Clone Wars Thoughts: The "Umbara Arc"
Nov. 19th, 2011 01:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerWhile the latest season of Clone Wars has continued to deliver "changes of pace" as it gets under way, it does seem to me to be packing more action up front than the previous one did. Whether this only prefigures the complaints about "message" episodes coming later, I don't know, but at least for the moment things are getting my attention.
When the forces of the Republic landed on the darkened world of Umbara, I found it striking both in terms of sound and visuals (even aggressively panned and scanned as it was on the channel I was watching it on), but did wonder a bit what the larger point of it was. That showed up soon enough, though, when Anakin was ordered away and replaced by the Jedi Master Krell.
Krell basically being a jerk to the clonetroopers did seem the obvious sort of thing an episode (or even several, with a rare example for Clone Wars of things leaving off in the midst of action on a "cliffhanger") could be built around, but one thought I did have was it seemed somehow "late in the day" for a Jedi to be introduced who saw those under his command as nothing more than interchangeable "clones"; there might well have been something special about Anakin's take on things, but the rest of the Jedi still seemed to get along well with their soldiers. As things got worse and worse for Rex and everyone else, though, I might have managed to file the thought away. It was more interesting to consider along with everyone else "anticipations of Order 66," and one thought I had there was that Anakin's blue and white-armoured clonetroopers might have had a unique role to play in it. There does seem to be a definite difference between the possibly automatic and overriding action of shooting one Jedi in the back and helping to wipe out everyone in the Jedi Temple. In acknowledging that, though, I did have to acknowledge both my surprise at the start of Clone Wars that Anakin was somehow on an equal footing with Obi-Wan in having soldiers to command and my usual hopeful theory that maybe the crisis at the start of Revenge of the Sith separated Anakin from Ahsoka and Rex and Ahsoka's fate wouldn't have to be addressed by those who would have spent whole seasons developing her character beforehand. I suppose reinterpretations of that are always something I've had to face, though.
Things seemed to descend into utter nightmare for the clonetroopers when they wound up fighting each other under the pretext of facing Umbarans in their armour, and it did seem obvious enough that Rex and everyone else would turn on Krell at that point. The episode even managed to quote a line from one of the new Star Wars movies. After an extended pursuit that didn't touch on the idea that enough firepower will bring a Jedi down, we got our explanation at last... although I suppose I did start wondering if Krell's own vision of the future and whole-heartedly preparing himself to join the side he saw winning was a "comfortable" way for him to be cut off from the rest of the Jedi, just as Dogma beating Rex to the trigger left him taking responsibility for the necessary action. Even so, there were still many interesting things about these episodes.
When the forces of the Republic landed on the darkened world of Umbara, I found it striking both in terms of sound and visuals (even aggressively panned and scanned as it was on the channel I was watching it on), but did wonder a bit what the larger point of it was. That showed up soon enough, though, when Anakin was ordered away and replaced by the Jedi Master Krell.
Krell basically being a jerk to the clonetroopers did seem the obvious sort of thing an episode (or even several, with a rare example for Clone Wars of things leaving off in the midst of action on a "cliffhanger") could be built around, but one thought I did have was it seemed somehow "late in the day" for a Jedi to be introduced who saw those under his command as nothing more than interchangeable "clones"; there might well have been something special about Anakin's take on things, but the rest of the Jedi still seemed to get along well with their soldiers. As things got worse and worse for Rex and everyone else, though, I might have managed to file the thought away. It was more interesting to consider along with everyone else "anticipations of Order 66," and one thought I had there was that Anakin's blue and white-armoured clonetroopers might have had a unique role to play in it. There does seem to be a definite difference between the possibly automatic and overriding action of shooting one Jedi in the back and helping to wipe out everyone in the Jedi Temple. In acknowledging that, though, I did have to acknowledge both my surprise at the start of Clone Wars that Anakin was somehow on an equal footing with Obi-Wan in having soldiers to command and my usual hopeful theory that maybe the crisis at the start of Revenge of the Sith separated Anakin from Ahsoka and Rex and Ahsoka's fate wouldn't have to be addressed by those who would have spent whole seasons developing her character beforehand. I suppose reinterpretations of that are always something I've had to face, though.
Things seemed to descend into utter nightmare for the clonetroopers when they wound up fighting each other under the pretext of facing Umbarans in their armour, and it did seem obvious enough that Rex and everyone else would turn on Krell at that point. The episode even managed to quote a line from one of the new Star Wars movies. After an extended pursuit that didn't touch on the idea that enough firepower will bring a Jedi down, we got our explanation at last... although I suppose I did start wondering if Krell's own vision of the future and whole-heartedly preparing himself to join the side he saw winning was a "comfortable" way for him to be cut off from the rest of the Jedi, just as Dogma beating Rex to the trigger left him taking responsibility for the necessary action. Even so, there were still many interesting things about these episodes.