Welcome to a new weekly feature that will be had here at Geek-tastic over the next new months. After viewing the season premiere of the second season of Clone Wars, I've been inspired to write a brief (hopefully) weekly review of the episodes from this season as they come out. As should be noted, the title of this feature is indicative of my inherent bias walking into these reviews. I'm a huge old-school Star Wars fan. I was raised on the original trilogy, I've read every Star Wars book that came out between 1980 and 2000, I've played every Star Wars video game and RPG ever made, suffice it to say I have lived and breathed Star Wars for almost all of my natural life.
With that said, you should know that I was highly disappointed with all three of the prequel films. Maybe it was due to my extremely high hopes for them, or maybe it was due to them being horribly awful pieces of crap, either way I was unhappy with them. That's not to say that I hate them completely though. I do recognize that each of the films has bits and pieces that can be enjoyed. I do also believe that the films got better as they went. Episode One was atrocious, Episode Two was pretty damn bad and Episode Three was almost actually enjoyable . . . almost.
I'm not a complete hater of the new Star Wars stuff. I'm just very picky about what I like. There are things I do like though. I happen to think that the original Clone Wars Animated Series that was created by Genndy Tartakovsky is one of the greatest animated shows of all time. It's amazing. Go see it if you haven't yet. Seriously. Overall, I actually enjoyed season one of this new Clone Wars series as well. I don't think it's as good as the original series was, but I don't think it's really bad either. The first season was a bit uneven at times. Some of the episodes sucked, some of them were absolutely incredible. In the end though, I have been very happy that the show is being made and am greatly looking forward to seeing more episodes. However, I will not put up with stupid crap though and will call it out the moment I see it.
Ok, enough with the introductions. Let's get on to the review. Oh, and just so you know, there's MAJOR SPOILERS being given here. If you don't want to have the episodes ruined, stop reading.
Season 2: Episode 1
This new season has been heavily hyped in commercials as "Rise of the Bounty Hunters". All of the first season focused entirely on the struggle between the Jedi and the Battle Droids to the point where it was starting to get a little boring. This show badly needed new villains and we were thankfully introduced to one in the season one finale. His name is Cad Bane. He's a Duros bounty hunter who is both cunning and ruthless. As opposed to the retarded battle droids, this guy can actually get stuff done. In his very first episode he marches straight into the Imperial Senate, holds a group of Senators hostage, kills a few people in cold blood, gets what he wants and then makes a smooth getaway. As Darth Vader would say, impressive . . . most impressive.
More Cad Bane was something I was gladly looking forward to all summer, and now that he's here let me say that this guy definitely does not disappoint. The season premiere was a two part storyline in which Cad Bane this time marches straight into the Jedi Temple and steals something incredibly valuable. A Jedi Holocron to be specific. He's working for Darth Sidious (who isn't really?) on this job and he manages to get in and out of the temple fairly easily thanks to the Jedi being totally overconfident of their abilities.
Before this story really gets going though, we are treated to a cool subplot at the beginning of the show in which Anakin's annoying padawan Ahsoka blatantly disregards direct orders from both Obi-wan and Anakin himself and almost manages to get both herself and her detachment of clone troopers slaughtered. This is great because it shows the affect that having Anakin Skywalker as a teacher will have on a person. If the teacher is impetuous, hot headed and prone to disobeying orders then chances are their padawan will be too. It's starting to show in Ashoka. She's becoming obsessed with battle and with winning, even to the point of ignoring the more sensible path. Due to this, she is punished by being reassigned to guard duty at the Jedi Temple. Yeah, it's a bit of a convenient plot point to get her where the robbery takes place, but I didn't really mind that too much.
Soon enough Cad Bane shows up, steals the Holocron and makes the Jedi look like total fools. His partner gets captured, but he himself makes a clean getaway by using his own droid as a bomb. Oh, and before the assualt on the Temple had even started, Bane had killed a Jedi so that his shapeshifting partner could assume his identity. Yes, you heard me right, this guy killed a Jedi before the episode had even begun.
Season 2: Episode 2
With the Holocron in his possession, the Jedi track Bane down to the outer rim where they've deduced he is going after a specific Jedi Master that has a crystal he needs to unlock the data in the Holocron. Sidious wants the data on it, and Bane wants to get paid, so he abducts this Jedi Master who has what he needs and tries to get him to open the Holocron for him. It turns out that even though Bane now has the crystal he needs to unlock the data in the cube, he still needs a Jedi to open it so he can insert the crystal. The Jedi of course refuses, so Bane resorts to torturing him in the hopes of changing his mind.
This is actually a really dark scene and it suprised me a lot. If there is one moment I will point to in the future as the moment that the Clone Wars creators veered away from being a kids show and started getting darker and aiming for a more adult audience, it's this scene right here. Maybe the folks over at Lucas Animation finally realized that the core demographic of this show is the 18 and up crowd, not the 8 to 12 crowd that most of Season One was aimed at. Whatever the reason, this show is definitely getting darker, and I'm loving every damned second of it. Bring on more darkness I say.
Anyways, Cad Bane starts torturing this Rodian Jedi Master with electric shocks. The Jedi still refuses to talk, so Bane ups the wattage. Still nothing, so more wattage. Eventually, the shock operator warns Bane that any more may kill the Jedi. Bane doesn't care and orders another shock to be given. This last shock is too much for the poor Jedi and he dies.
Yeah, Cad Bane just tortured a Jedi . . . . to death . . . . on screen. You still wanna tell me this is a kid's show?
Bane doesn't care about the fact that the Jedi is dead, he just says they'll have to find another Jedi and leaves. Meanwhile, Anakin and Ahsoka have tracked Bane down and board his ship as he's attempting to flee. Bane's ready for this though and has some traps set up to welcome the two Jedi and their clone troopers. Eventually, they all meet in the hangar bay where Bane turns off the ship's gravity and a full on zero-g gunfight takes place. For the record, a zero-g gunfight is (to quote Mattman) fuckawesome.
Bane again slips away and Anakin and Ahsoka give chase. The two Jedi get separated though and only Ahsoka keeps up with Bane. The two fight and Bane defeats her by cheating and using a stun gauntlet on her. He then uses her as bait to lead Anakin to him. Oh, and for good measure he decides to torture her for a bit too by electrocuting her some more. Personally, I think he was just bored and was killing time until Anakin showed up.
Mr. Skywalker does indeed eventually arrive. There's a standoff where Bane threatens to shoot Ahsoka out of an airlock if Anakin doesn't open the cube for him. Anakin does, Bane inserts the crystal and gets the data he needs, then he opens the airlock anyways when Anakin tries to attack him. During Anakin's rescue of Ahsoka, Bane yet again gets away and heads for the hanger bay to the only shuttle left on the cruiser. Did I mention at any point that the big ship that everyone's on is actually falling apart and about to explode? Oh yeah, I should have mentioned that. Sorry.
Anakin tries to go after Bane one last time, but Ahsoka reminds him that they're all about to go nova along with the ship and he changes his mind and heads for the shuttle instead. Bane accidentally stumbles upon a lone Clone Trooper who orders him to lower his weapons. The scene then cuts back to Anakin and Ahsoka as they enter the hangar bay. Up on the upper landing we see what appears to be the Clone Trooper shooting and killing Bane. This trooper is the last to board the shuttle as it takes off just in time to avoid the gigantic explosion. As they're flying away, Anakin comments that it's funny that even though Bane is dead, he can still feel him.
If you actually believe that Bane is dead and isn't in fact the Trooper who's standing not two feet away from Anakin as he says this, then you're dumber than . . . . well . . . . . dumber than Anakin is at this very moment. It's pretty damned obvious that Bane switched outfits with the Trooper before he shot him and then boarded the only shuttle left on the cruiser. So now, at the end of the episode, Trooper/Bane is seen walking away in the background to make good his full and complete getaway.
So let's review, shall we? In the course of two episodes, Cad Bane has successfully managed to kill two Jedi Masters, he's kidnapped and tortured a Jedi padawan just for the hell of it, he's bested Anakin Skywalker multiple times and made him look like a chump, he's broken into the sacred high security vault inside the Jedi Temple, he used his own droid as an unwilling suicide bomber, he got the data he was hired to retrieve and not only has he gotten away with it all but he's managed to convice the Republic that he actually died in the process so they won't be chasing him anymore.
I am sorry, but even Boba Fett couldn't have pulled off a heist that was this fucking awesome. Cad Bane is a badass, don't let anyone tell you different.
As a season premiere, these were some pretty solid episodes to set the mood and direction of the series. The episodes were tight and well paced. We got to see some amazing action sequences. A new and rad villain has been expanded from an already good beginning, the good guys didn't actually win even though they think they did and most importantly . . . at the end of the day a major piece of the Star Wars story has taken place without most people even realizing it.
You know that data that was on the Jedi Holocron that Darth Sidious was so keen on getting? It turns out it was the name and personal information of every single force-sensitive child in the galaxy that the Jedi Order is aware of. And just what do you think Darth Sidious will be doing with this information after Order 66 is given? Have you ever wondered why the few Jedi who actually did escape Order 66 didn't go seeking out new padawans to train to try to rebuild the Jedi Order? Maybe it was because after the Jedi purges, the emperor uses this information to track down and kill every single known force-sensitive person in the galaxy. Hey, the Emperor was nothing if not thorough in his work. He knew that to leave even one Jedi alive was to risk an inevitable cival war, so why not eliminate every potential Jedi too? It makes good sense to me.
Final Grade For these Episodes: A
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