Trashing Chicago
Star Wars: Clone Wars 2.21 “R2 Come Home”
Aww, R2. So cute. So heroic. And perfectly capable of flying a ship home by himself when the bad guys jam transmissions.
It’s all about trusting the little guy…and accepting droids might have their own agency. You would think Windu had seen enough to have already learned that lesson.
We also see more of chibi Boba, and I have to admit, chibi Boba is pretty adorable.
Star Wars: Clone Wars 2.22 “Lethal Trackdown”
Boba and his mentor, Aura, decide to lure Windu into a trap…but Windu isn’t well enough to travel, so they get different Jedi instead.
Lots of bar scenes and Boba is captured. They aren’t clear on what they’re going to do to him…juvie, I assume…but we all know what he grows up to become.
I found this a bit anticlimactic for a season finale, to be honest.
Star Wars: Clone Wars 3.1 “Clone Cadets”
The new season starts with an exploration of how clones are trained. It’s not very authentic…they ship out in squads of rookies? Realistically, they would be split up to replace losses.
It’s creepy…it’s about them working together, but also…it’s just creepy how they’re expected to be units and never apart.
We also find out what they do with bad clones (support jobs) and that the cloning facility is starting to struggle. Presumably this is the start of the explanation of why everyone stops using clones.
Star Wars: Clone Wars 3.2 “ARC Troopers”
This is a follow up…Grievous attacks Camino, where all the cloning facilities are because in the Republic we don’t decentralize.
Our cadets come back to defend their home…with the help of the “bad batch” clone, 99, who is brave and stupid. He could have been brave without being stupid, but he wanted to prove his manhood. We’ve all met that guy, haven’t we.
Lightsaber battles involving Grievous are always fun to watch.
Star Wars: Clone Wars 3.3 “Supply Lines”
We return to Ryloth, where the Twi’leks are under blockade and running out of supplies. And somebody sent Jar Jar to negotiate with a neutral planet.
Jar Jar.
Not that he doesn’t prove to be useful, but meesa no diplomat. (But a very good plate juggler).
The constant attacks on Ryloth might be a foreshadowing of the reduction of the Twi’leks to a slave race under the Empire.
Star Wars: Clone Wars 3.4 “Sphere Of Influence”
People seem to like to turn their daughters into Senators. It’s a thing. And it seems to be across species.
Another blockade, this time by the Trade Federation, who aren’t separatists, honest, a kidnapping and Ahsoka being badass.
Honestly, the senator is pretty badass too. Badass lady senators are a trope!
So are Jedi who don’t follow the rules…
Movie Review: Divergent
This is a rewatch because I made the mistake of thinking it was good when it first came out.
So, is it any better ten years later?
Nope. In fact, I found myself noticing plotholes that weren’t there the first time…I swear they weren’t.
This movie was part of the height of a craze for trashing Chicago. Why Chicago? Who knows. Mostly, filmmakers trash LA, but novelists were trashing Chicago.
It represents the “You’re in a faction and can’t change” subset of YA dystopia that tries, poorly, to capitalize on people’s desire to be part of a team.
In this case, our heroine (and love interest) are people who can’t just be categorized into a single virtue. That is, human. Sorry, but nobodywould be categorized as any one of the factions and realistically the testing would give them a score for each faction to help them pick.
But that wouldn’t create enough Drama or enough Evil.
(Another trend: For a while it seemed a lot of movie villains were conventionally attractive white women in powersuits with short blonde hair. Just saying).
So no, not an improvement on last time I watched it, but kind of entertaining in its own way.