Ahsoka - SPOILERS

[billd91]

You must hate the fact that the Imperials in Star Wards did not shoot the escape capsule with the droids...

They almost did! But they had multiple decent rationales for not doing so (shuttles occasionally get launched in fighting, no life signs). But the shuttle was also, at most, escaping, not approaching, and so was never actually a direct threat.

 

[Clint_L]

You must hate the fact that the Imperials in Star Wards did not shoot the escape capsule with the droids...

It mildly annoys me that they didn't try or have a better reason, yes. A better line would have been "Negative - Lord Vader needs any survivors taken for questioning. We're to let the ground forces deal with it." But Lucas was never a great writer, and the rest of the film is so good that I can forgive it.

Like, I thought the opening scene of Ahsoka episode 2 was really dumb, but the rest of the episode was quite good, so I can let that go. Episode 1 was all dumb scenes.

 

[Zaukrie]

Show, don't tell. Same reason a lot of folks don't like the voiceover in Bladerunner (Harrison Ford hated it and resented having to record it). In general, text and voiceovers are considered lazy writing choices, but there can be stylistic or practical justification for them.

The original Star Wars text crawl was there to get the audience very quickly up to speed on a complicated backstory so they would understand the legendary opening shot that was about to happen - given the context (1970s audiences had no idea what was about to happen, and Lucas had a whole epic backstory no one could have known about) I think it's justified. And then that became a Star Wars tradition - basically, a meme. But it's not essential - I believe Ahsoka is the first D+ show to use one?

Here, you could make a case that we again have obscure source material, at least to the general public, so maybe you can make an argument for it on those grounds. However, I think in story terms a better opening would have been to show us the climactic battle between Ahsoka and the spy, where the audience could have got all the same information. So why not do that?

I think because using the text crawl was done for symbolic reasons, especially because it bleeds into an establishing shot that is very similar to that of the original movie (but inverted). Basically they were flagging that "this isn't like the other D+ shows, this one has the weight of the movies." It makes Ahsoka seem like a bigger deal, and also elevates its source material, the animated shows. So I get why they did it, and it wasn't the reason the opening episode irritated me so much.

The second episode is so much better than the first that I think the first had to be a "too many chefs" situation. In episode 1 the story felt really disjointed with a lot of stock scenes and a lot of exposition - basically, it seemed like they were trying to make an exciting hour that got in all the Star Wars tropes and covered a ton of backstory, at the cost of characterization. Episode 2 is much better paced and driven by character moments as much as plot exigencies. It's far better written and directed.

It's SW, it starts with a crawl. Also, show don't tell is a lazy trope that just isn't true in nearly any fiction. It was harmless. It was SW. It starts with a crawl.

 

[Zardnaar]

Would any ilitary captain let an unknown helicopter broadcasting codes from the mid 90s land on their ship irl?

I know Star Wars isn't the most realistic and we have had 32 years of the New Republic being incompetent.

Depending on how they present Thrawn you might actually cheer for him. In the new canon he's not presented as a hard core imperial.

 

[Nikosandros]

They almost did! But they had multiple decent rationales for not doing so (shuttles occasionally get launched in fighting, no life signs). But the shuttle was also, at most, escaping, not approaching, and so was never actually a direct threat.

I don't think that the Imperials were ever threatened during the whole "battle". They were looking for someone escaping with important material and they could have just shot the pod, just to be on the safe side.

 

[BRayne]

Here, you could make a case that we again have obscure source material, at least to the general public, so maybe you can make an argument for it on those grounds. However, I think in story terms a better opening would have been to show us the climactic battle between Ahsoka and the spy, where the audience could have got all the same information. So why not do that?

We did, it's called The Mandalorian Chapter 13: The Jedi. The text crawl was just a recap.

 

[tomBitonti]

The ship captain doesn't do something stupid. He thinks he's letting two idiot imperials onto his ship for an easy arrest, rather than letting them fly away.

Yeah. The episode failed to present how ludicrous the situation appeared to the captain. And to give the captain enough bluster and arrogance to make it believable that he would want to go to the dock to be on hand when the simpleton fools were apprehended. I think the scene can be made believable with some minor modifications.
TomB

 

[Hussar]

At this point in time isn't Luke around and training new Jedi? He's pretty famous and a jedi training academy would well known, especially on a New Republic ship. The claim isn't as far fetched as you think.

Not really. The only new Jedi is Grogu. And Luke is so unknown that the Mandalorian couldn’t find him.

 

[tomBitonti]

I already described how I would write the scene: the bad guys use their skill and talent to stealth their way onto the ship and get to the brig. There, they are in the middle of using stolen codes to release the prisoner when a sharp-witted security guard realizes what is up and trips the alarm. Now the bad guys have to fight their way out, and they do, despite the best efforts of a skillful captain and crew. That would make sense and make the villains seem much more powerful and resourceful.

Hmm, doesn't that give us a large part of the original Star Wars movie? Sneak onto the Death Star to rescue the princess? Maybe that would work as a dark side analogue, but that feels too meta to me.

TomB

 

[Clint_L]

It's SW, it starts with a crawl. Also, show don't tell is a lazy trope that just isn't true in nearly any fiction. It was harmless. It was SW. It starts with a crawl.

Show don't tell isn't a trope, it is an adage. I'm a creative writing teacher, and it is generally good advice. As I already pointed out, there can be good stylistic or practical reasons to violate it (e.g. Ferris Bueller's Day Off), but usually telling rather than showing is lazy writing, and boring to read or watch. Showing engages the audience by letting them work out what is happening on their own, and respects them by trusting that they are smart enough to do so. For example, instead of a character telling us "I'm so sad," we see them sitting dejectedly with moist eyes, holding an old photograph. Which is more interesting?

Also as mentioned, this is the first D+ Star Wars show to start with a crawl, so it isn't axiomatic that Star Wars=crawl. In fact, this bucked the trend for D+ shows and was therefore an intentional choice. And I already agreed that I am fine with it in this case. They did it to elevate Ahsoka to the level of the films.