rebelsofshield - Tumblr blog

rebelsofshield · 10 hours

Text

Reviews for the last four Bad Batch episodes and Tales of the Empire will happen. Both just happened to land during finals week and so I'm buried in mountains of grading papers and writing portfolios and I'm also like very close to making another big career move in the next week or so. I love Star Wars. I love writing reviews. I love all you wonderful readers who have stuck by this blog for over a dozen years. But it's been very hard to make this a priority in the last two months. I'll get there though!

Anyways, May the Fourth be With Y'all!

#Star Wars #My Life #personal #review #reviews

4 notes · View notes

rebelsofshield · 4 days

Text

Star Wars: The Bad Batch: "The Point of No Return" - Review

In an action packed and climactic episode, The Bad Batch shakes up the series status quo in preparation for its final few chapters.

With the Empire closing in on all sides, the Batch decides that it’s safest if they abandon their temporary safehouse on Pabu. However, CX-2 has been hunting down some of the Batch’s old contacts and allies and has learned the location of the island sanctuary. By nightfall, the city will burn.

Like its name would suggest “The Point of No Return” is a consequential chapter of The Bad Batch that fundamentally changes the status quo of the series headed into its finale. It was always just a matter of time before the Batch’s safety on Pabu was shattered and the Empire caught up to Omega. While much of Pabu has slipped into the background over the last half season, it’s still one of the most well-developed and peaceful locales that we’ve seen the team inhabit in this series. The people of Pabu are welcoming, kind, and fundamentally innocent. Placing them in the crossfire of the Empire’s attempts to recapture Omega makes the actions of the Empire feel all the more horrific and damaging. By placing this violent showdown between the Batch and their enemies amid the a city filled with civilians, many of whom are friends, "The Point of No Return" ratchets up the tension.

And while there may be no big character deaths in “The Point of No Return,” The Bad Batch certainly isn’t pulling any punches. Within just the first few minutes of the episode the Batch’s ship and long-term home, The Marauder is obliterated taking Wrecker out of commission. Slowly the Empire, or more explicitly CX-2, whittles away at the Batch, their resources, and their allies. Soon, it’s just Crosshair and Omega faced with an impossible choice as the violence unfolds around them. The fact that it’s Crosshair who tries to talk Omega out of her big plan of self-sacrifice works as the culmination of the character arcs the two of them have been placed on since the season premiere. Crosshair has gotten to the point where he’s genuinely pained to watch Omega leave but also trusts her decision making and she in turn has confidence that he’ll follow through on his half of the plan. It’s a level of vulnerable honesty that I’m not sure I ever expected to see from this dynamic, but it works in part because of the hard work that the writing team, Dee Bradley Baker, and Michelle Ang have put in this season.

I’m not entirely sure what to think of CX-2 as a character. The secrecy surrounding his identity and the importance that the series has given him seems to hint that he’s at least connected to one of our existing characters. The prevailing wisdom online seems to be that he’s Tech turned Winter Soldier and while I see the appeal of this, I personally hope that this doesn’t end up being the case. The Bad Batch has enough on its narrative plate right now that I’m not sure we could make space for a “friend turned evil brainwashed assassin” subplot. That being said, Omega giving up Tech’s goggles as one of her personal treasures when leaving Pabu certainly seems like foreshadowing? Regardless, I do think that CX-2 makes for an intimidating villain in that he’s really felt like the only regular antagonist that the series has featured in quiet sometime that’s regularly been able to go toe-to-toe with each of the Batch members. Also his little arrowhead spy ship is cool as hell.

And as CX-2’s ship disappears in the flame lit Pabu sky, The Bad Batch enters its series endgame. All roads lead to Tantiss and now the stakes are higher than ever.

Score: A-

#Star Wars #The Bad Batch #review #reviews #Star Wars: The Bad Batch

5 notes · View notes

rebelsofshield · 4 days

Text

Star Wars: The Bad Batch: "Identity Crisis" - Review

Dr. Emerie Carr takes the spotlight in a quiet, unsettling episode that showcases the moral horrors of Mount Tantiss.

With Nala Se imprisoned due to her assistance in helping Omega escape from Mount Tantiss, Dr. Emerie Carr requests that Dr. Royce Hemlock promote her to the position to Chief Scientist. Hemlock agrees, but only after showing Carr the truth about the Vault inside Project Necromancer: the specimens inside are Force Sensitive children.

Dr. Emerie Carr is an enigma. Even before we learned that she, like Omega, is a female clone of Jango Fett, her role as Dr. Hemlock’s second in command was shrouded in mystery. Her cold, sometimes impersonal demeanor seemed to indicate that she was little more than an eager servant of Hemlock’s brutal pursuit of scientific progress and career ambitions. This all changed at the start of this season, however. Slowly, we have begun to see empathetic cracks in Emerie’s exterior. Omega presented a problem that Emerie couldn’t reason her way out of. Here was a girl, the closest thing she might have to a sister, who was being held against her will by the people she’d dedicated her life to serving.

“Identity Crisis” pushes Emerie’s unease even further. While the reveal that Project Necromancer is keeping a small prison of Force Sensitive children as live test subjects isn’t much of a surprise to the viewer, it’s a further shock to Emerie’s faith in the Imperial system. The trope of having imperiled children serve as the breaking point for a character’s faith in corrupt causes is a bit tired in Star Wars at this point, but The Bad Batch has already laid the groundwork for Emerie’s disillusionment and the parallels to the children and Omega’s own plight is too apparent for me to raise much of a stink about it. The call back to Omega's straw doll as a gift given to one of Hemlock's prisoners is a smart narrative choice that further sells the ways in which Tantiss's inhuamane actions are slowly eating Emerie's resolve.

In general, I find it impressive just how much this season of The Bad Batch has leaned on character interactions and dialogue to tell its stories rather than flashy action sequences. There have been multiple episodes this season that have more or less abandoned the show’s tried and true A-Team-esque storytelling style in favor of more emotional and character driven plots. If the writing weren’t so consistently solid it may be an issue, but The Bad Batch has yet to really fumble any of these quieter episodes. Emerie Carr’s voice actress Keisha Castle-Hughes is also a standout. Castle-Hughes is able to maintain the clone doctor’s almost monotone speech pattern but infuses it with quiet moments of doubt, disgust, or heartbreak. It’s a tough line to walk and is another testament to how solid the voice work on this series has been.

Also, I always love seeing Cad Bane. Even if his role is minor, it feels oddly fitting that he’s once again capturing specialized children on behalf of Palpatine. It does seem to be what he does best.

“Identity Crisis” was released as part of a two episode drop and if previous Bad Batch stories have been any indicator, it means that the next installment is sure to be explosive and dramatic. I have a feeling Pabu is in for a rough night.

Score: B+

#Star Wars #The Bad Batch #Star Wars: The Bad Batch #review #reviews

2 notes · View notes

rebelsofshield · 4 days

Text

Star Wars The Bad Batch: "The Harbinger" - Review

After almost a dozen years away, Asajj Ventress returns to television, but this Star Wars anti-hero’s big comeback proves to be a much quieter and gentler story than most may have anticipated.

Fennec Shand’s contact, the force-wielding bounty hunter Asajj Ventress, arrives on Pabu and offers to help Omega understand her what her high M-Count might mean and if this means that she might be Force Sensitive. However, the Batch soon discover that Ventress isn’t just any normal bounty hunter. She’s a Separatist war criminal and former assassin to none other than Count Dooku himself.

“The Harbinger” may have been the most anticipated episode of The Bad Batch in its entire history. When the full trailer to the series’ third and final season dropped, nobody was expecting to hear Nika Futterman’s venomous whisper. Despite a potential resurrection in a canned story arc for Star Wars Resistance, most fans had considered Ventress dead for well over a decade. Regardless of your feelings about the novel Dark Disciple, I think it’s fair to say that fans of the character were always disappointed that one of The Clone Wars’s most interesting characters had her story resolved in a novel rather than on screen, especially given how much Futterman’s performance came to define Ventress’s character. Getting the chance to not only see Ventress back in animation but also alive following her previously canon death was the best kind of surprise.

Given the expectations placed on “The Harbinger,” it would have been all too easy to let Ventress’s big return steal away focus from our principle cast of characters. We’ve absolutely seen our fair share of Star Wars shows that have pushed aside their main storylines in favor of letting that week’s guest star have their time in the spotlight, but script writer Jennifer Corbett thankfully avoids this. Ventress’s presence here is clearly positioned as a potential, atypical mentor figure to Omega and her own journey regarding her potential destiny. Answers about her resurrection or what she’s been up to since the end of the Clone Wars are saved for another time and while that may frustrate some fans, it ultimately serves the show.

Whether or not Omega is Force sensitive has been a mystery hanging over this series since the premiere and the question has only gotten louder since the start of season three. We needed another Force user to give us these answers and in a way Ventress makes for a more inspired choice than some of the other potential options. We could have easily brought Ashley Eckstein back to voice Ahsoka in a one-off episode, but Ventress brings with her a greater sense of conflict and unease that allows this episode to work dramatically. Even if Ventress seemed redemption bound when fans last saw her in The Clone Wars, we don’t know where exactly her current loyalties lie, and the Batch have no reason to think that she’s changed from her time fighting on the opposite side of the war. Also Ventress, isn’t really the most nurturing of people?

Ventress’s presence here also plays into long running themes in The Bad Batch about trusting former enemies in an ever changing galaxy. Ventress makes it clear that she doesn’t see the clones as enemies but victims of the same power structure that used and abused her. Omega in turn looks to Ventress as a potential mentor and another formerly lost soul like Crosshair.

It all makes for a much less explosive and flashy episode than some fans might have been expecting. While we do get a very well choreographed little smackdown between Ventress and the Batch and an end of episode fight with a sea monster, “The Harbinger” is a very action light episode. Ventress doesn’t join the Batch in taking down Imperials. There’s no surprise lightsaber duel. Instead we focus on a complicated woman helping a confused girl find her way.

If the Lucasfilm team hadn’t made it clear that we are definitely not done with Ventress’s story, it might have been disappointing to get such a relatively lowkey outing for her big return to animation, but as it stands I can accept this quieter, more emotional story. We see a Ventress that is oddly enough more sure of herself than we’ve seen her in a long time. She’s not necessarily a servant of the light, but she’s absolutely not a villain. Seeing her solve the episode’s big ending sea monster attack with a peaceful, nonviolent use of the Force feels like a huge step for her character and an evolution that is both surprising and entirely welcome.

Ventress’s answers regarding Omega’s future remains a little too vague for the time being. Sure, Omega may be Force sensitive but what exactly that means for her as a character or the future of this series is still a big unknown.

Despite the surprisingly gentle story told here, we end the episode on a feeling of unease and foreboding. The Empire is never far from getting what they want and the team’s peaceful existence on Pabu can’t lost forever.

Score: B+

4 notes · View notes

rebelsofshield · 6 days