I have the first DVD, and its quite nice. Its actually an hour of content… since each episode is about 5 minutes or so. And it flows together to make a nice, continuous movie.
And then the last 5 episodes are of course longer (12 or so minutes) thus making another hour.
Ultimately providing more entertainment than the film has any hope of providing…
Well, I didnt say that. I think Clone Wars is great… but I’m still a Star Wars fanboy, and Ill admit that. So I like all the movies, I’m crazy like that.
The Clone Wars, while awesome, add to The Illusionary Nerfing of the Jedi.
At the end of the Matrix, Neo is amazing, transcending the “reality” of the Matrix, unmaking the agents from the inside. Then we get to the Matrix 2, and nevermind the train-wreck the rest of the movie turned into, we’re all immediately baffled by the fact that Neo is back to fighting Agents hand to hand. I mean, he wins, but still, can’t he just rend them asunder with an intense “Whoa” and a gesture of his hand? What happened to Neo? That disappointment lingers for much of the rest of the trilogy, and it certainly snowballs into an irepairable mess, but so much of at least the second movie could have been easier to swallow if the first movie ended in that hallway with Neo just getting a glimpse of the Matrix and then pummelling the crap out of Hugo, winning in a “fair” fight.
To their credit, the Wachowskis might not have expected to actually get to make the next two movies, and maybe just wanted to end the first one with a bang. Still, they’d ended the movie with Neo at such a powerful level that they had to either scale him back, to the disappointment of fans (which is what they more or less did), or come up with artificial obstacles to maintain tension and investment in the character. I hear the same thing comes up in the similar situation of writing Superman’s character in comics, it’s hard to maintain interest in an invulnerable character so you’re driven to exceedingly absurd lengths to keep things interesting.
So anyways, Lucas got this part right. The Jedi in his movies aren’t gods among men. They’re really powerful men, but they’re still vulnerable. Luke can get stuck out in a snowstorm, he can get captured by that snow thing, but he’s also resourceful and powerful enough to free himself. The whole RotJ skiff thing going on in the other thread is more evidence of how Lucas kept the Jedi powerful but in a smart realistic way. Luke doesn’t just flex and forcepush the entire population of the palance across the room.
What’s gone horribly wrong is the Jedi outside of the movies. I blame the video games mostly, as I don’t know if it’s present in the books. A subtle fanboism has gradually inflated the power of the Jedi ridiculously. Kyle Katan would have gone on a lightsaber spree and killed everyone in Jabba’s palace before the Rancor pit trap door could’ve slid back entirely (light/dark side issues of motivation aside, I mean he was capable of the act), Revan could have force choked everyone in two rounds of combat, etc. I realize Revan was supposed to be some amazing master, but still. These are not the same type of Jedi who run away from a couple of droids in a hallway like Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan in TPM, these are not the same Jedi who cannot prevent Dooku’s escape because it takes all of their concentration to stop that big thing from falling on Obi-Wan and Anakin.
This is The Illusionary Nerfing of the Jedi, the way other forms of media misrepresent the Jedi and leave the movies looking stupid. Clone Wars adds considerably. This isn’t a spoiler cause I don’t know if it’s true, but I assume we actually see Mace Windu die at some point in RotS. The Mace Windu that I just watched wipe out hundreds of droids without his lightsaber in the middle of sporadic sandstorms could not reasonably be defeated by anything less than a direct hit from the Death Star. However he meets his end, I’m going to be frustrated, thinking “No way they could do that to him!”
So the Clone Wars are a lot of fun, I enjoy watching the series, and I don’t discount that it may be more enjoyable than the movies themselves, but it’s doing it at the expense of one of the things the movies actually got right.
I see what you are saying Wholly. But I think part of it is just the nature of cartoons. It would look ridiculous have Samuel L. Jackson running around super-fast, doing ninja moves and swingin a sword everywhich way.
But in a cartoon, not only can you totally get away with doing that, it would seem almost boring if you just had two guys swinging sabres at each other for 10 minutes. So while yes, it does make them seem super powerful, I think it works within the construct of the cartoon.
I don’t buy it.
We heard all about how amazingly kick ass the real Jedi were back in 1977. 20 years later we get these wimpy punks who are being totally played by an old man and the racial stereotype aliens.
Fact of the matter is that you wouldn’t do a live action movie the same as the cartoon, but you could make the equal to the cartoon.
I’m betting they go down like punks as well.
I thought the point was that the Jedi were near unstoppable badasses back then, at the zenith of their power. Luke is a neophyte even by the end of RotJ and Vader is a cripple (well, relatively). The only thing that’s really inconsistent is why Obi Wan is such a gimp at the end of A New Hope, given that the amazing bouncing Yoda is relatively much older in Clones. Well, and if Darth Vader displays zippy badassitude at the end of RotS, then THAT will be inconsistent with ANH, too. And somehow I’m guessing this will be the case.
In the end, though, you’ve just got to shrug and accept that in ANH they had poor fight choreography and lacked the special effects we have today.
And as far as what could kill an unstoppable badass Jedi like Mace Windu? My guess would be a MORE unstoppable badass Jedi. Er, Sith, whatever.
Still, modern fight coreography aside, if Episode 1 for example had been done more like the video games or the Clone wars, Obi Wan would’ve ripped the palace walls apart when he was trapped in the force fields while Qui Gon fought Maul, or there would’ve been a panel in the Jedi Knight game that you force push to destroy the generators or something other than meditating and waiting. Sure the actual light saber fighting was fast and furious against Maul, but you’d see nothing less between expert sword fighters (in a movie at least). The force touches were little things, leaps here and there, Maul destroying the door controls with the debris, nothing on the level of destructive power you see in the games and whatnot.
And a relatively much younger Yoda? He’s like, 800 years old. If anything, over Anakin’s relatively short life span, Yoda’s “relatively” the same age through the entire trilogy.
Who in Clone Wars did we see go totally off the meter in terms of force powers? Just Yoda and Windu, right? The #1 and #2 most powerful Jedi in the whole shebang. Were the Clone Wars Anakin and Kenobi that far off from their movie versions? Maybe a little, but I can’t recall anything drastic.
I guess my point is that you’re probably right in that the video game and cartoon verssions of the Jedi are powered up, but I don’t see it to the extent that you do. And I don’t consider video games cannon.
And a relatively much younger Yoda? He’s like, 800 years old. If anything, over Anakin’s relatively short life span, Yoda’s “relatively” the same age through the entire trilogy.
Wow, that’s a good point. It’d be like a human going infirm after 12 months. My half-assed rationalization would be that Yoda’s spirit is broken by the events of Episode III and that he just can’t summon the will to animate himself like he did. Or go on living, apparently.
Whether people see them as real canon or not, they certainly carry more weight than if some guy just wrote up some fanfic about Jedi slaying entire armies of droids. I can see how it wouldn’t bother some people as much, but for me, as much as I otherwise enjoy the Clone Wars episodes, they’re hurting one of the few things I can still defend about the movies.
And it was mostly the Windu fight that made me think about it, you’re right about that, but even Anakin’s fight through the trees in Clone Wars is more force jumping and flying around than you’d ever see in the movies.
I finished watching vol1 today and completely agree with this assessment in toto.
For what it’s worth, although the Jedi wanking went way overboard at times (especially the Mace vs stomper battle) and there wasn’t much of a story, some small things in the Obi-Wan/Anakin interactions in the last 5 episodes (the lunch scene and the advice after Anakin has his vision) do much more to build up the friendship angle between the two men much better than anything in the actual prequels. The hallucinegic scene in the cave also mirrors nicely Luke’s experience in the Dark Side nexus on Dagobah.
Volume 2 is entertaining.
I was highly let down watching Volume 1 after reading all the Clone Wars worship here. It’s just an hour of cartoon fighting. Yawn.
Has anyone watched the season finale of Clone Wars? I heard there was a scene in the film that was very reminiscent of my pitch to my pitch film Forced Alliance
Different Show!
Is this the right place for this? New Clone Wars right? Is this the one @CraigM likes so much?
https://mobile.twitter.com/swankmotron/status/1020031799068463104
Oh. My. God.
I’m literally crying tears of joy over this.
Yeah, I’m so much more interested in this than Episode 9. This is amazing news.
Agreed 100,000%.
Even mild SW fans should watch the Clone Wars show. Its not just “kiddie” Star Wars. It starts slow but really get good the last several seasons. So glad its getting a reprieve.