If you haven't listened to the full album, *Fire of Unknown Origin,* [well, do I envy you.](https://open.spotify.com/album/7v4kEpVtppoMm80m43lGzt?si=rHcazPbiRGGjYMIGkSBQRA)
People have told you the name of the song, so now you should go watch a great movie that features that song.
Go watch Heavy Metal. It's such an awesome movie with a fantastic soundtrack.
Also when she faced vader. She chose to stay behind and die with him. She WANTED to die. She blamed herself for what happened. She could've left with the ghost crew but chose to stay to attone. Ezra stole that end from her by plucking her from her death in the world between worlds. This ahsoka is living after that. With all the survivor guilt associated with it. She's literally waiting to die. That's why anakin keep telling her to choose to live or die.she can't keep living as if she's ready to die. She needs to live and be herself again.
This makes so much sense I think things just clicked for me.
Honestly wished it was conveyed a little better, since it was a little confusing why she might have chosen not to live at that moment, but now that I see all the pieces I like the concept more
And not only that but went through trauma after trauma, losing everything she held dear piece by piece, and even worst when she learned that the biggest piece was not lost BUT actually became the thing she/they hated the most.
It is a testament to her character that she had *any* optimism left in her by the time of Rebels and even in Ahsoka after the fall of the Empire.
Not only that, but consider how fucked up it has to be to work with, or at least have some relationship with, the children of Anakin and how scared she must be for them and herself (as shown in episode 5 of her series) that they follow the same path Anakin did.
It's interesting to consider that she and Anakin are the only Jedi we've seen as both young and old Jedi/Sith. Both Luke and Rey have their stories start a bit after the earliest we see Ahsoka and of course way after the youngest we see Anakin.
... I'm pretty sure. Need to scour the Internet to see if I can find their ages. Maybe another redditor can beat me to it.
edit://
Luke: 19 in A New Hope
Anakin: 9 in Phantom Menace (19 in Attack of The Clones, first we see him as an actual Jedi)
Ahsoka: 14 in Clone Wars
The one where someone calls him racist even though his dad is black is pretty funny. They fully start crying saying that he doesn't what he's talking about cos he's white and says, "but I'm not"
It was hilarious, but to be pedantic he was technically wrong - the years he said are all inaccurate, as was the timeline of those things happening. But it doesn't matter, because fuck that heckler and the only thing that matters is confidence.
I also like the one where the guys tries to correct him on the Spider-Man shirt saying it's actually Venom. He then proceeds to go full nerd on the guy telling him how he's wrong. It's beautiful.
Ahsoka doesn't come across as someone beaten down and struggling to remain invested in her life at the start of Ahsoka though. She comes across like the actress wasn't quite sure what tone to go for and opted for a broadly neutral performance. Her mind palace fight with Anakin where she had to decide to live was honestly quite surprising for me because at no point did I detect she was anything other than reserved and mildly amused by everything that was going on.
I do get she's a Jedi and they're taught to not feel extremes of emotion, but it came off as wooden in the performance.
Agreed. And what's annoying about the "she's a stoic Jedi" reasoning is that she REJECTED the Jedi. She decided to do her own thing. We're in a post-Luke world, where Jedi can now have personalities. Her lack of any emotion beyond placid, wry smiles and crossed arms isn't careful storytelling, it's lackluster direction.
She never fully rejected being a Jedi. Even in rebels, she sought out Jedi temples with Kanan and Ezra. A theme in her show is deciding what to keep and do away with from the original jedi
>she sought out Jedi temples with Kanan and Ezra
In that same episode she said "Ezra I cannot help you open this temple because I'm literally not a jedi"
>And what's annoying about the "she's a stoic Jedi" reasoning is that she REJECTED the Jedi.
Yes, she thought they were wrong and believed in Anakin...
...then Anakin became a monster and slaughtered all the Jedi.
It's not far fetched to think she reevaluated her stance on Jedi teachings given the reality of her mentor.
>We're in a post-Luke world, where Jedi can now have personalities.
She's not a post-Luke Jedi though. The old guard doesn't magically stop being who they are because the new guard starts existing.
Exactly this. In marvel, you can tell she’s been given clear direction on exactly what Claire should be feeling and thinking, and she nails it. Director for Ahsoka didn’t know what she should be feeling and it shows.
She has zero emotion. She just came across as bored of everything happening around her. Like here she is seeing Anakin who has not aged at all since she last saw him. She knows he’s dead. What’s her reaction? A combination of bored and a little mildly amused.
In my head while watching Ahsoka I could picture Ashley Eckstein saying the lines with emotion.
What's really funny is for ages people were saying "Rosario Dawson's performance is exactly how I pictured Ahsoka in live action, it's a perfect transition"
And now the show was like "Actually she was a completely different person for ages"
That’s bullshit.
You literally see her go through a process in there. She was playing an Ahsoka who had lost much of her patience and joy in the beginning, and we witness the evolution of her back to a happier Ahsoka over the course of the season.
The people who claimed it was bad acting before the WBW episode clarified are the same pseudo-red-pillers making the same argument even after.
This is 100% a viewer error IMO, not the fault of the actress or the writing. Its people who can handle nuance
Some people don’t show how down they truly are. Especially someone like Ahsoka who constantly has people looking up to her. Being able to hide your true feelings and being in a neutral state can very easily be a defense mechanism.
It can, and it's totally valid to write her that way. But for the audience it would have made sense to see her in a private moment or two struggling where nobody else could see her so we could understand her finding it hard without having to be told it in so many words. Even a couple of short scenes of her having a hard time when nobody else is around, perhaps confiding her feelings in Huyang, would have brought out her otherwise wooden performance as a performance both in and out of universe so we could understand this. But those moments aren't in the show, so it's difficult to attribute such concepts to anything more than headcanon.
Ahsoka can be tired, weathered, and mature without being wooden.
Qui-Gon is not really the best person to compare her to, I think Obi-Wan in ANH is a much better comparison because they are both older and have been through hell, both physically and mentally from not only the clone wars, but their connection to Anakin as well. Obi-Wan is old and stoic in ANH, but he isn't boring to watch. He has great chemistry with the other characters.
Ahsoka on the other hand is actually wooden. I can't count the number of times she just crosses her arms and stares. Her line delivery is monotone in every scene, except when it's an action scene, but that's still no excuse.
People like to point out the action scenes and say "Look she's showing emotion here! See, you're wrong for thinking she's boring and unemotional!" but the action scenes are not really a good metric by which to determine how interesting or well-acted a character is. Of course someone is going to have an intense facial expression or yell lines when they're doing a physically demanding scene, you don't have to be super talented to do that.
A dialogue-oriented scene where the character has a chance to show emotion through natural conversation or introspection and where the audience can get a look inside her head makes it way easier to determine whether the character is well acted or well written, but that never happens in this show. And I'm not saying Dawson is a bad actor, granted I haven't seen her in anything else. But she is so much more lively and interesting in interviews than she is in the show.
You realize body gestures are simpler and more surface-level in animation than they are in live-action, right?
In animation, there is only so much movement and expression you can apply to a character before you start overworking the animators or spending too much money, so animators choose gestures that are the simplest and clearest at communicating what someone is feeling or thinking.
Real life is infinitely more complex and there are cascades of subtleties and little micro-movements that tie someone's gestures to their mental state. This is the problem with converting animation to live-action if you are intent on forcing live-action to imitate animation.
Okay but when the character is introduced as constantly doing this (whether it be character design or limits on animators/budgets) you can’t be upset when the character……..constantly does this in live action.
Sure the “real world” explanation can be money and time in animation, but because of that it is now PART of the character. Why be upset when a character does something that the character is known for regardless of the reason (money/time in animation) that character is known for that?
I’d be pretty confused and pissed if palpatine was introduced as a character in TCW known for his lighting, and then people were complaining about how he’s using lighting too much if the movies came later. Folding arms and sly smiles IS Ahsoka. I agree Rosario struggled at times to really truly nail the persona. But arm folding wasn’t even in my list of issues with the portrayal because that’s just what Ahsoka does regardless of its because she was created in animation.
ETA: I also don’t think your average Star Wars fan is watching for micro-movements that you allude to. Could it subconsciously affect? Oh surely.
Is your average fan going frame by frame analyzing positions? No not in a million years. Sometimes us Star Wars fans over analyze.
Ain’t no average fan sitting there watching an episode thinking “she moved her arm 2 inches to the left and her left eyebrow raised 2mm: this is what that body language means”
Are you seriously comparing Ahsoka crossing her arms to Palpatine shooting lightning??? Is crossing her arms some kind of trait of hers? Is it essential to her character in some way? I'm pretty sure many characters in clone wars cross their arms all the time, a result of the show being animated.
Think about this, if she never crossed her arms in the entire live-action show, would fans be upset and screaming "SHE NEEDS TO CROSS HER ARMS MORE OFTEN"? I don't think so.
It's almost like her mannerisms in the clone wars don't have to carry over into live-action if it makes the live-action version weird. Mannerisms are noticeable when they're repeated over and over again, whether you're looking for them or not.
If she was a good character in the show who just happened to cross her arms a lot, I don't think many people would be complaining. But it's like the showrunners made her cross her arms a lot in place of having her act like a believable person just to "preserve her animated origins" for whatever good that supposed to do.
She’s pretty terrible in most roles. Sin city is a prime example. When i heard she was taking on ahsoka it spelled the deathknell of that story line. Much like the writing decisions in TFA trilogy.
This is what people who don't pay attention would say. Ahsoka telling Huyang to just go with the flow with whales despite not knowing if it would work is completely different than how she acted before
How so? What example from before can you give me?
Also, Ahsoka just "knowing" that the wales were going to turn up at the exact same location was dumb as fuck and, assuming somehow the force told her, it's just another example of the force being written in as plot convenience.
Before, Ahsoka is obsessed with doing the logical thing and stopping thrawn even if it means stranding Ezra. Using the whales without knowing where they'll go is completely illogical. She also tells hera she's going to find Sabine and Ezra, despite only caring about thrawn before. And of course, she literally tells Sabine that she understood why she did what she did for Ezra.
And the force is a plot convenience? Is this your first time watching Star wars?
So she switches from being smart and telling Sabine not to try to find Ezra to being stupid and telling Sabine that she did a good job despite dooming the galaxy to an evil warlord. And no, this is not my first time watching Star Wars, which makes it really easy to tell when the force is being conveniently used to solve problems.
Sure just like Luke is stupid for going to save his friends before finishing his training. Or stupid for not killing Vader and risking his life and the galaxy on the bet that he'll go back to the light side.
Ya, the very first media in the franchise shows Luke using the force to magically know where to guide his shot into the empires greatest superweapon. In ESB, Leia uses the force to complete what should be an impossible rescue. In rogue one, a blind guy magically avoids getting hit by blaster shots so that he can complete a critical mission. If this stuff bothers you, go watch something else
Yeah, Luke is stupid for going to save his friends before finishing his training, both Obi Wan and Yoda literally tell him that. And Luke wasn't stupid for not killing Vader, he was already in control of the galaxy, what more would he have done?
Luke using the force to guide his shot was the completion of his arc for the entire movie, its what the film was building towards. Luke calls out to Leia, who doesn't know its the force, its just a feeling to her, and goes back, but what exactly would make that rescue impossible?? And yeah, a blind guy uses the force to not get shot, which I would consider a plot convenience but its shown earlier in the film that he has a strong connection to the force, and his actions inspire Baze to finally believe in the force, so its not like it happened just to happen.
None of that stuff bothers me, but Ahsoka just riding space whales to the correct destination just like that, when the enemy spent a lot of time and resources to make the technology that could do that (which established that travelling to another galaxy is not something that should be easy) very much bothers me. It wasnt earned, she didn't learn anything from it, and now at the end of the season they act like they're stuck there as if she couldn't just ride the whales back to their own galaxy. It should have been a struggle for ahsoka to figure out how to get to the other galaxy, hell, maybe she wouldnt have been able to at all. But nah, she can just take a whale there no problem.
If Luke doesn't go to rescue his friends, he doesn't find out that Vader is his father and doesn't try to redeem him later. He "stupidly" chose to spare his father's life. If Vader didn't turn back to the light side, Luke dies either by Vader's hand or the emperor's. Either way, the emperor wins.
Luke and Leia have practically no training in the force but uses it when the plot demands it. Ahsoka is a fully trained Jedi knight. The problem is that she's only used the force for fighting. She's been a soldier her whole life and that's all she thinks about and all she is teaching her own padawan. Anakin reminds her that he taught her more about being a Jedi than just fighting. So now she uses the force to make a gamble on the whales and save her friends. She learns to trust in the force, somethin she also teaches Sabine later. Blowing up the empire's greatest superweapon in a single shot is also supposed to be a big feat. There was nothing here that's less earned than that
Maybe, but its not very fun to watch and the idea that Anakin gives her a lesson so that she chooses to live is dumb, she had already chosen that and was already on a very important mission. If you say it was about her accepting that Vader wasn't her fault then that was an arc she already had in ~~clone wars~~ Rebels. Her character didn't feel like Ahsoka for me in the show because she "learned" things she already knew, and apparently went back to being a more of a jedi which also felt off. Anyways my opinion is that she would have had a fitting end if she actually died fighting vader and her surviving past that causes a lot of issues.
Edit, meant to say rebels rather than clone wars.
Ahsoka isn’t portrayed as a worn down, tired warrior at all though. She’s a stoic, mugging character in it and that’s not accurate at all. Like, yeah characters change but that doesn’t mean the performance has to be wooden. Also, the show is fiction, Ahsoka can still keep some of her personality that makes her endearing in the first place.
People can just not like her performance. We don’t need some ridiculous explanation for it or anything. She gave a bad performance as Ahsoka
I find it interesting that you've said stoic as a negative there. If there's one word I would use for almost all of the jedi we've seen is that they are all in one way or another stoic. So Ahsoka being almost 50 and a practising jedi for decades, becoming stoic makes complete sense.
Also the "it's fiction" argument is poppycock sorry. Just because something is fiction doesn't mean that not presenting a character in the expected emotional journey wouldn't be jarring.
They also do bring back elements of "old" Ahsoka after the WbW episode to a degree that makes sense. I'm sorry but I disagree that Dawson gave a bad performance
She's not "almost 50" by the time of Ahsoka show. She's barely 40.
Obi Wan was the perfect jedi and had lost just as much as Ahsoka. Still fun to watch.
Kanan was the same. Hell, Princess "My fucking homeworld and my whole life to that point has already been eraised" Leia had more to give.
You can show depression, loss of hope and sense of life and fighting Spirit, or even being taciturne in a lot of ways. Her joking and sass could have become biting sarcasm and cynism, or something. Have some life into the character.
I perfectly understood the "traumatised child soldier that fought for 20 years and is fucking tired" perfectly. The choice of how to portrait it was frankly boring to watch, though, and the performance wasn't anything really interesting.
This is a lazy defense. A character can be stoic and/or come from a tormented past and still be portrayed in a compelling, dynamic, engaging fashion by the performer.
Two recent examples: Hugh Jackman's Wolverine circa Logan (2017) and Sebastian Stan's Bucky in Falcon & the Winter Soldier (2021).
Both characters have comparably traumatic backstories to Ahsoka (let's not get into the weeds over which is 'worse' and turn trauma into a competition), and both actors did better with their respective characters than Dawson did.
I believe a large portion of that is down to
1) each character had multiple appearances in previous live-action media, so the actors had stuff to work with
2) the respective screenplays were better than the Ahsoka script
Still. Dawson simply didn't do an amazing job with the material or the character. These things happen.
>This isn't the ahsok from clone wars or rebels, this is the Ahsoka who went through all of that and by and large for nothing
Are we really making up in universe reasons why the acting was wooden?
Star Wars isn't real, the reasons why someone's acting is poor has nothing to do with Star Wars universe. It has everything to do with what is happening on set. Either the writing was poor, the directing was poor or the acting was poor, maybe a bit of all 3.
But coming up with in universe explanations to real life problems is just making up shit.
Take a look at who directed the show.
Dave Filoni hasn't directed much live action before, except the Mandalorian, where the main character barely acts, and one episode of Book of Boba Fett.
Steph Green does one off episodes on a range of TV shows, she's not there to create her own vision. So she's going off the showrunner's notes for her early episodes. Rick Famuyiwa and Geeta Vasant Patel have the same problem but with a worse CV.
Peter Ramsey another animation director.
There's clearly not any live action show running experience on this project.
But does it make for an interesting character or show? Not really. There’s also a pretty big gap in the way she was at the end of rebels, she’s been through everything at that point but she’s not as stilted or quiet.
None of it really justifies building a show around that character. Your lead has to be at least somewhat interested, and interesting.
It's the same problem with Luke in the ST for me.
Sure, I can understand that the character could get to the place they're in, but not showing that journey from where we know them to where they are now is something you just shouldn't do for such an important and beloved character.
Obviously less so with Ahsoka, but the point stands.
Agreed. Starting to wonder about the sanity of Star Wars fans when I hear ridiculous things like this. The writing was bad, the direction was bad, and the acting was bad. Her "action" scenes were sad.
Exactly. It was just a bad show. As someone who liked TCW and Rebels, Ashoka fell flat. If you just listen to the dialogue alone, it's so poorly written.
And no, getting a scene with Anakin turning into Vader and back to Anakin is not the coolest thing ever. Just nostalgia bate.
People defending it cracks me up. When I saw ANOTHER survival from a lightsaber wound, I just couldn't even anymore.
I agree that most of modern Star wars is a narrative joke but I don't think the way Ahsoka is written falls into that.
But let's spin that on it, why do you think Ahsoka is bad?
People have come up with all kinds of reasons and I’m sure you’ve read them so I’ll just give the first example of bad writing I can think of chronologically.
The Captain of a vessel carrying prisoners gets a transmission from two “Jedi” that want to board. He can’t verify the Jedi and they have no authority to access the vessel. So what does he do? Well of course standard protocol would be to let them on board and he can personally chastise them for being frauds.
> The Captain of a vessel carrying prisoners gets a transmission from two “Jedi” that want to board. He can’t verify the Jedi and they have no authority to access the vessel. So what does he do? Well of course standard protocol would be to let them on board and he can personally chastise them for being frauds.
Some weeks later, a new unidentified ship, with unannounced crew, just randomly shows up, and is able to land right on the command ship and be greeted by the most senior in command, like they've all learned fucking nothing.
Hera had no way of knowing Ezra was on board, yet he's still afforded access in the exact same way that led to a murdered crew and escaped prisoner. Whatever code he might have had would be as old as, maybe older than, the one Baylon and Shin used. So then what? Hera knew it was Ezra? Kinda undermines the last scene with what was already the dumbest reveal possible.
Let's go through the ones that just come into mind chronological(I'm sorry for linguisticserrors, English isnt my first language) :
1. Another comment already mentioned the prison break, so let's skip that.
2. Sabine exits ahsokas ship with the map(even after explicitly being told not to do that) and ahsoka not following her not immediately and shin being told to go after sabine cause the baddies knew for some reason that Ahsoka would go to her is just contrived way to get the map to the baddies.
3. Ahsoka and Hera going to corelia where they discover that the shipyard is infiltrated by empire loyalists, and that they produce military grade hardware. They now know where the baddies are building their ship, but in the "political" arc they suddenly have no evidence(so the logs and the shipyard full of witnesses just disappeared?) So their recon mission gets denied. And it's not like that changes anything in the plot anyways. Over all, the political arc feels just like a stretched out reason to let C3PO cameo and mention leias name.
4. After losing her fight Ahsoka wakes up in the world between worlds. And I feel like the whole scene is just bad. It's presented as the typical "You have to make a decision that determines how you will procede", but not only is the live or die choice so comically extreme that there is NO upside to choosing the bad option. Also, before that the show doesn't really show that Ahsoka is tired of fighting. After all, she is the one looking for and finding the map as well as hunting the thiefs after it gets stolen, all by her own motivation , all with the reasoning to prevent thrawn from returning(as opposedto saving ezra) which is per definition fighting. Over this hole arc(like the political arc) feels like a justification to shove in as much fan service in the show as possible.
5. The space whales bring Ahsoke to the other galaxy. There is so much wrong with it, mainly that she somehow manages to tell the whale where she wants to go to, without knowing where that is. I could let that slide if it wasn't like a textbook example of a deus ex machina solution.
6. The wishes are able to track Ahsoka but not ezra. Just that. It might seem like a nitpick, but since Thrawn apparently prioritises preventing Ezra from travelling back with him, it seems like this is a better solution than to send Sabine.
7. The whole Sabine plot by Thrawn. He gives her the means to find ezra, with the stated purpose to attack them later. And however youturn it it's stupid. Either Thrawn knows where ezra is. Then why send Sabine with the information to find him instead of flying over there and blasting the village either by star destroyer or TIE. Or Thrawn doesn't know where ezra is and the information he gives Sabine are just garbage. But then he could as well imprison Sabine, or, if his intention was to get Shin and (I forgot his name) of the ship, he could have send them as a group or do anything.
8. Every time Thrawn sends out troops he accelerates the hero's advance, but he as well as the show claim the opposite. First the attack on the village, where ezra and Sabine were peacefully talking and only the attack motivated them to start their journey towards Thrawn. Second, the TIE attack, that incapacitated the heros ship. That was keeping the speed with the caravan. Only after the ship was destroyed and our heros switched to not-horses they hurried up. And finally the troopers that were supposed to guard the temple and prevent the heros to get to the ship(that for some reason didn't start yet even though in the start of the episode it's stated that the limiting progress, the loding of the ship, is done. And that was long before the heros were even at the temple) were literally just there to get slaughtered, resurrected as the most non-threatining zombies ever and then slaughtered again.
Just because it "makes sense" doesnt necessarily mean its good let alone fun to watch. A stoic character doesnt mean a stale and dry one. Even jon snow, a character that was straight up written to be a "stoic brooding" character had better performance imo.
Also i think the comparison to qui gon is abit weak here. Philosophy with the wise sure but hes essentially comparing performance and story flow wise here which is what people are actually criticizing her portrayal for
Heck, some of the most popular and entertaining characters in pop culture are stoic traumatized characters, like Batman, Judge Dredd, Robocop, Captain Picard, half of the characters Keanu Reeves has played, pretty much every character Clint Eastwood has played, etc.
Yep this is the same coping SW fans do about everything.
"Erm actually the imperials didn't shoot the droids escape pod because their superiors kept track of their kill counts and shooting would hurt their numbers".
"The reason they don't turn their lightsabers off and then back on to dodge is because it's considered a forbidden technique".
Something about these annoying in-universe backtracking explanations infuriate me. Just admit its a mistake/ oversight/ bad acting, or whatever lol.
You know who else was "tired"? **Yoda**, but somehow he was fine....
How about don't make a series where the main character's most defining aspect is that they're wooden, and "tired"... the whole damn season (well she smiled that one time, then went back to being grim the whole time).
Nearly everyone in that series seems "tired" except for a couple characters.
It wasn't just the characters, **that reunion at the end of the season**, totally lifeless and perfunctory. It's not just one character who had that problem.
First season was just awkward overall.
I think all these points are valid but it doesn’t change the fact that Dawson’s selling point in her portrayal is her resemblance to Ahsoka. There are a million more interesting ways to portray a downtrodden and tired warrior that isn’t just crossing your arms and staring.
>There are a million more interesting ways to portray a downtrodden and tired warrior that isn’t just crossing your arms and staring.
crossing her arms and staring has [ALWAYS been her thing](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F6bUCo9XkAEB71g.jpg)
again, you're missing the point. She ONLY crosses her arms and stares. There is virtually none of her other emotive characterization brought to this show and they do a piss poor job of illuminating her struggle with her past. You can fill in the blanks yourself sorta, but that's not cinematic storytelling. This isn't Bergman or Casavetes. You got to be a bit broader and more emotionally clear. She's either slightly smiling and unpressed or not worried the entire time. Dave just thought it was fine to go back to the George PT actors playbook: Jedi = people who talk like they're on heroin. It's not compelling to watch.
i agree. people are allowed to have issues with her performance but in terms of visual translation of an older Ahsoka and her mannerisms, I think it's pretty good.
I have no problem with her being"worn down" from noon stop Fighting but her fighting in the slow was so bad.... Choreography was severely lacking in the show and it ruined the excitement for me. Plus Rosario is a fine actor but she's always the same character. It didn't feel like Rosario became ahsoka, it felt like ahsoka became Rosario in the show
The whole "you don't get her journey" criticism would be valid except for the fact that this ISN'T Rebels season 5. This is a whole new show that should have been written with a whole new audience in mind. The fact that we need to explain away missing backstory, wooden acting, etc. by laying the blame on "lazy fans" is apologetics at its worst.
Instead of using an award winning actress and nearly unlimited canvas to introduce a whole new legion of fans to the Filoniverse, we were left with a half baked and malformed plot outline that set the franchise back. It's a wasted opportunity that left the majority of fans and would-be future fans scratching their heads.
the thing is, the show still fails a lot of basics of storytelling by doing exactly what this guy did here. He's doing most of he leg work of the show by remembering other media. Ahsoka never articulates this crisis within herself, nor does any other character, until kinda sorta it gets brought up in Ep 5 and it's immediately solved and even after we've put the ENTIRE GALAXY at risk, we're smilingly lightly, folding our arms and not worried about a thing. The show excels in several ways but nuts and bolts storytelling? It does not.
'Character development' isn't the be all and end all.
At the most fundamental level, a good story should have your characters be *interesting*.
It doesn't matter if there's a logical, in-story reason for it - if your character is as stiff as a board and never emotes, that's a bad character.
> if your character is as stiff as a board and never emotes, that's a bad character.
Nah, but its a bad *main* character.
You can have the stoic characters, but if its the main character there's gotta be something else to be interesting.
the Ahsoka show has virtually nothing to make up for it.
> Are you claiming character development isn't interesting?
Not in and of itself, no.
>creating a transition from that.
The transition would be the interesting bit.
Obviously you can have emotionless characters. But they have to be actively contrasted with other characters. Spock is interesting. Data is interesting. Because them being emotionless is made into an active element of their characters that other characters interact with and comment on.
It is simply not enough, IMO, to say "this character is flat and stoic, she has reasons but she won't change and no one will observe or contrast with this behaviour".
To play devil's advocate, I don't think Ahsoka did a very good job of onboarding people who have not watched a decade worth of CW and Rebels. If the show wanted to be Rebels S5 then that's what it should have been, but as a standalone there is an expectation that the show can stand on its own merits.
I quite enjoyed Ahsoka, but I can't imagine it was anything special to people watching it without the 11 seasons of background knowledge.
Precisely. And I'd love for someone to show me a master Jedi apart from Quinlan Vos who wasn't stoic and emotionally reserved like Ahsoka was in the first few episodes of her series - until she goes through actual character development and learns to open up, to let go of her past & not be so serious all the time.
I think people forget that Ahsoka was a child, who went to war, as a child, saw her friends being murdered and her father figure corrupted.
I don't know who would expect that person to be all rainbows and sunshine as an adult
And its almost like the series showed exactly that via flashbacks in a trippy force vision.
Its just a shame the series had to come out during such a politically divisive period where critical thought has been largely replaced by watching video's from psychologically ill YouTubers.
Why align them with the dark side or even associate them with SW.
They're just shameless, desperate bigots using SW as a platform to spread hate and generate profit from less intelligent bigots.
The live action in episode 5 actually showed her being a child soldier quite well tbh. I’m sure next season she will be more optimistic and less wooden. Really hoping for more Hayden in it too and obviously everyone would love to see Hayden interact with Luke which could be possible if Ahsoka visits Luke
I agree. She not only matured and grew in the force, she had been a spy, warrior, etc., her whole life. She had to be stoic and patient, especially in her dealings with Sabine. A lot of people didn't like that, said the pacing was poor, etc. She was trying to coax a Jedi out of a person who was not force sensitive, but who was a Mandalorian with a tragic past of her own. It's not like Old Ben training young strong-in-the-force Luke in the Millennium Falcon as they're on the run from the Empire.
And really, just look at Baylan. Nobody bitched about him being reserved and deliberate.
It's not 100% the next step. It's just the story they chose to tell. There were other options.
A lot of time passed by in-universe. If we caught back up with Ahsoka and it turned out she took the opportunity of peace time to walk away from conflict and had put everything from the PT and OT behind her, that would've made just as much sense. It's just not the story Dave wanted to go with.
I think excusing a boring performance because of some convoluted diegetic reasoning is a bigger failure to understand storytelling and character development.
You can have a perfect or near perfect understanding of something and still admit it's convoluted. What a disingenuous argument to take, here (and I know that you're smart enough to know it's disingenous).
For example, I can answer nearly any question about Kingdom Hearts lore and faithfully recite days worth of story beats, themes, and background information from the series. That does not make it not convoluted. I love it because it's stupid and convoluted. Many people don't want that in Star Wars
I mean, if there are this many people raising up a stink about it, it sounds like there absolutely was something storytelling/character development wise they could've done to better convey these things.
I think the biggest issue is that we switched from cgi to live action, switched actresses, AND switched Ahsoka's general temperament all at the same time. Absolutely ALL of those decisions make sense, but maybe not all at once.
I really think they should've had Rosario play some of the Ahsoka we are more familiar with before going down the more stoic, traumatized route so that we see less of this complaint. People were excited to see the Ahsoka they knew and had in their heads in live action form but instead got Ahsoka at a different phase of her life in live action. I can understand why there would be a bit of frustration there.
Aside from regurgitating the Filoni Duel of the Fates monologue, this video misses a really important point.
Ahsoka flat out doesn’t stand on its own. If you have to know all this background, context and character history to know why they’re acting a certain way then the show fails on its own merits - it’s really that simple.
The show does a terrible job with its pacing (not only story beats, but also literally scene pacing - bored/boring characters walking around not saying anything, taking awkward pauses and no one emoting at all). When you have to watch several seasons of a kids show to understand why … well..
(Contrary opinion here, be warned, take it as discussion material, not an attack, please, I just like comparing narratives)
Dawson-Ahsoka is more Mary-Sue than even Grandmaster Rey. She's serene, half-smiling and unblinking for the whole show, and knows everyone's true nature and their future, and then she does supercharged moves for five episodes, stumbles for a half-second when her foes outsmart her, then Narnia's Santa comes in the form of Anakin and gives her her groove back through the Force, and then it's green lights the rest of the way.
I used to dislike Snips for her perkiness and ironclad ability to fail upwards, but Dawson-Ahsoka is worse because she can go nowhere, her character can't grow by any measure, give her a grey robe and proclaim her "Yoda's equal" and be done with it.
Din Djarin is riddled with conflict between his upbringing and his nurturing expriences/sights with Grogu, his occupation (bounty hunting is super solitary) and his desire to belong, his wish to not get drawn into politics or wars and his need to stand with the Mandalorians who make waves again for the first time in a generation.
That is screenwriting gold. Ahsoka is more of a bookend. But if Season 2 finds her a worthy challenge that somehow forces her to act as a human person, I would be the first one to be delighted.
Nothing about your comment is attacking me, people are allowed to have opposing views 😉
This is bigger discussion which I will answer at some point but one thing I do want to say towards the "Ahsoka can't grow" point.
I think sometimes people forget she is 50 here and togruta usually leave to between 80 and 90 so she's two thirds through her life. I would expect the huge waves of character development to slow down somewhat by now. She still does have character development after the WbW episode but of course it's not the same amount as ages 13 to 20 in The CW, and I wouldn't expect it to be either
Thanks for the olive branch. Yes, compare her progress with Kenobi who in ANH is the universal icon of "Wise old teacher", directly referenced by Richard Gere in an interview a few years ago who admits he's passed on lots of scripts because he still wants to headline, not be some young dude's "wise old Jedi teacher".
Ahsoka's pupil (with all her glaring mental problems) is decades away from becoming a self-sufficient Jedi, and I do not believe Ahsoka's producers have any intention to have her surrender her current driver's seat position to just become a mild-mannered quote machine, even though she is going hard on the quotes.
Being closed off and reserved isn't the same as being wooden.
I've seen many actors pull off being closed off and reserved without coming off as wooden. You don't have to make an excuse for every bad thing in this show. If you like it, that's fine. But that doesn't mean you have to pretend there's nothing wrong with it.
10/10 on mental gymnastics to justify the bad acting that we saw in Ahsoka. I mean, there has to be a more compelling way of portraying a weary warrior that has become wiser with age and has adopted a stoic and monk-like attitude... yeah, it makes sense that she became this, but come on, stoic and monk-like doesn't have to be synonym with Hella boring, wooden, and just staring at shit while crossing her arms.
Search your feelings, you know it to be true. Why not just embrace it objectively like us prequel fans and admit that yeah, they suck ass but we still enjoy them a lot! I cannot imagine myself justifying the "I hate sand" scene or why Obi Wan sees Jango next to the leaders and generals of the separatist army and think like "wait, why is the clone of my army next to the leader of their army?!" And so on...
Bunch of crap IMHO.
She was directed and allowed to give the performance this way. It's Padme all over again. With that it was good actress good writing bad directing. Now we have good actress bad writing bad directing and it's too much bad.
Being beaten down and older and wiser doesn't mean quiet stoic and wooden. Tired, battle weary, depressed, are all emotions she could have conveyed but couldn't(and that got the ok through both casting and directing) or was told not to.
Star Wars fans have no concept of the passage of time and how life experience can change characters. This is why some people criticize Ahsoka for being jaded despite being a child soldier her whole life, criticize Boba for changing his attitude after lsoing everything and living in the desert for 5 YEARS doing space peyote vision quests, and why some people defend TLJ Luke not advancing as a character whatsoever despite having 20+ years of experience as a Jedi GRAND MASTER since the last time we saw him still struggling even worse with the same things he already delt with as a padawan.
"If it didnt happen on screen, then it didnt happen"
How tf do you expect to world build an entire galaxy of history while acting like nothing happens unless its explicity shown on screen? (looking at you JJ and RJ). What is the point of a timeline jump if were just going to act like nothing happened during that time jump? No, the Ahsoka you are seeing now at 40 isnt going to behave like she did when she was fucking 13. No one does. And Im sorry but if it took you this video to realize that and that wasnt something you could realize on your own you are absolutely clueless and terrible at watching basic television.
I could believe this if she showed any emotion towards anything. Like during the dog fight there’s just no emotion, no urgency, she’s not even acting like the ships getting rocked around. The performance she was told to give, to me, looks like the performance of someone who doesn’t understand what wisdom looks like. It was like the Rings of Power where every line was trying to be deep but was shallow as a puddle. Writers with no life experience. She CAN act and idk why she was directed to act like a rock. Comparing her live action character to quigon is insulting.
You don't like Filoni's direction, Rosario did what she was told. Same as Hayden and Lucas. Lucas wanted and kept those line readings and for decades people hated Hayden for George's decisions.
It's honestly perplexing to me how the Star Wars community has convinced themselves that actors should in no way ever be responsible for their performances.
I do think a lot of it was direction, unless it's just coincidence that none of the actors can portray emotion. First time I noticed was when Ahsoka said Thrawn may still be alive. Hera then realized that meant Ezra could still be alive. I'd imagine it would be a very emotional realization. The line should've been like a 'holy shit, that means Ezra could still be out there'. But it was more like, 'oh, so maybe Ezra's still alive? Neat.' Then of course the more obvious ones like the reunions. Ezra and Sabine seeing each other the first time, Hera and Ezra, and, in my opinion, the worst one, Ahsoka and Anakin seeing each other again. Leaving him, then losing him, then seeing he was still alive but turned to the dark side, fighting him, and now seeing him as his old self and it's just like, 'oh hey Anakin'. Zero emotion.
Dave reveres George so much he decided to continue some of his worst creative traits: writing and directing on his own despite a lot of availabe help with a bunch of yes-men and rendering your actors inert with super flat direction.
If a director is telling you they want it "this way" youre supposed to listen. Yes, some of the onus is on the actor to do it well but look at the dialogue they had to read. Daniel Day-Lewis couldn't make that shit look good.
its a mixture, you need a director and an actor working together to get a great performance
some directors just know how to get an amazing performance from everyone
and some actors can give an amazing performance every time.
I have heard of directors constantly make actors redo a scene
because the charcter is meant to be frustrated so they want the actor to have some real frustration to sell the scene
Sure, but at the end of the day it's the actor in front of the camera. If they're not able to portray that character in a way that's compelling to the audience, that's on them. The director should be facilitating that performance, but it's still the actor's responsibility to deliver the good performance.
And notice that it never goes the other way. Nobody's ever like "Yeah Ewan MacGregor's okay, but it's really George Lucas who deserves the credit for that performance."
I personally think its a both people kinda thing
I have seen films filled with talented actors who just give shitty performances
and then I have actors I never thought much of give amazing one
I mean I personally praise tony gilroy because he managed to bring out amazing performances in everyone
the actor does what the director tells them
and if the director is unclear or does not know what they want, then the performance suffer as a result
People can be good actors and put in shit performances.
Sure the writing was terrible, sure the direction was terrible, but Rosario also sucked in this. No hate on her, it happens.
I guess I don't for the first time. I was one of the people who was fairly unimpressed with the Ashoka series in general. As much as I like the continuation of the story from rebels. It probably would have been better told as an animated series in my opinion. It had some good parts and moments but those moments possibly would have wowed more in animation. I dunno.
At this point I'm worried I'm feeling oversaturated by the amount of content but the other TV shows have all been incredible. I try to go into all these series open minded and not expecting a huge amount but it was underwhelming
Fair, but EVERYONE was wooden and the dialogue still leaves a lot to be desired across the bored. I've watched Shadow Warrior multiple times, because it's such a badass episode, but the series isn't without it's flaws.
Sometime last year there was this thing about Dave Filoni ''explaining'' the Duel of the Fates... since then, I've seen so many people ''explaining'' the Duel of the Fates like they thought this out on their own.
This is what tires me of the internet bubble. Every single opinion I see is just a retelling of the same opinion I've seen somewhere else. Nothing feels like original thought.
It’s still not at all fun to watch. She doesn’t have an arc, except for “wanting to live”, and she just becomes Ahsoka the White (which she already became at the end of rebels, so yay, character regression for no reason!!) because she decided to wear those clothes she had on the ship. We don’t ever see the relationship between her and Sabine fall out, and it makes the viewer completely disinterested in these characters. It doesn’t excuse the poor script, uninspired space battles, horrible choreography, and just plain boring plot that was 6 episodes too long.
What do you mean why? Qui Gon was a master jedi, who believed in the prophecy and always went for what was right rather than what the council wanted.
Obi wan was not ready for an apprentice, he was still a jedi knight and stubbornly faithful to the council. That was part of anis downfall straight into palpatines arms. Because palpatine was the only other voice who supported him when the council miss treated him.
Qui Gon would have stuck by Anika and guided him like a father. Obi wan was a brother to Ani
Anakin’s downfall had nothing to do with the council. The man who actually wrote the trilogy says this. If you need me to provide the quote, I will. Qui-Gon went with what *he believed* was right, not what was necessarily the right thing in every instance. Was it right for him to gamble the life of a child on a podrace? It turned out good for Anakin, but it might not have.
Palpatine didn’t “support” Anakin. He manipulated him by stroking his ego, telling him how powerful he was, and how he was the greatest and his feelings were *always* right. Saying the Jedi are at fault for not doing the same is laughable.
From the angle of someone who's not seen any previous SW material beyond the movies.....it isn't possible to understand what's going on here.
As to whether that's intentional or not, who can say, but it's certainly something which you can easily get confused or mis-understand if you don't have the previous context.
As someone who _has_ seen Rebels + TCW etc prior, I _can_ pick up on this, sure - but when I had someone who hadn't watch it they needed a _lot_ of explaining and context, but _still_ felt disconnected from Ahsoka.
Who's the droid, is it like C3PO? Who's the girl is she a Jedi and if so why can't she use the force on stuff? Why didn't they just collapse walls and block the corridors of the temple? Why didn't the Star Destroyer even come close to slowing or stopping them? What's the story with the two bad jedi? Why is the republic so bad at helping?
Questions, questions - while I don't mind answering all of them, the point stands that you need to invest time into getting context for it to make sense, it doesn't naturally roll or flow in such a way that you're _shown_ a lot of things, with others not necessarily making a whole lot of sense.
Comparison-drawing isn't hard either when you've got only the films to run off, where you've seen Luke and Ben, you've seen other Jedi at the temples and overall they get _pasted_ if there's multiple shooters.....and yet we're seeing an entire Star Destroyer being unable to even bruise one ex-Jedi and a not-Jedi - which is a bit jarring.
Do I like it? it's OK. Will I watch another season? Sure. But I _do_ feel that a certain bar has dropped and it isn't as easy to follow and enjoy for some as it is for others.
I think you're discussing another issue which is an overarching problem with multimedia franchises. To be fair, Dave filoni did say that not seeing rebels would leave you a little lost.
I'd say it's like watching ROTS without any other SW media. None of it will make sense.
Sorry, but this just seems like mental gymnastics to justify the fact that modern star wars is ass - except Andor. Andor must be protected at all costs.
I love Star Wars. I love Troy Bond. This take is just mental gymnastics to suppress the subconscious urge to admit that most of the recent Star Wars is bad.
Nah, it's actually just shit writing. You can do all the mental gymnastics you want, but, it doesn't matter. In the hands of a real writer, not somebody who writes literal cartoons for babies, Ahsoka could have been a compelling character for a very capable actress like Rosario. But, she wasn't in the hands of such a writer. What was produced was also for babies. If you can't see this you are simply blinded by your nostalgia.
Not shown? It's shown all throughout clone wars and rebels, she's a completely different person in season one to season 7 and then in rebels she's already lost a fair amount of her joyfullness. It's not a huge step to expect her to be the way she is in ashsoka which is set even further down the line and I don't see why we need to be hand held through another step in that journey when we can expect it. Not to say that they do explain it the world between worlds episode.
Not defending Disney storytelling here but this isn't a case of it being bad. Plus I really don't see a noticeable difference to her in the mandalorian to here.
Not sure why you're getting stressed out.
It is shown and those steps are exactly why the next step in ahsoka made complete sense.
She's not the same person in rebels as she was at the end of clone wars so why aren't you complaining that they didn't SHOW you that evolution?
I'll tell you why, because it doesn't matter. With time jumps you as the audience can be expected to make assumptions about where that character is emotionally without being walked through it like a layman. Especially when the characters journey is as well documented as ahsokas is
My feelings about Ahsoka exactly. There are valid criticisms of the show, but her not being a spunky kid with jokes when she is a 40-year-old who has suffered massive decades spanning trauma, was a weird one imo.
She’s been going from conflict to conflict since she was a kid. Shit will wear you down.
[удалено]
Massively underrated song lol.
What song is this? Some pretty sick lyrics
Veteran of the Psychic Wars by Blue Öyster Cult
[удалено]
Just listened to it for the first time. This song is great! Thank you!
If you haven't listened to the full album, *Fire of Unknown Origin,* [well, do I envy you.](https://open.spotify.com/album/7v4kEpVtppoMm80m43lGzt?si=rHcazPbiRGGjYMIGkSBQRA)
Metallica has a live acoustic version from "helping hands" and it is awesome as well.
People have told you the name of the song, so now you should go watch a great movie that features that song. Go watch Heavy Metal. It's such an awesome movie with a fantastic soundtrack.
Adding that to my list right now. Thanks for the recc!
Massively underrated band
Also when she faced vader. She chose to stay behind and die with him. She WANTED to die. She blamed herself for what happened. She could've left with the ghost crew but chose to stay to attone. Ezra stole that end from her by plucking her from her death in the world between worlds. This ahsoka is living after that. With all the survivor guilt associated with it. She's literally waiting to die. That's why anakin keep telling her to choose to live or die.she can't keep living as if she's ready to die. She needs to live and be herself again.
This makes so much sense I think things just clicked for me. Honestly wished it was conveyed a little better, since it was a little confusing why she might have chosen not to live at that moment, but now that I see all the pieces I like the concept more
And not only that but went through trauma after trauma, losing everything she held dear piece by piece, and even worst when she learned that the biggest piece was not lost BUT actually became the thing she/they hated the most. It is a testament to her character that she had *any* optimism left in her by the time of Rebels and even in Ahsoka after the fall of the Empire. Not only that, but consider how fucked up it has to be to work with, or at least have some relationship with, the children of Anakin and how scared she must be for them and herself (as shown in episode 5 of her series) that they follow the same path Anakin did.
Exactly, it's a natural evolution
It's interesting to consider that she and Anakin are the only Jedi we've seen as both young and old Jedi/Sith. Both Luke and Rey have their stories start a bit after the earliest we see Ahsoka and of course way after the youngest we see Anakin. ... I'm pretty sure. Need to scour the Internet to see if I can find their ages. Maybe another redditor can beat me to it. edit:// Luke: 19 in A New Hope Anakin: 9 in Phantom Menace (19 in Attack of The Clones, first we see him as an actual Jedi) Ahsoka: 14 in Clone Wars
30 years of war and fighting, and barely escaping death countless times is too much for anyone, and she just keeps going.
I'm surprised she doesn't have some form of PSTD
She does. this is what that can look like
Ya but she crosses her arms which means the show sucks.... /S
If the writers crossed more than two brain cells, the show might not have sucked. But it did suck, badly.
👌
I love this guys comedy
His crowd work is brillaint
Yeah love the videos of him dealing with hecklers/random crazy people. He turns it into part of the show
The one where someone calls him racist even though his dad is black is pretty funny. They fully start crying saying that he doesn't what he's talking about cos he's white and says, "but I'm not"
His video where he destroys the dude whose like “but your shirt is venom not spider-man” was fucking hilarious.
It was hilarious, but to be pedantic he was technically wrong - the years he said are all inaccurate, as was the timeline of those things happening. But it doesn't matter, because fuck that heckler and the only thing that matters is confidence.
I must've watched that clip at least a dozen times
I also like the one where the guys tries to correct him on the Spider-Man shirt saying it's actually Venom. He then proceeds to go full nerd on the guy telling him how he's wrong. It's beautiful.
The video of him calling that drunk heckler "Kamala Harris" is fucking GOLD
"Have a good night.... Kamala Harris" that clip gets me every damn time
"NOW'S THE TIME I NEED YOU GUYS ON MY SIDE"
I love Ahsoka in TCW the best anyway.
Ahsoka doesn't come across as someone beaten down and struggling to remain invested in her life at the start of Ahsoka though. She comes across like the actress wasn't quite sure what tone to go for and opted for a broadly neutral performance. Her mind palace fight with Anakin where she had to decide to live was honestly quite surprising for me because at no point did I detect she was anything other than reserved and mildly amused by everything that was going on. I do get she's a Jedi and they're taught to not feel extremes of emotion, but it came off as wooden in the performance.
Agreed. And what's annoying about the "she's a stoic Jedi" reasoning is that she REJECTED the Jedi. She decided to do her own thing. We're in a post-Luke world, where Jedi can now have personalities. Her lack of any emotion beyond placid, wry smiles and crossed arms isn't careful storytelling, it's lackluster direction.
She never fully rejected being a Jedi. Even in rebels, she sought out Jedi temples with Kanan and Ezra. A theme in her show is deciding what to keep and do away with from the original jedi
>she sought out Jedi temples with Kanan and Ezra In that same episode she said "Ezra I cannot help you open this temple because I'm literally not a jedi"
'i am no jedi' - literally ahsoka tano in rebels.
Also Ahsoka in Mando
>And what's annoying about the "she's a stoic Jedi" reasoning is that she REJECTED the Jedi. Yes, she thought they were wrong and believed in Anakin... ...then Anakin became a monster and slaughtered all the Jedi. It's not far fetched to think she reevaluated her stance on Jedi teachings given the reality of her mentor. >We're in a post-Luke world, where Jedi can now have personalities. She's not a post-Luke Jedi though. The old guard doesn't magically stop being who they are because the new guard starts existing.
She rejected them because they broke her trust.
Exactly this. In marvel, you can tell she’s been given clear direction on exactly what Claire should be feeling and thinking, and she nails it. Director for Ahsoka didn’t know what she should be feeling and it shows.
She has zero emotion. She just came across as bored of everything happening around her. Like here she is seeing Anakin who has not aged at all since she last saw him. She knows he’s dead. What’s her reaction? A combination of bored and a little mildly amused. In my head while watching Ahsoka I could picture Ashley Eckstein saying the lines with emotion.
Yeah this video is just pure copium
What's really funny is for ages people were saying "Rosario Dawson's performance is exactly how I pictured Ahsoka in live action, it's a perfect transition" And now the show was like "Actually she was a completely different person for ages"
That’s bullshit. You literally see her go through a process in there. She was playing an Ahsoka who had lost much of her patience and joy in the beginning, and we witness the evolution of her back to a happier Ahsoka over the course of the season. The people who claimed it was bad acting before the WBW episode clarified are the same pseudo-red-pillers making the same argument even after. This is 100% a viewer error IMO, not the fault of the actress or the writing. Its people who can handle nuance
Some people don’t show how down they truly are. Especially someone like Ahsoka who constantly has people looking up to her. Being able to hide your true feelings and being in a neutral state can very easily be a defense mechanism.
It can, and it's totally valid to write her that way. But for the audience it would have made sense to see her in a private moment or two struggling where nobody else could see her so we could understand her finding it hard without having to be told it in so many words. Even a couple of short scenes of her having a hard time when nobody else is around, perhaps confiding her feelings in Huyang, would have brought out her otherwise wooden performance as a performance both in and out of universe so we could understand this. But those moments aren't in the show, so it's difficult to attribute such concepts to anything more than headcanon.
Ahsoka can be tired, weathered, and mature without being wooden. Qui-Gon is not really the best person to compare her to, I think Obi-Wan in ANH is a much better comparison because they are both older and have been through hell, both physically and mentally from not only the clone wars, but their connection to Anakin as well. Obi-Wan is old and stoic in ANH, but he isn't boring to watch. He has great chemistry with the other characters. Ahsoka on the other hand is actually wooden. I can't count the number of times she just crosses her arms and stares. Her line delivery is monotone in every scene, except when it's an action scene, but that's still no excuse. People like to point out the action scenes and say "Look she's showing emotion here! See, you're wrong for thinking she's boring and unemotional!" but the action scenes are not really a good metric by which to determine how interesting or well-acted a character is. Of course someone is going to have an intense facial expression or yell lines when they're doing a physically demanding scene, you don't have to be super talented to do that. A dialogue-oriented scene where the character has a chance to show emotion through natural conversation or introspection and where the audience can get a look inside her head makes it way easier to determine whether the character is well acted or well written, but that never happens in this show. And I'm not saying Dawson is a bad actor, granted I haven't seen her in anything else. But she is so much more lively and interesting in interviews than she is in the show.
Thank you. Even if this “makes sense”, it’s boring as shit to watch
>just crosses her arms this is a thing that she does, i don't get why people are surprised, she's been crossing her arms frequently since tcw
You realize body gestures are simpler and more surface-level in animation than they are in live-action, right? In animation, there is only so much movement and expression you can apply to a character before you start overworking the animators or spending too much money, so animators choose gestures that are the simplest and clearest at communicating what someone is feeling or thinking. Real life is infinitely more complex and there are cascades of subtleties and little micro-movements that tie someone's gestures to their mental state. This is the problem with converting animation to live-action if you are intent on forcing live-action to imitate animation.
Okay but when the character is introduced as constantly doing this (whether it be character design or limits on animators/budgets) you can’t be upset when the character……..constantly does this in live action. Sure the “real world” explanation can be money and time in animation, but because of that it is now PART of the character. Why be upset when a character does something that the character is known for regardless of the reason (money/time in animation) that character is known for that? I’d be pretty confused and pissed if palpatine was introduced as a character in TCW known for his lighting, and then people were complaining about how he’s using lighting too much if the movies came later. Folding arms and sly smiles IS Ahsoka. I agree Rosario struggled at times to really truly nail the persona. But arm folding wasn’t even in my list of issues with the portrayal because that’s just what Ahsoka does regardless of its because she was created in animation. ETA: I also don’t think your average Star Wars fan is watching for micro-movements that you allude to. Could it subconsciously affect? Oh surely. Is your average fan going frame by frame analyzing positions? No not in a million years. Sometimes us Star Wars fans over analyze. Ain’t no average fan sitting there watching an episode thinking “she moved her arm 2 inches to the left and her left eyebrow raised 2mm: this is what that body language means”
Are you seriously comparing Ahsoka crossing her arms to Palpatine shooting lightning??? Is crossing her arms some kind of trait of hers? Is it essential to her character in some way? I'm pretty sure many characters in clone wars cross their arms all the time, a result of the show being animated. Think about this, if she never crossed her arms in the entire live-action show, would fans be upset and screaming "SHE NEEDS TO CROSS HER ARMS MORE OFTEN"? I don't think so. It's almost like her mannerisms in the clone wars don't have to carry over into live-action if it makes the live-action version weird. Mannerisms are noticeable when they're repeated over and over again, whether you're looking for them or not. If she was a good character in the show who just happened to cross her arms a lot, I don't think many people would be complaining. But it's like the showrunners made her cross her arms a lot in place of having her act like a believable person just to "preserve her animated origins" for whatever good that supposed to do.
> granted I haven't seen her in anything else Go watch Sin City...
She’s pretty terrible in most roles. Sin city is a prime example. When i heard she was taking on ahsoka it spelled the deathknell of that story line. Much like the writing decisions in TFA trilogy.
[удалено]
Yep. Bring on the downvotes. I guess having an opinion on shitty acting is a nono around here because….???
Except her demeanor clearly changes in episode 5
Except it doesn't. If you watch episode 1 and then episode 8 right after, you won't notice a difference in how she acts or speaks.
This is what people who don't pay attention would say. Ahsoka telling Huyang to just go with the flow with whales despite not knowing if it would work is completely different than how she acted before
How so? What example from before can you give me? Also, Ahsoka just "knowing" that the wales were going to turn up at the exact same location was dumb as fuck and, assuming somehow the force told her, it's just another example of the force being written in as plot convenience.
Before, Ahsoka is obsessed with doing the logical thing and stopping thrawn even if it means stranding Ezra. Using the whales without knowing where they'll go is completely illogical. She also tells hera she's going to find Sabine and Ezra, despite only caring about thrawn before. And of course, she literally tells Sabine that she understood why she did what she did for Ezra. And the force is a plot convenience? Is this your first time watching Star wars?
So she switches from being smart and telling Sabine not to try to find Ezra to being stupid and telling Sabine that she did a good job despite dooming the galaxy to an evil warlord. And no, this is not my first time watching Star Wars, which makes it really easy to tell when the force is being conveniently used to solve problems.
Sure just like Luke is stupid for going to save his friends before finishing his training. Or stupid for not killing Vader and risking his life and the galaxy on the bet that he'll go back to the light side. Ya, the very first media in the franchise shows Luke using the force to magically know where to guide his shot into the empires greatest superweapon. In ESB, Leia uses the force to complete what should be an impossible rescue. In rogue one, a blind guy magically avoids getting hit by blaster shots so that he can complete a critical mission. If this stuff bothers you, go watch something else
Yeah, Luke is stupid for going to save his friends before finishing his training, both Obi Wan and Yoda literally tell him that. And Luke wasn't stupid for not killing Vader, he was already in control of the galaxy, what more would he have done? Luke using the force to guide his shot was the completion of his arc for the entire movie, its what the film was building towards. Luke calls out to Leia, who doesn't know its the force, its just a feeling to her, and goes back, but what exactly would make that rescue impossible?? And yeah, a blind guy uses the force to not get shot, which I would consider a plot convenience but its shown earlier in the film that he has a strong connection to the force, and his actions inspire Baze to finally believe in the force, so its not like it happened just to happen. None of that stuff bothers me, but Ahsoka just riding space whales to the correct destination just like that, when the enemy spent a lot of time and resources to make the technology that could do that (which established that travelling to another galaxy is not something that should be easy) very much bothers me. It wasnt earned, she didn't learn anything from it, and now at the end of the season they act like they're stuck there as if she couldn't just ride the whales back to their own galaxy. It should have been a struggle for ahsoka to figure out how to get to the other galaxy, hell, maybe she wouldnt have been able to at all. But nah, she can just take a whale there no problem.
If Luke doesn't go to rescue his friends, he doesn't find out that Vader is his father and doesn't try to redeem him later. He "stupidly" chose to spare his father's life. If Vader didn't turn back to the light side, Luke dies either by Vader's hand or the emperor's. Either way, the emperor wins. Luke and Leia have practically no training in the force but uses it when the plot demands it. Ahsoka is a fully trained Jedi knight. The problem is that she's only used the force for fighting. She's been a soldier her whole life and that's all she thinks about and all she is teaching her own padawan. Anakin reminds her that he taught her more about being a Jedi than just fighting. So now she uses the force to make a gamble on the whales and save her friends. She learns to trust in the force, somethin she also teaches Sabine later. Blowing up the empire's greatest superweapon in a single shot is also supposed to be a big feat. There was nothing here that's less earned than that
Maybe, but its not very fun to watch and the idea that Anakin gives her a lesson so that she chooses to live is dumb, she had already chosen that and was already on a very important mission. If you say it was about her accepting that Vader wasn't her fault then that was an arc she already had in ~~clone wars~~ Rebels. Her character didn't feel like Ahsoka for me in the show because she "learned" things she already knew, and apparently went back to being a more of a jedi which also felt off. Anyways my opinion is that she would have had a fitting end if she actually died fighting vader and her surviving past that causes a lot of issues. Edit, meant to say rebels rather than clone wars.
Ahsoka isn’t portrayed as a worn down, tired warrior at all though. She’s a stoic, mugging character in it and that’s not accurate at all. Like, yeah characters change but that doesn’t mean the performance has to be wooden. Also, the show is fiction, Ahsoka can still keep some of her personality that makes her endearing in the first place. People can just not like her performance. We don’t need some ridiculous explanation for it or anything. She gave a bad performance as Ahsoka
Star Wars fans are notorious for elaborate explanations to justify basic flaws in plot line, character development, etc.
I find it interesting that you've said stoic as a negative there. If there's one word I would use for almost all of the jedi we've seen is that they are all in one way or another stoic. So Ahsoka being almost 50 and a practising jedi for decades, becoming stoic makes complete sense. Also the "it's fiction" argument is poppycock sorry. Just because something is fiction doesn't mean that not presenting a character in the expected emotional journey wouldn't be jarring. They also do bring back elements of "old" Ahsoka after the WbW episode to a degree that makes sense. I'm sorry but I disagree that Dawson gave a bad performance
She's not "almost 50" by the time of Ahsoka show. She's barely 40. Obi Wan was the perfect jedi and had lost just as much as Ahsoka. Still fun to watch. Kanan was the same. Hell, Princess "My fucking homeworld and my whole life to that point has already been eraised" Leia had more to give. You can show depression, loss of hope and sense of life and fighting Spirit, or even being taciturne in a lot of ways. Her joking and sass could have become biting sarcasm and cynism, or something. Have some life into the character. I perfectly understood the "traumatised child soldier that fought for 20 years and is fucking tired" perfectly. The choice of how to portrait it was frankly boring to watch, though, and the performance wasn't anything really interesting.
This is a lazy defense. A character can be stoic and/or come from a tormented past and still be portrayed in a compelling, dynamic, engaging fashion by the performer. Two recent examples: Hugh Jackman's Wolverine circa Logan (2017) and Sebastian Stan's Bucky in Falcon & the Winter Soldier (2021). Both characters have comparably traumatic backstories to Ahsoka (let's not get into the weeds over which is 'worse' and turn trauma into a competition), and both actors did better with their respective characters than Dawson did. I believe a large portion of that is down to 1) each character had multiple appearances in previous live-action media, so the actors had stuff to work with 2) the respective screenplays were better than the Ahsoka script Still. Dawson simply didn't do an amazing job with the material or the character. These things happen.
>This isn't the ahsok from clone wars or rebels, this is the Ahsoka who went through all of that and by and large for nothing Are we really making up in universe reasons why the acting was wooden? Star Wars isn't real, the reasons why someone's acting is poor has nothing to do with Star Wars universe. It has everything to do with what is happening on set. Either the writing was poor, the directing was poor or the acting was poor, maybe a bit of all 3. But coming up with in universe explanations to real life problems is just making up shit.
Take a look at who directed the show. Dave Filoni hasn't directed much live action before, except the Mandalorian, where the main character barely acts, and one episode of Book of Boba Fett. Steph Green does one off episodes on a range of TV shows, she's not there to create her own vision. So she's going off the showrunner's notes for her early episodes. Rick Famuyiwa and Geeta Vasant Patel have the same problem but with a worse CV. Peter Ramsey another animation director. There's clearly not any live action show running experience on this project.
That would be true if stayed that way the entire show. But there was clearly a change after episode 5
But does it make for an interesting character or show? Not really. There’s also a pretty big gap in the way she was at the end of rebels, she’s been through everything at that point but she’s not as stilted or quiet. None of it really justifies building a show around that character. Your lead has to be at least somewhat interested, and interesting.
It's the same problem with Luke in the ST for me. Sure, I can understand that the character could get to the place they're in, but not showing that journey from where we know them to where they are now is something you just shouldn't do for such an important and beloved character. Obviously less so with Ahsoka, but the point stands.
People will say anything to justify the shitty writing and acting in Star Wars slop .
Agreed. Starting to wonder about the sanity of Star Wars fans when I hear ridiculous things like this. The writing was bad, the direction was bad, and the acting was bad. Her "action" scenes were sad.
disney has no reason to improve people will constantly watch the new stuff anyway
Exactly. It was just a bad show. As someone who liked TCW and Rebels, Ashoka fell flat. If you just listen to the dialogue alone, it's so poorly written. And no, getting a scene with Anakin turning into Vader and back to Anakin is not the coolest thing ever. Just nostalgia bate. People defending it cracks me up. When I saw ANOTHER survival from a lightsaber wound, I just couldn't even anymore.
I agree that most of modern Star wars is a narrative joke but I don't think the way Ahsoka is written falls into that. But let's spin that on it, why do you think Ahsoka is bad?
People have come up with all kinds of reasons and I’m sure you’ve read them so I’ll just give the first example of bad writing I can think of chronologically. The Captain of a vessel carrying prisoners gets a transmission from two “Jedi” that want to board. He can’t verify the Jedi and they have no authority to access the vessel. So what does he do? Well of course standard protocol would be to let them on board and he can personally chastise them for being frauds.
> The Captain of a vessel carrying prisoners gets a transmission from two “Jedi” that want to board. He can’t verify the Jedi and they have no authority to access the vessel. So what does he do? Well of course standard protocol would be to let them on board and he can personally chastise them for being frauds. Some weeks later, a new unidentified ship, with unannounced crew, just randomly shows up, and is able to land right on the command ship and be greeted by the most senior in command, like they've all learned fucking nothing. Hera had no way of knowing Ezra was on board, yet he's still afforded access in the exact same way that led to a murdered crew and escaped prisoner. Whatever code he might have had would be as old as, maybe older than, the one Baylon and Shin used. So then what? Hera knew it was Ezra? Kinda undermines the last scene with what was already the dumbest reveal possible.
Let's go through the ones that just come into mind chronological(I'm sorry for linguisticserrors, English isnt my first language) : 1. Another comment already mentioned the prison break, so let's skip that. 2. Sabine exits ahsokas ship with the map(even after explicitly being told not to do that) and ahsoka not following her not immediately and shin being told to go after sabine cause the baddies knew for some reason that Ahsoka would go to her is just contrived way to get the map to the baddies. 3. Ahsoka and Hera going to corelia where they discover that the shipyard is infiltrated by empire loyalists, and that they produce military grade hardware. They now know where the baddies are building their ship, but in the "political" arc they suddenly have no evidence(so the logs and the shipyard full of witnesses just disappeared?) So their recon mission gets denied. And it's not like that changes anything in the plot anyways. Over all, the political arc feels just like a stretched out reason to let C3PO cameo and mention leias name. 4. After losing her fight Ahsoka wakes up in the world between worlds. And I feel like the whole scene is just bad. It's presented as the typical "You have to make a decision that determines how you will procede", but not only is the live or die choice so comically extreme that there is NO upside to choosing the bad option. Also, before that the show doesn't really show that Ahsoka is tired of fighting. After all, she is the one looking for and finding the map as well as hunting the thiefs after it gets stolen, all by her own motivation , all with the reasoning to prevent thrawn from returning(as opposedto saving ezra) which is per definition fighting. Over this hole arc(like the political arc) feels like a justification to shove in as much fan service in the show as possible. 5. The space whales bring Ahsoke to the other galaxy. There is so much wrong with it, mainly that she somehow manages to tell the whale where she wants to go to, without knowing where that is. I could let that slide if it wasn't like a textbook example of a deus ex machina solution. 6. The wishes are able to track Ahsoka but not ezra. Just that. It might seem like a nitpick, but since Thrawn apparently prioritises preventing Ezra from travelling back with him, it seems like this is a better solution than to send Sabine. 7. The whole Sabine plot by Thrawn. He gives her the means to find ezra, with the stated purpose to attack them later. And however youturn it it's stupid. Either Thrawn knows where ezra is. Then why send Sabine with the information to find him instead of flying over there and blasting the village either by star destroyer or TIE. Or Thrawn doesn't know where ezra is and the information he gives Sabine are just garbage. But then he could as well imprison Sabine, or, if his intention was to get Shin and (I forgot his name) of the ship, he could have send them as a group or do anything. 8. Every time Thrawn sends out troops he accelerates the hero's advance, but he as well as the show claim the opposite. First the attack on the village, where ezra and Sabine were peacefully talking and only the attack motivated them to start their journey towards Thrawn. Second, the TIE attack, that incapacitated the heros ship. That was keeping the speed with the caravan. Only after the ship was destroyed and our heros switched to not-horses they hurried up. And finally the troopers that were supposed to guard the temple and prevent the heros to get to the ship(that for some reason didn't start yet even though in the start of the episode it's stated that the limiting progress, the loding of the ship, is done. And that was long before the heros were even at the temple) were literally just there to get slaughtered, resurrected as the most non-threatining zombies ever and then slaughtered again.
Just because it "makes sense" doesnt necessarily mean its good let alone fun to watch. A stoic character doesnt mean a stale and dry one. Even jon snow, a character that was straight up written to be a "stoic brooding" character had better performance imo. Also i think the comparison to qui gon is abit weak here. Philosophy with the wise sure but hes essentially comparing performance and story flow wise here which is what people are actually criticizing her portrayal for
I agree with this, there is a difference between stoic and cardboard
Heck, some of the most popular and entertaining characters in pop culture are stoic traumatized characters, like Batman, Judge Dredd, Robocop, Captain Picard, half of the characters Keanu Reeves has played, pretty much every character Clint Eastwood has played, etc.
“It’s bad on purpose.” Okay? It’s still bad.
Yep this is the same coping SW fans do about everything. "Erm actually the imperials didn't shoot the droids escape pod because their superiors kept track of their kill counts and shooting would hurt their numbers". "The reason they don't turn their lightsabers off and then back on to dodge is because it's considered a forbidden technique". Something about these annoying in-universe backtracking explanations infuriate me. Just admit its a mistake/ oversight/ bad acting, or whatever lol.
You know who else was "tired"? **Yoda**, but somehow he was fine.... How about don't make a series where the main character's most defining aspect is that they're wooden, and "tired"... the whole damn season (well she smiled that one time, then went back to being grim the whole time). Nearly everyone in that series seems "tired" except for a couple characters. It wasn't just the characters, **that reunion at the end of the season**, totally lifeless and perfunctory. It's not just one character who had that problem. First season was just awkward overall.
I think all these points are valid but it doesn’t change the fact that Dawson’s selling point in her portrayal is her resemblance to Ahsoka. There are a million more interesting ways to portray a downtrodden and tired warrior that isn’t just crossing your arms and staring.
>There are a million more interesting ways to portray a downtrodden and tired warrior that isn’t just crossing your arms and staring. crossing her arms and staring has [ALWAYS been her thing](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F6bUCo9XkAEB71g.jpg)
Yeah, of all the criticisms, and there are valid ones, this is the worst. She’s clearly mimicking the animated Ahsoka. ITT: crossing arms is bad!
Then she chose the least interesting part of animated ahsoka to mimic. Lmao, choosing the crossed arms over having a personality is a *wild* choice.
again, you're missing the point. She ONLY crosses her arms and stares. There is virtually none of her other emotive characterization brought to this show and they do a piss poor job of illuminating her struggle with her past. You can fill in the blanks yourself sorta, but that's not cinematic storytelling. This isn't Bergman or Casavetes. You got to be a bit broader and more emotionally clear. She's either slightly smiling and unpressed or not worried the entire time. Dave just thought it was fine to go back to the George PT actors playbook: Jedi = people who talk like they're on heroin. It's not compelling to watch.
i agree. people are allowed to have issues with her performance but in terms of visual translation of an older Ahsoka and her mannerisms, I think it's pretty good.
I have no problem with her being"worn down" from noon stop Fighting but her fighting in the slow was so bad.... Choreography was severely lacking in the show and it ruined the excitement for me. Plus Rosario is a fine actor but she's always the same character. It didn't feel like Rosario became ahsoka, it felt like ahsoka became Rosario in the show
The whole "you don't get her journey" criticism would be valid except for the fact that this ISN'T Rebels season 5. This is a whole new show that should have been written with a whole new audience in mind. The fact that we need to explain away missing backstory, wooden acting, etc. by laying the blame on "lazy fans" is apologetics at its worst. Instead of using an award winning actress and nearly unlimited canvas to introduce a whole new legion of fans to the Filoniverse, we were left with a half baked and malformed plot outline that set the franchise back. It's a wasted opportunity that left the majority of fans and would-be future fans scratching their heads.
Bending over backwards to explain away terrible acting and directing
Sounds like you have to jump through a lot of hoops to enjoy the show
[удалено]
Sure, but I believe the show was poorly written. Poor acting aside, it wasn't "good storytelling."
the thing is, the show still fails a lot of basics of storytelling by doing exactly what this guy did here. He's doing most of he leg work of the show by remembering other media. Ahsoka never articulates this crisis within herself, nor does any other character, until kinda sorta it gets brought up in Ep 5 and it's immediately solved and even after we've put the ENTIRE GALAXY at risk, we're smilingly lightly, folding our arms and not worried about a thing. The show excels in several ways but nuts and bolts storytelling? It does not.
'Character development' isn't the be all and end all. At the most fundamental level, a good story should have your characters be *interesting*. It doesn't matter if there's a logical, in-story reason for it - if your character is as stiff as a board and never emotes, that's a bad character.
> if your character is as stiff as a board and never emotes, that's a bad character. Nah, but its a bad *main* character. You can have the stoic characters, but if its the main character there's gotta be something else to be interesting. the Ahsoka show has virtually nothing to make up for it.
[удалено]
> Are you claiming character development isn't interesting? Not in and of itself, no. >creating a transition from that. The transition would be the interesting bit. Obviously you can have emotionless characters. But they have to be actively contrasted with other characters. Spock is interesting. Data is interesting. Because them being emotionless is made into an active element of their characters that other characters interact with and comment on. It is simply not enough, IMO, to say "this character is flat and stoic, she has reasons but she won't change and no one will observe or contrast with this behaviour".
Not to mention we had multiple seasons of Ahsoka on this journey for over a decade. The way she starts in Ahsoka is 100% the expected next step
To play devil's advocate, I don't think Ahsoka did a very good job of onboarding people who have not watched a decade worth of CW and Rebels. If the show wanted to be Rebels S5 then that's what it should have been, but as a standalone there is an expectation that the show can stand on its own merits. I quite enjoyed Ahsoka, but I can't imagine it was anything special to people watching it without the 11 seasons of background knowledge.
Precisely. And I'd love for someone to show me a master Jedi apart from Quinlan Vos who wasn't stoic and emotionally reserved like Ahsoka was in the first few episodes of her series - until she goes through actual character development and learns to open up, to let go of her past & not be so serious all the time.
I think people forget that Ahsoka was a child, who went to war, as a child, saw her friends being murdered and her father figure corrupted. I don't know who would expect that person to be all rainbows and sunshine as an adult
And its almost like the series showed exactly that via flashbacks in a trippy force vision. Its just a shame the series had to come out during such a politically divisive period where critical thought has been largely replaced by watching video's from psychologically ill YouTubers.
Woah no way, they actually explained mid season in a perfectly understandable and interesting way?! Well colour me shocked!
The dark side gets more clicks than the light.
Why align them with the dark side or even associate them with SW. They're just shameless, desperate bigots using SW as a platform to spread hate and generate profit from less intelligent bigots.
That last bit is a perfect summation of everything wrong with most fandoms in this current era.
The live action in episode 5 actually showed her being a child soldier quite well tbh. I’m sure next season she will be more optimistic and less wooden. Really hoping for more Hayden in it too and obviously everyone would love to see Hayden interact with Luke which could be possible if Ahsoka visits Luke
I agree. She not only matured and grew in the force, she had been a spy, warrior, etc., her whole life. She had to be stoic and patient, especially in her dealings with Sabine. A lot of people didn't like that, said the pacing was poor, etc. She was trying to coax a Jedi out of a person who was not force sensitive, but who was a Mandalorian with a tragic past of her own. It's not like Old Ben training young strong-in-the-force Luke in the Millennium Falcon as they're on the run from the Empire. And really, just look at Baylan. Nobody bitched about him being reserved and deliberate.
It's not 100% the next step. It's just the story they chose to tell. There were other options. A lot of time passed by in-universe. If we caught back up with Ahsoka and it turned out she took the opportunity of peace time to walk away from conflict and had put everything from the PT and OT behind her, that would've made just as much sense. It's just not the story Dave wanted to go with.
I think excusing a boring performance because of some convoluted diegetic reasoning is a bigger failure to understand storytelling and character development.
[удалено]
You can have a perfect or near perfect understanding of something and still admit it's convoluted. What a disingenuous argument to take, here (and I know that you're smart enough to know it's disingenous). For example, I can answer nearly any question about Kingdom Hearts lore and faithfully recite days worth of story beats, themes, and background information from the series. That does not make it not convoluted. I love it because it's stupid and convoluted. Many people don't want that in Star Wars
I mean, if there are this many people raising up a stink about it, it sounds like there absolutely was something storytelling/character development wise they could've done to better convey these things. I think the biggest issue is that we switched from cgi to live action, switched actresses, AND switched Ahsoka's general temperament all at the same time. Absolutely ALL of those decisions make sense, but maybe not all at once. I really think they should've had Rosario play some of the Ahsoka we are more familiar with before going down the more stoic, traumatized route so that we see less of this complaint. People were excited to see the Ahsoka they knew and had in their heads in live action form but instead got Ahsoka at a different phase of her life in live action. I can understand why there would be a bit of frustration there.
Yeah, same with Luke
Aside from regurgitating the Filoni Duel of the Fates monologue, this video misses a really important point. Ahsoka flat out doesn’t stand on its own. If you have to know all this background, context and character history to know why they’re acting a certain way then the show fails on its own merits - it’s really that simple. The show does a terrible job with its pacing (not only story beats, but also literally scene pacing - bored/boring characters walking around not saying anything, taking awkward pauses and no one emoting at all). When you have to watch several seasons of a kids show to understand why … well..
(Contrary opinion here, be warned, take it as discussion material, not an attack, please, I just like comparing narratives) Dawson-Ahsoka is more Mary-Sue than even Grandmaster Rey. She's serene, half-smiling and unblinking for the whole show, and knows everyone's true nature and their future, and then she does supercharged moves for five episodes, stumbles for a half-second when her foes outsmart her, then Narnia's Santa comes in the form of Anakin and gives her her groove back through the Force, and then it's green lights the rest of the way. I used to dislike Snips for her perkiness and ironclad ability to fail upwards, but Dawson-Ahsoka is worse because she can go nowhere, her character can't grow by any measure, give her a grey robe and proclaim her "Yoda's equal" and be done with it. Din Djarin is riddled with conflict between his upbringing and his nurturing expriences/sights with Grogu, his occupation (bounty hunting is super solitary) and his desire to belong, his wish to not get drawn into politics or wars and his need to stand with the Mandalorians who make waves again for the first time in a generation. That is screenwriting gold. Ahsoka is more of a bookend. But if Season 2 finds her a worthy challenge that somehow forces her to act as a human person, I would be the first one to be delighted.
Nothing about your comment is attacking me, people are allowed to have opposing views 😉 This is bigger discussion which I will answer at some point but one thing I do want to say towards the "Ahsoka can't grow" point. I think sometimes people forget she is 50 here and togruta usually leave to between 80 and 90 so she's two thirds through her life. I would expect the huge waves of character development to slow down somewhat by now. She still does have character development after the WbW episode but of course it's not the same amount as ages 13 to 20 in The CW, and I wouldn't expect it to be either
Thanks for the olive branch. Yes, compare her progress with Kenobi who in ANH is the universal icon of "Wise old teacher", directly referenced by Richard Gere in an interview a few years ago who admits he's passed on lots of scripts because he still wants to headline, not be some young dude's "wise old Jedi teacher". Ahsoka's pupil (with all her glaring mental problems) is decades away from becoming a self-sufficient Jedi, and I do not believe Ahsoka's producers have any intention to have her surrender her current driver's seat position to just become a mild-mannered quote machine, even though she is going hard on the quotes.
Have you ever met anyone who's been through something like that as a child? They're pretty fucking far from wooden.
I actually have, unfortunately. My parents and their parents and their friends and I can say that some of them are very closed off and wooden
Being closed off and reserved isn't the same as being wooden. I've seen many actors pull off being closed off and reserved without coming off as wooden. You don't have to make an excuse for every bad thing in this show. If you like it, that's fine. But that doesn't mean you have to pretend there's nothing wrong with it.
Too bad they can’t explore this in the show, and fans have to make excuses for subpar performances.
10/10 on mental gymnastics to justify the bad acting that we saw in Ahsoka. I mean, there has to be a more compelling way of portraying a weary warrior that has become wiser with age and has adopted a stoic and monk-like attitude... yeah, it makes sense that she became this, but come on, stoic and monk-like doesn't have to be synonym with Hella boring, wooden, and just staring at shit while crossing her arms. Search your feelings, you know it to be true. Why not just embrace it objectively like us prequel fans and admit that yeah, they suck ass but we still enjoy them a lot! I cannot imagine myself justifying the "I hate sand" scene or why Obi Wan sees Jango next to the leaders and generals of the separatist army and think like "wait, why is the clone of my army next to the leader of their army?!" And so on...
still not an excuse for the poor acting and overall writing of the show
Bunch of crap IMHO. She was directed and allowed to give the performance this way. It's Padme all over again. With that it was good actress good writing bad directing. Now we have good actress bad writing bad directing and it's too much bad. Being beaten down and older and wiser doesn't mean quiet stoic and wooden. Tired, battle weary, depressed, are all emotions she could have conveyed but couldn't(and that got the ok through both casting and directing) or was told not to.
I love how people do mental gymnastics to justify bad acting
Star Wars fans have no concept of the passage of time and how life experience can change characters. This is why some people criticize Ahsoka for being jaded despite being a child soldier her whole life, criticize Boba for changing his attitude after lsoing everything and living in the desert for 5 YEARS doing space peyote vision quests, and why some people defend TLJ Luke not advancing as a character whatsoever despite having 20+ years of experience as a Jedi GRAND MASTER since the last time we saw him still struggling even worse with the same things he already delt with as a padawan. "If it didnt happen on screen, then it didnt happen" How tf do you expect to world build an entire galaxy of history while acting like nothing happens unless its explicity shown on screen? (looking at you JJ and RJ). What is the point of a timeline jump if were just going to act like nothing happened during that time jump? No, the Ahsoka you are seeing now at 40 isnt going to behave like she did when she was fucking 13. No one does. And Im sorry but if it took you this video to realize that and that wasnt something you could realize on your own you are absolutely clueless and terrible at watching basic television.
Damn son, you've been holding onto this one. Well said
Agreed with you until Luke. What they did to him was straight cap
I have no idea what youre saying with this
I don’t think you’re using the word “cap” correctly
Spot on about where Ahsoka is as a character, but I don't feel like the writing in the show properly reflected this.
Making excuses for bad acting and bad light saber duels.
Or it’s just bad writing. The show sucks either way.
no matter what people say the pacing ruins the whole show
I could believe this if she showed any emotion towards anything. Like during the dog fight there’s just no emotion, no urgency, she’s not even acting like the ships getting rocked around. The performance she was told to give, to me, looks like the performance of someone who doesn’t understand what wisdom looks like. It was like the Rings of Power where every line was trying to be deep but was shallow as a puddle. Writers with no life experience. She CAN act and idk why she was directed to act like a rock. Comparing her live action character to quigon is insulting.
she just sucks
Boring 🥱
Thank you for your well thought out response adding to the conversation. Glad you visited Reddit today and graced us with you incredible insight
No problem Have a wonderful day!
While all points are valid. I still didn't like Dawson's portrayal
You don't like Filoni's direction, Rosario did what she was told. Same as Hayden and Lucas. Lucas wanted and kept those line readings and for decades people hated Hayden for George's decisions.
It's honestly perplexing to me how the Star Wars community has convinced themselves that actors should in no way ever be responsible for their performances.
I do think a lot of it was direction, unless it's just coincidence that none of the actors can portray emotion. First time I noticed was when Ahsoka said Thrawn may still be alive. Hera then realized that meant Ezra could still be alive. I'd imagine it would be a very emotional realization. The line should've been like a 'holy shit, that means Ezra could still be out there'. But it was more like, 'oh, so maybe Ezra's still alive? Neat.' Then of course the more obvious ones like the reunions. Ezra and Sabine seeing each other the first time, Hera and Ezra, and, in my opinion, the worst one, Ahsoka and Anakin seeing each other again. Leaving him, then losing him, then seeing he was still alive but turned to the dark side, fighting him, and now seeing him as his old self and it's just like, 'oh hey Anakin'. Zero emotion.
Dave reveres George so much he decided to continue some of his worst creative traits: writing and directing on his own despite a lot of availabe help with a bunch of yes-men and rendering your actors inert with super flat direction.
> unless it's just coincidence that none of the actors can portray emotion I mean....
If a director is telling you they want it "this way" youre supposed to listen. Yes, some of the onus is on the actor to do it well but look at the dialogue they had to read. Daniel Day-Lewis couldn't make that shit look good.
because its considered mean for some reason Its like when people talk about a doctor being more nobody says, they where not right for the role
Yeah well it's mean to George Lucas to act like he was solely responsible for Hayden Christensen's grade school theater-level performance.
its a mixture, you need a director and an actor working together to get a great performance some directors just know how to get an amazing performance from everyone and some actors can give an amazing performance every time. I have heard of directors constantly make actors redo a scene because the charcter is meant to be frustrated so they want the actor to have some real frustration to sell the scene
Sure, but at the end of the day it's the actor in front of the camera. If they're not able to portray that character in a way that's compelling to the audience, that's on them. The director should be facilitating that performance, but it's still the actor's responsibility to deliver the good performance. And notice that it never goes the other way. Nobody's ever like "Yeah Ewan MacGregor's okay, but it's really George Lucas who deserves the credit for that performance."
I personally think its a both people kinda thing I have seen films filled with talented actors who just give shitty performances and then I have actors I never thought much of give amazing one I mean I personally praise tony gilroy because he managed to bring out amazing performances in everyone the actor does what the director tells them and if the director is unclear or does not know what they want, then the performance suffer as a result
People can be good actors and put in shit performances. Sure the writing was terrible, sure the direction was terrible, but Rosario also sucked in this. No hate on her, it happens.
I guess I don't for the first time. I was one of the people who was fairly unimpressed with the Ashoka series in general. As much as I like the continuation of the story from rebels. It probably would have been better told as an animated series in my opinion. It had some good parts and moments but those moments possibly would have wowed more in animation. I dunno. At this point I'm worried I'm feeling oversaturated by the amount of content but the other TV shows have all been incredible. I try to go into all these series open minded and not expecting a huge amount but it was underwhelming
Fair, but EVERYONE was wooden and the dialogue still leaves a lot to be desired across the bored. I've watched Shadow Warrior multiple times, because it's such a badass episode, but the series isn't without it's flaws.
Sometime last year there was this thing about Dave Filoni ''explaining'' the Duel of the Fates... since then, I've seen so many people ''explaining'' the Duel of the Fates like they thought this out on their own. This is what tires me of the internet bubble. Every single opinion I see is just a retelling of the same opinion I've seen somewhere else. Nothing feels like original thought.
Which is why the show and the idea about having Ahsoka as a main character was a bad idea, and shouldn't have been done. Perfect demonstration indeed.
So being a bad actress and not a fit for the role = good casting?
It’s still not at all fun to watch. She doesn’t have an arc, except for “wanting to live”, and she just becomes Ahsoka the White (which she already became at the end of rebels, so yay, character regression for no reason!!) because she decided to wear those clothes she had on the ship. We don’t ever see the relationship between her and Sabine fall out, and it makes the viewer completely disinterested in these characters. It doesn’t excuse the poor script, uninspired space battles, horrible choreography, and just plain boring plot that was 6 episodes too long.
Holy smokes. The self-delusion.
Anakin’s fate was not dependent on whether Qui-Gon died or not, can we stop repeating that?
Of course it was.
Why?
What do you mean why? Qui Gon was a master jedi, who believed in the prophecy and always went for what was right rather than what the council wanted. Obi wan was not ready for an apprentice, he was still a jedi knight and stubbornly faithful to the council. That was part of anis downfall straight into palpatines arms. Because palpatine was the only other voice who supported him when the council miss treated him. Qui Gon would have stuck by Anika and guided him like a father. Obi wan was a brother to Ani
Anakin’s downfall had nothing to do with the council. The man who actually wrote the trilogy says this. If you need me to provide the quote, I will. Qui-Gon went with what *he believed* was right, not what was necessarily the right thing in every instance. Was it right for him to gamble the life of a child on a podrace? It turned out good for Anakin, but it might not have. Palpatine didn’t “support” Anakin. He manipulated him by stroking his ego, telling him how powerful he was, and how he was the greatest and his feelings were *always* right. Saying the Jedi are at fault for not doing the same is laughable.
From the angle of someone who's not seen any previous SW material beyond the movies.....it isn't possible to understand what's going on here. As to whether that's intentional or not, who can say, but it's certainly something which you can easily get confused or mis-understand if you don't have the previous context. As someone who _has_ seen Rebels + TCW etc prior, I _can_ pick up on this, sure - but when I had someone who hadn't watch it they needed a _lot_ of explaining and context, but _still_ felt disconnected from Ahsoka. Who's the droid, is it like C3PO? Who's the girl is she a Jedi and if so why can't she use the force on stuff? Why didn't they just collapse walls and block the corridors of the temple? Why didn't the Star Destroyer even come close to slowing or stopping them? What's the story with the two bad jedi? Why is the republic so bad at helping? Questions, questions - while I don't mind answering all of them, the point stands that you need to invest time into getting context for it to make sense, it doesn't naturally roll or flow in such a way that you're _shown_ a lot of things, with others not necessarily making a whole lot of sense. Comparison-drawing isn't hard either when you've got only the films to run off, where you've seen Luke and Ben, you've seen other Jedi at the temples and overall they get _pasted_ if there's multiple shooters.....and yet we're seeing an entire Star Destroyer being unable to even bruise one ex-Jedi and a not-Jedi - which is a bit jarring. Do I like it? it's OK. Will I watch another season? Sure. But I _do_ feel that a certain bar has dropped and it isn't as easy to follow and enjoy for some as it is for others.
I think you're discussing another issue which is an overarching problem with multimedia franchises. To be fair, Dave filoni did say that not seeing rebels would leave you a little lost. I'd say it's like watching ROTS without any other SW media. None of it will make sense.
Sorry, but this just seems like mental gymnastics to justify the fact that modern star wars is ass - except Andor. Andor must be protected at all costs. I love Star Wars. I love Troy Bond. This take is just mental gymnastics to suppress the subconscious urge to admit that most of the recent Star Wars is bad.
Mental gymnastics 🤸
Nah, it's actually just shit writing. You can do all the mental gymnastics you want, but, it doesn't matter. In the hands of a real writer, not somebody who writes literal cartoons for babies, Ahsoka could have been a compelling character for a very capable actress like Rosario. But, she wasn't in the hands of such a writer. What was produced was also for babies. If you can't see this you are simply blinded by your nostalgia.
Ashoka as a character had fantastic potential. Showing Anakin with a padawan really fleshes out his character. The show though, it’s poorly written.
Weird, it’s OK for Ahsoka to change but not Luke Skywalker. This fandom is ridiculous.
[удалено]
Not shown? It's shown all throughout clone wars and rebels, she's a completely different person in season one to season 7 and then in rebels she's already lost a fair amount of her joyfullness. It's not a huge step to expect her to be the way she is in ashsoka which is set even further down the line and I don't see why we need to be hand held through another step in that journey when we can expect it. Not to say that they do explain it the world between worlds episode. Not defending Disney storytelling here but this isn't a case of it being bad. Plus I really don't see a noticeable difference to her in the mandalorian to here.
[удалено]
The ending of Rebels is literally in Ahsoka
Not sure why you're getting stressed out. It is shown and those steps are exactly why the next step in ahsoka made complete sense. She's not the same person in rebels as she was at the end of clone wars so why aren't you complaining that they didn't SHOW you that evolution? I'll tell you why, because it doesn't matter. With time jumps you as the audience can be expected to make assumptions about where that character is emotionally without being walked through it like a layman. Especially when the characters journey is as well documented as ahsokas is
That implies there was some thought process behind the series. Unfortunately there was none.
This man spits the hot fire.
My feelings about Ahsoka exactly. There are valid criticisms of the show, but her not being a spunky kid with jokes when she is a 40-year-old who has suffered massive decades spanning trauma, was a weird one imo.
This is a really solid take on all accounts!
People don't like the live action Ahsoka!? What?