The first episode of Ahsoka ends with a shocking cliffhanger… that lacks any tension or stakes if you have even the slightest amount of grey matter between your ears. Despite this, I feel no compulsion to keep watching. I just needed that first episode to confirm my suspicions, which it did resoundingly.
So what’s wrong with it? Is it bad?
Eh, it’s no worse than anything Disney has produced since 2015. It’s also not much better than the least interesting things they’ve produced.
The problem is accessibility. Allow me to extrapolate…
Ahsoka is a show that is jumping demographics and accessibility. Even though the character had been introduced in live action in The Mandalorian, and shown again in The Book of Boba Fett, your standard “movies and mando” Star Wars fans have zero idea who she is. This isn’t a problem on its own. A series dedicated to her could backfill us in on the details we’ve missed. Except, instead of doing that, they’re introducing more characters the “movies and mando” crowd have never heard of.
“Well, that’s their problem. They should have watched the cartoons!”
Those shows, whose target demographic was children, need I remind you, started in 2008. I was 31 years old. I didn’t watch them. They weren’t for me. They were stories for children.
“Uhm… ever heard of Japanese anime? It’s possible to make sophisticated animated programs for adults.” 👓
Anime? Like Urotsukidōji: Legend of the Overfiend (超神伝説うろつき童子)? Yeah, I watched that when I was like 12. That’s my point! It’s for children.
Ok, kidding aside, I know not all animation is for children, but The Clone Wars, and later Rebels, were 100% aimed at children. That is in no way a slight. Children deserve stories just for them.
Well, that 10 year old in 2008 is 25 now. That 10 year old in 2014 is 19 now. Both are ready for the more “adult themed” adventures of their favorite characters. That’s great! That’s awesome. But what about the fans who aren’t between the ages of 15 and 30? Or the fans in that age range who simply never watched those cartoons?
“It’s not the job of every single show to bring everyone up to speed! The Mandalorian didn’t fill in all the backstory from the original trilogy! The Force Awakens didn’t give you the whole story up to that point!”
This is very true, but those weren’t jumping accessibility or demographic. Someone who was 10 in 1977 could enjoy the prequels at 32 in 1999, and then enjoy the sequels at 48 in 2015. They were aimed at the same general audience demographic, with the same barrier for entry, “One ticket for Star Wars, please”.
When you jump from books or TV series to film, you absolutely cannot expect your audience to come having read all the source materials, or watched 200 episodes of television. It’s just not reasonable. It’s why The Lord of the Rings films didn’t start with the battle of Helms Deep, assuming everyone read the book and a half that lead up to that (even more if you count The Hobbit and the Silmarillion).
It’s even less reasonable to assume your audience has watched something aimed at an entirely different demographic, prior to watching your show. I mean… would it work the other way around? Would you make a cartoon show out of an over the top brutal, gory, R-rated movie, like Rambo, Robocop, or The Toxic Avenger?
Wait… don’t answer that.
Ahh… the “good old days”.
Anyway, my point is, you’ve got all these great characters you want to use in live action. Awesome! Introduce them. Let this new audience discover them and come to understand them. Don’t just assume we already know who they are. Don’t make your show just for the fans who already know all the backstory. I guarantee you there are fewer of those people than you think there are.
You do not need to fill in every single gap, and every single adventure that the characters had, but you need to give us something so we can connect with the emotional journey they undertake. Because we sure as hell aren’t watching these stinkers for the tiresome, tensionless, eye rolling action. We’ve seen all that before. And we’ve seen it done better, 40 years ago, when they used actual sets and stunt performers in real places doing stuff. So, all we have are the characters.
GIVE US SOMETHING!
Ok, that’s the end of the real stuff, now for the nitpicking… (SPOILERS, by the way)
We open with two Jedi just murdering an entire starship full of people. Dozens of people shooting at them, not even a minor inconvenience to the Jedi. How did Clone Troopers manage to kill any of these monsters? They’re unstoppable machines of destruction. Vader and the Emperor didn’t sense these two knockin’ about? They either could have used their help, destroying the entire Rebel Alliance in one go, or would have seen them as a threat and hunted them down. Hell, if you remade the original Star Wars now, with the rules set forth in the prequels, Obi-Wan and Luke would have just walked off The Millennium Falcon, undisguised, and fought their way through the entire Death Star, killing everyone in their path, until Obi-Wan got to Vader, then the two of them launch into a boring, tensionless, lightsaber duel, where neither of them look threatening until the time to kill Obi-Wan is reached.
So let me get this straight. The map to where Thrawn is, currently, is stored in a 1000-year-old temple? This is “ancient Sith dagger points way to Death Star wreckage” logic.
Ahsoka goes through all these shenanigans to get to the McGuffin orb, which was housed in stone beneath her feat, the same stone she cut through with ease to get into the chamber. Did she forget she had her sabers?
Some robots show up… they will be no threat to our hero, of course, because Jedi are unstoppable murder machines. That is, until they all detonate what appear to be miniature nuclear devices, with roughly a 100-kiloton yield each. Where were these bombs when the Rebels were trying to take out the shield generator on the moon of Endor? Han could have dropped one from orbit and taken out the entire generator, three Ewok villages, as well as the adjacent Imperial Swimming and Tennis/Racquetball facility.
Hey kids, remember Home One? Remember the briefing room from Jedi? REMEMBER X-WINGS??? How dare you philistines not like Andor because it wasn’t full of bullshit Star Wars porn. Shame on you all.
Sabine is riding on a HOVER VEHICLE down a paved road and has something blocking her path. She could easily fly over the edge and fly around it, or fly over it. We know speeder bikes can do this. We saw it in other movies. Why is this even played up as tension? Why did the Republic pilot even think this would be a threat or hindrance? Oh, because she didn’t realize Sabine is a fucking idiot who will slide UNDER it, for some reason, risking serious injury.
On the subject of Sabine; rainbow hair really pops in animation. It makes a character stand out. Gives them personality. But it looks ridiculous in a live action universe full of muted colors.
“Hey, guys, I’m here to help! Why is everyone shooting at me? Do I stand out or something?”
We end with Sabine getting a saber through her chest. I haven’t watched the second episode, but she’s fine, I’ll bet. Lightsaber through the torso only seems to be fatal some of the time.
Armchair Screenwriter 