Clone Wars Debriefing: "Ambush" and "Rising Malevolence"

[lazypadawan]

CW kicked off with "Ambush," where Yoda and a trio of clonetroopers find themselves in a bizarre contest with Asajj Ventress and Co. to see whether Toydaria remains with the Republic. It's a great little character study of Yoda, where we see the Wise Old Jedi Master from TESB and ROTJ combined with his PT-era persona. Interestingly enough, he shows his clone guys a lot of respect for them as individuals. But make no mistake, he's not THE Jedi Master for nothing. He takes the droid armies to town. At one point, he's leaping around and forcing the battle droids to shoot at each other, all of the while he's giggling in that Yoda-ish way. It hearkens back (forward?) to the occasional impishness Yoda showed in TESB. Naturally, Yoda saves the day and wipes the floor with Ventress's rear end. You know how villains in old movies and cartoons would throw a smoke bomb or something, then run out the back door? Ventress pulls the same distract-and-run trick, making me wonder why Ventress wasn't fired before the end of the CW. Really, if you were an Evil Overlord, would you want to keep employing a cowardly henchwoman who never seems to win any battles and has to run away all of the time?

This had a lot of funny lines, "but I just got promoted" being my favorite. That's followed by an exasperated Ventress explaining to a dimwitted battle droid what Yoda looks like: "He'll be the small, shriveled green one...with a lightsaber!"

The second episode "Rising Malevolence" brings back the A-Team of Anakin, Ahsoka, and Artoo. And it marks the t.v. debuts of Plo Koon and General Grievous!

Plo Koon's ship gets blasted by a new secret weapon called the ion cannon, leaving it and the rest of the Republic floatilla as target practice for Grievous and Count Dooku's ship. Everybody runs for the escape pods and the battle droids are sent out to kill every survivor in each pod because the Seps don't want anyone to know about their awesome new weapon. Whew, that's cold! The Jedi Council assigns Anakin to have his ship protect a convoy. Ahsoka, worried about Plo Koon (he brought her to the Temple), asks if they can go rescue him. Anakin bitches out Ahsoka for her big mouth, then essentially sneaks out with her on the Twilight on a "scouting mission." He tells her she has to learn to play the system his way, wink wink.

Even though we all know who's going to make it, there's plenty of suspense. Plo Koon gets to be wise and awesome, so it's no surprise his #1 fan Dave Filoni directed this episode ;). It was also cool to see obscure references like Abregado get mentioned as well as a few nods to ANH and TESB: the Death Star-style shot of the ion cannon going off, the lines copped from Han and Chewie trying to fix the Falcon in TESB, and of course, the ion cannon that helped the Rebels get away in TESB. See, all of that Sep secret weaponry did some good after all!

Anakin shows shades of Obi-Wan in this but I guess they say it's true you turn into your parents once you have a kid. That he likes to bend the rules is very much in character, though it's telling that he starts to give up on the rescue mission when Palpatine tells him to do so. Of course it was Plo Koon, not Obi-Wan or Padmé, who was out missing. Ahsoka shows she is a chip off of the old master's block when she senses Koon and immediately seizes control of the Twilight.

My only quibble is how these clone guys were heard screaming as they were floating into space. I know in SW, there are explosions, ka-booms, laser pew-pews, and so forth but even that stretches credulity ;). Otherwise, another winner of an episode.

The animation is fantastic. Curse you Cox for not having Cartoon Network available on my HD service!! The vocal talents of many of the actors improved from the theatrical release and the replacements for Samuel L. Jackson and Christopher Lee did decently.

I also thought the little sayings at the beginning of the episodes were pretty cool. I see on starwars.com they call those the "Jedi Fortune Cookies."

Comments

[darth-pipes.livejournal.com]

[i]You know how villains in old movies and cartoons would throw a smoke bomb or something, then run out the back door? Ventress pulls the same distract-and-run trick, making me wonder why Ventress wasn't fired before the end of the CW.[/i]

LOL! I guess some cartoon conventions will never die...unlike the various clones in this show. ;)

Yeah, I thought too that the clones shouldn't have been heard screaming.

I agree about the voice work, especially Tom Kane as Yoda.