Ahsoka 1.01 and 1.02.

[selenak]

The first two episodes of the Ahsoka miniseries have been released.



First impressions: I still have trouble emotionally connecting to Rosario Dawson's version of Ahsoka. This is not really due to the difference between animation and live action, or her as an actress - I mean, I loved her in the Netflix Marvel shows as Claire - , but mostly due to the show, and Ahsoka's earlier cameos in The Mandalorian, being set in an era where she's at the middle aged zen master stage of her life. And one big character trait of Clone Wars Ahsoka was her passion and drive. Of course she was decades younger, a teenager, and the show was very much her growing up tale, but still, this was part of what made such an engaging character, and such a great foil for Anakin. Why their Master/Padawan bond became so intense.

Now, I think I know where Filoni is going by making Sabine Ahsoka's Padawan. He knows how important the Ahsoka and Anakin relationship was to The Clone Wars, and wants to make another Master and Padawan combination who initially clash over their similarities the heart of this show. It's not a bad idea at all! But it still means I have to start from scratch with this version of the characters, and I'm not there yet.

(Seriously though: given how much Totruga makeup anyone playing Ahsoka in a live performance has to wear, which means the physical age of the actress in question isn't central, why no A.E.?)

Speaking of Sabine: I've seen all of two or so Rebels episodes, and I know she's a very popular character there, but she didn't endear herself to me by ghosting what's his name at the ceremony. That's a Tony Stark at the start of Iron Man 1 kind of move, and when he did it to Rhodey, it was because the script wanted to signal it was a jerk thing to do and he's in need of a wake up call, which he promptly got. Whereas here, I thought the script wanted me to think Sabine was a cool rebel for doing it (and also angsty because of the missing Ezra). Whereas what I thought was: Look, no one should be forced to attend a ceremony they don't want to attend, but then say so in the first place when getting the invite! Don't say yes and then don't show up! Boo, hiss.

Other than that, Sabine and Hera were fine, an I like that we have three female main characters on the hero side of things plus two on the villain side. And the late Titus Pullo Ray Stevenson, to whom the pilot was dedicated, sob, as a dark side Jedi. He and his padawan haven't yet done much more than be menacing fighters, but I look forward to learn more about them. Morgan Elsbeth as a former Night Sister of Dathomir gives me happy Clone Wars vibes, but I wish she were in business for herself and not for Thrawn. Yes, I know Thrawn is supposed to be the best villain ever, but look, I read the original Heirs to the Empire trilogy when it got published way back when, and I didn't get it, and I still don't. Ah well. Maybe his life action counterpart will do the trick.

The New Republic using that many former Imperials in their administration has been called an explanation as to why the Sequel trilogy opens with a basically destroyed Republic (again) and the facists are back, but speaking as the citizen of a country where about 70% (ex?) Nazis were employed in the administration(s) post WWII, which yes, I do think is shameful, that doesn't necessarily follow. Still: since the Sequels didn't bother with world building beyond wanting to have a situation where its heroes are the underdog again, I appreciate Filoni and friends doing the actual world building work in the Mandalorian and here.

That's it for now: looking forward to next week!

Comments

[musesfool]

It would have been great if Ashley Eckstein got to play Ahsoka, but I really missed Vanessa Marshall's voice as Hera. Mary Elizbeth Winstead is not doing it for me so far. (I also wish Ahsoka's lekku looked less like rubber hoses slung about her shoulders.)

[selenak]

Not having seen more than two eps with Hera in them, I haven't formed attachments to her original voice, but who knows how I'll feel if and when I have the chance to marathon Rebels.

While we're talking body posture for Ahsoka, what is it about the constant arm folding? Is this because of the lekkus, i.e. the actress has to balance them out? Is it's meant to associate Vader? Because I don't recall her doing that in Clone Wars.

[musesfool]

I think it's to associate her with Vader and also show she's closed off/keeps running away from emotions ("attachments") etc. because of all the past trauma. And possibly the costuming requires some slower/more deliberate movements in order to not slip, though I thought she moved well enough during her fights.

[lightofdaye]

I've not seen any Star Wars TV before so aside from wookpedia and nerd culture osmosis from the internet I was going in blind. Found the episode perfectly comprehensible plot wise but nothing really endeared me to Ahsoka as a central character.

Which is sad because I am fond of Rosario Dawson from netflix marvel as you say.

[selenak]

Admittedly the writers have to find the balance between making the series comprehensible for newbies and avoiding retelling everything they already narrated very ably over six entire seasons of clone Wars and and several of Rebels, but I do wonder whether Filoni underestimates the need to reintroduce Ahsoka to a new audience because he's created the character and written her for such a long time. Plus, like I said in my review, there's the problem with the age and actress difference even for an audience like me who does love the character in her original Clone Wars incarnation. It's a bit like having become attached to, hm, Hermione from HP and getting a new show called "Hermione" where the character is more like McGonnagal and doesn't show yet evidence of traits that used to be really important to who Hermione is like campaigning for House Elves or loving to read, being an overachiever or quoting Hogwarts: A History. McGonnagal is a good character! But very different!

Ah well. It's just the pilot, we'll see what the next episodes bring.

[kore]

I have about the same feeling as above -- the only Star Wars TV I've ever seen was Andor, and while the plot was pretty comprehensible, they weren't so good at filling in the background for newbies so there wasn't a lot of emotional stakes. I gotta admit I loved Sabine I do not have a bad girl thing and I'm really happy about those five major actresses. I have no real idea who Ezra is and I'm not happy Sabine and Ahsoka's relationship took place offscreen from what I can see? but maybe there'll be flashbacks. Or fic! I also hope Thrawn doesn't show up for a while because he appears to have the kind of makeup job that immediately throws me out of a live-action show.

The main problem I had with the pacing. Like Ahsoka herself it was very deliberate and slow and not that engaging. I've loved Dawson in other things and especially in Defenders she had a great wryness along with drive and heroism, so it feels like she's being kind of tamped down.

[selenak]

Presumably the pace will pick up. The slow and very deliberate manner is very unlike Ahsoka was in Clone Wars (mind you, she went from teenage motor mouth to quieter and sadder due to events by the end there already, and a few decades of Empire and Rebellion would effect a change), so I'm assuming Filoni is going somewhere with this.

[lokifan]

The New Republic using that many former Imperials in their administration has been called an explanation as to why the Sequel trilogy opens with a basically destroyed Republic (again) and the facists are back, but speaking as the citizen of a country where about 70% (ex?) Nazis were employed in the administration(s) post WWII, which yes, I do think is shameful, that doesn't necessarily follow.

Do you think it could've long-term? Like, if Germany hadn't had its intense reckoning with what happened, could it have ended up going down a fascist road?

[selenak]

*stares at the Neonazi party in parliament* We're not out of the woodworks yet.

But to go back to the post war years, because given in SW, the victorious return of the fascists happens within twenty years or so, actually because of the East and West divide we have two different models. The GDR didn't use so many (ex?)Nazis in the judiciary, administration etc., they tried for a genuine new start in the branches of government, but otoh they also severely downplayed antisemitism from the get go (an later, once Israel was founded and became a key US ally, doubled down on the downplaying) and the widespread support of fascism within the populatation in favour of a narrative where basically all the fascists remained in the West and those twelve years were all about Communist Resistance vs Industrialist Who Supported Hitler And Their Flunkies, with them, of course, being the inheritors of the Communist Resistance. Xenophobia could not exist in a glorious socialist republic, so it was never dealt with and faced; I befriended a GDR guy whose mother was Bulgarian in 1989 who said he and his siblings and their other faced a lot of daily discrimination but he didn't try to ask for help from the teachers more than once because this was a phenomenon that could not exist in a socialist republic. And I do think that has a lot to do with why the support for the AFD (= Neonazi party back in parliament to eternal shame) is strongest in the former East Germany.

Otoh, in the West, with a very few exceptions there was massive under the carpet sweeping in the 1950s and non facing and happily jumping on the anti Communist bandwagon (I mean, the guy put in charge of the first West German secret service was an unrepentant Nazi had seen which way the wind was blowing in 1944, had collected all the intel he could get his hands on re: Communism and did a deal with the Americans in 1945), with the confrontation of the past really starting in the later 1960s, not so coincidentally when the next generation had grown up to ask "what did you do in the war, Dad?" with a very different undertone than in the Anglosphere and the 1968 youth rebellions exploded, and it's not a coincidence, either, that in the 1980s, when this generation was the one in political power, we got the confrontation with the past from the ground upwards, i.e. for someone like me who was a teenager in the 1980s, being taught in great detail about the Third Reich and the Holocaust in school (where now many teachers were the former protesters from the 1960s) was standard, but for my parents (born in 1945 and in 1947, respectively), it hadn't yet been - their teachers were to a man/woman of That Generation, of course.

What I'm getting at is that confronting the past intensely was and is a decades long work in progress, not a singular short lived event, and so it's hard to point to a fork in the road not taken. However, what happened in neither the East or the West twenty years after the war: reestablishing of a fascist dictatorship as the result of a long term conspiracy. Now, one big reason for that is something that can't apply to the SW scenario - both West and East Germany were very tightly bound to a superpower with troops on their territory as a vassal/satellite state. But I also think if you look at our revolting (ex?) Nazis who were everywhere in the 1950s and 1960s, they simply weren't interested in reconquering territory or starting the next war or what not. They want to get rich, enjoy their ill gained goods and not answer questions by their pesky kids. But the only SW movie who tried to use financial greed as a motivator for the villains was The Last Jedi. Among the tv shows, Andor used it, too, but in both cases as part of an already established fascist Empire. It's not very movie plot friendly but ultimately most disturbing to me that you can be part of a genocidal regime and then spend the rest of your life in a democracy acting not much differently than if your twelve years of active support of a genocidal regime had not happened.