[5.8/10] This really didn’t do it for me. It feels like it’s trying to be a PG version of Fleabag, without Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s wit or insight. It feels like it’s trying to capture the quippy patter that has become the MCU’s house style, without supplying the good quips. And it particularly feels like it wants these characters to come off as charming and playful when they mostly come off as minorly annoying and even a little concerning at times. It’s all watchable, but scans as a miscalibrated and inauspicious start to She-Hulk: Attorney at Law.
That said, there’s two things that give me hope for the series. The first is, I love the thought experiment of “What if someone got superpowers and didn't want to become a superhero?” It’s not a story you see a lot of, particularly in a world of “with great power comes great responsibility. But the notion of Jennifer liking her normal life, not feeling attuned to or interested in the life of a superhero, and wanting to go back to the future she’s forged for herself, is a thought-provoking and interesting theme to explore.
At the same time, I like the idea that Bruce Banner is pushing this life on his cousin to some degree, as a moral imperative and practical necessity, when, as Jennifer points out, it’s left him lonely and traumatized. So many of these phase 4 projects -- No Way Home, WandaVision, Black Widow, and Hawkeye -- have been about the heroes who participated in the events of Endgame and beyond picking up the pieces after such serious stuff goes down. Exploring how Bruce’s choices have isolated him or made him unhappy as he quietly mourns the loss of friends like Tony, Steve, and Natasha, is worthy territory.
Unfortunately, She-Hulk doesn’t seem particularly well-suited to do that in the early going. It’s a boon that they got Mark Ruffalo to return as Banner to kick things off here, but his performance is really off. It’s hard to put my finger on exactly, but whether it’s not being physically in certain scenes or just having off days, he’s substandard in several scenes here that throws things off.
It’s tough, because much of the episode rests on the dynamic between Jennifer and Bruce, and the chemistry is just as out-of-whack. The show seems to want us to find them cheeky and playful with each other, but with all the tweaking and pointedness, they just kind of seem like jerks. Bruce is condescending and controlling, and Jennifer seems smug and pestersome. There’s not much in the way of likable characters in the early going here. Plus, while I think the show wants to treat two hulks doing battle as mere roughhousing, it’s a little unsettling that the two basically resolve their disagreement with physical force and outright violence.
On top of that, there’s some unfortunately cartoonish “dudes suck” and go-girl feminism motifs. There’s a kernel of a good idea there -- with the notion that Jennifer is better at controlling her anger or other strong emotions than Bruce ever was because it’s the sort of thing women have to do every day lest they face harsh labels or risks to their safety. But the jerky lawyer and other male antagonists are cartoonishly awful, and the “Anything you can do, I can do better” routine between Bruce and Jennifer starts to feel overly blunt very quickly. The point isn’t bad, but the dramatization of it is too exaggerated and on-the-nose to elicit much more than eye-rolls.
And, as the Internet has apparently fixated on, the CGI is very inconsistent and frequently quite dodgy. Sometimes it’s fine! At times, both hulks feel like real, expressive people in bodies with weight and definition. At others, they feel like characters from a video game cutscene circa ten years ago. I’m not one to gripe about such things too hard, but considering this isn’t just side spectacle, but rather core to the main character of the series, it can be genuinely distracting in several moments.
All of that said, we get thirty seconds of The Good Place’s Jammela Jamil, which is promising if she has more to do on the show. And there’s some good ideas worth exploring that are hopefully in the show’s future. But the questionable approach, tone, characters, and realization of these ideas in the early going all provide a shaky-at-best start to the new show.
Star Wars has always drawn a connection between the Empire and the Nazis. From the very beginning, A New Hope gave us the images Grand Moff Tarkin and his officers, replete with enforcers called “stormtroopers” wore uniforms that likened them to the time the men who served Hitler. It’s a visual choice that’s meant to tell the audience who the Empire is at a single glance, without needing to unpack the details that the franchise would revel in over the ensuing decades.
So there is particular resonance for a Jew like myself watching an episode like “Legends of the Lasat” from Star Wars Rebels, when one of the show’s protagonists grapples with the Empire having wiped out his people. That character, Garazeb Orrelios (or “Zeb” for short) is a Lasat, an alien species based on original Star Wars conceptual designer Ralph McQuarrie’s original designs for Chewbacca. Zeb believes himself to be the last of his species, with the rest of the Lasat perishing in the Empire’s attack of his homeworld. But when he encounters Chava and Gron, a pair of elderly survivors seeking out a fabled new home for the Lasat, his world is thrown into disarray.
While initially overcome by his impulse to protect and defend the pair from their stormtrooper captors, Zeb begins to bristle at the presence of these two individuals. They are devoted to finding Lira San, a planet that an ancient prophecy foretells as a safe space, one that will offer a new life for the Lasat. But Zeb doubts the prophecy, and he doubts that there’s a real future for his people.
That captures two strains of thought that emerged in the Jewish community after the events of the Holocaust. There were those who, after the horrors of that chapter in Jewish history, were even more devoted to the belief in deliverance, that God would once again lead them to the holy land and that it was all the more important that they attempt to usher in that era given what had transpired. And there were those who were understandably broken by the decimation of the Holocaust, who lost their belief in the shadow of one of the world’s greatest crimes, when God had not intervened to help them, to save so many people who suffered such terrible ends, when they needed him most.
So there’s power in Zeb’s reluctance to join his new compatriots in their rituals, ones meant to help find that homeworld. There’s a sense that he once believed in those promise of those prophecies, and had that faith broken by the tragedy that befell his people. Something as serious as genocide -- and make no mistake, that’s what Rebels is engaging with here -- could lean anyone to a questioning of the beliefs, and a sense that putting stock in these hopes led his people to ruin.
Rebels smartly keeps this material fairly light, emphasizing the force-by-any-other-name qualities of the spirit that guides Chava and wrapping it in the usual cat and mouse game and space adventure that the series does well. After the rescue, Zeb and the rebel crew flee Agent Kallus, one of the show’s recurring antagonists, whose attempting to destroy them. And it’s also buoyed by the presence of Hondo, a comic relief pirate whose two-faced one-liners provide consistent laughs.
The heart of the episode, however, is Zeb struggling with whether to embrace the rituals he’s hesitant to countenance, or whether to treat them as false promises after the Empire wiped out his entire species. “Legends of the Lasat” adds another dimension to Zeb’s distress here -- he is wracked with guilt.
The episode reveals that Zeb was once a part of the Lasat Honor Guard, tasked with protecting the royal family and all Lasat. In a tender confession to his crewmate and surrogate little brother Ezra, he expresses deep remorse at being unable to fulfill that duty, at so many perishing when he had a personal responsibility to keep his people safe. It’s a unique take on the same survivor’s guilt that so many who lived through the Holocaust felt, the sense that they could and should have done more, and that the very fact that they are still here is an insult to the people who died.
But when pressed, and encouraged by his found family, Zeb participates in the ritual to find his people’s homeland. He reconstructs his weapons like the Lasat of old, and it points our heroes to a planet in uncharted space. In the effort to get there, there’s some of the usual Star Wars excitement. The titular rebels face off with the bad guy; a wizened spiritual leader gives a vaguely-worded speech about destiny and self, and the hero of the story embraces the mysticism before him to lead his compatriots out of danger. Zeb performs the ritual with his weapon once more, and it interacts with his ship to guide them through an imploded star cluster that destroys their pursuers and leads them to safety.
The aftermath is beautiful. A grand white light dissipates, and the passengers on the ship wake up to see Lira San, the promised land, before them. Zeb discovers that there are millions of Lasat down on the planet, that it’s where his people originally came from. It is the paradise, the deliverance, that he’d dared not believe in, after having so much of his beliefs crushed by the Empire’s horrors. And yet there it is, a place of salvation, and the promise of renewal for his people, there before him. It is a dream that many displaced and decimated people in the real world have cherished for centuries.
Star Wars has never been shy about casting its major villains in the hues of Nazism. But true to the subtitle of the film that started it all, the franchise has also always been about hope. The Original Trilogy in particular stands for the proposition that even in the face of constant oppression and an overwhelming force, there are well-meaning, committed, hardworking people can find the best parts of themselves and beat back their oppressors. It posits that even those remaining devotees after a great purge can find solace and strength in their ancient religion. And for Zeb, a man who is still reeling from the loss of his people and doubt in the old ways, there is hope in returning to a homeland, a place where his people might be free.
These journeys are dressed up in the thrills of interstellar battles and science fiction embellishments and great escapes. But there is an emotional truth at their core, one that speaks to so many peoples facing oppression and devastation, that makes the stories told in the midst of this grand space opera resonate beyond its flash and flair, and gives Star Wars’s devotees hope for the future too.
[8.0/10] Another episode where I really like the animating idea behind. Granted, it’s a little clunky when Rafa conveniently delivers the important backstory for her and her siblings. It’s also a bit convenient that it happens to line up with events from original The Clone Wars movie.
But the idea is enough to compel me. There’s plenty of times when I watch the adventures on The Clone Wars or similar series where they bound buildings or launch vehicles at one another or engage in plenty of the other ground-shaking fisticuffs that are the stock and trade of superhero and fantasy stories, and wonder about the lives of the regular people affected by such collateral damage.
That’s why it’s striking, albeit a bit contrived, to have Rafa and Trace be a pair of those little people subjected to being a necessary loss in the scheme of greater events. It’s fun to watch Ashoka and Anakin and others leap tall buildings or engage in property destruction in the name of vanquishing the Sith and the Separatists. But at the same time, it tugs at your heartstrings to think about two young girls, roughly Ahsoka’s age, who lost their parents in the extraneous fallout from one of those scraps, and who are understandably angry at the order that gave them nothing more than “may the Force be with you” to show for it.
(Incidentally, I don’t really remember the deal with the ship crashing into the underworld that Rafa described, nor was I sure which green-skinned Jedi they were referring to. Yoda? Bariss? Kit Fisto?)
There’s something a little radical about that. As with “The Wrong Jedi”, it’s a personal story that helps explain why the public had grown disillusioned with the Jedi and might not view them so favorably even before Imperial propaganda started in full force. It’s the kind of thing you can only do at the end of a series like this one, because otherwise you’re only using the deconstruction to remind your audience that everytime your heroes are having fun adventures and exciting battles, they might be ruining some poor family’s lives.
Still, apart from that fancy pants thematic material, this is also just an exciting and well-done episode. The design of the sparking torture bot was truly frightening. (Man, his janky walk gave me the willies.) The efforts for our trio of heroes to escape and the ensuing chase had lots of thrills as each improvised their way away from their Pyke pursuers. And the final rescue, with Ahsoka showing up in some kind of construction or security ship, was a cool firefight sequence as well.
It’s also a particularly nice outing for Ahsoka. She not only gets to save the day here in that ship, but gets some cool moments of surreptitiously using her force powers. Unlocking the door or helping Trace launch over a gap is a nice way to show that she's still got it. And I especially enjoyed the scene where she took out a control room full of Pykes using only hand-to-hand combat. It kinda contradicts the “whose life might you be ruining?” point of the episode, along with the three of them decapitating that one Pyke. But it is cool to see her using martial arts training to whup them even without a lightsaber.
I also like how, despite her own growing disillusionment with the Jedi, Ahsoka still has their ideals within her. When challenged by Rafa on why Ahsoka got involved with them, Ahsoka’s answer about the desire to help whoever needs it being simply a part of who she is works as a strong response, one that helps define who the former padawan is after her exit from the Jedi order.
It’s a story that lines up with Trace and Rafa’s surprisingly well. Ahsoka is getting along without her “parents” for the first time, and so understands how hard it must have been for them. It’s easy to comprehend why the Martez sisters would do what they have to do to survive given the hand they were dealt. And it’s particularly interesting to hear Ahsoka tell Rafa that Trace would never say no to her, because she’s her sister and believes that Rafa has her best interests at heart, even on dangerous missions. They’re words that sound like they’re meant for Anakin, not Rafa.
Overall, this is my favorite episode of this arc yet, one full of quality action and thought-provoking examinations of the impact the Jedi have on the world at large, and how Ahsoka’s new life fits into that.
(P.S., I wish the credits hadn’t spoiled who those mysterious, cloaked, bounty hunter-looking types who were tracking Ahsoka are.)
[7.3/10] Not the world’s greatest conclusion to this arc, but still a solid one. My favorite part is the intrigue of how they handled Ahsoka’s status as a former Jedi. There was a touch too much melodrama for my tastes, but I like the issue that the show was trying to tackle,even if the execution wasn’t perfect.
There’s an interesting ray area that Ahsoka is in right now. The fact that she doesn't consider herself a Jedi, but that others still do, with all the rights and resentments that come with it, makes for an interesting dynamic. The Pykes want to use the fact that they’re about to execute a Jedi to get back in the good graces of their overlord; Rafa and Trace are aghast that someone in league with an order they see as oblivious and harsh was an ally, and Bo Katan and her crew are tracking Ahsoka because they think she might help them with Maul on Mandalore. As much as Ahsoka is ready to leave the order behind her, it’s still a part of who she is and how people perceive her, something she can’t escape from. I like that idea.
I also like Rafa and Trace’s disbelief that anyone can or would leave the order. To them, being a super space hero and getting to live in the overworld is a crazy privilege, and it’s baffling that anyone would give that up. I haven’t loved every piece of this arc, but one of the things I’ve liked is the way it broadens our perspective on the Jedi and, more specifically, on Ahsoka’s choice, putting it into a different context han we might have seen or thought previously.
That said, the actual mechanics of the episode (no pun intended), are pretty pedestrian. There’s some juice to the face that Ahsoka gives herself up to let the Martez sisters go free (in a nicely coded ploy), and that the skeptical Rafa appreciates the gesture enough to go back and save her (even if Rafa naturally cakes in the idea that she just doesn't want to let Ahsoka one-up her). I also like that for all her inexperience and shakiness, Trace gets a nice moment of helping to save the day as a pilot.
But again, there’s a lot of unconvincing melodrama in this one when it comes to the blame game among our heroes inside the Pyke prison. I was also pretty meh about the action. There’s something solid and even a little amusing about Rafa trying to con her way into some spice until she runs into an ornery Trandoshan. But her fighting the local, Ahsoka fighting the Pykes, and all that sneaking around didn’t do much for me. There was something cool about Ahsoka losing her shackles by deflecting some blaster fire, but otherwise, even the big explosion fest was just okay.
There’s also a heavy-handed amount of foreshadowing the final arc with Maul on Mandalore. Maybe it’s just because I’m already familiar with the basic outline of where things are headed thanks to the Clone Wars Legacy materials (not to mention the superb Ahsoka novel), but the show feels pretty direct in setting up what’s to come rather than focusing on the here and now. But it probably plays differently for people who haven’t dorked out on this show to such a silly degree.
Overall, I think I like the idea of this arc better than the way the arc played out. The Martez sisters in particular work more as ideas than characters (and the performances didn’t help). But it’s still nice to see Ahsoka back in action, and this felt like solid, meat and potatoes The Clone Wars type material. Still super excited for the final arc!
[7.7/10] You have to appreciate the way these sequences are set up. I don’t just mean the design work. There’s some good, basic writing to the scenario our heroes find themselves in over the first two-thirds of the episode that really keep the tension high.
In the first third, the good guys have to find a way out of the room where Echo was being kept while a Separatist destroyer droid is boring its way into the room. That makes for a ticking clock, one of the easiest ways to build tension in fiction, but one that’s used so often because it’s so effective. The simple images of the little tentacled ball droid lasering its way through two sets of doors at the same time members of the Bad Batch are trying to reinforce them makes the urgency of the situation clear.
To add to that, the episode gives us two tasks that have to be completed before the droid makes it into the room. The first and most straightforward is Tech deprogramming the connection between the Separatists’ computer and Echo, so that he can be detached. The second, and more visually exciting, is the group exiting the room through a cooling vent in the ceiling. I appreciate how the episode connects the two things, with Echo’s knowledge of Wat Tambor’s base providing our heroes the out and they need. The method of exit – with Wrecker tossing the rest of his allies up into the vent and Anakin force-lifting him with them just before the droid wreaks havoc – is particularly fun.
The second major set piece works just as well. The good guys being stuck on a narrow pipe crossing, and then getting outflanked by a platoon of battle droids on both sides creates a solid plot obstacle, one magnified by Wrecker’s fear of heights. The show has to spackle over the solution to the problem – noting that Tech records everything – but still, his use of bird calls to get the local winged creatures to rescue them not only fits with the rest of the arc, but makes for a visually exciting escape for Anakin, Rex, and the Bad Batch. (Shades of Lord of the Rings!)
I also really enjoy the design work in this episode. One of the things really that stands out here versus the story reels is the look of Echo post-extraction. He is so pale and emaciated, in a way that didn’t come through as clearly with the basic character model. The Borg-like implants throughout his body add a layer of body horror to his state, which makes what he’s been through more palpable, his joking around with Rex more heartwarming, and the ten-thousand yard stare he gets at the end of the episode when told things will go back to normal all the more haunting.
The part where the episode loses me a bit is in the third act. Don’t get me wrong – it’s visually thrilling to see Anakin, a unit of Clone Troopers, and the Skako Minor locals taking on a droid army. The big balloon droids in particular are visually striking, and Anakin and the clones slicing them up, taking them out, and knocking them down is a sight.
But story-wise, a lot of that final fight is disquieting. When Rex and the rest escape to the locals village, the local leader complains that they did exactly what he asked them not to do – bring the war to their homes. Rex rallies them by showing the locals what Wat Tambor and company did to Echo, and gets them to join in the cause of fighting the droid army. In principal, that’s no so bad.
The catch is that holy hell we see a lot of locals dying for what isn’t really their fight. The show doesn’t exactly pivot to suggesting that this could be the locals liberating themselves or something. Instead, it feels like they get wrapped up in Rex and Anakin’s unsanctioned mission, and they’re the only ones who pay the ultimate price for a fight that, ultimately, itsn’t really theirs.
Part of me wants to give Dave Filoni and company credit for that. The Clone Wars, as a series, has not been at all shy about exposing the hell of war or the hypocrisy of the Jedi in how they wage it, regardless of whether they started it. There’s a disquieting subtext to our heroes using the local populace as what amounts to nameless cannon fodder, and maybe that’s intentional. But part of me thinks the show just needed a cool battle scene and some easy stakes, but couldn’t kill off one of the named characters (which would complicate the morality of Rex’s mission) and so threw the locals in to show the might and mortal costs of the Separatists' attacks.
Still, moral questions aside (questions that, thankfully, TCW is no stranger to), this is an exciting episode full of good scenarios, exciting action, and a heartwarming but complex reunion between Rex and Echo). Overall, a quality outing for the revived series.
oh the cruel realisation that you're getting too old for these types of movies
