Ahsoka

For months, I held off from watching Ahsoka. I had read the reviews, watched the snipes, gripes and story breakdowns on YouTube. I knew that the fanbase was split between diehard Filoni fans and those who've had just about enough of Disney SW. And then I set it all aside, and I watched the entire season in a two-day binge.

And the funny thing? Everybody is right about this show.

As far as negatives go, there are many. It's often stunningly poorly scripted. SW fans are usually pretty forgiving to clunky dialogue and goofy plot contrivances, but Ahsoka routinely pushes this tolerance past the limit. It feels like we're watching a hasty second draft, and not a cohesive, completed screenplay.

It's also too often poorly directed. Why would anyone allow their main actors to so often appear so lifeless, constantly folding their arms, puffing out frustrated sighs and pausing for interminably long breaks between dialogue exchanges. It's not for lack of talent - the main cast is excellent, but the direction of their work is amateurish at best.

So why a seven? Why give this sorry little show such a reasonably solid score? First, let's be honest. Disney has probably lowered our expectations. For all of Ahsoka's faults, it's light years ahead of The Book of Boba Fett, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Mandalorian Season 3. If you love SW, these can be strange times. We get a lot of content, but not a lot of very good content.

But second - and here's perhaps the most important factor to me - Ahsoka is sincere and genuine and very Star Warsy. It's a space opera. It's optimistic. It's occasionally quite rousing and fun. And while the direction and script are flawed, the visual and sound effects and musical score are virtually flawless. This FEELS like Star Wars. The LOOKS like Star Wars. This SOUNDS like Star Wars. Filoni clearly cares about this universe, and in Ahsoka, he and his crew gently begins to expand it.

Ultimately, I enjoyed Season 1 - much, much more than I thought I would. Sometimes, an earnest attempt at something great still wins the day, star warts and all. Recommended.

Firstly, I want to say that I do enjoy the series. I don't think it deserves any awards but it's fun to watch. Nor do I think it's a "masterpiece" as some have called it. Far from it.

I like all the characters but one. Syndulla. I don't like how the show portrays this character at all. How this character became a general is a mystery. The character feels that being a general she can do whatever she wants. Being a general does afford a person a great amount of latitude in many things but you simply can't do whatever you want. She has a flippant attitude and acts like a petulant child while shirking her duty. Her childish attitude caused the death of a few pilots at Seatos. She should be arrested and charged with conduct unbecoming, disobeying orders, utilizing Republic property without authorization, dereliction of duty, and involuntary manslaughter. This character is an annoyance and detracts from an otherwise decent show.

Like some others have stated I would also like a little more backstory to the characters relationships with each other. I get that the writers want to keep an air of mystery and reveal things slowly but at a certain point I am going to stop caring about the relationship dynamics and lose interest in the show. And by the way, leaving things open to audience interpretation is lazy storytelling.

Ahsoka may not the best thing from Star Wars that I've seen but it's still worth watching. I was really looking forward to this when I first read about it and the even more so after I saw the trailers. It did not disappoint! I don't consider myself a huge Star Wars fan but I'm a normal fan who does enjoy most of them. Like by most, I really liked The Mandalorian and Andor. I thought those two are some of the best things Star Wars has put out since the original trilogy. I even thought The Book of Boba Fett and Obi-Wan Kenobi were both worth watching. I don't understand most of these negative reviews, it's like most of the people writing them didn't want to like this. What were you expecting that you didn't get? Anyway, if you're a fan of Star Wars I definitely recommend you give this a try.

This is another forgettable and mediocrely-written Star Wars show by the best streaming service ever!

It is overall not as bad as Obi-Wan Kenobi and way more well-produced and well-made, but it's still a soulless show that has barely anything to offer.

In order to keep my review of the whole show short and get my points across more easily, I will just list the pros and cons and won't get into details.

So for things I liked first:

• The music is decent at first but gets kinda forgettable after a couple of episodes

• The action scenes are well-choreographed and surprisingly well-thought-out, but ultimately get dull

• The visuals and CGI is pretty good

• Ahsoka's style of fighting is pretty cool

• Sabine not being a superhero and gradually getting better but still getting hit nonetheless

• There are some setups and payoffs and things don't just magically come to aid the characters and also they don't always succeed on the first try

• The flashback episode was pretty good

• Bad guys getting a decent screen time as much as the protagonists

• Ray Stevenson

• Thrawn's intro

.... and, that's it I guess? I can't really think of other things I liked about the show other than some cool action scenes and some moments here and there. But there is really nothing to like about its characters or the writing in general.

Now the bads and the uglies:

• Dave Filoni's writing and not having other writers work with him on the show

• Ahsoka being a black void of a character and having zero personality whatsoever. She's just devoid of any characterization.

• Sabine getting more screen time and character arc than Ahsoka. Might as well call the show Sabine instead.

• Sabine's baffling decision-making and having zero plan gambling the fate of an entire galaxy over one person

• The barebone story and plot that could've even been a 3-episode mini-series

• Main characters having the biggest plot armor in recent years

• Bad guys/good guys having the clear opportunity to end each other multiple times but doing nothing

• Thrawn being wasted and turned into something even worse than a cartoonishly evil character. He is a forgettable terribly-written villain that does nothing and basically runs to his grandmas for help every 5 minutes. They did a terrible job of making him intimidating or powerful.

• The trope of bad guys having every opportunity to kill the good guys and even getting the orders to shoot but still standing around looking at each other and doing nothing. Even worse is when they do decide to shoot, they stop because the good guy said "Wait"!

• Maybe too much use of nostalgia-baiting and random name-throwing and references for its own good. It's basically all for the hardcore Star Wars fanboys to lose their mind because they name-dropped Glup --ito and now they think the show is a masterpiece because an old character had a cameo.

• Ahsoka not feeling like the main character at all and having less and less screen time every episode

• Ahsoka having a semblance of a character arc which turns her into a worse character with having a more baffling mentality of actually agreeing with Sabine's stupid choices

• Introducing the element of witchcraft which makes it feel less like Star Wars. I understand that the Jedi are basically space wizards. But this is just too un-Star Wars-y, and feels like they don't know how to make interesting stories with Star Wars anymore, so they resort to throwing every genre at it.

• The story is more like a video game, especially in the finale, because there isn't much meat to the story so they have to resort to video game storytelling and level design instead of actual good writing

• Forgettable dialogue and sometimes even childish

• The pacing is pretty bad especially in the beginning with many pointless drawn-out scenes where characters just stare and do nothing

• Too many action scenes in the second half of the season that get boring and dull after a while

• No tension whatsoever. There are no stakes because you know the outcome every time and an action scene without any tension of stakes is a boring one.

• Not giving a good characterization to the main protagonists, or a reason as to why the audience should care about them for those who haven't seen the animated shows.

• Uninteresting story a show overall since you don't care about any of the characters.

• Unfinished storylines and plot when the show is advertised as a mini-series. So basically the nothing sandwich of a story also didn't have a conclusion.

• Did I forget to mention how awful and forgettable the characters are and how terribly written they are?

These are the problems I can think of right now. I'm sure if I got into details I would remember more problems I had with it, and the review would be 5 times bigger than this.

But overall, I'm not sure what the point of this was. Basically, everything from this show is forgettable and I feel like I'm being generous with giving it a 6. I do not care about the characters especially Ahsoka herself and I'm just observing them from afar and not caring about them at all. The plot is really thin and how it unfolds and things happen is only because of the stupid decisions Sabine makes. The only interesting and intriguing character is Baylan Skoll which is all because of Ray Stevenson's acting. But they waste him and his character so badly too.

I understand if they're trying to prepare a new trilogy of movies maybe? Or a season 2. But this was the worst way to go at it, especially since they botched the main bad guy from the start by making him as unintimidating as possible as if it was on purpose. They really dropped the ball with Thrawn.

I'm not sure what the point was, but as long as Disney isn't willing to hire actual professional writers who know what they're doing, this is what we're gonna get with the shows and the movies. The shows apart from Andor have been nothing sandwich after nothing sandwich with barely any story to them. Basically, drop some references and names here and there and show some cool action scenes, bring back old actors from the prequel trilogy and utilize them as much as you can, and nostalgia-bait really hard so fans would lose their minds as they just witnessed a masterpiece because there was a cameo. Also don't forget to make the most forgettable and black holes of characters you've ever seen. Congratulations, you just made a $100M Star Wars show that will definitely turn a profit and be called an actual good show by the fanboys.

I'm a big fan of the Clone Wars and Rebels animated series so I was doing backflips when I heard about a live action series based on the characters.

Overall, the casting is good and where Rebels left off, the series has a strong premise. The production design is all right (not quite as good as Andor's though) and the lightsaber fights and well choreographed.

The writing is where it's falling down. Dave Filoni has to take the blame since he wrote every episode and clearly needs a writing staff. Perhaps he's spent too much time writing for five year olds, because he is writing the characters as too bland and not grownup enough, and not thinking some things through sufficiently.

Take Ahoska for example. She's being written as too zen and serene, without an inner conflict that a lead character needs. She is being written as an Obi-Wan-ish mentor figure, but the series is named for her, so why isn't she written as the lead character, with inner conflict and complexity to match?

Maybe the true lead is a character for whom Ahsoka is the mentor? That could be Sabine or Ezra. But Sabine is the worst-written character of all. She must be pushing 30 by now, yet she still acts like a rebellious adolescent.

And don't get me started on "everyone is Force sensitive." It's far too late in the game to retcon Star Wars like this. If it only was a matter of trying to get a little telekinesis or mind control, it would be as common as superpowers are on The Boys, with societal upheaval like you see on that show.

Why doesn't Jabba the Hutt have a minion who can influence rivals in negotiations? Why aren't there background characters who can levitate a glass from across the table, or take an unusually large leap to avoid a mud puddle in the street? We'd have been seeing this all the time long before now. They just need to drop it.

Sabine is being retconned with the Force so she can serve as an apprentice figure to Ahsoka but Ezra is the more natural apprentice. But I'm no happier at his writing.

Okay let's recap here. He made a huge sacrifice while still a teenager to save his friends and the galaxy from Thrawn. He's spent a decade on a bleak planet, surrounded by enemies, with only some turtle people as companions. He has no reason to believe he will ever be rescued.

Then Sabine shows up and effectively invalidates his sacrifice. How does he respond? Oh hi Sabine, nice to see you. That's ALL? He isn't overjoyed to be rescued while at the same time, infuriated that the last ten years were all in vain? Why isn't Ahsoka equally angry at Sabine? Why is Sabine being written as an unstable moron?

It's like Filoni is scared to show the "grownups" being angry at each other because it would upset the presumably childlike audience. If you assume the audience is largely grownups, having conflict and drama is not only all right, it's necessary so we won't all doze off.

Since this series isn't yet over and hopefully won't be for a few years, I may be back to edit this review later on. Hopefully to bump up the score to an 8 or 9 because the writing has improved. Fingers crossed for season 2.