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Ep 3.10- Welcome to Paradise, Rockjumpers
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Hello my Punky Muffins! On today's episode, Ryn introduces Sam to everyone's favorite child soldier, Ahsoka Tano! In addition, we cover such topics as the misogyny inherent in the system, the marketing genius that came up with the concept of little wrinkly green alien babies, Kevin Kiner's absolutely incredible soundtrack, Obi-Wan and Ventress's flirt-fighting, and (unintentional?) homophobia!
Covers Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008)
Recommended
Transcript
Pole Dancing Misconceptions and Curiosities
00:00:00
Speaker
So I was at the studio, the pole studio yesterday, working out, being powered by spite and stress into trying to do tricks, which I did. I did my trick. It was great. I dropped into a chopper. It was awesome. But...
00:00:16
Speaker
At the studio during Open Gym, I think I've mentioned this on the show before, you're just surrounded by the most beautiful women you've ever seen doing gravity defying feats beyond your wildest imagination.
00:00:32
Speaker
If you're not super familiar with pole dance and you just kind of have a general idea of what it is like in your head, it's a lot different than that, I have learned. So people can do some wild stuff. And I wasn't really paying attention to the people around me because I was just locked in really trying to get this trick.
00:00:49
Speaker
And I got it. And so I was just kind of sitting and drinking my water and taking in the environment. And I realized that one of the very beautiful women near me was wearing a really cool outfit. It was more less of an I'm at the gym outfit and more of a I'm recording content outfit, which sometimes people are doing. Love that for them. Go make your content.
00:01:12
Speaker
But there is no delicate way to put this. The bikini bottoms that she was wearing, the thong, was bedazzled. but only on the pussy.
00:01:24
Speaker
So that when she was walking around, it looked like it was just black. But then there are many moves that put the goods on display and the effect is very striking and surprising. ah And you know, I have to say it was memorable and good for her.
00:01:44
Speaker
The jazzled at the gym. Yeah.
00:01:50
Speaker
It was fajazzled. Do you remember that trend from years ago? A trend? The trend? Hang on I'm not even doing this in an incognito window. DuckDuckGo. don't know if anyone else has ever searched this on DuckDuckGo. I'm sorry. but Why is it? Okay.
00:02:12
Speaker
DuckDuckGo gives me some fucking whack-ass search results. So the first suggestion is the Wikipedia page for Vajazzle, which is fine. That's normal. But the second suggestion is an album of photos on Flickr. Click.
00:02:33
Speaker
Let's see what's Flickr.com in for
00:02:43
Speaker
Okay, so there's an anime girl surrounded by cherry blossoms. Not at all what that is. There is... I'm going to take a screenshot so you can see this. It's just a flower. But the caption is, a rose with a quote, vajazzle type application.
00:03:01
Speaker
Hey, what the fuck does that mean? It just means glitter. Glitter. That is 100% AI scraping the weirdest shit and not... There's places advertising get vajazzled today only $17. A a birthday cake of a crotch that says vajazzled at $40.
00:03:25
Speaker
That's also really good. I'm going to post these screenshots in our D&D group chat with no other information.
00:03:35
Speaker
This is going to come right after hearing about our friend's horrible internship.
00:03:43
Speaker
Context later, dot, dot. dot Maybe, dot, dot, dot.
00:03:50
Speaker
Wait, no, now I have to clarify. Wait, to clarify, i am not getting vajazzled. This is for the podcast.
00:04:04
Speaker
That's not better.
00:04:08
Speaker
Also, $17. And there's something to be said for the economy these days. And taking care of your wallet where you can. I don't think I'd want to put seventeen like something... i don't think anything that I put near my genitals, I would want to be $17 or less.
00:04:29
Speaker
Yeah, that's less than minimum wage in a lot of places. Now, this does appear to be an Australian company. So I don't know when this picture was posted. i don't know what the conversion rate is with inflation.
00:04:42
Speaker
But unless they're moving very quickly. Speed of a jazzling. That's like, um you remember cup stacking that trend where people yeah do it really fast. Now I'm just imagining and speed of a jazzling where it's like, did you did you do you this was apparently posted 16 years ago. So what was 16 years ago? 2010. I hate that. That was okay.
00:05:05
Speaker
Australian dollar inflation calculator. So seven. Okay. $17. in 2010 okay that's the equivalent of 2629 today but what is that in freedom dollars
00:05:27
Speaker
that's 1885 yeah that's not i don't want to discount vajazzling I don't want to work at the place where I have to provide discount bejazzling.
00:05:39
Speaker
I'm getting recommendations for TikTok. How to bejazzle safely and effectively. what would be ineffective? just Just toss and glitter at your pussy.
00:05:52
Speaker
i guess. And hoping it sticks. That's beautiful. I'm going embroider that on a pillow. I don't have a segue.
00:06:03
Speaker
Wouldn't that be so fucking funny if somebody was wearing that thong and they were for jazzled though? Because then it would be like you're wearing a hat under your hat.
Introduction to the Podcast and Hosts
00:06:14
Speaker
Oh.
00:06:32
Speaker
Hello everyone, and welcome back to an episode of the Fandom Apprentice. My name is Rin, I'm one of your hosts.
00:06:44
Speaker
I grew up with Star Wars, including this movie. I saw it in the theater at a childhood friend's birthday party in 2008. And I have made it my adult mission to foist my love of Star Wars and other nerdy media onto my friends, particularly post-2020. I did my Clone Wars rewatch recently.
00:07:07
Speaker
in the depths of lockdown and I'm now very glad to have somebody else to drag into the depths of Star Wars ephemera with me. as I'm being dragged I'm going yippee!
00:07:22
Speaker
Hello I'm Sam I'm the other one I just watched this movie for the first time and it was really fun.
Star Wars: The Clone Wars Movie Analysis
00:07:30
Speaker
I am glad that I don't have too much later star wars animation to compare it to yet besides those couple tales of jedi episodes that i watched because you and some of our other friends were saying oh my god it's 2008 it looks so janky i don't know any better to me it looked delightful except for the stinky who is so hideous but we'll talk about him soon enough So today we are talking about the 2008 animated space opera film directed by Dave Filoni, Star Wars The Clone Wars. I saw this one in the theaters. This was the second Star Wars movie I saw in the theaters. The first one I saw was Revenge of the Sith, also at a friend's birthday party.
00:08:09
Speaker
I think maybe the same friend? Possibly. Possibly, because they were four years apart. It is the lowest grossing film in the Star Wars franchise.
00:08:20
Speaker
But, you know, still made a $60 million dollars profit, which is pretty solid. Mm-hmm. And it ultimately served as the pilot to the Clone Wars television series, which we've already watched a couple of episodes of.
00:08:35
Speaker
And the reason we're slotting this here is chronologically, this goes after a couple of the episodes we've already watched. Technically, one of the episodes we watched takes place after this. The Clone Cadets one technically takes place after this, supposedly.
00:08:49
Speaker
But it's it's very sort of outside of time. So just leaving that there. Yeah, it it's enjoyable. Like you said, I definitely could see the animation being kind of janky, especially because I just finished Maul.
00:09:06
Speaker
But having just finished Maul, where so much of that animation looks as if it's a watercolor painting, going back to this, I can see that like that style has carried through Star Wars animation since the beginning.
00:09:24
Speaker
The backgrounds in this movie were hand-painted. Oh, I didn't know that. A lot of the backgrounds were hand-painted, but the 3D animation out in the front doesn't have the same sharpness that you see in modern Star Wars animation.
00:09:43
Speaker
So it's sort of an interesting contrast between like, yeah, I can see the through lines and then I can see sort of where they started from with the rest of it. I think all in all, it's it's a solid movie. You can definitely tell. It's four episodes of TV just kind of mushed together, shoved into a get-along shirt.
00:10:01
Speaker
I could really tell when it was transitioning from one episode to another, but it's fine. If I hadn't known that going in, I would have been confused and annoyed by it. But as it is, it was fine. I liked the movie. I thought it was really fun. i laughed at pretty much all the jokes.
00:10:20
Speaker
It was very light. It was very silly. There's Jawas in it. We know I love Jawas. I have some gripes and I can gripe about them in detail later, but I think the three big ones are number one, put a shirt on that baby.
00:10:37
Speaker
Number two, Ahsoka and Anakin are just doing wall to wall banter. We could have let them have a normal conversation maybe once or twice, but it's kid's movie. So whatever.
00:10:48
Speaker
And it's very violent. And we'll talk about that more later too, but yeah. Yeah. I also have more in-depth character analysis for one character later, but overall, sweet it was fun and it was cute. I liked it.
00:11:02
Speaker
Yeah. I like out the front where you have sort of the Lucasfilm animation thing and you can hear the clones shouting. There's laser fire.
00:11:14
Speaker
And it's all lines that either are direct from other Star Wars movies or really, really similar. Yeah. o to other Star Wars movies that you hear like other background actors saying at other times in other Star Wars movies.
00:11:31
Speaker
One of the lines at one point, we hear one of the clones saying, I can't shake them. I'm hit. I'm hit. And that's direct from episode four. Oh, we have there's too many Captain. And if you have the some of them, it's like there's one of them is labeled as clone number three. And then the next one is labeled as Rex.
00:11:50
Speaker
Oh, my buddy. Watch your stabilizer gold six. And then it ends with somebody shouting, where's our reinforcements? And then there's a beat of silence. And then you get the slightly modified Star Wars theme by Kevin Kiner.
00:12:05
Speaker
So good. No opening crawl. Just the World War Two newsreel. Which I think is very fun and I like the remix of the main Star Wars theme is very sort of peppy.
00:12:32
Speaker
Yeah. In the opening newsreel, we see the like the squid ship that comes down onto Jabba's sail barge. And while this movie came out before the series, for us watching this in sort of a chronological timeline, at the end of last episode, Ventress says she has to go prepare her master's next plan and then walks towards the squid ship in the background.
00:12:55
Speaker
Ooh. Wait, was this the plan? Was this the thing? This is the plan. This is her master's next plan. It's a direct lead-in. But the voiceover here calls them a rival band of pirates kidnapping Jabba's son.
00:13:08
Speaker
But we know it's Ventress. And obviously it's revealed to be Ventress later. Other things immediately to note that like connect this to our overall Star Wars story, Anakin's visual has been adjusted to be somewhere between his Attack of the Clones look and his Revenge of the Sith looks.
00:13:25
Speaker
He's now, he's got a scar, Which he has in Revenge of the Sith. His hair's a little longer. and he's wearing like more dark armor. But he's still got like the brown under tunic.
00:13:39
Speaker
Yeah. The other thing that I noticed early on was the War of the Worlds ass looking droids. um The ones that like look like giant bacteriophages. They're fun.
00:13:50
Speaker
The three legs and the spinning heads. and the They're really fun because because the Jedi just keep getting to jump on top of them and just stab them and cut them to pieces. It's great.
00:14:02
Speaker
There's a lot of really good droids in this one and we know I love a droid. Yeah, now that now that we're dealing with a droid army versus all the clones, we we're starting to see more clone individuality here than we did in some of the previous episodes.
00:14:16
Speaker
We're seeing more differences to the haircuts. A couple of the clones, usually the higher ranking ones, have more coloration on their armor. Most of the clones are still all in white.
00:14:28
Speaker
But now pretty much all the clones in the field seem to have names. Yeah. Yeah. We have so our main two, Rex and Cody. And Commander Cody is Obi-Wan's right-hand man.
00:14:40
Speaker
Together they lead the 212th Attack Battalion. Commander Cody appears in Revenge of the Sith. And as the war goes on and we see clones putting all the designs on their armor, the 212th will usually be in yellow.
00:14:54
Speaker
Captain Rex is Anakin's right hand. Two of them lead the 501st Clone battalion Rex does not appear in any other movies. He was created for this. We'll get there.
00:15:05
Speaker
Ooh, okay. He was created for this, but their armor decorations will primarily be blue, the 501st. The 501st, also in Star Wars lore, will continue to persist into the Imperial era where they become part of the Stormtrooper Corps.
00:15:21
Speaker
They become the 501st Stormtrooper Legion, nicknamed Vader's Fist. Ooh, damn. Damn. Yeah. Also, one of the other things to note, we have Commander Cody and Captain Rex.
00:15:35
Speaker
Anakin has a lower ranking right hand guy because he's a more junior Jedi. He's just a knight, not a Jedi master. That makes sense. Anyway. Flowing through the plot.
00:15:49
Speaker
There's big opening battle. We come down onto the planet Christophsis. Lots of battle scenes. Lots of fighting. And then at one point in the battle scene, R2 comes up to a clone, gets petted by the clone, and then it goes to another scene. And that like the entire purpose of that shot was to see R2 get pets.
00:16:07
Speaker
Which is good. Which fantastic. very much And correct. Yes. And then some of the other background shots I was paying attention to when I was rewatching for my notes. When Obi-Wan and Anakin are heading back to meet the messenger that Yoda is sending, in the background there's a trio of clones. And it's clearly one is like supporting the other one who's wounded. And they're talking to a third who's probably a medic. But it looked for a second like there was three clones hugging it out. oh Which i love.
00:16:38
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to get real emotional about clones, aren't i We're going to get very emotional about clones. that was That was kind of the point of starting with clone cadets.
00:16:51
Speaker
Start from when they're kids and now throw them into war. And speaking of kids, our child soldiers here. Yes. So context, context, plot context. So there's a big fight. There's difficulty getting communications between Anakin and Obi-Wan. And I'm saying this very carefully because in my notes, I fucked up and I wrote Luke. And this is going to be Bilbo and Frodo all over again, baby. This is going to keep happening.
00:17:21
Speaker
So I've got to say the right one. So Anakin and Obi-Wan are on the planet. Everybody else off the planet. No communications. Big problems. But Yoda has sent a messenger who is the baby, who is also... The Padawan that Obi-Wan totally requested for himself. Totally, for sure, definitely.
00:17:47
Speaker
And he suggests, you know, Anakin, you should request a Padawan. It's important to teach the next generation. And Anakin goes, that's lame. That sucks. Boo.
00:17:58
Speaker
Wonder how that's going to work out for you, buddy. yeah Yeah, but we meet the child soldier who shows up. Teensy, teensy child. so She has big, cute eyes. i love her immediately. she should be wearing a shirt, Mr. Lucas, but ah she's a delight. She's perfect.
00:18:19
Speaker
i In terms of her characterization, her personality, no notes. She's flawless. I love her. She's a menace. I absolutely love her character arc through everything.
00:18:30
Speaker
We can entirely lay the blame for her outfit at George Lucas's feet. he because like listen if a baby wants to dress themselves however they want great if we're working with child actors and or animation put a shirt on that child Dave Filoni you can find Dave Filoni's original sketch of Ahsoka Tano and she looks like a kid it's very cute yeah like a big like pleated swirly skirt And a full-ass shirt.
00:19:02
Speaker
And again, the big eyes. And George Lucas apparently was like, me put her in a crop top shorten up the skirt and give her leggings.
00:19:13
Speaker
No, stop. I was saying i want to call George Lucas's mother and tell her he's been disrespectful to women. The other thing, too, i feel like Ventress's outfit is very obviously a George Lucas influence because who the fuck draws massive boob window and no back onto this woman's outfit?
00:19:39
Speaker
At least with that one, she's an adult. And I can be like, well, as a gay person, thumbs up. As a feminist, though, try again. But our adorable baby child soldier says that Yoda wants Anakin and Obi-Wan back at the Jedi Temple. But because the communications are down, like I said, he sent a messenger.
00:20:01
Speaker
She's very obviously... bright and smart and full of good ideas and she suggests getting around the communications issue by relaying the message through the cruiser that brought her in and the reactions between Anakin and Obi-Wan are so good because Anakin just glares and Obi-Wan does this little smile like his plan is going along perfectly and it's just a very fun little shot.
00:20:28
Speaker
We're going to talk a lot about the Jedi and their fucking child soldiers.
Ethics and Morality in Star Wars
00:20:33
Speaker
But from the start, we get it sort of a vague, like, grand tradition of the young children of knights and nobles as pages and squires and runners and messages during wartime. Like, that was a thing in medieval Europe.
00:20:49
Speaker
Mm-hmm. However, the Jedi don't have children traditionally. ah They just have younglings who they take from their families at a young age. And now this is a now the Jedi are soldiers when they really shouldn't be soldiers. It's a whole thing. This is going to lead to the fall of the Jedi. We will discuss this over the course of Clone Wars.
00:21:09
Speaker
And when they sort of get through the initial talk, Obi-Wan does like this formal introduction and introduces himself as her new master.
00:21:22
Speaker
And she goes, i'm at your service, Master Kenobi. But actually, I've been assigned to Anakin Skywalker. And she points at Anakin. And Anakin, the way Anakin like freaks out and like paces behind Obi-Wan like he's hiding has the exact same energy as like child shows up on your doorstep and tells you they're yours and their other parent was someone you had a one night stand with 15 years ago.
00:21:47
Speaker
Yeah. Like that's the energy here. And she has such good manners. She's so polite. She's so sweet. And Obi-Wan being just charming and perfect and him having good manners. i was fanning myself. i was like, oh, he's being he's being good with the child. I love him. I love him. He's complicit in the system that's making her into a soldier, but it don't worry about it. Don't worry about it.
00:22:11
Speaker
I was also thinking about this on my drive home today. Thinking about... so Because I've now been re-watching my way all through Clone Wars to like make sure that the watch order that I have in place is correct. And for the most part, it we're mostly following chronological order through the Clone Wars. But there's a couple of things we're maneuvering around.
00:22:30
Speaker
point is, watching how Obi-Wan is sort of like the voice of reason and the steady one. And if we go back to Phantom Menace...
00:22:44
Speaker
Obi-Wan is absolutely, ah like, gonna be a fucking loose cannon. He's going to sort of ignore the council like his master and his and his old master before him.
00:23:00
Speaker
o He's gonna follow in the grand tradition of telling the council to fuck off so he can go and be a good goddamn Jedi by all kind of being a little off the rails.
00:23:13
Speaker
isn it But then he gets parentified, and now we have like the result of parentified older sibling Obi-Wan Kenobi 10 years later.
00:23:26
Speaker
Now that he's not responsible for Anakin 23 hours the hour being the twenty fourth hour being when Anakin conks the fuck out for 20 minutes.
00:23:40
Speaker
The other couple of minutes when he's brushing his teeth, i don't fucking know. I was thinking because of another Jedi that we encounter later in the series, I would like to start a list. And that list is a list of Jedi that are going to give Obi-Wan Kenobi an ulcer.
00:23:57
Speaker
he Number one on that list, of course, is Qui-Gon Jinn. Mm-hmm. Qui-Gon Jinn is the cause of all of this at the fucking beginning.
00:24:09
Speaker
Which Obi-Wan Kenobi was going to be the cause of Qui-Gon Jinn's ulcers, but then Qui-Gon Jinn got the ultimate ulcer when he got stabbed through the stomach and died.
00:24:21
Speaker
Yeah, that'll do it. And now we have Anakin Skywalker and Ahsoka Tano. Yeah. Because she is, you know, she's all polite, but she also, she matches energies very, very well. Like when Obi-Wan's polite to her, she's super polite to him.
00:24:42
Speaker
Soon as Anakin gets a little combative, she gets super combative. And he has this, you know, don't get snippy with me, young one, which is the origin of now, he'll call her Snips for the rest of time.
00:24:56
Speaker
And she calls him Sky Guy, which is very cute. and Fucking perfect. didn't write down all of their quips because, again, everything they say to each other is a quip. But it's all very funny. And yeah Rex also thinks that she's hilarious, which is great because that obviously makes Anakin even more annoyed.
00:25:15
Speaker
Which Rex at one point, Anakin goes, Captain Rex will show you how a little respect can go a long way. And Rex's face changes to be like, bro, in what universe does this battalion run on respect? This battalion runs on your fuck ass plans, plot armor, and snorted caffeine pills.
00:25:37
Speaker
Like, no. Yeah. You know, and she at the start is, you know, because she's like 13 or 14 is getting a little bit under Rex's skin.
00:25:50
Speaker
She's like, i outrank you and is like smug about it because she's 13 or 14. And Rex gives her the most diplomatic. You cannot fucking give me orders, you child. With the in my book, experience outranks everything. And she's like, well, I'm going to go get some fucking experience then.
00:26:07
Speaker
I should have paid attention to whether or not she does finger guns in this movie. She must at some point, but she spiritually is always doing finger guns. Oh, constantly.
00:26:18
Speaker
And in that in that conversation with Rex, she's saying, well, I'm a Jedi, so I outrank you. bitch you're not a Jedi you're a bad one and she does this again later in the movie she loves to and this is something that she and Anakin have in common of pretending that yes I am totally a real Jedi yes am not a bad one what are you talking about which is just that kind of bluster is so on brand for a teen and it's hilarious it's very good Yeah, our other note here with my long-running beef of how long the Clone Wars takes, of it's only three years, which means this has only been a couple of months since the Battle Geonosis, which means Anakin is still 19, and he's getting handed this kid like, hey, train her. Wrong-
00:27:10
Speaker
wrong You know, give him a couple of years and a college degree, please. Like, come on. In between all of these little quips, there is a... We flash to Ventress, who's talking to Holo Dooku, revealing that they kidnapped the Hutt. And she goes, you know, I've brought Jabba's son to the abandoned monastery.
00:27:31
Speaker
have brought Jabba's son to the abandoned monastery. He will be safe here. That word does not mean...
00:27:43
Speaker
what we think it means apparently the way you're saying it yikes h and or she just is having dark side dramatics so i would like to invoke rule number one magic makes you dramatic this is true we haven't really circled back to this one in a minute but it is absolutely very present hmm Absolutely. Particularly with Sky Guy and Snips this whole time.
00:28:16
Speaker
They are so fucking dramatic. And they come up with a super duper smart plan to get through the enemy's shields that they... It's kind of unclear to me why this works. But the droid army has the bubble technology that we saw on Naboo.
00:28:39
Speaker
And so... Anakin and Ahsoka need to get through the bubble to put some explosive charges on their shield generator whatever. So they hide under a box and they just let the expanding shield wo over the box.
00:28:55
Speaker
And this works and is very silly and undignified. But I think I just need to not think too hard about why it works. Yeah, I have a mental list of shields in the Star Wars universe and what they seem to do.
00:29:10
Speaker
Because we have deflector shields and thermo shields, which seem to just be deflectors but stronger. And deflectors are on ships and usually...
00:29:20
Speaker
And they can run out if they take enough hits like shields in Star Trek. And then there's just like energy shields, which might be deflectors. And you can you seem to be able to like you can pass through slowly, but like energy or anything fast moving gets bounced off.
00:29:38
Speaker
And that's just pulled straight out of Dune. And we haven't really talked about the fact that Star Wars is just in part George Lucas's Dune fanfic. But like that's just straight out of Dune.
00:29:49
Speaker
Do I have to read Dune? I heard the book is really long. I only read the first one and I got about halfway this through the second one and decided no. So if you want to read Dune, we can talk about Dune, but ah I'm not going to make that an assignment for you.
00:30:05
Speaker
Extra credit, maybe. Yeah. And then there's Ray Shields, which seem to be basically impenetrable, but seem to take a ton of energy, I think.
00:30:17
Speaker
Like they seem to be like the most rare and everyone's like, oh shit, it's ray shielded. We kind of can't do anything about it. But that seems to be like the ultimate.
00:30:28
Speaker
The energy shield here seems to be basically like you said, like the Gungan's shield. It doesn't go down. And it also seems to not get any weaker the larger it gets, which would be my assumption of like, you cover less space and the shield is stronger and then you use the same amount of energy to cover more space.
00:30:45
Speaker
But also it's a science fantasy and I'm thinking way too hard about all of this. Perhaps. After they sneak through the shield, they run into a droideka, and Ahsoka does this little one-handed flip back handspring thing to get into a standing position. And, like, first of all, cool as shit.
00:31:06
Speaker
Second of all, you know, she probably uses the Force to do a lot of this, but, like, she does a lot of really acrobatic shit all through the series. Mm-hmm. more so than most of the other jedi and you know on the one hand i wonder if like to gruta have any sort of acrobatic abilities she's a to gruta that she's like you know is she extra enhanced enhancing these with the force and then but then also i'm realizing she's a girl so she has to fight acrobatically because acrobatics are a feminine way to fight yeah you're right
00:31:43
Speaker
I, we can talk at some point about, i don't know if we've talked in this podcast before, about the Gams of Steel takedown. No, I don't think so.
00:31:55
Speaker
Okay, I cannot find. Okay, well, because the internet is impossible to search things on anymore, I'll have to find details, but it's it's the, like, Lucha Libre, like,
00:32:08
Speaker
you know, a woman runs up to a man and jumps at him and wraps her legs around his neck and takes him down that way. Like there's a whole, i read an article a while back, a whole literary analysis of like the history of that move used by fighting women in action movies.
00:32:29
Speaker
That's really interesting. I would love to read that. Yeah, I want to find that. But ah the the article talked a lot about how basically like women in action movies have to be flippy and have to be, you know, acrobatic and use their legs to fight more because obviously women could never use their upper bodies to fight men because men obviously have so much more upper body strength and so have to be acrobatic and flippy to be
00:33:00
Speaker
beat the stronger man so stupid since i read that article unfortunately like no matter it it's one of those things where it's like you might not have intended this to be the way your girl character fights but she does and now i see it and now i'm annoyed because misogyny permeates everything in our society I will never be able to unsee this.
00:33:28
Speaker
Uh-huh. We have a literary and film analysis podcast. So unfortunately, this is what we do. Yes, but it's good. I like and like knowing things.
00:33:40
Speaker
Obi-Wan, to stop the shields from getting to the heavy cannons, proceeds to stall General Worm Loathsome by engaging in perfidy.
00:33:52
Speaker
Oh, that's what it's called. That is what it's called. Perfidy. Sounds like a Puritan name. Perfidy, noun. One, deliberate breach of faith, calculated violation of trust, treachery.
00:34:05
Speaker
Two, the act or an instance of treachery. Three, the act of violating faith or allegiance, violation of a promise or a vow, or of a trust reposed, faithlessness, treachery.
00:34:18
Speaker
Perfidy is considered a war crime. And the form of perfidy that Obi-Wan is using here is false surrender. is It is the reason perfidy is a war crime is there's the assumption that both sides are acting in good faith.
00:34:35
Speaker
But if one side does not, then that calls doubt upon any future calls for mercy or for surrender. isn't um Or any other future flags of truce or anything like that. So, yes. So we're going to see a lot of war crimes committed in this show.
00:34:58
Speaker
Primarily by the bad the quote-unquote bad guys, the Separatists. But the first one that is committed in our in our lovely little viewing here is by a Jedi. Yeah.
00:35:13
Speaker
Worm Loathsome, which is his name, it's never said in this. We heard him addressed in our last episode as General Loathsome, but never as Worm. He at one point says, bring us something liquid to one of the droids. And I'm 100% sure that there was a deleted scene joke where the droid brings oil or something instead of tea.
00:35:33
Speaker
Oh, that would be really good. i have never, you know, like, I don't know for a fact that there is, but like, that seems like the setup for a joke that they just ended up cutting.
00:35:44
Speaker
Yeah. But of course, during this stalling war crime negotiation, he does talk about the treatment of his troops. And this is also important because mistreatment of prisoners of war of war is also a war crime.
00:35:59
Speaker
Okay. This insistence that prisoners of war be treated humanely, even though he's lying about the whole thing, this is where General Loathsome flips out and accuses Obi-Wan of stalling, which he is.
00:36:16
Speaker
But again, it's kind of telling that it happens specifically during the prisoner of war section. Okay. We do get, oh it ah not Obi-Wan, Ahsoka and Anakin blow up the shield, everything resolves.
00:36:30
Speaker
We get a line from Anakin, you're reckless little one. You never would have made it as Obi-Wan's Padawan. And an extended pause for to see Ahsoka's disappointed face and then, but you might make it as mine.
00:36:45
Speaker
That was cute. i like was that. That was very cute. You know, at one point he's saying to yo Master Yoda, you know. Wait a minute. I admit Ahsoka a little rough around the edges, but with a great deal of training and patience, she might amount to something.
00:37:03
Speaker
Way to just barely give a compliment, Anakin. But then again, he is also learning from Obi-Wan. Yeah. Who also kind of does this barely gives a compliment thing, is kind of a sarcastic asshole. And yeah, this was absolutely a combined idea between Obi-Wan and Yoda to like calm Anakin the fuck down.
00:37:28
Speaker
And it was also interesting because as they're walking away... Obi-Wan and Yoda are talking and Yoda is saying basically it's going to be pretty straightforward for him to train her. I'm not worried about that. But letting her go is going to be really difficult for him. And that's an interesting angle on the no attachments thing, because we had talked about that before. We talked about it with the Tales of the Jedi stuff about the bond that Jedi feel for their padawans. And this is obviously a very important relationship, but sort of using this to teach Anakin a lesson
00:38:08
Speaker
with this expectation of inflicting emotional pain on him. It's very Jedi. It's very Jedi. But it's interesting to see it from that angle because I don't think we've had it explicitly acknowledged in quite that way before.
00:38:26
Speaker
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I mean, this this movie and the show, obviously, will be a little bit more sort of, like, in-your-face with all the themes because it is for kids. Like, apparently, this movie got lambasted by the section of the fandom that likes to do that because they always do.
00:38:45
Speaker
And was like, oh, it was too oriented for kids. And George Lucas was like, Star Wars has always been for kids. Like, it's always been for kids. You just... Didn't quite pick up on that until it was animated.
Star Wars: For Kids or Adults?
00:38:59
Speaker
And I do think this was geared towards a younger audience of children than the previous movies. But it is like we talked about when we watched A New Hope and talked about like that was absolutely prime for my father, a 15 year old boy 1977 to watch. Like that was that was he was prime audience.
00:39:24
Speaker
Mm hmm. And just because, and I feel like we've, we're far enough away from the brony discourse that it's quite possible that we might have listeners who weren't super online at the time when that was happening. But...
00:39:40
Speaker
We've been through multiple cycles of, hey, just because something is for kids doesn't mean it's bad and stupid. You can enjoy something and it can also be for kids. That's fine. You don't have to go, oh, this isn't actually a kids show. It's actually really deep.
00:39:58
Speaker
It can be both things. That's fine. And sometimes kid things that aren't deep fucking rule. i in the course of my job with children have recently started reading aloud the fairy pony series about the fairy ponies on fairy pony island and i was telling miles about this entire chapter book that i read him one day about the fairy ponies on fairy pony island who lost their fairy pony magic It was a whole thing. And I told them, I said, I knew because these fantasy books, especially the ones geared toward little girls, always have at least one thing that's really fucked up. And I was just waiting to see what that thing was going to be. And it's when Shadow, the evil fairy pony, fucking kills the queen.
00:40:44
Speaker
technically he saps away her life force but it's not like oh he made her sad he made her do a frowny face and took away her sparkles no they literally say on the page the queen is going to die in one hour and we have to save her with the fairy pony magic i love it i love it but yeah it's a kid's movie so fucking what just don't make it weird and Don't be weird around the kids who are trying to enjoy it. And don't be weird around the adults either, because then we won't want to hang out with you. But, ah, I scream. Kid stuff is just fun sometimes, and that's okay.
00:41:21
Speaker
And, yeah, it's geared toward kids, and also it's super duper fucking violent. Yeah. Do you want to talk about that now? Because this is around the time where there's some real. Yeah. There's one point where super battle droid like grabs a clone trooper's arm, picks him up, shoots him point blank in the face and then chucks him away.
00:41:46
Speaker
And I was like, oh, my God, this is a children's movie. And there really are, we didn't really comment on this in any of the other movies, there's a lot of guns.
00:41:58
Speaker
Guns and tanks and military planes. And it's not, sure you could say they're blasters or whatever, but these are the least spacey looking guns. These just look like gun guns. Well, don't know. That's because when in 1977, they found a bunch of like surplus World War II weapons and stuck Grebbles on them.
00:42:20
Speaker
And that was how they made the Star Wars guns. So yeah, all of the guns in the Star Wars universe look like real guns because they are. They just sometimes have like an extra little thing stuck on them somewhere.
00:42:37
Speaker
i was saying when we were watching this together, It is so stupid the way that my American brain had to be shocked into this realization because I enjoyed the very niche podcast Till Death Do Us Blart, which people who were into My Brother, My Brother and Me at any point are probably familiar with. comes out once a year on Thanksgiving. They just watch the same movie. They watch Paul Blart Mall Cop 2. And it's the McElroy brothers.
00:43:04
Speaker
And Tim Batt and Guy Montgomery from The Worst Idea of All Time. And Tim and Guy are from New Zealand. And they were talking about Paul Blart and Mall Cop 2 and saying, hey, this is a family movie for kids.
00:43:19
Speaker
There's a lot of fucking guns in this movie. Is this a thing that all American family movies just have a lot of guns and shooting in them? And it took me listening to that podcast as an adult to go, oh,
00:43:32
Speaker
There are a lot of guns in American kids' movies. And it feels stupid that it took that long to realize, but that's another thing that now that I am aware of it, I go, oh, holy shit, this is just...
00:43:44
Speaker
We're showing this to little kids. Oh, no, there are so there's so many guns and so much violence in so much American children's media and violence like point blank violence is not considered like a reason to change the rating. But like swear words and sex are m or a gay character.
00:44:11
Speaker
God forbid there's a nipple. We can't handle that. But we can put a child in a halter top and have people get shot in the face and see clones straight up with holes. Like, we don't see their, like, faces, but with straight up holes through their helmets.
00:44:31
Speaker
Yeah. Speaking of children, back at the Jedi base, Ahsoka is entertaining the clones with stories of the battle, which is just so charming and cute and delightful and What's she saying? Got to keep the boys inspired or trying to keep the boys inspired is all very cute.
00:44:49
Speaker
And then we also see paintings of alien pinup girls on the ships a la World War Two bombers, which is very funny because I had pointed out the pinup girls in the other Clone Wars episodes that we had watched. So that's just silly that that's in there.
00:45:07
Speaker
It's very fun. The music over the approach to Teth, because so Anakin and Ahsoka are tasked to go track down Jabba's kidnapped son.
00:45:20
Speaker
And they're pretty sure he's on Teth. And so the music over the approach to Teth over the slow-mo shot of the Venator descending and then the monastery approach fucking slaps.
Music and Animation Style in Star Wars
00:45:53
Speaker
the music from that slow-mo shot basically until they enter the monastery slaps all the way through. even And quite frankly, I need somebody and probably somebody has somewhere done an edit of right when they land and the pilot goes, welcome to paradise rock jumpers.
00:46:14
Speaker
And everyone jumps out of the gunships and starts running. And then you get like the rocking guitar riffs as they're scaling the cliff to the monastery
00:46:57
Speaker
incredible i need somebody to do an edit where it starts on that breaks into guitar like with edits of basically every clone trooper exit into a war zone out of the gunships the series so cool welcome to paradise rock jumpers that'll go on my list of edits i'll watch 75 times behind the obi-wan 99 problems one that one's the best for a reason and the reason is obi-wan kenobi also speaking of him there was a quick thing that happened before that scene that i just had to highlight my favorite line in the whole entire movie which is when obi-wan goes to go see jabba and say that he's got jedi on the case they're going to bring back his son
00:47:46
Speaker
Jabba's droid, who's the same kind of droid as C-3PO. I don't know what type of droid that is. A protocol droid. A protocol droid who's translating for him says, The most gracious Jabba has one more small condition.
00:48:01
Speaker
He demands you bring back the slime who kidnapped his little, Punky Muffin. The phrase punky muffin lives in my head rent free. I thought that was the funniest line in the entire fucking movie. So just the entire time, this is all about that little punky muffin.
00:48:18
Speaker
Back to the music real quick, because as we're, we have more super fucking cool soundtrack hits. Right after they get through the battle on the cliff and they get up to the monastery and they start walking towards the monastery, we get some like string lines and it's done on an oud, which is a Middle Eastern short neck lute.
00:48:52
Speaker
And there were a few other instruments that we hear in like this section and throughout Clone Wars that Kevin Kiner, who is the composer, introduced into Star Wars instrumentation.
00:49:07
Speaker
this This movie marks the first time we hear ouds in Star Wars and erhuz, which is a Chinese bowed stringed instrument, and duduks, which is an Armenian double reed instrument.
00:49:21
Speaker
Armenia mentioned. I think I actually know what that is. That seems like something I've heard of. i want to read a quote from Kevin Kiner here. Yeah, because I think he nailed the vibe of Star Wars, much like when we were talking about Ludwig Gorenson. He nailed Star Wars while putting his own spin on it in a way that like nothing felt out of place. Nothing felt like it didn't belong in Star Wars.
00:49:52
Speaker
hmm. While also being like, ooh, that's different. That's cool. He said at one point, I don't ever want to be like mini me John Williams. I don't think there's any composer, film composer or composer on earth who's as good as him.
00:50:08
Speaker
I'm always looking at what he does and listening to what he does and finding little tricks, but I have to put my own voice to it. Mm hmm. And Kevin Kiner is going to be the voice of Star Wars animation for the rest of the time that we watch Star Wars animation, pretty much.
00:50:24
Speaker
So it's really fun to, like like he says, hear what he's pulling from John Williams, because you know John Williams is the fucking goat, but also hear the other influences, like like At the beginning you can hear the World War II war movie type music influences.
00:50:49
Speaker
You can hear sort of trying to get like different cultural sounds into Star Wars music. So when you're in areas that don't look like they're out of European mythology, that it doesn't sound that way either.
00:51:06
Speaker
Yeah. It creates a whole new scene. Very, very cool. Couple of pieces, again, with the just misogyny. Mm-hmm, do tell.
00:51:19
Speaker
We have droid who claims to be the caretaker, the humble caretaker of the monastery, who in fact works for the Separatists.
00:51:30
Speaker
He looks at Ahsoka and goes, not a place for a servant girl. And like, was that a necessary line? Yeah, we have to sort of show her insecurity and recklessness.
00:51:42
Speaker
But it calls attention to the fact that, one, she's the only girl in the platoon. And it draws parallels to, and I know we we haven't watched it together yet, but to Return of the Jedi, where the colloquial name for all the women in similar-ish outfits to hers in a similar former Bomar monastery setting in Jabba's palace is Slave Girl.
Gender Roles and Stereotypes in Star Wars
00:52:05
Speaker
Ooh, don't like that. Yeah. so and I feel like the only reason we changed it to Servant Girl in the script is because it's a kid's movie.
00:52:17
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, so just more of the like, once you once you see the misogyny inherent in the system, you don't unsee it. Not that I am telling anything new to the gender studies scholar that I host this podcast with.
00:52:35
Speaker
But, you know, I am new to Star Wars. So that line didn't particularly stick out to me because I was just focused on trying to follow the plot. And so I didn't even register that that was happening. so it's And I also haven't seen the other movie yet, so I don't have the broader Star Wars context. But, ah oh, God.
00:52:56
Speaker
The dwarf spider droids, which are the four-legged ones we see around the monastery with, like, the mosquito nose cannons, h In Star Wars lore, they are apparently created by the Commerce Guild to fight, quote, renegade miners.
00:53:10
Speaker
Oh. So the their purpose was to crush union organizers. Handshake beam with sec unit. I mean, that's like the separatists are backed by all of the corporate interests. All of the droids come from the corporate armies.
00:53:29
Speaker
The private corporate armies. So, fun. We find Rota the Hutt. Oh my god. ah So they get to this comically large cell, which you open because we've seen Jabba the Hutt. We know he's a big gloopy guy. We expect that his son will also be big and gloopy.
00:53:53
Speaker
But no, he is the stupidest, awfulest, most hideous, janky tadpole booger. I would say he's about the size of slightly bigger than a soccer ball, maybe.
00:54:09
Speaker
i love him instantly. He was the one part of the animation... that even I thought was truly bad. it was so, so bad. Because he's supposed to be sort of gloopy and wrinkly and have this sort of fluid motion, but he's just solid. And i don't think the technology at play was up to the task of rendering him. But I did find him very, very lovable. And I did think that it was funny comparing that and the mandalorian which was our first star wars thing that transporting wrinkly green baby really seems to be a theme here and it works it works great listen we we settled on a formula that works and every 10 years we gotta get a wrinkly green baby in the mix
00:55:08
Speaker
And this was one bit of misogyny that was obvious even to me, which is that obviously Ahsoka takes to him instantly and assumes the role of his caretaker because, of course, she's a girl.
00:55:23
Speaker
And girls are good at taking care of babies, which even as a person or maybe, you know, maybe even especially as a person who works with kids professionally, and I'm quite good at it, I like to think.
00:55:36
Speaker
I was very, very, very resistant to doing anything with kids professionally because even my pretty liberal with it upbringing very much had shoehorned me into, you are an older sibling. You are the oldest person in this church slash afterschool program slash whatever. You go take care of the babies. And I resented the shit out of that.
00:56:02
Speaker
So especially to me, it's extra personal because there's layers and shit. But anytime young girl is expected to just instantly take care of a baby, Ugh, makes me feral, it makes me so angry.
00:56:15
Speaker
Fucking throw hands. Yeah, no. Absolutely not. The little baby is sick. Which, do slugs get fevers? Apparently they do. Yeah, I'm wondering how she can tell. I don't know how Ahsoka knows the base body temperature of a whatever the fuck, of a hutlet.
00:56:33
Speaker
But she's pretty sure that he's sick, so I guess he is. Yeah. Yeah. But Jabba controls essential territory that the Grand Army of the Republic needs to traverse through to beat the Separatists. So little baby Hutt has to survive getting back.
00:56:52
Speaker
Anakin and Ahsoka have various misadventures and daring escapes to make it to the fucking jankiest ass ship that they then try to fly to the Jedi cruiser.
00:57:04
Speaker
And then the Jedi cruiser's landing bay gets shot up by droid starfighters. And then they have to go all the way to Tatooine and have a crash landing on Tatooine. But we'll get there shortly because I want to talk about Obi-Wan and Ventress.
00:57:20
Speaker
Please do. My goodness. Yeah, i don't remember exactly what I said during that fight, but it was definitely something along the lines of, this is a fight that I'm paying attention to.
00:57:36
Speaker
and i was locked in. i was focused. Why was it so sexual? Oh my god. attacks and then stops to literally take her skirt off and throw it at him.
00:57:51
Speaker
And I know it's like a throw the cape, but it's her skirt. And then he, at one point, he grabs her wrists and forces them up above her head. Yeah.
00:58:02
Speaker
And they're, you know, they've got the flirty banter going back and forth the whole time. You'll have to do better than that, my darling. Why the my darling? Why? Why are you saying this Obi-Wan Kenobi? I am.
00:58:16
Speaker
We're having confusing emotions here. ah you can keep doing it. It's just confusing. We are we are but simple women who ah are in love with animated fucking Obi-Wan Kenobi.
00:58:33
Speaker
Listen, I'll take him however I can get him. ah Also, Ventress has two lightsabers, which rules. So not only is the horniest fight ever unfolding between these two awesome characters, then there's just two lightsabers. Why? Because having two lightsabers is awesome.
00:58:52
Speaker
And I enjoyed that. Palpatine ends up manipulating Padme into... into walking herself into danger again because palpatine is trying so fucking hard to get padme killed to drive anakin off the edge this is some tom and jerry shit just well not even because tom and jerry are mutually trying to kill each other some other kind of looney tune-esque murder plot where just all he wants is for Cadme to die.
00:59:26
Speaker
yeah it's Roadrunner and Coyote, but she is yes fucking unkillable until the plot says she dies. Oh god, I haven't even thought about how she's gonna die. Badly. now We'll be upset about it when we get to be upset about it.
00:59:41
Speaker
Yeah, he just drops that Anakin is in danger, but in a way that's not letting on, that he knows about them being secret married. And she suddenly is very motivated to get a treaty signed, and she's going to go talk to Jabba's uncle. And Palpatine goes, no, don't do it. Ha ha, don't. But but you're so sexy, ha ha. Like he always does. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
01:00:09
Speaker
And then I have things to say about Zero the Hutt. We meet Zero the Hutt. And just to wrap up before we go into our deep analysis of yeah Zero the fucking Hutt.
01:00:20
Speaker
Turns out Zero was in on it with Dooku the whole time. The Hutt's are both a species and a crime family all in one. And so Zero was trying to backstab his nephew Jabba.
01:00:34
Speaker
By helping Dooku kidnap Rhoda to then convince Jabba that it was the Jedi who kidnapped Rhoda. And then get Jabba and the Jedi to fight so the Jedi will kill Jabba so Zero can take his place.
01:00:50
Speaker
Convoluted. Just a tidge. Sure, whatever. Yeah, it all sort of comes out and it all works out nicely in the end.
01:01:01
Speaker
Yeah. But Zero the Hutt is a very interesting Hutt because, first of all, he speaks Galactic Basic, which we haven't heard a Hutt do in Star Wars.
01:01:12
Speaker
Most of them speak, we've only really seen Jabba and at one point I think Gardula, but they all speak Huttese. Zero speaks Basic and he does it in an interesting way.
01:01:25
Speaker
Can I talk about him? Can i talk about Zero? yeah Can I talk about what I have to say about Zero? Okay. Please. when I first laid eyes upon this hut, I knew immediately that there was some fuckery happening. And then I explained to Miles what I'm about to explain to you, dear listener. And I said...
01:01:48
Speaker
okay, here's what I think. Watch the scene and tell me that I'm right. And then they said, oh my God, if you hadn't pointed that out, I wouldn't have thought of it. But now that you say it, of course you're right. So let's just describe Zero real quick.
01:02:02
Speaker
So he's in the club where he lives question mark just seems to be all the time he's got this very high soft sing-song baby voice it's very weird and but i baby voice is the only way to describe it it's very creepy and he's smoking a hookah or something like it Covered in body paint. He's got this sun and swirly pattern on him. He's covered in jewels. He's wearing this big ring and feathers.
01:02:42
Speaker
I can't forget that he's also fat, which we know means that someone's immoral. And he's just this picture of excess and indulgence. And I immediately go, oh, he's a queer degenerate.
01:02:57
Speaker
This is effeminate, bad, gay man. This is this is obvious. Yeah, he's purple. He's backstabby.
01:03:07
Speaker
Oh, I forgot that he was purple. Yeah, he's purple and all of the other huts are green. o We will never see another hut that is not, like, green or yellow.
01:03:19
Speaker
It's just zero. So the voice thing was... George Lucas. He asked for Zero to sound specifically like Truman Capote, famous American author.
Character Design Critiques
01:03:34
Speaker
And we'll just put a clip of Zero here. You tried to call for help, Senator. believe you are too dangerous to be kept alive. And then a clip of Truman Capote talking.
01:03:47
Speaker
I worked with a lot of actors, mostly doing the scripts, but being on the sets and watching what happens to them. And the first time I remember watching this phenomena...
01:04:03
Speaker
At time of recording, i don't know what Truman Capote sounds like. Identical is what he sounds like. ah Importantly, however, and, you know, so, okay, so Zero sounds identical to Truman Capote.
01:04:18
Speaker
You are not the first person to see Zero as an anti-gay stereotype. Dave Filoni was, like, he was, like, was trying to make the sexuality ambiguous,
01:04:29
Speaker
said Hutts don't have a sex in Star Wars Legends, like which at this time, this was all part of that continuity, which would was like varying levels of canon. George Lucas didn't consider like the books in such canon, but Hutts at this time are supposedly hermaphroditic, but in the new Star Wars continuity, they do have discrete sexes.
01:04:54
Speaker
So you know again, this was not an intentional anti-gay stereotype which again relation to dune i was like oh it's baron harkonnen all over again i am familiar with this character loosely yeah so like that was sort of the vibe i was getting here truman capote to whom zero not only has similar voices but mannerisms and fashion sense truman capote was openly gay
01:05:27
Speaker
Pics that make you go, hmm. Yeah, so... It's, again, one of those things that, like, maybe you didn't intend this, but that is still what you did.
01:05:42
Speaker
Yeah. Right? Sure, Ahsoka is not meant to be femininely fighting just because she's acrobatic, but that's the theme.
01:05:54
Speaker
That's what we see everywhere. Same thing here. Yeah. yeah And I do think if you don't know that context and you're not looking for it, it could be easy to not notice.
01:06:06
Speaker
But I was noticing i was looking for it. Oh, and it was just uncomfortable. And then also the fact that he is an uncle.
01:06:16
Speaker
There is also this sort of media trope of the gay uncle that also is just sort of falling into all of this. it It doesn't look good.
01:06:27
Speaker
hmm. But the one thing, because when you said that Dave Filoni was trying to make the sexuality ambiguous, there is one, is it Twi'lek or Twi'lek? How do you say it with the long head things?
01:06:42
Speaker
But one of them is sort of in the background doing a dance that could be sensual if she wasn't doing it at 4x speed. She's dancing like the rent is due. And the faster she goes, the more money she makes. There is nothing. She's also by herself. There's no music playing, at least not diegetic music that she's clearly dancing to. She's just going so fast. And it's clearly meant to be
01:07:13
Speaker
She is there to dance sexily for Zero the Hutt, but it's not delivered in a convincing way at all and just looks very, very stupid. There is also one thing from that scene that I did notice that I thought was fun is that there are two aliens making out in the club. There's a slow pan past a pillar and you see two of them lean in and just kind of start going for it.
01:07:37
Speaker
And I thought that that was fun. But ah clearly this is just a hub of degeneracy. Yes. But a lot of it is just very stupid. So just just to wrap up the plot and then we can finish talking about visuals.
01:07:50
Speaker
So Padme's attempts to negotiate with Zero don't work. There's back and forth. There's rescuing. She's fine in the end. There's a fake out where Anakin and Ahsoka have to split up and Anakin gets in a big lightsaber battle with Dooku and Dooku thinks that he's captured him because Anakin has the backpack with the baby in it. Psyche. It was just rocks. And Ahsoka had the baby the whole time.
01:08:17
Speaker
Then they go back to Jabba and all of the treachery is revealed. The Punky Muffin is returned and everything is okay. um There was also just two quick things that I wanted to note that weren't that important but that I enjoyed.
01:08:32
Speaker
As Anakin and Ahsoka are walking through the desert... They're trying to find things to talk about. And she's trying to push his buttons and needle him for personal lore. She goes, Master Yoda has a saying, old sins cast long shadows. Do you know what he meant by that? And then Anakin says, he means your past can ruin your future if you allow it.
01:08:52
Speaker
But you forget it was Master Skywalker who said, i don't want to talk about my past, which I thought was pretty good. that was a pretty good line. was solid. And then at the end, when everything is being revealed and resolved, and Padme is saying, you know, oh, we're very grateful for your help, Jedi. And he's saying, no, I'm in your debt, Senator. Just trying to flirt with your secret wife via hologram was kind of cute.
01:09:19
Speaker
On the conference call. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, that's the plot. The plot is not that complicated. The whole four episode nature of it makes it not very strong as a movie plot, but it's fine.
01:09:33
Speaker
Yeah, it works out. You know I know there is like within the first several seasons of the show, there's a lot of like things that are that were aired out of order because of the nature of this movie. They chose to include it because like this is the introduction of Ahsoka and she's going to be a main character. And like while we will have episodes where she and Anakin are not the main focus, she's still going to be one of the big draws for kids.
01:10:02
Speaker
hmm. Over the course of the Clone Wars. So they decided to put like this four episode piece, which serves as her introduction as like the pilot released in theaters.
01:10:15
Speaker
So things ended up getting released then out of order, which is why we started with like a season three episode and then had a season two episode and then a mid season one episode and now a movie.
01:10:29
Speaker
So more on the visuals, specifically in the den of gen, den of de gen, fuck. he Specifically. Yeah.
01:10:42
Speaker
degen ah Degeneracy. Gen-gen-generations. Ellen Ellen degenerates. More gay degeneracy. Specifically, in the den of degeneracy. Yes.
01:10:56
Speaker
You had said we had to be concerned we can't possibly see a nipple, but we see two nipples, in fact, very strongly.
01:11:06
Speaker
Why why are her nipples like that? And also why is her butt like that? Yeah, so Padme is in her Clone Wars Geonosian outfit in the the white bodysuit that has the seams on the tits.
01:11:26
Speaker
Mm-hmm. And like, they're prominent in the live action and create a corner direct at the nipple. But they're like half the fucking outfit in the animation here.
01:11:41
Speaker
It goes from like highlighting where the nipple is to being the nipple. And i don't I don't know why. It looks really weird.
01:11:53
Speaker
Yeah, there's there is a stylization to the animation for this show, which is at times charming and at times fucking baffling.
01:12:05
Speaker
Yeah. And then when she turns around, each butt cheek is rendered in such crisp detail. They are lifted and separated. i don't know why.
01:12:18
Speaker
And then speaking of stylization, why is Anakin shaped like that? His neck is so thick and his waist is so thin. This isn't like a Captain America Dorito broad shoulder muscle man situation. He just has a really thick neck. He's like my dog. This is not a proportion that most living things have.
01:12:42
Speaker
so and Oh my god, he is. He is? He's like Phoenix. We can include socials screenshots of Anakin and pictures of my dog. I have also been told that my dog has a Hank Hill butt. I've never watched whatever show Hank Hill is on, but I have seen screenshot of what his butt looks like. And yeah, that is kind of what my dog's butt looks like.
01:13:06
Speaker
I have a cartoon dog. He's barely real. barely alive. But it's just kind of weird. Everyone else's stylization I felt like was okay.
01:13:19
Speaker
But those two specifically didn't really work for me. So the other main thing with the stylization is i and this is something I picked up on my first watch as well, I'm not jaded enough to say that this movie was only made to sell toys. I do believe there's a story being told and it's the joy of sharing in the Star Wars universe, whatever, but it was absolutely optimized to sell toys. You can really, really tell that all of the shapes are very easy to render into 3D objects that a child will recognize in a store. Yoda has these big, cute,
01:14:00
Speaker
Like modern Beanie Baby eyes before modern Beanie Baby started looking like that. The droids are all very collectible. The clones have their fun little customizations on their armor that you can tell apart. It's all very, very marketable. And I didn't do any research into toy sales for this, but it seems pretty obvious.
01:14:26
Speaker
You're making a kid's show. This is a thing that's going to sell a fucking million toys. Oh, it toys have been at the cornerstone of Star Wars since the beginning. That's something George Lucas nailed straight away.
01:14:42
Speaker
hmm. And anytime you make a slight variation on the thing, that's a new toy. You got to have your plain clone armor toy and then you can have all the different officers, but you can use the same mold for all of them. Just slap different paint on them and then you've got a million toys.
01:14:59
Speaker
Every single droid you can make super stylized shapes are much easier to make into toys than something really realistic. it's It's a goldmine. They're printed money.
01:15:11
Speaker
Exactly. And I had Star Wars toys, so it worked. Yeah, I mean, same. Absolutely. oh Okay, so anything else we want to talk about for plot visuals? I mean, I think that sums up most of my thoughts on the movie.
01:15:29
Speaker
There will be more tie-in thoughts as we go through the series. I think my only last little thought, circling back to misogyny and being weird about girls,
01:15:42
Speaker
is in the 2000s, in this era, there were so... I don't know if this is still the case with kids' shows. I hope it's not. But every single animated girl was in crop tops for some reason in this era of animation. And as a child in that era, I definitely had a very special fascination with all of them. Misty from Pokemon, I'm looking at you. Totally spies. Winx Club. So many.
01:16:12
Speaker
Every single cartoon girl was at a crop top. ah Total Drama Island was a little later on. I was more of sort of a tween at that point, but that also 16, everything from that studio.
01:16:25
Speaker
This was a thing. And as an adult, I can recognize that that was weird. As a child who was having some gay thoughts, I do have a certain amount of complicated nostalgia for that. Just seeing like, oh yeah, this was not something I experienced when it came out, but it was part of this broader, very strange, weird, problematic cultural moment that also really specifically impacted me.
01:16:55
Speaker
So I don't think we should bring it back. I don't think that it was a good thing. But I mean, it did remind me of other things that I was consuming at that time and reminded me of being a very confused gay little child.
01:17:09
Speaker
Well, and to an extent, it unfortunately like is coming back. I feel like you can draw direct parallels to like early 2000s diet culture and like skinny culture.
01:17:24
Speaker
And when like all like women's clothing and girls clothing was like, it's super tight and super short and like cuts off and always shows the midriff. And like, so, you know, the emphasis on always having a flat stomach is, it becomes a cultural thing rather than just the general annoying skinny culture bullshit.
01:17:51
Speaker
Mm-hmm. But yeah, I mean, thinking about sort of the return I've been seeing of some of that, you know, of the like low rise pants with the really short tops and the really small outfits um that are returning in coordination with all like the GLP-1 bullshit.
01:18:17
Speaker
that is becoming such a thing now and it's like it's the return of 2000s diet culture yeah and other people have done much better analyses of all of this than i ever will but yeah that's that's the other parallel i feel like we can draw with all of that Yeah, definitely. And, you know, especially with our objectively evil, big, fat, gloopy glob guys, because everyone else in this
Behind the Scenes: Creators and Crew
01:18:49
Speaker
movie is stick thin, you know? Oh, yeah.
01:18:53
Speaker
Yeah. Real quick, I want to talk a little bit about the people behind screen. Please do. I want to talk a little bit about just the actors and actresses playing everybody. We have Ashley Eckstein playing Ahsoka Tano, and she will continue to be the voice of Ahsoka Tano through everything with voice.
01:19:15
Speaker
We have Matt Lanter playing Anakin Skywalker. We talked about him previously. We have James Arnold Taylor as Obi-Wan Kenobi. We have Dee Bradley Baker as all of the clone troopers.
01:19:29
Speaker
And as I think we mentioned last time, deep Bradley Baker is more well known by, again, folks in our generation as Appa from Avatar The Last Airbender.
01:19:41
Speaker
Tom Kane plays Yoda and Admiral Yularen. Tom Kane passed away a couple weeks ago. Oh, I didn't know that. He was apparently a lifelong nerd, particularly Star Wars like star wars nerd.
01:19:57
Speaker
His son made a statement after his death, apparently, that he he was a you know longtime reader and Star Wars fan and would... always want to talk about the books that he was reading with you and, you know, want to engage you in conversation about what you were reading and like what media was important to you. And so he sounds like he was a really, really cool guy in addition to being a super talented voice actor.
01:20:26
Speaker
Mm-hmm. So that's ah that's a major, major loss to the talent community. We have Nika Futterman playing Asajj Ventress and also Jabba's protocol droid TC-70. Ian Abercrombie plays Darth Sidious. We have Corey Burton playing both Zero the Hutt and Kronos 327, who is droid that we see when we enter Zero's club, who Zero is sentencing to death for failing him.
01:20:55
Speaker
Oh, yeah. i personally, I love when this happens. It's not uncommon throughout the series because voice actors are fucking wild, where you'll just have characters like having a conversation back and forth with themselves.
01:21:10
Speaker
m Obviously, Dee Bradley Baker does this all the fucking time when clones are talking. But there's an episode at one point way later on that I watched the other day.
01:21:22
Speaker
where James Arnold Taylor is playing both the separatist bad guy and Obi-Wan Kenobi. And they meet face to face and Obi-Wan is like, you're not how I imagined for a man with such a soft voice.
01:21:36
Speaker
Incredible. Perfect. Catherine Tabor plays Padme Amidala. Matthew Wood is the battle droids. David Accord plays Baby Stinky. Kevin Michael Richardson plays Jabba. And then returning from the live action movies, we have Samuel L. Jackson playing Mace Windu, Anthony Daniels playing C-3PO, and Christopher Lee playing Count Dooku.
01:22:00
Speaker
Count Dooku and Mace Windu will be voiced by other actors in the television series, but Anthony Daniels will remain voicing C-3PO through the Clone Wars TV series, which, great, perfect.
01:22:14
Speaker
And then this was written by Henry Gilroy. We talked about the music already. That's Kevin Kiner. I do want to call out a couple of things from Henry Gilroy's writing credits, just because they're funny.
01:22:31
Speaker
We have, let's see, we have Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd century, Timo Supremo, House of Mouse, Justice League Unlimited, Lilo and Stitch the Series, Kim Possible, Super Robot Monkey Team Hyper Force Go,
01:22:48
Speaker
ah Voltron Force, Hulk and the Agents of Smash, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Anyway, mostly I wanted to say Super Robot Monkey Team Hyper Force Go.
01:23:00
Speaker
That's really catchy. Yeah. And then also he wrote a Mass Effect short animated film too. I will need to watch that at some point when I'm done playing Mass Effect. And then it was directed by Dave Filoni.
01:23:14
Speaker
Dave Filoni has my heart. He seems just like a genuinely cool dude who is clearly a massive fucking nerd and Star Wars fan who started out like as an animator. and he's He's an artist. He's a brilliant artist if you look up some of his drawings he's a very very strong artist he is now the president and chief creative officer of lucasfilm oh wow He was personally hired and mentored by George Lucas.
01:23:48
Speaker
He started out in his early career working on Avatar The Last Airbender. Amazing. Which is what got him noticed by George Lucas.
01:23:58
Speaker
And then he ended up on Star Wars and basically has been on Star Wars ever since, both in live action and in animation.
01:24:11
Speaker
Mm-hmm. Looking through his filmography, we have Star Wars, Star Wars, Star Wars, Star Wars, all Star Wars. And then one, two, three, three.
01:24:22
Speaker
We have, yeah, King of the Hill, Teemo Supremo, Kim Possible, Lilo and Stitch, the series, Jake Long, American Dragon, Avatar The Last Airbender, and then Wars, Star Wars, Star Wars, Star Wars, Star Wars, Star Wars, Star Wars, Star Wars, Star Wars, stars stars Star Wars, Star Wars.
01:24:38
Speaker
Basically everything after Avatar The Last Airbender is Star Wars. Yeah. yeah He got picked up by George Lucas and was like, you're mine now. And then he got creative control and was like, yeah, but what if yes we wrote women actually decently?
01:24:57
Speaker
What if we drank our Respect Women juice? Yeah, no, I i think he does. That's that's the thing. He's a massive nerd. He clearly loves the stories that he's making.
01:25:09
Speaker
And I feel like that love is really, really obvious. Yeah. As we go through, like, don't get me wrong, George Lucas obviously loves Star Wars. He wouldn't have gone to such an effort to make it if he did not love the story he was putting out.
01:25:25
Speaker
But there's sort of a difference once you start making something that is so large that it kind of escapes containment. It escapes the mind of the original creator.
01:25:37
Speaker
I feel like the best person to then make stories in that escaped zone is a fan. Yeah. Is someone who's not here because, like, they're an industry baby.
01:25:51
Speaker
Is someone who's here because they fucking love this media. And I think that's, I mean, from everything that I have seen that he has been either responsible for writing, directing, or producing out of Star Wars in the last decade and change, almost two decades at this point, he wants to make good Star Wars because he wants good Star Wars.
01:26:12
Speaker
Because he's a fan. Yeah. And I think people respond to that. I know that I definitely do. And I've said about lots of different kinds of media that I like, I respond to earnestness. I like when I can tell that people are really into what they're doing.
01:26:29
Speaker
Because it's fun. If you're... acting like you're too cool to be doing something if you're say too cool to be enjoying star wars because this is a kids movie whatever then that's just obnoxious nobody wants to be around you and you're gonna make things that are jaded and stupid and bad but if you just embrace that what you're doing is fun then everyone has a good time Well, and he and I think we talked about this when we talked about some of the Mandalorian episodes.
01:26:56
Speaker
Dave Filoni and Jon Favreau, when they were making The Mandalorian, were saying like, yeah, we put in a lot of references to the original characters. you know, Star Wars movies, but it wasn't like, hey, look at this. We're making a reference. Did you get it?
01:27:14
Speaker
It was like, no, like this is just kind of fun for us. Yeah. And, you know, it's fun for the Star Wars fans who are watching it, but the whole point here is to tell a fun story. Mm-hmm.
01:27:26
Speaker
Yeah, i feel I feel like some of these very, very large franchises, because they get so self-referential after a point, can get to that point where it's like, hey, did you see what we did there? You see that subtle reference? You have to understand that subtle reference or you're not going to get the plot of the movie. And I feel like Marvel falls into that really heavily.
01:27:52
Speaker
Marvel, DC, like the the big comics, universes, and the Marvel Cinematic Universe falls into that really heavily. I feel like Star Wars runs the risk of doing that quite frequently. It runs sort of right up along the edge of that really often.
01:28:09
Speaker
Of needing to stretch its own DNA, perhaps. Perhaps. To make a reference to our own previous episode. Galaxy Brain.
01:28:21
Speaker
Yeah, but I do think that by and large, at least a lot of the people behind Star Wars are trying to make good stories first.
01:28:34
Speaker
And I think when that's your primary goal, that's going to be what you're going to get out of it, regardless of how many references and pieces of the franchise that you pull in. Mm-hmm.
01:28:47
Speaker
If your goal is that this is a good story that can be enjoyed by both Star Wars fans and non-Star Wars fans alike, then you're going to make that a good Star Wars story. And the Clone Wars, I know that they've said that they were targeting primarily like young kids who were new to Star Wars and their nostalgic parents.
01:29:09
Speaker
Yeah. And that comes across because I'm not sure if you just showed this to somebody our age that this would pull them into Star Wars. Yeah, I don't think so. But to target a new Star Wars audience, this works perfectly well. And it's still, it is a good story for telling that to somebody new.
01:29:32
Speaker
Telling that to a kid who is new to Star Wars. This is the kind of story that will pull them in and want them to see more. Yeah. Anyway, we're going to see more. We spent a lot of time talking about this little four episode arc.
01:29:48
Speaker
It is my intention. We'll see if this
Future Podcast Plans and Engagements
01:29:51
Speaker
happens. But the next time we record, we will be covering 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 episodes Clone Wars. 11 episodes. eight nine ten eleven episodes of clone wars eleven episodes Season 3, Episode 3, Supply Lines. Season 1, Episode 1, Ambush. Season 1, Episodes 2 through 4, The Malevolence Arc. Season 1, Episode 5, Rookies. Season 1, 6 and 7, Droid And then Season Episodes through The
01:30:24
Speaker
tracking grievous arc So, we'll see if we get through all of those. I do think that when they made this movie, they you know obviously it's four episodes shoved together and you can see that, but they did like pad some extra stuff in around it to make it not...
01:30:41
Speaker
Quite as much for episodes. I think we'll do our best to like skate over the top because I don't want to be in Clone Wars for an entire year. If we can help it. We'll be strategic. So that is the current list. I will publish that on our social media when I publish the social media stuff for this episode. So that way you have a watch list if you are watching along with us.
01:31:06
Speaker
If you would like to not necessarily watch along with us, but you'd like to follow along with the podcast, you can absolutely do that. You can follow us on whatever podcasting platform you're currently listening on. You can follow us on another podcasting platform.
01:31:20
Speaker
You can let us know if we're not on your preferred podcasting platform and we will try to get on it. You can follow us on our social media. We are at FanAppPod on any social media site we are on. You can also always send us an email at thefandomapprentice at gmail.com if you have side things you want us to cover, if you have suggestions for the exact order that I should be having Sam watch things to cause her the maximum emotional distress, particularly when we get tied to certain characters. If you have a favorite discount vajazzling place, don't send us that one. ah
01:31:59
Speaker
You can feel free to leave comments on our episodes if the podcasting platform you're on allows, that sort of thing. If you leave us a five-star review or you leave us a written review, that really, really, really helps our podcast.
01:32:13
Speaker
Like it genuinely gooses the algorithm a little bit and gets us in front of more ears. But what gets us in front of the most ears is sharing us with your friends. Word of mouth is the best way for a podcast like ours to spread.
01:32:26
Speaker
So if you like what you're hearing, tell your friends about us, leave us a review, subscribe to the podcast, subscribe to the social media, send us an email if you have ideas, if you have thoughts.
01:32:38
Speaker
That's the best way to get in contact with us. And we hope that you will come back for more Clone Wars next time. Thanks so much for listening. See you next time. Bye.
01:32:50
Speaker
The Phantom of Brentis is produced and edited by Rin and Sam. Our music is composed and performed by James. You can find more of his work on Spotify and Bandcamp under Bayruz, B-A-E-R-U-Z.
01:33:03
Speaker
Our art is by Casey Turgeon. You can find more of her work at KCT Designs on Instagram. The content discussed is the property of the original copyright holders and is used here under fair use.
Humorous Tangents and Closing
01:33:51
Speaker
I did try to see if I could find that outfit on the internet. I could not. This might have been a custom piece. what Was it like just like a line of rhinestones or was it like in like a full on Yoni detailed in? No, it was not a detailed rendering. No, it was just coverage.
01:34:19
Speaker
I know that would be really funny though. Hey, Abby, you got a craft idea for you. Abby would do that. What gemstone do you make the clit? Oh, that's what's the most precious one. I guess that's subjective.
01:34:35
Speaker
That's just like a that'll be a really good personality quiz. What gemstone is your clit?
01:34:43
Speaker
This has nothing to do with Star Wars. Aren't there crystals in the lightsabers? That could be... Maybe that's something. i also don't want a lightsaber anywhere between my legs.
01:35:02
Speaker
There are tears coming out of my eyes. Could it be because of the pollen? Maybe.