I was born 1975 and grew up with the original Star Wars Trilogy. That being said, I've never subscribed to the intellectually dishonest position that only because you dislike something it must be bad, and only because you like something it must be good, which seems to underpin many oinions on the internet. It is totally legitimate to like something which is bad, and to dislike something which is good. Whether something is good or bad basically has not that much to do with whether you like it or not, if you are honest with yourself.

That being said, most people out there - myself included - are pretty average: Not dumb, but not too bright either. Many of those, however, like to think of themthelves as being very bright, and those are more inclined to advertise it to the world. Those are the kinds of people who in my experience are prone to jump to the conclusion that something is bad, and must be objectively so, because they dislike it. Hence the cacophony of hours-long hyperbolic negativity towards shows and movies in the internet - the majority of which clearly do not serve to get insight on an intellectual level through nuanced analysis, but validate lame opinions. Negativity likes to pretend to have special insights, but it is really the road to stupidity. It's a fast track to popularity also, it seems.

I like Clone Wars and Rebels. Both have some flaws, like any show, but they have well-constructed narratives, character arcs, and are overall well done. Calling those bad and unwatchable because you dislike them is bordering the inane. It's okay to not like them - for whatever reasons - but the need to utterly dismiss them is revealing more about the person doing the dismissing than the shows.

As for the Jedi being dogmatic fools - that's actually in and if itself pretty dogmatic and narrow-minded and a good example for proving my point: A nuanced analysis reveals that yes, the Jedi Order and its rules are dogmatic, but Jedi in the show are persons who bring their own views and some of which start to clash with the dogma of their Order. This creates some good drama in the show, it humanizes the Jedi, who can often legitimately be seen as self-rightous and narrow-minded. Some characters even leave the Jedi Order because they grow sceptical and wary of it. This makes for great stories and drama with actual substance to it. Dismissing the "Jedi" as being a-holes and for that reason the show as being bad is a travesty.

As for the Clones: The show goes out of its way to make the Clones individuals and persons. At the end, there's even a strong musical allusion to Blade Runner, creating a thematic connection between the Clones and the Replicants: Both have been created to serve in the most dire circumstances and take the worst risks, both have shortened lifespans, both are said to not be individuals, while in truth both are more human than those who ordered orchestrated their creation.

Again - you are fine to not like it, but once you rationalize your disliking the show by deliberately ignoring or even misrepresenting its many clear strengths, you are on the path of ignorance at best, and intellectual dishonesty at worst.

1 hour ago, Fourtytwo said:

I was born 1975 and grew up with the original Star Wars Trilogy. That being said, I've never subscribed to the intellectually dishonest position that only because you dislike something it must be bad, and only because you like something it must be good, which seems to underpin many oinions on the internet. It is totally legitimate to like something which is bad, and to dislike something which is good. Whether something is good or bad basically has not that much to do with whether you like it or not, if you are honest with yourself.

That being said, most people out there - myself included - are pretty average: Not dumb, but not too bright either. Many of those, however, like to think of themthelves as being very bright, and those are more inclined to advertise it to the world. Those are the kinds of people who in my experience are prone to jump to the conclusion that something is bad, and must be objectively so, because they dislike it. Hence the cacophony of hours-long hyperbolic negativity towards shows and movies in the internet - the majority of which clearly do not serve to get insight on an intellectual level through nuanced analysis, but validate lame opinions. Negativity likes to pretend to have special insights, but it is really the road to stupidity. It's a fast track to popularity also, it seems.

I like Clone Wars and Rebels. Both have some flaws, like any show, but they have well-constructed narratives, character arcs, and are overall well done. Calling those bad and unwatchable because you dislike them is bordering the inane. It's okay to not like them - for whatever reasons - but the need to utterly dismiss them is revealing more about the person doing the dismissing than the shows.

As for the Jedi being dogmatic fools - that's actually in and if itself pretty dogmatic and narrow-minded and a good example for proving my point: A nuanced analysis reveals that yes, the Jedi Order and its rules are dogmatic, but Jedi in the show are persons who bring their own views and some of which start to clash with the dogma of their Order. This creates some good drama in the show, it humanizes the Jedi, who can often legitimately be seen as self-rightous and narrow-minded. Some characters even leave the Jedi Order because they grow sceptical and wary of it. This makes for great stories and drama with actual substance to it. Dismissing the "Jedi" as being a-holes and for that reason the show as being bad is a travesty.

As for the Clones: The show goes out of its way to make the Clones individuals and persons. At the end, there's even a strong musical allusion to Blade Runner, creating a thematic connection between the Clones and the Replicants: Both have been created to serve in the most dire circumstances and take the worst risks, both have shortened lifespans, both are said to not be individuals, while in truth both are more human than those who ordered orchestrated their creation.

Again - you are fine to not like it, but once you rationalize your disliking the show by deliberately ignoring or even misrepresenting its many clear strengths, you are on the path of ignorance at best, and intellectual dishonesty at worst.

Ah, ferchrissake. I’m not pretending that I’ve got some sort of stranglehold on objective truth. I’m not trying to pretend that my opinion carries some sort of universal weight because it ascribes to some sort of Platonic ideal of aesthetic theory. I’m just saying that I think Filoni is an unremarkable talent, and I don’t like his f***ing cartoon, and I’m pointing out what I believe are weaknesses in it to illustrate my points and invite debate. The entire point of the discussion is that it may have legitimate strengths, but I struggle to dig to them because of the multiple problems I have with the presentation. And once again, the biggest problem is that he bothered to make a show about a conflict that Lucas set up poorly to begin with.

You don’t have to agree. Go ahead and like what you like. I’m not here to yuck your yum. But don’t pretend that your opinion is any more valid (or less objectionable) than mine. The big difference between us is that you feel the need to use veiled condescension, while I’m happy to just tell you straight out that your last post was insufferable.

Plenty of others have disagreed with me here. None of the rest of them have been so rude about it.

And by the way, between Lucas’ shoddy later work, and Filoni, they’ve definitely created a story which all-too-often violates most of the basics of good storytelling that any undergraduate writing, film, or drama course in America would teach. “Show, Don’t Tell.” Create (anti)heroes with pathos. Write dialogue that makes sense, that feels real, and uses words that real people would use in a given situation. Tie up loose ends. Don’t make your world feel “small” by overusing characters. Edit the boring parts out.

That sort of thing.

If you wanna Siskel & Ebert this ****, I’ll play all day. But Siskel never told Ebert he was being “inane,” and “pretending to have special insights” because he had a differing opinion. Get lost.

2 hours ago, Fourtytwo said:

I was born 1975 and grew up with the original Star Wars Trilogy. That being said, I've never subscribed to the intellectually dishonest position that only because you dislike something it must be bad, and only because you like something it must be good, which seems to underpin many oinions on the internet. It is totally legitimate to like something which is bad, and to dislike something which is good. Whether something is good or bad basically has not that much to do with whether you like it or not, if you are honest with yourself.

That being said, most people out there - myself included - are pretty average: Not dumb, but not too bright either. Many of those, however, like to think of themthelves as being very bright, and those are more inclined to advertise it to the world. Those are the kinds of people who in my experience are prone to jump to the conclusion that something is bad, and must be objectively so, because they dislike it. Hence the cacophony of hours-long hyperbolic negativity towards shows and movies in the internet - the majority of which clearly do not serve to get insight on an intellectual level through nuanced analysis, but validate lame opinions. Negativity likes to pretend to have special insights, but it is really the road to stupidity. It's a fast track to popularity also, it seems.

I like Clone Wars and Rebels. Both have some flaws, like any show, but they have well-constructed narratives, character arcs, and are overall well done. Calling those bad and unwatchable because you dislike them is bordering the inane. It's okay to not like them - for whatever reasons - but the need to utterly dismiss them is revealing more about the person doing the dismissing than the shows.

As for the Jedi being dogmatic fools - that's actually in and if itself pretty dogmatic and narrow-minded and a good example for proving my point: A nuanced analysis reveals that yes, the Jedi Order and its rules are dogmatic, but Jedi in the show are persons who bring their own views and some of which start to clash with the dogma of their Order. This creates some good drama in the show, it humanizes the Jedi, who can often legitimately be seen as self-rightous and narrow-minded. Some characters even leave the Jedi Order because they grow sceptical and wary of it. This makes for great stories and drama with actual substance to it. Dismissing the "Jedi" as being a-holes and for that reason the show as being bad is a travesty.

As for the Clones: The show goes out of its way to make the Clones individuals and persons. At the end, there's even a strong musical allusion to Blade Runner, creating a thematic connection between the Clones and the Replicants: Both have been created to serve in the most dire circumstances and take the worst risks, both have shortened lifespans, both are said to not be individuals, while in truth both are more human than those who ordered orchestrated their creation.

Again - you are fine to not like it, but once you rationalize your disliking the show by deliberately ignoring or even misrepresenting its many clear strengths, you are on the path of ignorance at best, and intellectual dishonesty at worst.

It’s pretty funny to me that you open like you did and then completely contradict yourself. I mean seriously? Because you like it, it shouldn’t be dismissed and he should try harder? All he said is that he disliked the show and found it unwatchable. This is his opinion (spoiler here, which he is entitled too based on his tastes) and one I share as well. All three of my children grew up watching the clone wars new and I couldn’t watch it then and still can’t get through an episode. I guess since I think fried squash is horrible tasting maybe I should just try harder to like it and suffer the whole time. To use your words, way to stroll down the path of ignorance and dishonesty, but you do you.

(Sorry just couldn’t bring myself to put intellectual up with the rest of your words, nothing in the least intellectual about that post)

10 hours ago, Cpt ObVus said:

Rebels was passable (except for the return of Maul, but I really ought to blame that on the unwatchable Clone Wars, which is I guess originally responsible for his resurrection, right? I don’t know for sure, I honestly can’t watch the show for more than two episodes).

Well, Rebels was the first time Filoni was in full creative control, so if his work here was 'passable' then that already suggests your problem isn't actually Dave.

I also find it a little strange that you're going to completely write off something you haven't seen. Yes, a good show should grab you instantly. I won't tell you The Clone Wars is perfect, but there's a lot of great content in there when the show is finally given the chance to develop.

10 hours ago, Cpt ObVus said:

Mandalorian was great. I loved every episode except the return to Mos Eisley, which I found to be so bad that I went to look up the director afterward. It was Filoni.

I'd say the village episode directed by Bryce Dallas Howard was far, far worse.

And Dave Filoni also directed the first episode, while executive producing the whole series and contributing to writing.

11 hours ago, Cpt ObVus said:

Clone Wars was Filoni’s big breakout, and as I’ve said, I think it’s just horrid. Writing, art style, plot, characters... I’ve tried, man.

You know that TCW was George Lucas' baby, right?

He poured millions of dollars of his own money into it, was a pretty constant present in the writers' room and gifted whole arcs to his family. So much of what you're taking issue with is down to the elements George controlled.

Dave Filoni is an EU nut who wanted to cram as much content in as he could (including a Darth Revan vision - twice) but was regularly curbed by George wanting to keep things simple and super kid friendly.

And yeah, I agree. TCW's art style is pretty horrible. I think it's way better than Rebels, though. At least TCW has an art style. The character models in Rebels are incredibly mushy, like that round Spongebob meme, and then the rest of the attempted art style...

7 hours ago, Cpt ObVus said:

like wide, squat TIE Fighters and ISD’s with giraffe-like “necks” below the bridge, but I can overlook those, for the most part.

Exactly. They're horrible.

Rebels also suffers from low res background textures, a grainy feel, cheaper animation than the later series of TCW and some pretty lacklustre FX (seriously, go back and watch Thrawn's bombardment of Atollon and look at the explosions, they're baaaad).

TCW may have had some strange faces, and you either love the 'painted canvas' texture look or you hate it, but its settings, environments and ship models were pretty sumptuous.

11 hours ago, Cpt ObVus said:

he Clone Wars of its dramatic impact is that I’m essentially watching soldier-slaves fight puppets, and like, who am I to root for?

The 'soldier-slaves'. You're supposed to root for the Clones.

That you call them 'soldier-slaves' is exactly why you should watch TCW. The best thing it does as a show is humanise the clones and give you a reason to root for at least some of them, if not all.

If you had to boil down TCW to who it's really about, then the answer would be Anakin, Ahsoka, Captain Rex and a particular squad of clones. They're the people you're meant to 'root for'. Of those, the only one whose story you already know is Anakin's, but the reason he's a main character here is because TCW does a far, far better job of showing his path to becoming Vader than the prequels did.

11 hours ago, Cpt ObVus said:

He also makes a lot of the same mistakes that George made at the end... the biggest being that there are TRILLIONS of characters in this galaxy, and rather than show us new ones, he keeps going back to the same well, just like George did

Yeah, **** that Dave Filoni! Always going back to the same old characters we had before TCW and Rebels like Rex, Fives, Bo-Katan, Kanan, Hera, Sabine, Sato, the Inquisitors.... wait, what?

Oh, but he was part of the writing for that Boba Fett series! Oh, no hang on that was a different guy too....

Okay, so he may have invented some new characters for the first two animated series, but he stuffed his third series full of legacy characters. Bring back Kaz, Yeager, Vonreg, Pyre.... Hmm, nope...

.... Uh, what was your complaint again?

11 hours ago, Cpt ObVus said:

Boba Fett was cool, right? What about another silent Mandalorian bounty hunter who looks a lot like him?

That's Jon Favreau's character, not Filoni's.

Y'know, I'm starting to see some pretty staggering confirmation bias here.

You stated that you really like the Mandalorian, except for the one episode Filoni directed (even though he directed two, which drives this point home even further). But when it comes to an aspect of the show you want to criticise (Mando is derivative), then all of a sudden he's Filoni's character. But even if that were true, and it was Filoni who created him, then shouldn't you be giving him credit for coming up with a show you really like?

Why is it Jon Favreau's show when you like the episodes, but Filoni's fault that the Mandalorian is based on Boba Fett?

11 hours ago, Cpt ObVus said:

And ****, let’s bring back Fett and put him in that series, too.

And now you're criticising it for something that hasn't even happened and has only been wildly speculated on by fans.

What, did Dave Filoni start those rumours too?

7 hours ago, Cpt ObVus said:

How old are you all? Roughly. The reason I ask is that I was born in May of ‘77, the same time that ANH released. I’m obviously too young to have seen it on its first theatrical run, but I clearly remember one of my first theatre experiences being ESB (man, was I pissed at Lando for turning his friends in after that movie!). Most of my Star Wars loving friends are about 5-8 years younger than I am, and all of them are more charitable to the prequels and Clone Wars content than I am. I do wonder if age is a factor.

I don't think age necessarily has to be a factor.

I grew up in the 90s, so most of my initial introduction to Star Wars was during the hype for the Special Editions. I'd already seen the original films by the time the SE's hit the cinemas, and had fallen in love with the universe thanks to all the toys that were coming out ahead of the SEs (those hilariously buff PotF figures may have been silly, but I still have a ton of nostalgia for them). So I was the perfect age for the prequels. I was 9 when TPM came out and I was so excited. I loved it, because I was a kid. I was so excited for II and III and went to see them a bunch of times. I used to defend them against all the people my age who criticised them.

And then I got to around 17 or 18 and decided to watch all three again and.... I couldn't do it. I couldn't sit through them. These days, I still really dislike the prequels. They're bad films. The only change in my opinion since that first realisation was deciding that TPM actually isn't as bad as I used to think, but that AotC is way, way worse. And that RotS isn't even as 'good but flawed' as I used to think.

So despite being the perfect age for a Prequel Defender, I'm not one.

But despite hating the prequels, I love the final arc of TCW.

Seriously, the Siege of Mandalore is some of the best Star Wars content I've ever seen. It's up there with the Jedi Knight games and Stover's novels. Real talk, it's better than the Mandalorian.

It makes me genuinely sorry for you that you can't find a way to enjoy it. But you won't get anywhere enough out of it if you haven't invested even a little bit in TCW. You need to get to the stage where you like Ahsoka for it to work. You need to watch all the Mandalorian and Maul episodes to get it. You need to watch the good Anakin episodes, the Fives arc and some really important Rex episodes to get it.

7 hours ago, Cpt ObVus said:

I will probably, out of some sense of obligation, try the Clone Wars again. I’ve tried three or four times to watch it already. But it always feels more like work than recreation.

Have you ever tried one of the curated viewing orders that are out there?

I can totally understand struggling with most of the first two or three seasons. They're bad. But I also wouldn't want to just say start with season 4, because there are some important episodes before then.

Luckily, there's a playlist for all levels. Some just put the whole series in chronological order, which helps. Some focus on just the Jedi stories, some on the important clone stories.

7 hours ago, Old Sarge said:

I also found Clone Wars to be bad. I was miserably powering through it until I found a guide that recommended skipping certain episodes. Then it became quite tolerable. The final arc was absolutely incredible.

This is absolutely my experience.

TCW on the whole is bad. Especially for an EU fan.

But once it hits its stride and Ahsoka and Rex become likable leading characters, boy does it get better. And yeah, Siege of Mandalore was so good.

***

Anyway, to finally get back on topic:

This news doesn't do much for me. I thought the Bad Batch was actually the weakest arc of the final season. Yes, I thought it was way worse than the Martez sisters. I know it's a minority opinion, but I quite like them and their arc. Stories of normal people doing what they can to survive in the Star Wars galaxy are often the ones that appeal to me the most. I liked getting to see a plot of desperate people turning to smuggling and being bad at it, I liked that it was a story where a ship represented freedom (because who doesn't love Firefly?) and I liked that it helped set up Ahsoka's transition away from the Jedi by showing her the world away from the war.

The Bad Batch, on the other hand, I thought were derivative, uninteresting and one dimensional. Maybe they'd have held up better in a world where Republic Commando and the novels hadn't already done the premise of a squad of clones with different, archetypal roles and personalities much better.

The plot of those episodes was dull as well. Sorry TCW fans, but I didn't care at all about Echo. It was sad when he died, but bringing him back just undercut that previous episode rather than added to the series as a whole. The 'algorithm' was a typically silly macguffin for a war story and I still don't get what people see in Trench - he's as incompetent as all the CIS characters.

I really don't see enough depth to anchor a series off there. I love the inter-war period, but this doesn't seem like a particularly fresh take on it. Looks like we're still in a holding pattern until the High Republic stuff starts coming out and we finally get something a bit different.

1 hour ago, GuacCousteau said:

Well, Rebels was the first time Filoni was in full creative control, so if his work here was 'passable' then that already suggests your problem isn't actually Dave.

I also find it a little strange that you're going to completely write off something you haven't seen. Yes, a good show should grab you instantly. I won't tell you The Clone Wars is perfect, but there's a lot of great content in there when the show is finally given the chance to develop.

I'd say the village episode directed by Bryce Dallas Howard was far, far worse.

And Dave Filoni also directed the first episode, while executive producing the whole series and contributing to writing.

You know that TCW was George Lucas' baby, right?

He poured millions of dollars of his own money into it, was a pretty constant present in the writers' room and gifted whole arcs to his family. So much of what you're taking issue with is down to the elements George controlled.

Dave Filoni is an EU nut who wanted to cram as much content in as he could (including a Darth Revan vision - twice) but was regularly curbed by George wanting to keep things simple and super kid friendly.

And yeah, I agree. TCW's art style is pretty horrible. I think it's way better than Rebels, though. At least TCW has an art style. The character models in Rebels are incredibly mushy, like that round Spongebob meme, and then the rest of the attempted art style...

Exactly. They're horrible.

Rebels also suffers from low res background textures, a grainy feel, cheaper animation than the later series of TCW and some pretty lacklustre FX (seriously, go back and watch Thrawn's bombardment of Atollon and look at the explosions, they're baaaad).

TCW may have had some strange faces, and you either love the 'painted canvas' texture look or you hate it, but its settings, environments and ship models were pretty sumptuous.

The 'soldier-slaves'. You're supposed to root for the Clones.

That you call them 'soldier-slaves' is exactly why you should watch TCW. The best thing it does as a show is humanise the clones and give you a reason to root for at least some of them, if not all.

If you had to boil down TCW to who it's really about, then the answer would be Anakin, Ahsoka, Captain Rex and a particular squad of clones. They're the people you're meant to 'root for'. Of those, the only one whose story you already know is Anakin's, but the reason he's a main character here is because TCW does a far, far better job of showing his path to becoming Vader than the prequels did.

Yeah, **** that Dave Filoni! Always going back to the same old characters we had before TCW and Rebels like Rex, Fives, Bo-Katan, Kanan, Hera, Sabine, Sato, the Inquisitors.... wait, what?

Oh, but he was part of the writing for that Boba Fett series! Oh, no hang on that was a different guy too....

Okay, so he may have invented some new characters for the first two animated series, but he stuffed his third series full of legacy characters. Bring back Kaz, Yeager, Vonreg, Pyre.... Hmm, nope...

.... Uh, what was your complaint again?

That's Jon Favreau's character, not Filoni's.

Y'know, I'm starting to see some pretty staggering confirmation bias here.

You stated that you really like the Mandalorian, except for the one episode Filoni directed (even though he directed two, which drives this point home even further). But when it comes to an aspect of the show you want to criticise (Mando is derivative), then all of a sudden he's Filoni's character. But even if that were true, and it was Filoni who created him, then shouldn't you be giving him credit for coming up with a show you really like?

Why is it Jon Favreau's show when you like the episodes, but Filoni's fault that the Mandalorian is based on Boba Fett?

And now you're criticising it for something that hasn't even happened and has only been wildly speculated on by fans.

What, did Dave Filoni start those rumours too?

I don't think age necessarily has to be a factor.

I grew up in the 90s, so most of my initial introduction to Star Wars was during the hype for the Special Editions. I'd already seen the original films by the time the SE's hit the cinemas, and had fallen in love with the universe thanks to all the toys that were coming out ahead of the SEs (those hilariously buff PotF figures may have been silly, but I still have a ton of nostalgia for them). So I was the perfect age for the prequels. I was 9 when TPM came out and I was so excited. I loved it, because I was a kid. I was so excited for II and III and went to see them a bunch of times. I used to defend them against all the people my age who criticised them.

And then I got to around 17 or 18 and decided to watch all three again and.... I couldn't do it. I couldn't sit through them. These days, I still really dislike the prequels. They're bad films. The only change in my opinion since that first realisation was deciding that TPM actually isn't as bad as I used to think, but that AotC is way, way worse. And that RotS isn't even as 'good but flawed' as I used to think.

So despite being the perfect age for a Prequel Defender, I'm not one.

But despite hating the prequels, I love the final arc of TCW.

Seriously, the Siege of Mandalore is some of the best Star Wars content I've ever seen. It's up there with the Jedi Knight games and Stover's novels. Real talk, it's better than the Mandalorian.

It makes me genuinely sorry for you that you can't find a way to enjoy it. But you won't get anywhere enough out of it if you haven't invested even a little bit in TCW. You need to get to the stage where you like Ahsoka for it to work. You need to watch all the Mandalorian and Maul episodes to get it. You need to watch the good Anakin episodes, the Fives arc and some really important Rex episodes to get it.

Have you ever tried one of the curated viewing orders that are out there?

I can totally understand struggling with most of the first two or three seasons. They're bad. But I also wouldn't want to just say start with season 4, because there are some important episodes before then.

Luckily, there's a playlist for all levels. Some just put the whole series in chronological order, which helps. Some focus on just the Jedi stories, some on the important clone stories.

This is absolutely my experience.

TCW on the whole is bad. Especially for an EU fan.

But once it hits its stride and Ahsoka and Rex become likable leading characters, boy does it get better. And yeah, Siege of Mandalore was so good.

***

Anyway, to finally get back on topic:

This news doesn't do much for me. I thought the Bad Batch was actually the weakest arc of the final season. Yes, I thought it was way worse than the Martez sisters. I know it's a minority opinion, but I quite like them and their arc. Stories of normal people doing what they can to survive in the Star Wars galaxy are often the ones that appeal to me the most. I liked getting to see a plot of desperate people turning to smuggling and being bad at it, I liked that it was a story where a ship represented freedom (because who doesn't love Firefly?) and I liked that it helped set up Ahsoka's transition away from the Jedi by showing her the world away from the war.

The Bad Batch, on the other hand, I thought were derivative, uninteresting and one dimensional. Maybe they'd have held up better in a world where Republic Commando and the novels hadn't already done the premise of a squad of clones with different, archetypal roles and personalities much better.

The plot of those episodes was dull as well. Sorry TCW fans, but I didn't care at all about Echo. It was sad when he died, but bringing him back just undercut that previous episode rather than added to the series as a whole. The 'algorithm' was a typically silly macguffin for a war story and I still don't get what people see in Trench - he's as incompetent as all the CIS characters.

I really don't see enough depth to anchor a series off there. I love the inter-war period, but this doesn't seem like a particularly fresh take on it. Looks like we're still in a holding pattern until the High Republic stuff starts coming out and we finally get something a bit different.

I actually don’t think you and I are very far apart on most of this. Just wanted to clear a few things up...

The way you’re characterizing what I said about The Mandalorian isn’t quite right. I liked the whole thing, except one episode, and I disliked that one so much that I went to look up the director afterward, and found it was Filoni. I know he also directed the first episode, which was fine. I’m not saying he’s never produced good work. I just think that his work is inconsistent, and he really should be a consultant on Star Wars, not The Guy. I dunno who The Guy ought to be, but it shouldn’t be someone who wrote and directed something as dumb as that particular episode of Mando. Nor should it be anyone who had anything to do with giving Maul legs. That’s the laziest pandering SW has ever engaged in, and it just annoys the **** out of me that SW is written in a way that clearly shows that quite often there are no adults in the room telling George/Dave/whoever that just because you have an idea doesn’t mean it’s good.

Backing up a bit: I LOVED the Bryce Dallas Howard episode of Mando. Talk about actually showing the consequences of war and a lawless galaxy affecting real people? There it is. Plus, I really like the Cara Dune character. And I think it did a good job of humanizing the Mando.

Also, maybe I’m giving Filoni too much flak for derivative characters and small world syndrome. I had been under the impression that he was the architect of the Maul/Savage stories (by the way, I get that Sith are supposed to have menacing names like “Tyranus” and “Bane,” but... “Savage Opress?” Yeesh. Why didn’t they just call him “Darth Scary Badman?”). I really, really hate that they brought Maul back. On so many levels. It’s not good writing. And if you can cut a Sith in half, and have him survive, why do a Jedi even use lightsabers? It’s just dumb, and it makes me angry that they did it, and even as a guy who thought Maul was pretty cool, I don’t want to talk about it any more. But the fact that Filoni had any part in making that happen... ugh. I just want to send everyone involved in that to remedial writing classes.

Anyway, all that aside, I appreciate your help and suggestion that I get some sort of curated CW playlist going. But I gotta tell you: When I recommend good art to someone, I don’t usually tell them to skip certain bits.

“Go listen to most of ‘Dark Side of the Moon,’ but skip tracks 2, 3, 7, and 9.”

“Watch ‘The Princess Bride,’ but fast forward through the first ten minutes.”

“Read ‘The Lord of the Rings,’ but skim through everything between Rivendell and Moria in the first book, and skip the first half of the second book.”

No, I’m afraid that if I’m gonna watch Clone Wars, I’m gonna have to slog through the whole thing. Maybe it’s just me, but I really don’t care for ‘a la carte’ culture. If you’re gonna make sixty episodes of something, make it good! If you’ve only got twelve good episodes in you, make one great season and be done with it! To do otherwise shows a lack of editing, which is arguably the most important part of the creative process.

I'm excited for Bad Batch. I watched all of those episodes when they were unfinished story reels and just dug the cheesy over-the-top-ness of the Bad Batch. I was pretty cranky when Clone Wars was cancelled. My big thing with this news is that hope for Battlefront: The Bad Batch videogame is not entirely dead. I downright love both of the animated series. They get that pulpy-Saturday-afternoon-square-jawed-heroes serial thing quite right in my opinion.

One of the things I think Rebels gets really right is the balance they strike between using The Empire as foils for the heroes and showing why the heck The Empire needed standing up to and overthrown.

18 minutes ago, Cpt ObVus said:

The way you’re characterizing what I said about The Mandalorian isn’t quite right. I liked the whole thing, except one episode, and I disliked that one so much that I went to look up the director afterward, and found it was Filoni.

I had exactly the opposite reaction to that episode. I was like "I really liked that episode. Who directed that?" I think Mandalorian overall is pretty "meh." SOOOOO much shaky-cam in scope aspect and over-production in that show. The premise is strained and underdeveloped. The trackers and bounty-hunter guild is wearing a lampshade at best. That strain is placed on it by the lazy and threadbare setup of TFA they've got to honor. The Child is just a deus ex machina .

The thing plays a lot like a brainstorming session for a movie script that they just didn't throw anything out of. It is too long for a movie and too short for a series. The show needed a few more episodes like the Filone one that seems to get run down in the Star Wars social media corners of the internet I visit. But audiences have the attention span of gnats and flip their poodoo at even a hint of "filler." The other episode I liked was just Seven Samurai/Magnificent Seven riff which was something they did in Clone Wars.

Mandalorian and Rogue One are really overrated. The are the other side of the coin of a movie like "Temple of Doom."

58 minutes ago, Cpt ObVus said:

“Watch ‘The Princess Bride,’ but fast forward through the first ten minutes.”

Whoever sells The Princess Bride this way needs a paddlin'.

2 hours ago, Cpt ObVus said:

I actually don’t think you and I are very far apart on most of this. Just wanted to clear a few things up...

The way you’re characterizing what I said about The Mandalorian isn’t quite right. I liked the whole thing, except one episode, and I disliked that one so much that I went to look up the director afterward, and found it was Filoni. I know he also directed the first episode, which was fine. I’m not saying he’s never produced good work. I just think that his work is inconsistent, and he really should be a consultant on Star Wars, not The Guy. I dunno who The Guy ought to be, but it shouldn’t be someone who wrote and directed something as dumb as that particular episode of Mando. Nor should it be anyone who had anything to do with giving Maul legs. That’s the laziest pandering SW has ever engaged in, and it just annoys the **** out of me that SW is written in a way that clearly shows that quite often there are no adults in the room telling George/Dave/whoever that just because you have an idea doesn’t mean it’s good.

Backing up a bit: I LOVED the Bryce Dallas Howard episode of Mando. Talk about actually showing the consequences of war and a lawless galaxy affecting real people? There it is. Plus, I really like the Cara Dune character. And I think it did a good job of humanizing the Mando.

Also, maybe I’m giving Filoni too much flak for derivative characters and small world syndrome. I had been under the impression that he was the architect of the Maul/Savage stories (by the way, I get that Sith are supposed to have menacing names like “Tyranus” and “Bane,” but... “Savage Opress?” Yeesh. Why didn’t they just call him “Darth Scary Badman?”). I really, really hate that they brought Maul back. On so many levels. It’s not good writing. And if you can cut a Sith in half, and have him survive, why do a Jedi even use lightsabers? It’s just dumb, and it makes me angry that they did it, and even as a guy who thought Maul was pretty cool, I don’t want to talk about it any more. But the fact that Filoni had any part in making that happen... ugh. I just want to send everyone involved in that to remedial writing classes.

Anyway, all that aside, I appreciate your help and suggestion that I get some sort of curated CW playlist going. But I gotta tell you: When I recommend good art to someone, I don’t usually tell them to skip certain bits.

“Go listen to most of ‘Dark Side of the Moon,’ but skip tracks 2, 3, 7, and 9.”

“Watch ‘The Princess Bride,’ but fast forward through the first ten minutes.”

“Read ‘The Lord of the Rings,’ but skim through everything between Rivendell and Moria in the first book, and skip the first half of the second book.”

No, I’m afraid that if I’m gonna watch Clone Wars, I’m gonna have to slog through the whole thing. Maybe it’s just me, but I really don’t care for ‘a la carte’ culture. If you’re gonna make sixty episodes of something, make it good! If you’ve only got twelve good episodes in you, make one great season and be done with it! To do otherwise shows a lack of editing, which is arguably the most important part of the creative process.

While I was initially skeptical of the return of Darth Maul, I find your criticism to be odd. Jedi use lightsabers because they have been proven to be incredibly effective at killing things time and time again throughout every piece of media in which they appear. Just because there is a single instance of a very powerful and perhaps very lucky sith lord surviving losing his legs does not discount that fact. Playing it off as bad writing seems silly to me. And despite my initial doubts, bringing back Maul turned out to be one of the best decisions in the show. He became an excellent villain and a very interesting character.

This begs the question: how much of the clone wars, and what parts, have you actually watched? As others have brought up, it seems odd to harshly criticize the whole of the show, not having watched it yourself in any great amount.

As for the comment about skipping parts of art; it is actually nothing like those examples. The dark side of the moon is not an album of singles, the princess bride is not a a collection of random anecdotes, neither is lord of the rings. Skipping parts of the clone wars is like skipping certain short stories in a short story book. The series is based on many different anthologies, and the truth of the matter is, some stories are simply not necessary to the overall vision and story of the series. As a huge fan of the clone wars, there are some parts that even I say to not watch. Sure, ideally, there wouldn’t be any bad episodes, but that’s what happened, and its silly to hate a show for the poor episodes while ignoring the good ones and the overall vision.

2 hours ago, Cpt ObVus said:

Anyway, all that aside, I appreciate your help and suggestion that I get some sort of curated CW playlist going. But I gotta tell you: When I recommend good art to someone, I don’t usually tell them to skip certain bits.

“Go listen to most of ‘Dark Side of the Moon,’ but skip tracks 2, 3, 7, and 9.”

“Watch ‘The Princess Bride,’ but fast forward through the first ten minutes.”

“Read ‘The Lord of the Rings,’ but skim through everything between Rivendell and Moria in the first book, and skip the first half of the second book.”

This is kinda why I'm finding that more and more I want to stay away from discussion and criticism of art on the internet.

Youtube channels and independent blog type sites have done a lot to bring the language of art criticism to people who haven't studied it, but boy am I growing tired of the 'hot take' era. It's absolutely encouraged more and more people who think they know what they're talking about to use terms to avoid making actual arguments (not saying that's what you're doing here, mind, just a comment on the 'post-Red Letter Media' world) and false equivalences and bad analogies like yours (this time I am saying that's what you're doing) are absolutely rife.

You can't make a blanket statement like that about 'art'.

You can't compare a TV series to a book series, or an album or a film like that.

They are totally different. They are made differently. They are experienced differently.

An album isn't something produced and released over the course of years.

Pink Floyd didn't change the last track on Dark Side because they weren't expecting people to latch onto three lines from a verse of Money when it was released as advanced single, and wanted to capitalise on that verse by giving the listeners a refrain.

But writers might change the last season of a show to feature more of a character that fans unexpectedly latched onto in the second series.

A film is a collaborative work, but it almost always has one consistent director, one team of consistent writers, one producer. While directing Princess Bride, Rob Reiner didn't decide halfway through production to let his daughter write and direct a scene about characters only tangentially related to the rest of the plot. A film is produced all at once, then released all at once.

A series will evolve, and a rotation of the creative minds behind it will result in changes. Like George Lucas temporarily giving Katie Lucas the rains so she could butcher the Nightsisters of Dathomir because she thought the name was cool but didn't care at all about their original role. Or, like Dave Filoni gradually being given more leeway over time to focus on his original characters like Ahsoka and Rex instead of everything having to revolve around movie characters.

JRR Tolkein didn't suddenly receive a massive budget increase before sitting down to write Return of the King. Even if he had, he couldn't have used that extra money to somehow make the words on the page scan better to the reader or improve the aesthetics of the typeface.

A series can absolutely improve over time. More money can result in better sets, higher fidelity cameras, better effects, more expensive and better acting talent, more established writers.

The guitar didn't suddenly go through a discrete step change in absolute quality halfway through writing Dark Side. Pink Floyd didn't write the first 4 tracks with Guitar 1.0, release them, and then record the rest of the album with the demonstrably better Guitar 2.0 and not be able to change the first 4 tracks.

Animation and rendering tech gets better all the time. The Clone Wars noticeably looks better in Season 4 because the tech got better and they could afford more of it.

TV is its own medium. It changes all the time. Especially when the nature of the writing is episodic. When the story of four episodes doesn't necessarily connect to the story of a different 4 episodes, of course some will be more worthy of your time than others. When it turns out that one writer isn't working out and is replaced by a better writer, of course the quality changes over time.

As a final thought, even if it was appropriate to compare a series and an album, your analogy doesn't even track !

I have absolutely recommended albums to people but advised that some of the tracks aren't as good. When I listen to some of my favourite albums, I will skip tracks. I consider Kendrick Lamar's To Pimp a Butterfly an absolute masterpiece, but I will usually skip Momma and Complexion because I just don't enjoy listening to those tracks as much.

Worse, there are bands out there who have made entire careers out of great singles but albums fill of filler. If someone was to recommend a band to you, but say just listen to the singles and don't bother with the album only tracks, you wouldn't think it was that weird. So why isn't that equally analogous to a TV series?

What about bands themselves? Why is it okay to recommend Dark Side of the Moon as a masterpiece, but advise that unless you really want to get into the history of Pink Floyd you might want to skip Piper At the Gates of Dawn; but not okay to recommend someone watch the Umbara arc and Siege of Mandalore arc of Clone Wars, and not bother with the D-Squad arc or anything involving Jar-Jar?

Do you see why these analogies don't work? How do you even decide what comprises 'a piece of art' in this case? I would argue that a band's output over time is more comparable to a TV show than a single album of theirs, but who cares? It's a dumb comparison anyway.

People will recommend different starting points for a TV show all the time .

One of the best TV series ever created has two whole seasons of largely forgettable content. Would you really take issue with me recommending Star Trek The Next Generation to you, but telling you to skip all of Seasons 1 and 2 except or one single episode (Measure of a Man)? I find it hard to believe you would, because this is an extremely commonly accepted opinion - TNG is amazing, but only from season 3 on.

And one, final point just to really drive home how bad faith I think those comparison are. I tell people to skip part of LOTR all the time . I tell people who haven't read it that they really should, as it's a classic for a reason, but I will always tell them to skip the songs that go on for pages, and to skip the Tom Bombadil chapter. Yes, I know. That's total heresy to some. But that's the point. Sometimes you know that people will appreciate different aspects of a work, and you want them to enjoy the drama of Frodo and Sam's story, but you know that having the plot completely stall for a chapter will derail their enjoyment enough to give up. And it's okay to make recommendations to help them enjoy the bits you want to.

11 hours ago, Cpt ObVus said:

You don’t have to agree. Go ahead and like what you like. I’m not here to yuck your yum. But don’t pretend that your opinion is any more valid (or less objectionable) than mine. The big difference between us is that you feel the need to use veiled condescension, while I’m happy to just tell you straight out that your last post was insufferable.

Plenty of others have disagreed with me here. None of the rest of them have been so rude about it.

You literally made a comment theorizing the reason people liked the Clone Wars was because they were all too young to have grown up with the original trilogy. That also comes off as fairly condescending.

8 hours ago, Cpt ObVus said:

I’m not saying he’s never produced good work. I just think that his work is inconsistent, and he really should be a consultant on Star Wars, not The Guy.

You just described George Lucas.

Most would agree that Filoni has been among the most consistent people who have ever touched Star Wars screen media. If he shouldn't be "The Guy" (which, by the way, he isn't ), then who should?

Actually, my specific opinion is that he should be "The Guy" and that almost everything that's gone wrong in Disney canon could have been prevented had he been at the helm. Might we have an occasional weak episode? Sure. But you can bet your life he wouldn't have undone Anakin's prophecy by bringing Palpatine back. In fact, his vision for Anakin and the lore of the force is so potent I can't imagine how incredible a sequel trilogy written by him (and probably directed by others like Rian Johnson) could have been.

Instead, Disney made the unfathomable decision to let the directors walk in and write their own Star Wars, with no unified vision, no intended basic storyline, and very few people in the story group to say "no" to them.

8 hours ago, Cpt ObVus said:

I really, really hate that they brought Maul back. On so many levels. It’s not good writing.

It's still absolutely nothing compared to bringing Palpatine back. Maul was far more interesting after being sliced in half than before TBH. That incident essentially defines his character and it's pretty good.

At the very least, it's excusable.

Palpatine isn't.

48 minutes ago, ClassicalMoser said:

It's still absolutely nothing compared to bringing Palpatine back. Maul was far more interesting after being sliced in half than before TBH. That incident essentially defines his character and it's pretty good.

At the very least, it's excusable.

Palpatine isn't.

Agreed. I cringed at the initial thought of Maul coming back, but it was executed so incredibly well, that I couldn't help but like it. Palps revival was inelegant and unexplained.

1 hour ago, 5050Saint said:

Agreed. I cringed at the initial thought of Maul coming back, but it was executed so incredibly well, that I couldn't help but like it. Palps revival was inelegant and unexplained.

It's not even like Maul was the first time Star Wars media used the concept of a Sith Lord holding himself together through hate .

5 hours ago, PhantomFO said:

You literally made a comment theorizing the reason people liked the Clone Wars was because they were all too young to have grown up with the original trilogy. That also comes off as fairly condescending.

Wasn’t meant to be condescending at all. I’ve merely found that people about 5 years younger than myself tend to be more accepting of certain aspects of the story, and I’m wondering if I’m often the odd man out in such discussions because of my age (or however you wish to frame it). No value judgments intended.

7 hours ago, GuacCousteau said:

This is kinda why I'm finding that more and more I want to stay away from discussion and criticism of art on the internet.

Youtube channels and independent blog type sites have done a lot to bring the language of art criticism to people who haven't studied it, but boy am I growing tired of the 'hot take' era. It's absolutely encouraged more and more people who think they know what they're talking about to use terms to avoid making actual arguments (not saying that's what you're doing here, mind, just a comment on the 'post-Red Letter Media' world) and false equivalences and bad analogies like yours (this time I am saying that's what you're doing) are absolutely rife.

You can't make a blanket statement like that about 'art'.

You can't compare a TV series to a book series, or an album or a film like that.

They are totally different. They are made differently. They are experienced differently.

An album isn't something produced and released over the course of years.

Pink Floyd didn't change the last track on Dark Side because they weren't expecting people to latch onto three lines from a verse of Money when it was released as advanced single, and wanted to capitalise on that verse by giving the listeners a refrain.

But writers might change the last season of a show to feature more of a character that fans unexpectedly latched onto in the second series.

A film is a collaborative work, but it almost always has one consistent director, one team of consistent writers, one producer. While directing Princess Bride, Rob Reiner didn't decide halfway through production to let his daughter write and direct a scene about characters only tangentially related to the rest of the plot. A film is produced all at once, then released all at once.

A series will evolve, and a rotation of the creative minds behind it will result in changes. Like George Lucas temporarily giving Katie Lucas the rains so she could butcher the Nightsisters of Dathomir because she thought the name was cool but didn't care at all about their original role. Or, like Dave Filoni gradually being given more leeway over time to focus on his original characters like Ahsoka and Rex instead of everything having to revolve around movie characters.

JRR Tolkein didn't suddenly receive a massive budget increase before sitting down to write Return of the King. Even if he had, he couldn't have used that extra money to somehow make the words on the page scan better to the reader or improve the aesthetics of the typeface.

A series can absolutely improve over time. More money can result in better sets, higher fidelity cameras, better effects, more expensive and better acting talent, more established writers.

The guitar didn't suddenly go through a discrete step change in absolute quality halfway through writing Dark Side. Pink Floyd didn't write the first 4 tracks with Guitar 1.0, release them, and then record the rest of the album with the demonstrably better Guitar 2.0 and not be able to change the first 4 tracks.

Animation and rendering tech gets better all the time. The Clone Wars noticeably looks better in Season 4 because the tech got better and they could afford more of it.

TV is its own medium. It changes all the time. Especially when the nature of the writing is episodic. When the story of four episodes doesn't necessarily connect to the story of a different 4 episodes, of course some will be more worthy of your time than others. When it turns out that one writer isn't working out and is replaced by a better writer, of course the quality changes over time.

As a final thought, even if it was appropriate to compare a series and an album, your analogy doesn't even track !

I have absolutely recommended albums to people but advised that some of the tracks aren't as good. When I listen to some of my favourite albums, I will skip tracks. I consider Kendrick Lamar's To Pimp a Butterfly an absolute masterpiece, but I will usually skip Momma and Complexion because I just don't enjoy listening to those tracks as much.

Worse, there are bands out there who have made entire careers out of great singles but albums fill of filler. If someone was to recommend a band to you, but say just listen to the singles and don't bother with the album only tracks, you wouldn't think it was that weird. So why isn't that equally analogous to a TV series?

What about bands themselves? Why is it okay to recommend Dark Side of the Moon as a masterpiece, but advise that unless you really want to get into the history of Pink Floyd you might want to skip Piper At the Gates of Dawn; but not okay to recommend someone watch the Umbara arc and Siege of Mandalore arc of Clone Wars, and not bother with the D-Squad arc or anything involving Jar-Jar?

Do you see why these analogies don't work? How do you even decide what comprises 'a piece of art' in this case? I would argue that a band's output over time is more comparable to a TV show than a single album of theirs, but who cares? It's a dumb comparison anyway.

People will recommend different starting points for a TV show all the time .

One of the best TV series ever created has two whole seasons of largely forgettable content. Would you really take issue with me recommending Star Trek The Next Generation to you, but telling you to skip all of Seasons 1 and 2 except or one single episode (Measure of a Man)? I find it hard to believe you would, because this is an extremely commonly accepted opinion - TNG is amazing, but only from season 3 on.

And one, final point just to really drive home how bad faith I think those comparison are. I tell people to skip part of LOTR all the time . I tell people who haven't read it that they really should, as it's a classic for a reason, but I will always tell them to skip the songs that go on for pages, and to skip the Tom Bombadil chapter. Yes, I know. That's total heresy to some. But that's the point. Sometimes you know that people will appreciate different aspects of a work, and you want them to enjoy the drama of Frodo and Sam's story, but you know that having the plot completely stall for a chapter will derail their enjoyment enough to give up. And it's okay to make recommendations to help them enjoy the bits you want to.

My comparisons weren’t made in bad faith. I guess we just value different aspects of film and TV. Like, before the final couple seasons of Game of Thrones, I would tell anyone who would listen to go watch it immediately. After the last couple seasons, and particularly the finale, I would hesitate to mention it to most people as a show worth watching. I tend to prefer consistency.

Maybe I ought to try making an exception in this case.

10 hours ago, Frimmel said:

Mandalorian and Rogue One are really overrated. The are the other side of the coin of a movie like "Temple of Doom."

"Overrated" or not, they are the only good live action Star Wars content Disney has released so far.

I resisted Clone Wars and Rebels for years, but when I finally got around to them, I enjoyed both. Rebels in particular is genuinely good, with truly great new characters (Kanan and Ezra, in particular).

In order to make Clone Wars more accessible (seven seasons is a lot of television), I watched a curated list of the "best" arcs prior to Season 7's debut on Disney+. And I have to say, I really liked those episodes that I watched. Not enough to go back and watch the episodes that I skipped, mind you, but I really enjoyed them.

And this opinion may be rare, but I even enjoyed Resistance (though I actually saw it before I watched Rebels and CW , so it's dropped down a couple of notches since I originally watched it). In fact, I would like to see a third season of Resistance that takes place after Ep. IX. Let's see Finn (along with Kaz, Jannah, Rose, and Poe?) help free his fellow Stormtroopers -- that's his true purpose, I feel, and it's unfulfilled.

All that being said, I totally see where @Cpt ObVus is coming from. Dave Filoni has done good work for Star Wars , but I also think he's guilty of going back to the same well over and over again. His episode of Mandalorian was the worst episode -- no doubt about it. By baseball standards, he's a resounding success, but I think he misses as often as he gets hits.

As for the Bad Batch ? Well, to be honest, I would much rather have a sequel to Rebels than a Bad Batch spinoff, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that such a series is announced sometime later this year. But I'll definitely give the show a shot, being that I already have Disney+ and the previous animated installments have won me over. My concern is this: stories shouldn't be about world-building, they should be about characters, and from what I've seen of these characters so far, I don't find them terribly compelling. They're more caricature than character at this point. Let's hope they fix that.

1 minute ago, FTS Gecko said:

"Overrated" or not, they are the only good live action Star Wars content Disney has released so far.

That was sort of my point. They are the only live action I have enjoyed from Disney. Mostly liked Mandalorian, liked the third act of Rogue One and most of the time Krennic was on screen, did not hate Solo. Mandalorian would have been much better if they had foregone all of the shaky cam. I am starting to think shaky cam in scope aspect is at least as great a cinematic sin as allowing JJ to direct.

2 minutes ago, Frimmel said:

That was sort of my point. They are the only live action I have enjoyed from Disney. Mostly liked Mandalorian, liked the third act of Rogue One and most of the time Krennic was on screen, did not hate Solo. Mandalorian would have been much better if they had foregone all of the shaky cam. I am starting to think shaky cam in scope aspect is at least as great a cinematic sin as allowing JJ to direct.

Solo was OK. considering everything it had going against it. The sequels... are what they are, I guess (which in my opinion was just a massive waste of potential and a missed opportunity).

Didn't really notice the shaky cam in Mando too much myself, although I've only watched it through once. I'm not a fan of the technique myself and agree it gets overused far too much. Mando had some cool concepts and some great episodes, and some average episodes as well. But isn't that the case with a lot of first seasons? Most of the series I've enjoyed improved after the first once they found their groove (and increased budget).

My big worry for season two is the number of rumoured "guest" characters. I just hope it doesn't take too much attention away from the leads.

10 minutes ago, Rmcarrier1 said:

All that being said, I totally see where @Cpt ObVus is coming from. Dave Filoni has done good work for Star Wars , but I also think he's guilty of going back to the same well over and over again. His episode of Mandalorian was the worst episode -- no doubt about it. By baseball standards, he's a resounding success, but I think he misses as often as he gets hits.

Yeah, I'm not in the "Save us Obi-Wan Filoni, you're our only hope" camp either. I've enjoyed what I've seen of his work (mostly the first couple of seasons of Rebels and Mando), and he's certainly contributed to the best Disney have offered so far, but to use a pro-wrestling trope he seems to be one of those guys who's simply got to get all his s--t in. Almost as though he heard about the writing technique of "killing your darlings" and decided yeah, nope, that's not for me.

I think what it may boil down to is simple: I thought the prequels were... what they were, which is sort-of-entertaining B (C?) sci-fi films, but not nearly as good as the Star Wars I knew and loved, and couldn’t really get into CW. Meanwhile, I genuinely and unreservedly have thoroughly enjoyed all of the Disney era films and The Mandalorian. So to me, Filoni represents the bad old stuff, and is holding Star Wars back. I’m not particularly impressed with his work, so I look at him as a really average fanboy, and given that SW fanboys are a dime a dozen, and a lot of them have real writing talent, I’d really just rather have one of them at the helm.

Anyway. Carry on looking forward to Bad Batch, guys. I’ll probably give it the old college try. And thanks for the tips about not watching all of CW. I still don’t get why and how it can be hailed as great SW TV when everyone seems to agree that great swaths of it are totally skippable, but maybe I’ll give it another go and be wrong. I’d like to be wrong; it’s not like I enjoy not enjoying things.

Oh good. Glad to see that a third of that last season of CW was a backdoor pilot for another show instead of being used to resolve a bunch of stuff the series left hanging.

Didn't find them that interesting. Not particularly interested in this.

23 hours ago, Frimmel said:

Battlefront: The Bad Batch videogame is not entirely dead.

Like Battlefield: Bad Company? Oh, this would be cool.

It feels like the X-Mens of the Clones......

But the main thing I am curious about that is: Will it take place during the clone wars, or after order 66 ?

If it's after the order 66, I am all in !!! Maybe we can see Rex going with this group

1 minute ago, Odanan said:

Like Battlefield: Bad Company? Oh, this would be cool.

Yes, exactly what I'm meaning. A riff on Bad Company except with The Bad Batch. Multi-player to not have heroes.

5 hours ago, Cpt ObVus said:

Anyway. Carry on looking forward to Bad Batch, guys. I’ll probably give it the old college try. And thanks for the tips about not watching all of CW. I still don’t get why and how it can be hailed as great SW TV when everyone seems to agree that great swaths of it are totally skippable, but maybe I’ll give it another go and be wrong. I’d like to be wrong; it’s not like I enjoy not enjoying things.

It is the nature of having 100+ episodes of something that some of it isn't as good as the best of it. That's how the best gets to be the best. And sometimes the best is really good and other stuff gets a bad grade because the best stuff throws off the curve. The point I was making poorly above is that while Temple of Doom has problems its chief "crime" is that it isn't "Raiders of The Lost Ark." What Mandalorian has going for it is it isn't Episode VII, VIII, or IX. That the Droid Arc is something you can "skip" (I think one of the episodes in there is really good even if the arc is skippable) doesn't make the Umbara Arc or the Nightsisters and Maul's Return or Ahsoka framed arcs less watchable.

I think there is a tendency to read those best of the show lists by the disinterested as "this is the only stuff that doesn't suck." Those list are motivated by fans trying to get the staunch haters to give the thing a try at all. Seems to me that you're using skippable episodes as excuse to not really give it the old college try.

Frankly, I don't really think you should bother at all because I don't think you really don't want to be wrong. I often see folks who have a very serious ego investment in hating the prequels. More than twenty years and they still can't let it go even a little. I suspect even if you do like any of that stuff you won't like it. Probably, especially if you don't.

6 hours ago, Cpt ObVus said:

I think what it may boil down to is simple: I thought the prequels were... what they were, which is sort-of-entertaining B (C?) sci-fi films, but not nearly as good as the Star Wars I knew and loved, and couldn’t really get into CW. Meanwhile, I genuinely and unreservedly have thoroughly enjoyed all of the Disney era films and The Mandalorian. So to me, Filoni represents the bad old stuff, and is holding Star Wars back. I’m not particularly impressed with his work, so I look at him as a really average fanboy, and given that SW fanboys are a dime a dozen, and a lot of them have real writing talent, I’d really just rather have one of them at the helm.

I'm going to let this go. I'm all out of diplomacy and tact.