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Ahsoka | Teaser Trailer | Disney+ (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnzNZ0Mdx4I)

Streaming August 2023.

Well, there's my thought about Thrawn and Snoke in the Mandalorian thread made good, I think.

But who's the bearded guy with the red lightsaber?

Ezra?

I thought it was animated at first, nope just kinda colorful. Those lightsabers looked more orangey than red to me.

I noticed that too. I wonder if they're going to be some other faction of Force users or something.

I liked the trailer. But for a time where there are few Jedi left, there sure are a lot of lightsaber-wielding motherfuckers around.

They are rediscovering a Jedi every few days in the Canon. It Star Wars Galaxies all over again, only with less Dancers  :awesome_for_real:

Well since Ahsoka is not a Jedi it makes sense to give her some non sith but adjacent enemies.

Much as I think the Jedi have to rethink what they're doing (apparently we'll have to wait for Daisy Ridley to do that in a new movie), maybe Dark Side-ish Jedi are thinking "you know, hm, the Rule of Two is kind of fucking dumb". Or arguably maybe they've been thinking that all along.

I'd still love to see a non-martial group of Force users, e.g., people who don't fuck around with training and organization but who are close to the Force because they live intensely--because they're close to life and death, to the rhythms of being. That's a classic branching of religions--most organized religions end up with a group who are philosophers/mystics who don't think much of the guys wearing uniforms, owning real estate and contending for power.

Some of the Star Wars novels and comic books have groups like this. Various monks and shamans that aren't Jedi or Sith and just kind of do their own thing. I don't know a ton about them and have mostly just heard about them in various places here and there. Even Jedi: Fallen Order talks about another Force tradition with the Zeffo and their various tombs though honestly it's a bit odd since you never really find out much about them other than a Jedi Master hid a holocron in one of their tombs and one of them went to Dathomir and fell to the Dark side and became a tyrant.

I mean, in the original trilogy, that was Yoda, but then the prequels had to fuck it up.   :awesome_for_real:

"Wars not make one great". Like, Yoda is not one to talk here. Let's just say I trust the wisdom better when the wise one has the balls to disclose that he's talking first and foremost about lessons from his own life.

This is really why Star Wars peaked in the OT; all of these characters were way better when we didn't know their backstories.  Yoda was originally written as this wise hippie mystic, and he was irrevocably ruined the first time he pulled out a lightsaber.

I mean, in fairness, he is talking from a place of learned cynicism. He had 20 years to sit there and go "You know, it was really stupid for us to be in that war..."


Agreed. The clone wars and the Old Republic were 100X cooler when it was all in my imagination. Star Wars is what taught me to be wary of prequels and I can't think of a single prequel I have ever seen to any film or book series where I didn't go "it was cooler when I didn't know every single bit of backstory..."

Ok...maybe the Hobbit is an exception...

The Hobbit was written first, so it's not a prequel.   :awesome_for_real:

The only time prequels work is when they surprise you--when what you think was the case *isn't* or when it makes everything you've seen so much deeper and better. Andor makes Rogue One (and really all of Star Wars) better.

If the OT had grasped the nettle and stopped with the "certain point of view" bullshit about Obi-Wan lying--if Obi-Wan had sat down with Luke at the beginning of ROTJ and said, "Look, Yoda and I have lied to you; we're scared and confused. The Jedi got their asses kicked by Vader and the Emperor, and we're out of ideas. The Force isn't telling us what to do any longer. It's all up to you, Luke: your instincts are the only right thing we have"? That would have sold what happens in the end so much harder. And then if the prequels had been "How did Obi-Wan and Yoda, these wise souls, get themselves into this situation? What went wrong?" the prequels would have worked. But Lucas didn't have the imagination to go there, so it's left to viewers to try and push the subtext into text.

I think by the time ROTJ was written, Lucas and Star Wars was already so wildly successful that he probably couldn't physically envision a different scenario. The accepted wisdom that had become dogma of the Jedi couldn't fail because he had become a part of that successful machine that was Hollywood, instead of an outsider trying to impose his vision on the world.

Also, merchandising.

I guess I tend to think of a prequel as any work that precedes another but technically a prequel does need to be made later so point conceded! Also, it just proves that nope, I can't think of a single actual prequel that added anything good to a work of fiction.

The Hobbit is a great stand alone novel. My generation tended to read it before LotR. Just ignore the fact that Jackson butchered the story and dragged it out horribly... and yeah, you are right, the films did nothing for Middle Earth, unlike the book.

I've never seen the Hobbit films. I was super annoyed they took a short(ish) novel and made it into a trilogy. I knew they'd just add lots of useless padding to it and so I never bothered.

Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea (prequel to Jane Eyre, not by original author) is one of the few examples I can think of--the sort of prequels that are also commentaries upon the original, those work ok. Or "sidequels" that retell the main story from a perspective of a main character, e.g. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead.

Prequels are the dry hump of serial fiction.

Not saying they can't be good, but the ones that serve no purpose other than fan service, author paychecks, or "expounding on things that didn't need more words written about them" are the worst. I'm thinking of things like the movie Solo, and doing things like explaining why Han Solo had those dice on the Falcon, or how he got the name Solo.

Completely idiotic.

Han Solo plainly had a lot of adventures before meeting Our Heroes, so SHOW US THOSE. We don't need him explained that way; he's explanation enough when we see him. He's an archetype--a fun one. The idea that "Solo" is meaningful AS THE WORD blows up the entire fucking Star Wars universe. You mean *all those assholes* who have names that sound like English have 'meaningful names'? How did "Sleazebaggano" get his name?

Solo was a sort of fun movie but yeah, the name bit was just extremely dumb and should never have been put to film. I didn't mind the dice or him getting his gun from Woody but the name just made me groan.

Best prequel I can think of is Better Call Saul, but yeah, most of them are garbage.

That said, I'm a lot more interested in The Acolyte (mostly due to the cast and the showrunner) which is set during the High Republic era and thus technically a prequel, than I am in anything I've seen for Ahsoka so far. Skeleton Crew doesn't sound especially interesting either although it at least sounds like it's doing something slightly different.

I didn't hate Rogue One now that I think of it. Sure it had a few problems, but if anything, the gaining of the Deathstar plans was more interesting than midichlorians.

I don't consider something like the Acolyte a prequel. To me a prequel is something like an extended prologue for earlier work that fills in backstory. The Acolyte is unconnected to the main Star Wars films so doesn't really count.


Hmmm...Rogue One is a good example of a rare prequel that works. It focuses on one thing and doesn't go out of its way to fill in every little detail of past events in the most silly way possible.

Yeah, a prequel that actually makes the original better is hard to top.

Yeah, that wasn’t really part of the prequel discussion, just me rating my interest in upcoming D+ Star Wars shows. Ahsoka, as pure live action Filoni, will have to work hard to win me over.

I love Filoni's Star Wars content. I think he actually has a better grasp of Star Wars than George Lucas does or at least, what fans care about and want to see. The Clone Wars actually made me care about Anakin and somehow made Ahsoka into an amazing character. Rebels was just plain fun especially in the last 2 seasons. I'm looking forward to Ahsoka more than the Acolyte to be honest because I trust Filoni to make good content.

(https://media.giphy.com/media/kYLPweIoQBPcEAcoQ0/giphy.gif)

Damning with faint praise.

Dave Filoni grew up with Star Wars. I guarantee you he got into a lot of nerdy arguments about stuff and thought about it a lot. You can tell when he does interviews where he talks about the lore. He's a super nerd about it. Lucas created it but somewhere along the line I think he lost his creative spark.

I personally think the Clone Wars and Rebels are some of the best Star Wars content ever made in any medium though both of them have their rough episodes of course. I mentioned it earlier and I'll say it again, I think the Mandalorian is probably struggling this season because Filoni is 100% focused on Ahsoka but in Seasons 1 and 2 he was more involved.

Most of the people on this board grew up with Star Wars, as did most of the people who made Star Wars shows or movies after Lucas (including JJ Abrams). That by itself doesn't give him any sort of special cred, it just means he grew up in the '70s/'80s.

Personally some of the worst elements of Mandalorian for me are the things pulled from Filoni's previous work. I can't eyeroll hard enough at the Darksaber as a plot device.

No, of course not. I just mean that he is a total lore nerd about it and it's not just a job he took on. I actually like his stuff. I'm more or less neutral on the Darksaber but that's mostly because I find Mandalorian culture sort of meh personally and always have. It's why I enjoyed Season 1 and 2 more as it felt like the story of a man slowly emerging from the brainwashing of his cult but Season 3 is hitting the reset button hard sadly.

I actually really enjoyed stuff like Ahsoka showing up but I really enjoyed his previous two shows as I admitted. My biggest single issue with Ahsoka in the Mandalorian was the casting if I'm honest but Rosario Dawson seems to be doing a good job with it.

The Mandalorians generally seem like a weird narrative cancer--like, here's Boba Fett, he's supposed to be something, he's a badass, he gets his ass handed to him in a ridiculous way, let's do some EU compensation for that, oh wait here comes Jango Fett oh shit the backstory is growing oh noes here is all this other stuff people think about them oh wow Clone Wars. Etc. Reading the whole backstory in order on a wiki is like "oh fuck this is really incoherent bullshit and these guys seem really stupid". It's like the opposite of the Klingons in Star Trek, who start just as oily oriental pseudo-Soviets and end up being pretty complicated but mostly consistent in their complications. The Mandalorians make *less* sense every time they get more attention.

The legends EU had a few authors who more or less worshipped Mandalorians. I used to run into hardcore nerds about it in my SWTOR days who read those books and talked in all the pseudo-gibberish that the EU authors made up, particularly a woman named Karen Travis (I think) who thought Mandos were the most awesome thing ever and the Jedi sucked and the clones were awesome by their connection to the Fetts and all the Jedi deserved to die because they weren't nice enough to the clones or whatever. I read one of her books that was in the old New Republic era and everytime Boba Fett appeared in a book you could almost hear her squee in the background and any Jedi who appeared, including Luke, she just oozed disdain through her writing.

I never got the weird obsession about Mandalorians among fans or some of the authors. I mean, Boba Fetts armor was cool. Sure. It had lots of little tricks and stuff and it's a shame they didn't do more with him in the OT I guess? But I never cared about his "culture" or any of that. I thought Jango Fett was an ass and was quite happy to see Mace Windu lop his head off. I almost didn't watch Book of Boba Fett because I just didn't care that much but I did for Ming Na Wen and honestly she and the silly swoop bike kids were the best part of that show.

The only time I cared at all about Mandalorians (other than the hero of this show) was some of the Clone Wars episodes because they were given a bit of depth without them being shown as the most awesome warriors that have ever existed. Bo Katan, ironically, was one of the ones I really liked and if they wanted to make this show the Bo Katan show I'd be down for it because I think that she has become the more interesting character this season.

Star Wars in general makes less sense the more attention it's given. Very few writers have been able to make anything good out of a universe with characters named Dexter Jettster.

This is exactly the point I was about to make, before realizing I was missing the last few replies. :why_so_serious: But, yea, exactly. Midichlorians are the most egregious example, but far from the only one. Removing literally all of the mystery and intrigue from a fantasy series does it no favors.

I'm not liking this very much. Ahsoka does not seem like the same character from clone wars, rebels or even the mandalorian. She reminds me of the guy pretending to be a Jedi in Obi Wan more than anything. Everything else is ok.

She's almost totally drained of any personality at all. We've seen Dawson show warmth, strength and a bit of mystery in the role, and even that's not here.

As someone who hasn't watched the animated stuff, as I pretty much expected/feared, this show makes almost zero attempts to bring me in. It seems to largely operate under the assumption that people know these characters, and as someone who doesn't, they haven't done anything to get me to start caring about them now.

Gun to my head I could not tell you what this show is about beyond "lady jedis fight the bad jedis?". I've been finding it so difficult to pay attention that I don't even know whether it takes place before or after Mando.

It's pretty much the worst combination of:

STAR WARS FANS YOUR EASTER EGGS ARE HERE WOO HOO THRAWN AND EZRA AND ALL THAT, COME AND GET IT

STAR WARS FANS WE DON'T LIKE YOU AND NEED TO MAKE THIS FOR WHAT WE IMAGINE TO BE SOME MAINSTREAM THAT IS NOT YOU

Ahsoka trying to train someone with zero force sensitivity into being a jedi is just so dumb. First off she is not even a jedi, she does not want to be one and would not want to train someone else to be one. It made sense for Kanan to give her some basic training when she had the darksaber, this doesn't.

Filoni's stuff already seemed like fanfic to begin with, and now it sounds like he's doing bad fanfic of his own fanfic.

There's a map and a key and oh hell I don't know. It doesn't feel like they really want to build  the time between Return of the Jedi and Force Awakens into anything like a cohesive narrative with its own stories and conflicts. The whole thing feels so adrift.

I'm guessing most of the writers who were tasked with anything approaching "make the First Order into a viable force and a coherent narrative" either noped right the fuck out of the assignment or had a mental break with fucking reality.

She doesn't have zero force sensitivity. She does have quite low force sensitivity. Interestingly one of the most famous Jedi in all of Star Wars had such low force sensitivity he almost didn't become a padawan and was on the verge of being sent to the farm all the washouts work out. That being Obi Wan Kenobi. I'm curious if that will come up at some point in the show when Sabine is feeling really down about how "weak" she is.

Please give a non-EU canon source for "Obi-Wan Kenobi had low Force sensitivity".

Mind you, I love the idea that being good with the Force is a product of hard work and discipline. But this is a basic tension in wushu films too: everybody works hard at being a great martial artist AND monk and they all are, kind of, and then some motherfucker comes along in the course of the story who hasn't worked a day in his life at this shit and he's a natural who smokes the fuck out of all the hard-working guys. Nobody says "midichlorians" and ok, but it sometimes feels the same. Then again, some wushu movies are about the hard-working motherfucker making good and kicking ass.

I just wish the people making Star Wars were more savvy about that cultural template and played harder into it in a knowing way.

Ever since Iron... somebody (Scottish, doesn't seem to be here anymore) lost his fucking mind because I said that the movies certainly seem to think that the Force is inherited (and I haven't read any of the books), I giggle when this topic comes up.   :awesome_for_real: Why yes!, I'm am giggling right now!

SPAAAAAAACE WHAAAAAAAALES!

The ecology of the Star Wars universe is nothing if not aggressively nonsensical.

Hilariously so. Which means anybody sensible just has to lean in and enjoy it for what it is--SW's technological aesthetic, its ecologies, etc. are never going to make consistent, coherent sense.

As long as they don't try to explain it, I'm fine with it actually. Star Wars was always Science Fantasy, Warp Space Whales are not worse than Space Wizards. As long as they don't tell me their midichlorian count lets them go warp, I enjoy it.

As long as they don't tell me I'm basically supposed to accept that as true in that universe, yeah. I would have had no problem if Qui Gon was on the outs with the council because he was the equivalent of an anti-vaxxer and his midicholorian dingus was the equivalent of giving people medicine for deworming horses to cure a viral disease.

Some talented folks involved with this show (RIP Ray), but hoo boy is it a freaking mess.

I really like Ahsoka herself and the two main villains. I'd have liked to see more of them in something good. Every scene where evil panto witch lady asks if not a jedi dude if he's afraid/sorry/sad, and he shrugs and says a variation on 'sure, I'm not a dick', is great.

But the story is just... boring. Also far too much plot driven by incompetence, especially by apparently experienced commanders that we have already seen being hyper competent in previous shows.

That just isn't Sabine and it isn't Hera. The show is relying too much on us already knowing those characters, but we don't, at all. I get why they really wanted Sabine in this, but having Hera in the show as more than a cameo was probably a mistake - this is Hera's third completely different personality and style of communication, and it's getting a bit weird.

Its watchable fun though.

Idk that if I were Disney I'd feel these shows are worth the 100 million they each supposedly cost. But I'm happy enough paying my Disney sub to watch them.

I simply can't stand that the New Republic, having gone through all the blood sweat and tears, is now a bunch of fucking idiot bureaucrats who make dumb-baby noises about arresting a commanding officer who has a couple of X-wings as an escort and a famous Force-using former Jedi.

But otherwise, it's a boring mess. Nobody has any vision of the stories they want to tell over there except for the Andor people. There's no discipline or structure or focus. No real talent at keeping things fun or doing taut action or anything in particular. It feels like a shark that has to keep moving so it doesn't die but that's about it. The worst Marvel movies/series (except for Secret Invasion) are considerably better than the average SW production at this point.

I think the New Republic descends into slapstick a little too often.

But it seems completely appropriate that it is mostly incompetent.

Sabine being an incompetent idiot is a much bigger problem.

Yes, indeed. If Ezra doesn't tell her what a fucking idiot she is as soon as he realized how she invalidated his sacrifice I'm done with this particular strand of Star Wars. That kind of behavior wouldn't even be appropriate if he had f*cked her silly in the past, for a one-sided teenager crush this is abominable.

I love the main baddies and like some other aspects, but Sabine is inexcusable.

She didn't just do it for Ezra though. She's also working out her family issues. She wanted to fight the empire during the scourge of Mandalore and Ahsoka kept her from doing that because she would've died. She still hasn't reconciled that whole thing. Balon worked that angle on her. Ezra was only part of the equation.

And seriously? Every Star Wars has been a shitload of bad decisions.

Sabine going around as if Ezra is the only living person she has a relationship while spending the entire show interacting with two other characters she has had a much more meaningful relationship with, was weird.

Sabine barely tolerated Ezra until he became more competent at the end of rebels. And then she was far more preoccupied with Mandalorians.

Sabine's and Ezra's relationship hit a point where they were able to have entire conversations without speaking a word. He literally had a message saying he trusted her to find him and knew she would. Their relationship evolved over the show, especially as he got older. Her whole arc after Rebels was clearly to find Ezra, it's the literal last thing we see in Rebels, her leaving with Ahsoka to do it after the war.

Not denying that, just saying Ezra should be furious about it as soon as he realizes what happened.

So is Rebels the show that you need to have seen in order to care in any way about any of this?  Or do you also need to have seen Clone Wars and/or read the Thrawn books?

I can completely see that she would want to help find Ezra, I just can't buy into the screw everyone and everything in order to do so attitude.

No. Having seen rebels makes it worse. It carries forward some of the worst bits of rebels and then presents versions of rebels characters that don't make sense.

I do think you need to have seen some clone wars to appreciate it. Because the most watchable thing in the show is the grown up version of Ahsoka herself.

I went back and watched Rebels after the first two episodes of this so I could have some clue who everyone is, and it definitely helped.  But I feel like I'm still missing something, and I haven't found any other references outside of maybe a run of Rebels comics?  No idea when Ahsoka trained and apparently abandoned Sabine, or when Sabine's family died.  But Rebels is definitely the thing to watch for catching up on the majority of the "wait, who is that?" moments.

Thats why it isn't critically important to see Rebels. The theoretically most important dynamic (Ahsoka and Sabine) happened almost entirely offscreen between Series. So everybody is at the same footing (confused what has been going on) at the start of this Series.

Yeah, but Rebels does clarify all the stuff with Thrawn and Ezra and the space whales.  And Hera and her kid and droid, too.

Fortunately, nothing about this series inspired me to want to learn more about the characters.

Its been super unclear. But I'm 99% sure we are supposed to understand that Sabine's family died in the mandalore purge that we've heard about in the other show. And that Ahsoka stopped Sabine returning to get killed - or get so mad that she turned into lady vader, which led to Sabine throwing a tantrum and Ahsoka deciding not to train her further.

Why Ahsoka was training her in the first place, is entirely unclear. But the timeline must be just be after the start of GCW (when rebels ends) and before RotJ (because otherwise there would be no empire to purge anything).

The last scene of Rebels was Ahsoka and Sabine teaming up to go look for Ezra wasn't it? I imagine it seemed like a good idea to train her while they were at it. As much as I dislike Ahsoka and Sabine in this they completely nailed Ezra and Thrawn.

Fwiw I quite liked 6 and 7.

People being idiots less often. Less Hera.

I like Ezra. I like Thrawn. I feel sad for not getting a Disney+ show based around Ezra and his Muppet friends foiling the dastardly plans of Thrawn and the witch ladies. I could even start to see flashes of Sabine Wren once she met up with Ezra.

You do benefit from having seen rebels now. Because the idea of the Thrawn/Ezra relationship is quite neat. Thrawn is almost entirely inscrutable but I love how fucking furious he is that Ezra trapped him on this planet.

Still too much portent and not enough fun. But it's looking up.

You can never have too much Hera. Have you seen Mary Elizabeth Winstead's ass?

Well that really didn't feel like it went anywhere. 8 episode setup for another season or a movie or something.

Or something. Like, I have no confidence now that anything they do is a down payment on something they're gonna do. Nobody's in charge overall.

What a complete waste of time.

I think it was a setup for a movie Dave Filoni is making. I do think it left far too much unresolved and will the movie work without the series? I think it'd be best to just go with a Season 2 and resolve at least some of the lingering plot threads.

Endless set ups without payoffs are killing Star Wars and Marvel.

Only one move left. (https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2023/04/14/elder-magic)

I'm sure the original plan was that this was going to partly lead in to the movie(s) they've been talking about tie-in with Mando and Boba Fett and all that. Between the strikes and Iger having previously talked about pulling back and cost-cutting I'll be surprised if that ends up still being the plan. Beyond Skeleton Crew, The Acolyte which have already completed filming, Mando season 4 already written, and presumably another season of Andor, every other Star Wars project seems to be in limbo while they try to figure out an actual plan.

Yes (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IEN69qh5OY) (This was the point at which Ewan McGregor left a 22-year marriage)

Based on how it was shot I'm fairly confident the tub scene you are referring to in that series was a body double.

Wonder who will get cast in Ray Stevenson's role.

not sure if serious

It's inevitable, they left his story up in the air. Liev Schreiber would be a good match physically.

Not sure if serious.

I mean (and I can't believe I feel like I have to explain this) they have demonstrated a tremendous unwillingness to recast old/dead actors, preferring to use CGI mannequins.  They probably made Stevenson and every other actor on this show do a high res 3D full body scan before they started shooting, just in case.

Come on, he's not that iconic--they wouldn't waste the money on some kind of CGI thing, they'd just cast a big older guy with a beard.

At this point I think it's more likely that part of the story gets picked up in some animated thing and casting won't be an issue.

Rating on this show have been terrible, so I doubt it will ever be an issue.

I wouldn't be surprised if the character shows up again. Tbh all the characters bar Hera seem just fine for use in another show.

But no guarantee it will be live action and I have no clue why people keep saying Liev Schreiber, that just seems weird to me.

CGI renderings are fine for limited stuff, but presumably the character will have serious dramatic work to do on top of flipping around with lightsabers so recasting would be the better option.  Although cartoon is also very possible, given Filoni's history with the medium.

Yeah, they'd CGI a cameo but no way they are doing that for a plot relevant character. Best they can do is Luke in the mandalorian and he had zero facial expression.

Didn't stop them, did it.  They're only ever going to do more of that nonsense, not less.

Baylan Skoll died on the way back to his home planet.

They didn't NEED Luke to be anything more. New suggestion: Graham McTavish.

I could see Rory McCann or Titus Weliver doing well in the role.

This is the way. 

Lets do a Freddie Mercury. A different actor in each episode.

For whatever it was worth I quite liked the last three episodes.

Far too slow before that.

And in the final episode I kept thinking that this would would have been far better if animated.

The limited size of the sound stages was super obvious on scenes with lots of bodies. As with Mando S3, the whole thing looked like sequences designed for clone wars or a movie, but then scaled down to make them deliverable in a live action TV context.