedi can do like the same stuff? Do you think they have like different strengths and like is like can they all throw shit or is that like a special? If I were a Jedi, I would just fuck. I would just fuck. Who could stop you? You're a Jedi. I would just do a secret.

They're not in tune. They're not in tune with the force. They can't tell you fuck. Do you fuck? I'd be like no. You know I don't leave me alone. Yeah. This is just my friend. No, we just ran into each other in the lobby of the Jedi Temple. Yeah, crazy coincidence. Now she was just walking her back to her room, you know.

Yeah, she got home okay. Doing my Jedi duty. Protecting the public. And that's what we will continue to do here on a more civilized age. Until then, please rate and review us on the podcast platform of your choice. You can find me on Twitter at Rob Zakeney. Allie. Where can you will find you?

You can find me over at Allie underscore West on Twitter. Austin. You find me at Austin underscore Walker. And I will say if you want to hear Allie and I tell a military sci-fi story, we are currently wrapping up partisan, a season of Friends at the Table, featuring lots of military science fiction shit. I think the finale will be out tomorrow, the final episode. When does this come out? No, no, next week. We're in the finale now.

coming out. This episode of recording is coming out in a week from the time we're recording it, correct? Yes. So then yes. So we're right in the finale. There's a lot there. If you want to hear us do our own fucking... Finality part two is coming out tomorrow. Yes, yes. So you've got time to catch off. You don't.

You don't. But you should try. You should try to, yeah. That's fun. And Natalie, where can you'll find you? At Natalie Watson on Twitter with nothing to plug, but my beautiful genius. Wow.

all right so we hope you'll join us again for another return to a more civilized age but until then remember none of this is as long ago or as far away as you have been led to believe oh you got a new one i like that found it that that feels good it feels good You know? Oh! Oh! Oh!

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