Saturday, November 27, 2010

Star Wars: The Clone Wars - "Heroes on Both Sides"

Spoiler Level: High

Very, very nice.  This episode gives a very deep perspective to the entire war.  We've always known that Palpatine was playing both sides of the war to give rise to the Sith, but since we've always seen the story from the Republic's side, the assumption was always there that the prime motivation for the Separatists leaving the Republic was their own greed, led by the Trade Federation.

What this episode reveals puts the entire Star Wars saga in a new light-- the Separatists didn't leave the Republic out of greed, the left the Republic because they were sick of greed.  This totally explains why the Trade Federation is still a part of the Republic, and that Nute Gunray has simply gone rogue.  From the point of view of the average Separatist world, the Republic has become corrupt, manipulated by the businessmen into making sure the law always goes their way at the expense of the people.  And from what this episode showed us with the Trade Federation and Banking Clan, they're actually right.

I absolutely LOVE the Infiltator Droids.  I love the cleaning droid look, I love the combat droid look, and I love that they transform from one to the other.  Some truly awesome mecha.  Bring on the toy.

I also love the new character designs; it's nice to see Anakin finally in Jedi robes.  The battle armor makes sense while he's in the field, but not while he's on Coruscant.  I'd like it if this meant he'd actually be changing clothes depending on the situation, but since they've aged him I doubt that will happen.

And speaking of Anakain's age, a little more reading at starwars.com has made me realize that this series has never, ever been shown in chronological order.  Even the first season was jumping back and forth, and I just never noticed.  So I'd like to give a shout-out to Swashbucklingjedi, fanboyskywalker, and all the other fine folks at theforce.net message board for going to all the effort of coming up with a list to put all these episodes into chronological order.  Including the movie (and counting it as one episode), "Heroes on Both Sides" is the 55th episode aired and #54 in the known chronology to date.

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