I recently finished watching The Clone Wars cartoon. I am now going back and rewatching my favorite episodes.
On Revenge of the Fifth, I had friends over (who just got engaged and wanted to delve into my stacks of bridal magazines for ideas and inspiration…) and we watched Attack of the Clones and Return of the Jedi. That seems really random, but one hadn’t seen Episode 2 in ages, and the other had come in at the end of Episode 6 when someone else was watching it, so she wanted to watch the entire thing.
I’ve recently been rewatching all the movies. I still have to watch Episode 1, but since it’s my least favorite, I’ve been holding off.
Today, I finished the short story collection, From a Certain Point of View. I loved it.
I really hope they do one for Empire and Return of the Jedi when they hit 40. It was well worth my time. I enjoyed some stories more than others, but they were all good, and I got something out of them. It honestly makes me love A New Hope even more.
It’s not Star Wars, obviously, but I am finishing up an audiobook for The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath… which is a good book, but I’m glad I’ve been listening to it because it’s not the kind of normal book I usually read and I honestly just selected it on a whim.
I try to read a wide range of stuff.
Bonus section:
Thoughts I had while watching The Clone Wars:
The “Nightsisters of Dathomir” sounds like some geek-punk band… (If I was gifted with instruments and whatnot, I’d form a band with a cool name like this…)
In almost every episode where Padme has to go somewhere to do something, she either gets betrayed by someone and put in prison, her ship blows up, or Anakin rescues her… The most interesting part of this is the ship part. I mean, how many ships did she go through during The Clone Wars?! I know she was the Queen and is now a Senator… but I would think that ships would be expensive… and hers are like really nice… it just struck me while I was watching.
While we’re on the topic of ships… How many ships did Anakin and Obi-Wan have to crash-land because they were damaged? How many got blown up once they got there or stolen by someone? Just saying… it seems like people go through ships like water in The Clone Wars…
There are episodes where they talk about a citadel. Even though I’ve never seen the comic or read anything about it, I recall an episode of an internet Star Wars show where they talked about the “Screaming Citadel” so now, every time I hear ‘citadel’, I think of that.
I love the deliberate mirrorings of scenes, lines, or images. One of my favorites was in the arc where the Togrutas were put into slavery by the separatists… there was a scene where there was going to be a Colosseum-style brawl and the lightsabers were given to Artoo and shot out like in Return of the Jedi. I also liked one where there was this light festival on Naboo and people were going to kidnap Palpatine… someone had laid a trap which told Palpatine to go to a banquet- but Dooku is at the table like Darth Vader in Empire on Cloud City.
I love seeing Artoo and his importance to the Republic, and to Anakin. It makes it all-the-more heartbreaking when Anakin’s actions in Episode 3 cause the continued rise of the Empire and the death of the Jedi… and Artoo is so instrumental to the Rebellion, and eventually-to Luke… gives me chills.
Although I was joking above about Padme’s missions… I like that they gave her more to do in the show. Pretty much, all the messes she got into were arranged by Palpatine or Dooku… so it’s not really her fault.
They threw in a lot of cameos or large parts for characters we already knew like Bossk, Aurra Sing, Boba Fett, Jabba, Greedo, and Chewbacca…
I came to really love Ahsoka and I was bawling when she got blamed for the bombing at the Temple and eventually left the Order… I knew it was going to happen… I have the internet, so it’s hard to be completely in the dark when you follow a lot of Star Wars accounts on Social Media… but man! I was literally sobbing… I can’t even cry at funerals…
I liked finally getting to see Syfo-Dyas.
In Attack of the Clones, Dooku seems to be a rather grey character- not good, not evil… but in The Clone Wars, we see that he’s actually evil, which makes the fact of him being a threat in Episode 3 more believable… although I never thought he was a good guy and didn’t like that they tried to make it ambiguous.
I liked the Boba and Mace Windu arc. I can see why Boba became a Bounty Hunter like his father… I appreciated the fact that while he shows some very aggressive, unhealthy behavior- that he’s not completely evil… in these episodes, we see a hurting human being whose father has been killed by a Jedi…
We see that Palpatine is evil- as if we didn’t know before. The show also offers an interesting window into the strings he pulls behind the scenes. We know that without a doubt, Mas Amedda knows that Palpatine is Sidious…
We get to see the friendship between Obi-Wan and Anakin the way it is in the beginning of Episode 3.
I thought it was interesting to see how Anakin is with Ahsoka… and how Obi-Wan is like a second master to her. Between the two, she has an excellent teacher. Her and Anakin are a lot alike, but they don’t always agree. Usually, if she doesn’t agree with Anakin, she’ll agree with Obi-Wan… it’s just funny.
We get to see the beginnings of Anakin’s slide to the Dark Side and the way the Jedi were shaking his faith.
We see that there were plenty of clues for the Jedi to follow that would have told them that Palpatine was the Sith, but they didn’t get it, and ultimately it would become their downfall.
We see that Yoda’s thoughts on the Jedi and opinion about how the Force works changes towards the end of the show, which is probably one of the reasons why he lived… We also get to see the first part of his “training” with Qui-Gon… in the 6th season- there was that fantastic arc where he went on that mission and had to face his hubris which essentially looked like a Yoda/Gollum hybrid. I had chills the whole time…
Anyway… just some thoughts…
From a Certain Point of View... 