8.3/10. A fine finale to this series. We get one more badass lightsaber fight, and even if it's pretty quickly that It's All Just A Dream, that doesn't take away from the visual splendor of it or the thematic significance. Yoda is willing to die in this fight in order to save someone else, and that, whether you consider it ironic or just appropriate, is what allows him to have some kind of existence beyond his death.
There's a really interesting subtext to the episode, that is frankly a little adult for this show but still powerful and mostly subtle. Namely, the episode posits the Sith as not believing in life after death, and having that motivate their quest for power. There's a certain nihilism espoused on Moraband (and come on with the Sith names, George) that is pretty notable in how frank it is. Throw in the monologue from Darth Bane (Mark Hamill!) and you have the evil philosophy in this show being undergirded by some sort of very dark take on humanism, which is interesting even if it doesn't necessarily fit with my sensibilities.
And the show posits the Jedi, Yoda in particular, as having more of a Buddhist philosophy in response, of making peace with the cycle of life and death. The first analogue that actually came to my head was the conflict between Harry Potter and Voldemort in The Deathly Hallows where J.K. Rowling juxtaposes the latter as fighting constantly against his own demise and the former accepting it, and using that as the means to distinguish them. The idea of Yoda's acceptance of his own life as finite and his willingness to sacrifice himself to save others demonstrates the kind of morality, the kind of peace that assures the Priestesses he's ready for their training.
It's pretty heady stuff beneath the exciting battle and imagery we witness here. At its best, that's what the show gave us -- the sort of peak thrills that Star Wars is known for, but also the character work and themes to give it depth and intrigue beyond the shallowly enjoyable space-battles and sword fights. I still have the unfinished story reels and Rebels to look forward to from this creative team, but the finale, and the show, have both been worthwhile watches for the depth they added to the Star Wars universe, and in particular, for how they expanded and deepened the world of the prequels, finding the beauty and, frankly, the quality, that was missing in Lucas's late cinematic efforts, and showing the best that this part of the timeline and setting could be.
Story-wise this is a rather weak installment to close the Ip Man saga. The plot moves in a rather awkward direction, with fights happening in almost a cartoony/video games fashion where opponents come and go because the plot makes them have to (the alley fight with Bruce Lee and karate guy is almost straight out of video games). Performance-wise, the American actors are quite unconvincing, almost distracting. Even Scott Adkins. The performance is not bad but it's almost comically evil that it's too easy to dislike the character - not because he seems like a "bad guy", but because he attempts hard to look bad.
The theme itself tacks on contemporary issues such as racial discrimination and immigration. It plays out Ip Man's recurring theme of us vs them, what makes this attempt more interesting is the touch of parenthood given to the story, as Ip Man struggles to raise his son. There are a point or two that can be made about living as an immigrant family in the United States on this theme, but you know that a kung-fu film has jumped the shark when they have to move the setting to the distant West. Especially considering Ip Man 3 has given an emotional closing that seems to properly close the saga. That being said, the ending of Ip Man 4 is still touching with a throwback to Ip Man 3's ending (the wife listening to Ip Man's training) and Ip Man 1's last fight (a blow to the neck).
In the end though, we watch kung-fu movies not for the story, but the fights. The fights are not completely focused on Donnie Yen's performance as Ip Man; here they finally are able to give the long-awaited chance to Bruce Lee's fights (performed by Danny Chan). The choreographic is a bit more stylistic and dramatic compared to the first two Ip Man's movies, it is less tense but still satisfying to watch. Then again, considering the strong hit the first two films in both story and action-wise, I consider Ip Man 4 a touching but kinda unnecessary ending to the saga.
Pointless episode.
Anakin and Ahsoka fight because he wants to teach her one last lesson: "it is bad to die".
Ahsoka is full of herself and makes fun of Anakin because he has nothing left to teach her. She keeps crossing her arm.
Flashback/Nostalgia scenes where an young Ahsoka, played by an actress with an even worse performance than Rosario, sees clone troopers dying and is sad and angry at Anakin for teaching her how to be a warrior and thus getting clones killed. She also crosses her arms.
Lightning effects and Vader imagery to make fans excited to see Vader again in an awful show.
Dave Filoni OC proves she is so much cooler than Vader, defeats him and chooses not to kill him, tosses his light saber away.
Anakin approves Mary Sue and sends her in her merry way.
They rescued Ahsoka from the bottom of the Ocean. Either she died from falling on the ocean and came back to life or she can breath underwater. Either way is dumb.
Ahsoka turns into Gandalf the White. She starts wearing white even before she wakes up after being rescued. Did Anakin dressed her up?They decide they don't need the map cause Ahsoka can talk to the space whales, hop her ship inside the stomach of one of them and tell them to go where Ezra/Trawn/Sabine are. Geez. No one could see that coming.
And that's it! They could cut everything between Ahsoka waking up in make-believe-land and she being rescued that no one would notice, because it doesn't influence the story in nothing whatsoever, other than showing that FIloni´s OC is cooler than Anakin/Vader, so fans should clap.
Ahsoka is still the insufferable character from the 2008 Clone Wars film. Rather, she is even worse.
I'm not gonna call this one terrible at all, it's a pretty unique horror movie but it just wasn't for me.
I didn't like how much of a slow burner it was despite being a slasher film, took a whole hour for the horror aspects to get a move on. We get 60 mins of sex and about 30 to 35 mins of horror. Like I get it, it's the premise of the thing but Jesus they drag out those freaking scenes for way too long, if I wanted to see porn I'd just see porn. By the time we get to the horror I didn't even care about it anymore, though I will say I found about 2 of the kills to be pretty unique and well executed.
I honestly think that I might have liked it better if RJ ended up snapping and becoming the actual villain and say he's gonna turn the film into his own sick project but instead we end up with "Old gross people are jealous to a crazy level that they can't have sex". The villains also seemed to switch between pathetically weak and strong & stealthy on a dime.
I think I'd rather re-watch The Skeleton Key (2005) or Malignant (2021) than watch this again.
4.5/10. I'm going to offer this episode one of the gravest insults one can give an episode of Clone Wars -- this episode felt like something out of the prequels. Why? Because it featured two recurring motifs from the prequels that never worked.
The first is the romance between Anakin and Padme. I get that they're trying to set up Anakin's jealousy here, but the whole love triangle bit and tortured romance between the star-crossed lovers never succeeds beyond giving us a baby's first Tennessee Williams melodrama. While I like a lot of what this show does, romantic relationships have never really been its forte, with Obi Wan and Satine being its only real success. It's not like they have much to work with based on Episodes II and III, but still, the overdramatic love triangle stuff, not to mention the corny fight between Anakin and Rush, felt more like a Star Wars version of The Room than a real, meaningful interpersonal issue.
The second is all the machinations about the banking clan. Again, if there's anything we learned from the prequels, it's that Star Wars doesn't necessarily do byzantine political machination material well. I give Dave Filoni and company more credit than I give Lucas on that front, because they have explored some broader political concepts in a more interesting fashion, but the whole banking clan line of succession business with Clovis was tedious.
On top of that, we get a stock backstory monologue from Clovis that does add some intrigue to his character as an adopted child of the Banking Clan aliens who considers himself a part of that people, but mostly just feels like a cliche, and a similarly perfunctory fight between Anakin and Padme. There is one nice scene between Obi Wan and Anakin, where Kenobi talks about Satine and explains that he knows how Anakin feels. But for the most part, this episode felt like an extension of the worst elements of Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith in terms of romance. Hopefully the rest of the arc can do better.
Is this episode written by 16 years old?
This episode wanted to be Seven Samurai but ended up as that terrible The Walking Dead episode where everyone gets slaughtered (they're not though in Mandalorian, since this is a Disney series).
There is no development and no build up at all in this episode. Like the previous episode, everything is self-contained. All are introduced and resolved in this same episode. A lot of things happened in this episode but nothing actually contributes to the plot - except for exposition dump.
The bandit raid is a terribly weak, villain of the week setup. They just show up as some evil nuisances - no motives, no goals at all. The Mando teams up with an ex-rebel, which debunks a tired cliche, but at this point this feels like a try-hard attempt to make The Mando as a morally righteous hero. There is a half-assed attempts at romance here, but it feels forced as it happens so sudden. Despite being self-contained (or maybe because it is) the episode lacks closure by the end, and the nifty little scene regarding one stray bounty hunter seems like something that appears just because they still have several episodes to go.
The dialogues are terrible: it's a tonne of exposition dumps. I don't have any idea why the writers think it makes sense for the characters to suddenly ask a stranger, "when was your last time you open your helmet?" and, in return, open up a heart-to-heart "hey I got a tragic story" past to a stranger. The banters with Gina Carano's character is okay, but it feels like they have to slip backstory every now and then. As if they're not having a real, human conversation. Every dialogue feels so forced and hurried as if they have to make it fit into this episode.
Also, it seems like they have no idea what an AT-ST is. It's a vehicle, not a droid.
