SPOILER Angelman’s PT & Clone Wars viewing extravaganza

Hey all,

So, it’s a bit preposterous, I know, to make a thread about one’s own experience with and opinion of SW stuff, but this is a pretty big deal for me right now so I hope y’all will humor me

Backstory: Apart from TPM, the PT didn’t click with me when it came out, or upon the multiple viewings since. I therefore weren’t super-interested in the Clone Wars show when that launched; I mean, I was excited for the CW movie and saw it in the theatre, but though it was pretty bad and uninteresting. It seemed like this thing wasn’t really for me, and I pretty much ignored it for a while. I saw a few episodes with a buddy when they first came out on DVD, but by that time I was quite set against the entire endeavor, so I didn’t give it much of a chance, really.

A few years later, my gf and I binged through the first 4 or 5 seasons of CW, more out of SW obligation than anything else, and I didn’t much like it. There were the odd episode I liked, and some I found absolutely terrible, but the large majority of the episodes were non-events for us.

Fast forward to the Disney era SW, which rekindled all my childhood love of the franchise and brightened my very existence – no really, I’m a much better person these days, less grumpy and critical, and trying to do good by my fellow peoploids. I blame Star Wars.

In any case, with the SW bug well and truly re-caught, it was only a matter of time before I had to re-watch CW and try to see that and the PT with the loving eyes of those hordes of fans for whom this stuff IS Star Wars. In short, I wanted to try to like it all.

So here we are, doing a full PT & CW adventure, and do you know what? It’s pretty great!

I thought it might be funny to do a kind of running mini-review and ranking of all the installments, in an effort to help me remember it all better as much as anything else. (My memory is bantha poodoo…). So I’ll go through every PT movie act and every CW episode and offer my findings, and all y’all can follow it & comment if you want to

I’ve devised a 4 tier ranking system that I use for every installment, followed by a one-liner “conclusion”. The rating system goes like this:
--Awful (=try not watch this again in the future)
--Meh (=watch again only if absolutely required)
--Alright (=quite re-watchable)
--Essential (=a must re-watch installment)


The Phantom Menace
Act 1 (Naboo): Alright. Good set-up and much drama, with a fresh take on the franchise.
Act 2 (Tatooine & Coruscant): Meh. A 50 minute side story that stops the story dead, with side-tracked racing, wooden dialogue, and soooo much standing around and delivering exposition.
Act 3 (Naboo): Alright. Pretty great climax with interesting twists and much drama.

Attack of the Clone
Act 1 (Coruscant): Meh. Character set-ups, Anakin & Padmé relationships, the chase, investigations are all a bit weak.
Act 2 (Naboo, Kamino, & Tatooine): Alright. Take the Naboo sequences and romance scenes out of the equation, and there’s a lot of great stuff here.
Act 3 (Geonosis): Meh. Shiny, but very little substance. There is tension buried in here somewhere, however, and I firmly believe a good collaborator could’ve elevated the 3rd act (and probably the entire movie) into something high-paced and quite exciting.

The Chrsophsis Arc
CW 216 – Cat and Mouse: Alright. Anakin flies cloaked ship past Sep blockade. Interesting space battle tactics.
CW 116 – Hidden Enemy: Meh. Turncoat Clone spy.

The Clone Wars (movie)
Act 1 (Christophsis): Meh. Battle of Christophsis. Ahsoka introduced. Rotta stolen.
Act 2 (Tatooine & Teth): Meh. Rescue mission.
Act 3 (Tatooine & Coruscant): Meh. Resolution.
Not as awful as I remembered it, but basically a whole lot of unimportant hubbub.

The Domino Squad Arc Part 1
CW 301 – Clone Cadets: Alright. Clone cadets in training. Surprisingly interesting; heartwarming teamwork.

The Toydaria Arc
CW 303 – Supply Lines: Alright. Jar Jar & Bail negotiates for Toydarian support. Awesome Nikto Jedi (Ima-Gun Di)!
CW 101 – Ambush: Alright. Yoda & Ventress battles for which side the Toydarians will support.

The Malevolence Arc
CW 102 – Rising Malevolence: Alright. Plo Koon & Clones stranded in escape pod.
CW 103 – Shadow of Malevolence: Alright. Malevolence attack medical center.
CW 104 – Destroy Malevolence: Alright. Padmé kidnapped onboard the Malevolence.
Solid war, mystery, and intrigue story. A filler arc, yes, but one that highlights the war in unusual ways.

The Domino Squad Arc Part 2
CW 105 – Rookies: Essential. Domino Squad guards frozen moon attacked by BX-commando droids. Great self-contained story with strong character moments, grave fighting, and vicious baddies.

The Artoo Arc
CW 106 – Downfall of a Droid: Alright: R2 captured by Trandoshan gangster (Gha Nachkt). Anakin given the useless R3 as a replacement. (Anakin is mopey and annoying).
CW 107 – Duel of the Droids: Alright: Grievous wants R2 for his Republic secrets. R2 vs. R3.
This arc has the weirdest music throughout, including blatant rip-offs of other soundtracks (like Coppola’s Dracula and more). Baffling!

The Nute Gunray Arc
CW 108 – Bombad Jedi: Meh. Gunray bribes Rodia to betray the Republic with a “better deal”.
CW 109 – Cloak of Darkness: Alright. Gunray brought to trial, but traitor works with Ventress to free him.
CW 110 – Lair of Grievous: Alright. Fisto & a Mon Calamari padawan goes after Gunray and ends up in Grievous’ lair. Interesting backstory details on Grievous (which I understand are not entirely canonic?).
The arc is all right, but ultimately unimportant.

The Dooku Captured Arc
CW 111 – Dooku Captured: Alright. Dooku crashes and is picked up by Hondo (character introduction). Hondo plays every side against each other. (Hondo & the pirates are great!)
CW 112 – Gungan General: Alright. Hondo captures Kenobi & Anakin too; K&A+Dooku team-up!

The Lurmen Arc
CW 113 – Jedi Crash: Essential. Cool space battle sequence. Heroes crash lands on Maridun and seek the Lurmen’s help.
CW 114 – Defenders of Peace: Essential. Separatists arrive with defoliator weapon. The heroes fight to protect the pacifist Lurmen.
While not an important arc, there is so much good story and plot and character and message in this one that it ranks very high on my Star Wars appreciation scale.

The Trespass Arc
CW 115 – Trespass: Alright. Pantorans claim Orto Plutonia, but the (unknown) local Talz beg to differ. (So good that had the plot and consequences been a little more important, like bringing the Pantorans or Talz into the war on the Republic side, this would’ve become Essential viewing!).

The Blue Shadow Virus Arc
CW 117 – Blue Shadow Virus: Meh. Mad scientist brings back deadly virus on Naboo.
CW 118 – Mystery of a Thousand Moons: Meh. Virus on the loose. A vine from the moon of Iego might have a cure.

The Ryloth Arc
CW 119 – Storm over Ryloth: Alright. Sep blockade of Ryloth. Space battle; Ahsoka disobeys orders that gets clones killed, and loses confidence. Anakin pilots crewless Venator-class Star Destroyer to smash through blockade
CW 120 – Innocents on Ryloth: Alright. Kenobi leads invasion to liberate Ryloth. Clone scouts befriend a Twi’lek girl (Numa). Twi’leks freed.
CW 121 – Liberty on Ryloth: Alright. Mace Windu enlist help of Cham Syndulla and his freedom fighters to liberate Lessu (Ryloth capital). Senator Taa doesn’t like it, but Windu ultimately brokers an alliance.

 

Absolutely, @The Hero With No Fear. There is so much cool stuff going on

Ahsoka: I actually didn't find her that annoying this time around. There's like one or two episodes where she cringes a bit, but there's that with all characters, heh heh
Ventress: I haven't found her all that interesting yet, to be honest, but I guess she'll grow on me over time. The big new entry for me this season was definitely Hondo
Humanizing of clones: Yeah, this is probably the show's greatest contribution. It is a huge endeavor to pull off and they pull it off very well the large majority of the time. Excellent!
Anakin: I haven't found him particularly improved either, although there are far fewer cringy romance scenes than in AotC & RotS, so that's cool. (But when they do do A+P scenes, they make sure to make it as close to the PT cringe as possible... You gotta give it to them, they sure did NOT change the tone on that one ).

 

I thought Hidden Enemy was rather bland and predictable, and full of silly machismo; not for me
Bombad Jedi was certainly not good, and JJ is annoying in that one, but I liked some of the political gravitas in it, with the plight of the Rodian people. Still, it was "meh" for me.

Oh, the Lurmen arc was great! It is NOT important, but it had great conflicts, decisions that mattered, a strong new culture, a very well-made opening space battle sequence, inginuity, team-work, and heart. Definitelly some of the best Star Wars in that season, I found

 

I know there are several "selected CW arcs" schemes out there, and I originally thought about doing it that way, but in the end I'd rather watch it all, in LFL's reccomended chronological order, and make a note with each episode so I can chose what to re-watch on subsequent marathons, or whatever.

 

Not for me. I've been meaning to get into CW full tilt for a couple of years, but then D+ took forever longer than expected to reach me, and CW DVD sets were ridiculously prices, so I had to wait until now.

 

Explanation: My buddy bought some DVDs which I saw. Then I moved elsewhere and didn't have access to his DVDs anymore.
For a follow-up, my gf and I pirate bay'ed the season 1-4or5 and watched at some point, but we deleted or lost those files and didn't feel like stealing it again when time came to re-watch them. Capisce? I'm here all week, ready to supply y'all with fascinating details from my life... Always willing to serve

 

We're still at the start of CW season 3. There's been a thing in the family that we've had to deal with over the last couple of weeks, so the Star Wars marathon sort of grinded to a halt, but after this weekend things should return more or less to normal. Can't wait to dive back into the GFFA

 

It's an acronym for "Galaxy far far away"