#dave Filoni critical

[short-wooloo]

Now that the trailer is out, it's probably best that I get this out of the way before acolyte releases

The Jedi are right about the Force and the dark side

The Jedi did not lose their way

The Jedi were not corrupted

The genocide of the Jedi was not their fault

The Jedi are not wrong for being part of the Republic, it is in fact a good thing

The Jedi are not arrogant for thinking the sith are gone

and while we're at it the sith are evil, always, end of discussion

The Jedi do not steal children

If someone wants to leave the Jedi, that's allowed, no one will stop them

The Jedi are right about attachment

Attachment is not love (SW uses the Buddhist definition because Lucas is a Buddhist and the Jedi are based off Buddhist monks, Buddhism defines attachment as being possessive or unwilling to let go of people or things)

The Jedi do not forbid emotions, they forbid being controlled by your emotions, you must control them

The Jedi are not forbidden from loving people, nor are they celibate, they just can't get married (big whup) because their duties must come first

Being peacekeepers doesn't preclude the Jedi from fighting in war, sometimes to keep the peace you have to fight back, especially when its against tyranny, see WWII (or Ukraine today)

Gray jedi are not a thing

The Jedi are not slavers or complicit in slavery

Oh and of course, the Jedi are not elitists for not training non Force sensitives, (Han voice) that's not how the Force works, dave filoni broke the rules so he could shoehorn sabine into a Jedi (to give the benefit of the doubt, I do believe sabine's role as ahsoka's apprentice was meant for an original character but things got condensed by executives, so maybe filoni isn't entirely to blame here)

(Edit)

The Jedi are not cops

The Jedi are not the government/the rulers of the Republic/galaxy

The Jedi do not persecute other Force groups

Padawans are not child soldiers

Feel free to add anything I forgot

Do not, DO NOT!! add anything Jedi critical, I'm done with it and won't hear it, don't have something nice to say? Then go away, I will block on sight, either reblog without comment (either in the reblog or the notes) or don't interact at all

[hellonoblesky]

I truly will never get over the Acolyte being cancelled. For one beautiful beautiful show I was free. No Skywalker drama. Cortosis in live action. Female leads. Morally grey Jedi. A plot that made me care about the Jedi for the first time in the past 4 years. Lesbian witches. Non-dathomiri zabrak. For one season I was free. For one beautiful season I got to experience something NEW in Star Wars and it got fucking cancelled because everyone somehow forgot that Star Wars as a franchise is mid as hell, and once the nostalgia of previously loved characters (Ashoka, for example, who’s show SUCKED STRAIGHT ASS) is removed they can’t stand the same writing they praise

[antianakin]

Literally why are people who hate the Jedi even writing for Star Wars?

Why do they keep LETTING people who hate the Jedi write for Star Wars?

Can't these people just go make their OWN sci-fi about how selfishness is cool actually? We could all use more original sci-fi stuff anyway, it's vanishingly rare in film and TV, leave Star Wars and the Jedi alone.

[lieutenant-teach]

I love The Clone Wars series. I love the clones. I like both Rex and Cody. But since the very beginning of watching the series, I felt like smth was kind of off about them. Specifically, why do we have so much content about Rex? Why at least part of these clone-centric moments are not given to Cody? He was there first! He’s the only clone in the movies who has some semblance of characterization and he’s actually very important for Star Wars.

Like, the episodes about a clone deserter – why not give them to Cody instead of Rex? Why not use the 212th instead of the 501st? If you imagine Cody instead of Rex, the plot won’t change, the message of the episode won’t change – they both would have similar attitudes to the situation. But we would know more specifically about the most important clone of SW. And I’m not exaggerating this claim – Rex’s presence doesn’t change the movies narrative in any way. I’m not saying they should’ve cut him out completely – just divide some adventures between Cody and Rex.

Being a Filoni original character is very advantageous.

[godempworm]

Well, that explains a lot a man who only a handful of episodes of Rebels believes he’s the most knowledgeable on Rebel characters

And here’s the link to the article

[itsonlymyecho]

I'm sorry but it's textbook Star Wars that putting one person above the entire galaxy is a dark side move.

[thrawns-backrest]

Prompted by this post and the related interview, reason 15467352 why I think Dave Felony isn’t up to the task of writing live action Star Wars.

I was going to harp about how this proves Filoni hasn’t read the books but this interview is from before the canon trilogies were out so touché on that. And yet this just proves to me why Filoni isn’t the guy for the job of writing Thrawn. Or any live action imperials for that matter.

I’ll start by saying that one thing I will concede is that the notion of the Imperial military being plagued by incompetent officers is not entirely unrealistic. Given that it’s a stratocracy, you can expect to find people who used politics to climb the ranks rather than actual military competence - it’s a kind of French Revolution situation kind of thing. Historically it’s been known to happen in our world.

Combine that with the fact that the Empire is racist, elitist and (kind of) sexist as all hell and you have a limited pool of people to pick from when filling its ranks, pushing some genuine talent to the fringes or excluding it altogether.

The thing I’m entirely tired of seeing though is the implication that it’s the majority of Imperial leadership that’s like this and by this I mean incompetent. The overwhelming majority at that. But more on the Empire’s moronicity later, let’s talk about Thrawn.

“He’s not ambitious in the way where he needs to see himself promoted, or a governor one day. He purely wants to dissect them; that’s what he enjoys!” This. This grinds my gears so much. For starters it proves that Filoni sees Thrawn as this ‘quirky baddie’ where Zahn treats him as an actual person. There’s something almost condescending in taking a neurodivergent coded character and being like ‘aww, look at them, they’re so happy doing their little thing they don’t have any other goals and ambitions whatsoever :)’.

To get things straight, Thrawn has always been annoyed by the limitations placed on him by an inferior rank. You could argue it’s for the simple reason that a higher rank gives him more freedom to act and pursue his goals but that’s just what that is, a simplification.

And that’s where Filoni’s problem lies:

Filoni is good at writing cartoons. And before people raise their pitchforks, I don’t mean this in a negative way. Writing cartoons forces you to squish complex ideas into a digestible format, the genre needs simplification and caricature to work and doing that well is a talent all by itself.

You’re meant to put in some extra effort to suspend your disbelief in order to enjoy the deeper complexities of the story. Where that stops working though is when you step out of the genre and move into live action and our good buddy Dave doesn’t seem to realize that.

It may admittedly sound like I’m being unnecessarily harsh on him and I probably am but I do realize the guy is just doing what he does best. I doubt he has any real beef with neurodivergents or has no actual clue that militaries need a base level of competence in order to function and thrive.

Neither is he the only one guilty of implying the Empire’s competent staff can be counted on the fingers of one hand. “It’s just so different for them to have a bad guy that’s, you know, actually smart with how he uses the Imperial war machine!” Okay, Dave. Sure Dave. “[…] with the exception of Tarkin – Tarkin’s strategically intelligent” Oh so there’s two of them! (okay okay, I’ll stop here)

My point is, you can’t get away with making the antagonists so stupid in a realistic setting. I recently saw someone compare Kenobi and Andor in terms of portraying your antagonists correctly and I have to agree that Andor is the only star wars live action media in recent memory that gets it right. (Though even Andor is guilty of injecting some stupid into its plot in order to enable implausible events to happen. I’m looking at you, Maarva’s speech.)

Because the thing is, the more bumbling and idiotic you make your antagonists, the more it detracts from the efforts and skills of your protagonists when defeating them. The Empire is sprawling and all powerful, so much so that it takes several force users pulling deus ex machinas out of their ass to bring it down. In conjunction with the extreme dedicated efforts of the Rebellion mind you.

It took a timely coincidence of hubris, political corruption and flawed strategy working together to allow it to happen. Give me media that explores why the Empire endured for so long, the mechanisms in place that made ordinary people turn into cogs of the machine, the selective process behind constructing an absolutely ruthless, dangerous leadership, media that looks at how these same conditions can come about in our world rather than the unrealistic explanation of ‘people bad because bad’.

Zahn, Gilroy, Luceno and many others are examples of writers that do this justice. Pass the baton on to Filoni and you end up with an antagonist who’s smart as an exception because ‘he’s just so quirky’ while still bearing all the hallmarks of a cartoon villain, the ominous gloating speeches and sadistic behaviour and whatnot.

I’d be hella remiss to say it hasn’t left its mark on the fandom either. The amount of times I’ve seen characters like Tarkin, Krennic, Palpatine, etc. be moronified (while Thrawn inevitably gets his victim treatment) while completely ignoring the fact that defeating them was no small feat and their having weaknesses to exploit isn’t something that detracts from just how dangerous and scary these motherfuckers were.

The Clone Wars was a good show. Rebels was a good show. But by god is Filoni bad at transferring his skills to live action and no one can convince me that Thrawn isn’t the best example of that.

[just-prime]

Tales of Squandered Potential

Oh hello again everyone who follows me for my Star Wars ranting!

So! Tales of the Empire. The Hat Man is at it again.

Episodes 1-3 : The Path of Boredom

As expected, all of the Morgan stuff was not my thing. She was boring in Ahsoka, she was boring here. The entirety of the three episodes just hammered home "this lady is angry" in a way that felt overdone because there is no arc. There's no growth, no interest, no nothing. It all just feels like Filoni trying to retroactively make his one dimensional character that gets killed off in the stupidest way possible feel super badass. However because we know that she gets killed in the stupidest way possible, everything falls flat and none of it feels earned. It also doesn't actually answer any of the many many questions that Ahsoka raised about her. She's just there, standing in front of a fire. That's all she does.

Thrawn is there for all of about two seconds, and every moment of it is painful, because here's the thing. WE KNOW WHAT THRAWN WAS UP TO AT THIS TIME!!! We have the book that explains all of Thrawn's many exploits as an admiral. This is only more evidence for the idea that Filoni has never actually picked up any of the canon Thrawn books. Which we kinda already knew, but this is all but confirmation. As I've previously said, and will continue saying, Filoni needs to contextualize Thrawn as a 100% big bad otherwise his Heir to the Empire fanfilm won't actually feel earned, so he is systematically destroying any and all nuance that Thrawn has had to make sure that new viewers only ever see him as an unredeemable evil.

And I know that there are a lot of you out there who are holding out for the possibility that this is all a misdirect by Thrawn! That this is all part of his grand plan to go back and help the Ascendency, and that he's lying to everyone about his intentions. But the sad truth is that Filoni doesn't give a rats ass about anything other than cartoonishly evil Thrawn which means we're never getting Eli, or Karyn, or Hammerly or any of the characters from the six fantastic canon books that Timothy Zahn so lovingly created. That was made very clear with Filoni's prioritization of Admiral Pellaeon, who for those who don't know is actually in the new canon Thrawn books too! He wasn't just left behind in Legends, Zahn brought him back into canon too! But again, being the Legends fanboy that he is, Filoni doesn't care about where Pellaeon should be canonically, so instead he's just shoehorned into the episode for no other reason then Filoni likes him.

Episodes 4-6 : The Barriss Content

Soooooo, why didn't Barriss get a full fucking season to herself??? I get the idea behind the 15 minute episodes, but it really makes it hard to tell any sort of cohesive story. It works far better as a snapshot of a couple of days in someone's life. So unfortunately, while I did enjoy them, Barriss's episodes felt really rushed and I found it really hard to tell when things took place. How long was she at the Inquisitor training center? Was it a day? Was it a month? Really would have been interested in actually seeing the inner workings but it all has to get brushed over in favor of her becoming an Inquisitor. A seemingly intentionally not named Inquisitor which makes me feel like they've run out of early Inquisitor names. Unless there's a trial period before you get a proper number? I don't know it was just one of those things that niggled at me. Another thing that niggled at me (which was also mentioned by the wonderful artist @stealingpotatoes, go give her art some love) is that her design is kinda boring as fuck? Like, you have Birdy-Mc-Skullface right there with such a neat design and yet all Barriss gets is a motorcycle helmet with very slight voice modulation.

But I digress. The fact that Barriss commits herself to the Inquisitorium via a ritualized fight to the death, and then goes "wait, the red light saber wielding, all black wearing, Darth Vader serving inquisitors aren't here to help people?" before immediately bailing is so funny to me. This girl cannot for the life of her commit herself to an organization without becoming disillusioned within 1-3 business days.

I'm not sure how I feel about it all being about Lyn? I was very much rooting for her to totally die in the ice shafts instead of what felt like a very last minute redemption arc?

Though speaking of the last episode...HOLY SHIT OLD BARRISS IS FUCKING HOT. *coughs* Excuse me. Anyway. I would have loved to see more of what happened in between eps 5 and 6. Seeing how she and the jedi kid escaped the planet, and where the two of them did after than in the very hostile Empire would have been a facinating story watch play out. Also, who is this female friend that Barriss is referring to when she sends the child away? Is it Ahsoka??? If it is...WHY WOULD YOU NOT SHOW US THAT REUNION??? Like I get the whole point of this is to set up Barriss to make the jump to live action like every single other Filoni character is curseddestined to do, but also you've had people waiting years to find out what happened to Barriss and it feels like they burned their biggest story possibility on a throwaway reference. Did she find Ahsoka? Did Ahsoka find her? When did they find each other? Was it pre-Rebellion? Was it after Ahsoka was already functioning as Fulcrum? Given that we now know the Fulcrum name originated from Anakin, did Barriss recognize the name and seek this mystery person out? I don't know it just feels again like more wasted potential.

Final Thoughts

Fuck this animation is good now! Can we get a new writer?

Like, even for the shit I was annoyed by, the entire show just looks fabulous. It makes me really really wish that ANYONE other than Filoni could make content in this style. Let the writers of Jedi: Fallen Order and Survivor do a Merrin episode or a baby Cal episode. Or the people doing The Acolyte, let them do Tales of the High Republic! Let anyone other than Filoni have a chance to create within the world of Star Wars animated content.

[garden-bug]

Not to be a hater BUUUT-

Every time I hear anything abt the Ahsoka series doing ‘well’ I am baffled.

At most it was a little entertaining and some of the designs looked good. The plot and character work and just everything else was abysmal.

Oh yeah and it reminded us that The Clone Wars and Rebels was a show. That was new and really enriched the world of Star Wars.

[varpusvaras]

This isn't just the story of one bad show. Really, it's the story of the life and times of it's lead writer, David Christopher Filoni.

Filoni got spat out of a hole in the ground in Mt. Lebanon in 1974 with the straightforward mission of systematically destroying all of Star Wars' lore and the rest of the canon and characters, and no one's stopped him yet-

[short-wooloo]

Oh my fucking God

Chirrut does not prove that a non force sensitive can be trained as a Jedi

1. He's not a Jedi, he's a guardian of the whills

2. He still cannot use the Force, he doesn't use it in the movie, Chirrut trusts in the Force believes that it will guide him, but he cannot consciously feel or use it

The whole point of Chirrut's character is about faith

He is the believer to Baze's jaded doubter

Chirrut puts his faith in the Force, that it will lead him to his destiny and the forces of good to victory, and in turn his faith inspires Baze to regain his

And we never know with certainty that Chirrut was guided by the Force

But that's the point of faith, we don't know, we can't know, it's a matter of belief

Maybe the Force did help him, maybe he did it all by himself, or maybe because the Force exists in everything, Chirrut's action was the Force intervening

[heirtotheempire]

Prefacing this with mentioning that I'm autistic and Star Wars as a whole is my special interest/fixation/whatever the term is. So it really, really, REALLY gets to me when the lore and context and history of this franchise gets stepped on.

If Filoni wants to write his fanfiction and do whatever he wants then that's fine go make something on AO3 or whatever. The issue is that this is official. And like, maybe I'm insane for thinking this, but official material should probably stick with the official lore. Lore that states midichlorian count is what determines force sensitivity. Not training. Lore that has had examples of lightsaber wielding characters that did not have to be called Jedi or have to train as Jedi. General Grievous is the best example of this. He was never Sith, he was never force sensitive, but he was really good at using lightsabers.

If Sabine wants to train using a lightsaber, then I don't see the problem. But I DO see an issue in trying to shoehorn in the idea that she has to be trained as a Jedi for it, or has to be force sensitive for any of this.

Hating the official lore (from the OT, Prequels, Sequels, etc) is fine, you do you. I understand critiquing canon and wishing it was different. But as fans, we aren't influencing canon by having these views or writing fanfic and drawing fanart about it. The stuff that is set in stone doesn't change when we have headcanons that go against lore. But Filoni seems to.... Want to alter how canon is based on his headcanons. Which results in a clumsily written show that steps on itself trying to tell a story.

Regardless of if you like Filoni's interpretation of things or not, he kinda needs a check on his power and influence. He isn't the king of Star Wars, he isn't some God that can only create good content. If anything, Mando S3 kinda proved that he can make something absolutely awful out of what was great. And I really hope that he recognizes that maybe he should re-consult the lore specialists a bit more for the official work he does before charging ahead and assuming everyone thinks hes hot shit.

[camirami]

I'm still not over how disrespectful the pilot episode of the Bad Batch was towards Kanan.

Hunter's discovery of Order 66 could have been done with any other of the thousands of Jedi existing while still accomplishing the same intended plot and purpose (learning about the inhibitor chips and how theirs doesn't work). Instead, Kanan and his master are forced into the show, and what is meant to be a pivotal moment in his life is shoved to the side so we can focus on other characters' reactions to that moment.

The Kanan comics also had a frankly more emotionally compelling depiction of the Order than the show itself. The battle's over, Kanan's happy because he finally understands his role as a Jedi, and he's relaxing and joking around with the clones and his master. Suddenly the rug's pulled out from underneath him, and he freezes up as the clones open fire and he's quickly forced to join his master in cutting them down. Depa tells him to run and that she'll follow him, but when he briefly turns around he watches as she is put down by his former comrades and friends.

In the Bad Batch, he's hanging around with some guys he met not even an hour ago, and he was already running away from his master when the order came down. Then the next few minutes is spent on Hunter trying to convince Kanan he's not going to kill him... Even though Kanan has less reason to trust him than the members of his own battalion.

It's even more frustrating because I just know that Kanan was included because Dave wanted him in as a cameo without taking into consideration that it would retcon the works of other Star Wars writers like Greg Weisman, something that's starting to become a bad habit for Dave.

[inquisitor-apologist]

My biggest problem with the Mandalorian is also my biggest problem with Felony in general: he doesn’t know how to make things small. He wants everything he makes to be big and epic and vital to the universe, which means that he’s gotta pull in cameos and big villains and force storylines that don’t really make sense. That’s why we’re getting all this weird Elia Kane working her way into the New Republic and Bo Katan’s Epic Quest To Save Mandalore (v3) shit. He’s gotta make Mando bigger and more important, and it’s really ruining the show.

[trashquisitor-shirozora]

the SW dudebros are certainly eating up this episode. they're calling it "the greatest SW media since disney bought SW". something about the show being the only one that understood george lucas's idea on the Force (i'm a massive Lucas truther too but i heavily disagree on this lol). i guess that's a good indicator on how "good" the show actually is, eh?

I am terminally on twitter despite the rotten melonhead's best efforts and when I saw Lucas's name trending, I had to look... and yeah, a lot of tweets were crowing about Lucas's original idea for the Force and how Star Wars is finally going back to this original idea.... that had since been rewritten and transformed and become something else. Something else that now makes no sense to me because if all it took to become a Jedi was training and discipline and talent, why were there so few Jedi in the entire galaxy? What would've held back so many more people from becoming Jedi? And what does it say about people like Chirrut, who above all else had so much faith in the Force while not being a Known Force User?

"The Force is in all living things", so does that mean all living things can also use the Force? If so, why has this never been explicitly established before? The Disney Era has been canon for quite a few years now and I'm not aware of any precedent where someone who wasn't initially overtly Force-sensitive become one through training and discipline and talent.

The tricky thing about ideas that never make it to the big screen, the small screen, or the printed page is that they might be the original intent but sometimes they're left on the cutting room floor and a lot of times they transform into something else. And I don't mean the things that help an actor really get to know and understand their character. I mean the world-building stuff, the ideas that create the foundations and the rules and the internal logic of a story. If we've been going in one trajectory and then suddenly make a U-turn back to the origin point to go off in another direction, I would like some fucking warning.

But maybe it's just me. Maybe I'm just stubborn and bullish and have my blinkers on and refuse to consider the possibilities.

Or maybe the Felonious One really is breaking apart the universe he's in charge of for the sake of his Chosen One. The fuck do I know?

[itsonlymyecho]