Star Wars Month 2 - The Mandalorian Season 1 Episodes 5-6

We’re back with our 3^rd look at season 1 of the Mandalorian, it’s been a pretty strong show thusfar, can it continue?

Star Wars Month 2 - The Clone Wars Season 7 Arc 2 - Ahsoka

 It’s Star Wars Month

The rest of the 8 episodes of this series focus around the Journey of Ahsoka Tano after leaving the Jedi Order back in season 5. Her appearance as Fulcrum in Star Wars Rebels showed that she survived order 66, and has a new pair of lightsabres, white. The explanation for those came in the Ahsoka Novel, which stated that she’d won a battle with an inquisitor, unarmed, I might add.

The book also I believe introduced the concept that a sith lightsaber is red because the Khyber crystal undergoes a process known as bleeding, where you channel your hatred into it, I believe there may also be murder involved. This has made its way into the comics, in one of the recent Darth Vader runs, but I don’t think Japan got that memo in Visions. Now, the canonicity of the novel is not necessarily set in stone, as the final story arc will contradict its opening but I choose to believe until I hear otherwise that only the beginning isn’t canon and what happens from there lines up with the show.

They did this again, contradicting the original Caleb Dume origin from Greg Weisman’s Kanan comic when he shows up in the Bad Batch. But back on topic, one thing you could see from the Rebels s2 finale was that Ahsoka and Darth Maul had history. And novel implied that Ahsoka was on Mandalore at the time of Order-66 and had just beaten Maul. Now some of this has been retconned by the upcoming episodes but the core ideas are still there.

We also have some fallout on Maul’s side, after his ascension to the Throne of Mandalore, Bo-Katan and several other prominent members of Deathwatch abandoned him, forming a splinter cell of their own. This 4-parter begins the setup that will lead to the siege of Mandalore and the fallout there.

Star Wars Month 2 - The Mandalorian Season 1 Episodes 3-4

It’s Star Wars Month 2

We continue with the Mandalorian, what do the relics of the Empire want with a force-sensitive child? Let’s dig into episodes 3-4 and find out.

Star Wars Month 2 - The Clone Wars Season 7 Arc 1 - The Bad Batch

It’s Star Wars Month 2

One of my reviews from the original Star Wars Month was The Clone Wars. Whilst season 5 had a good ending and season 6 sewed a few seeds for Revenge of the Sith, there were definitely some loose ends that could be picked up on. There were a few more stories that were in production but not completed, but were released as lost stories online.

There were 2 main stories released as such, the Crisis on Utapau, featuring the location where Obi-Wan fought Grievous in revenge of the Sith, featuring the debut of Anakin’s revised hairstyle to match the aforementioned film and was the first time I’m aware of that they mentioned the plan to harvest Khyber Crystals, something that’s referenced repeatedly now. The other was the Bad Batch, which we’re going to cover as it was remastered for the Disney+ Season.

Other works related of note include Son of Dathomir which sees the revelation that Darth Maul is in fact the son of Mother Talzin and his capture at the end of the s5 episode Lawless was part of plan to finally end her, which unfortunately does happen. Something else that happens is Maul’s crime syndicate starts backing out after facing repeated separatist attacks, not sure if that part’s still canon given what happens in his story this season.

Another is Dark Disciple, which was released as a novel, probably would’ve been the show’s most ambitious storyline featuring another attempt to assassinate Count Dooku by Asajj Ventress, this time with Jedi Quilan Vos. Ventress dies in this storyline although there was some ambiguity there if they wanted to bring her back.

As for Mandalore, a lot of it was up in the air, but it was revealed in the Ahsoka novel, and hinted at during Rebels that Ahsoka was directly involved in a Siege of Mandalore by the Republic and we find out in Rebels that she saw Anakin not long before the events of the film. Ahsoka’s future in the Clone Wars was less certain, with one rough-cut animated scene of her crashing a speeder bike.

OK, but let’s get to business, I don’t know what the rights deal was with Cartoon Network, who originally hosted the show but evidently, it’s been resolved as all of The Clone Wars is available on Disney+, and, exclusive to that streaming service, a final season of 12 episodes to cap off the show’s run. 12 episodes is not massive so a few stories that were planned still didn’t make the cut. Cad Bane, a long-running antagonist of the show, wouldn’t show up again until The Bad Batch spinoff show. There was an episode planned with him and Boba Fett. Plus, we aren’t getting adaptations of Son of Dathomir or Dark Disciple. Crisis on Utapau will also remain in its current form, no upgrade for that one.

Were these episodes always planned out to be the way they were, I don’t know. Maul’s control over the underworld post the war was only ever established in Solo and I think that may have caused them to backpedal on Maul’s underworld crumbling like it was doing in Son on Dathomir. But one episode that was planned from the beginning was The Bad Batch, why did this episode get a remaster, well because it has rampant spinoff potential. As of writing this, The Bad Batch has had one season and has been renewed for a second. It’s actually occupying a fairly unique period in Star Wars history, the stage of transition between the Republic and the Empire. Most stories in this period begin with the Empire fully realised.

But I’ve just spent a whole page of my review with preamble and usually this bit is only a line or two, let’s take a look at the first of these stories and see how Star Wars bids farewell to the Clone Wars for the third time.

Star Wars Month 2 - The Mandalorian Season 1 Episodes 1-2

It’s Star Wars Month 2

With the launch of Disney Plus just shy of 2 years ago, there’s been a lot of Star Wars content dropped for the platform. We’ll be looking at 2 of the primary series they’ve done as well as one of the biggest Star Wars games that isn’t an MMO.

So let’s start with what’s arguably the most popular of the Star Wars series so far, the Mandalorian. 

Set between the times of the main and sequel trilogies, we get to explore a time not heavily covered by anything other than expansion comics. This gives them a lot of free reign and with Dave Filoni at the helm, you know that’ll be put to use, let’s take a look at episodes 1 and 2 of season 1 and see where it takes us.

A Strange Halloween 4 - The New Mutants

A chance mutation causes you pain,

Eliminating all that you seek to gain,

Starting over becomes a must,

But not all around are folks you can trust

In likeminded people you might find your home,

A crew each with their own sins to atone,

But horrors abound like you wouldn’t believe,

Haunting your nightmares without a reprieve

It’s time to come face-to-face with your fear,

Else you friends won’t make it far from here,

Your nightmares made flesh or try to deceive,

It’s a Strange Halloween on All Hallows Eve

It’s time to look at The New Mutants, the final film from the Fox X-men line. It’s an X-men film that had a pretty troubled production. The idea was initially pitched in 2014, and was filmed in 2017, Professor X was originally going to be in this but was written out alongside various other x-men being slated to make an appearance, though these ideas were ultimately dropped. Fox was expecting for the film to undergo substantial reshoots, getting the film pushed back from its initial 2018 release date. But their efforts were delayed by the Disney-Fox acquisition and by the time Disney had completed their takeover, reshoots were no longer an option as the young cast had aged out of the roles. Still, Disney wasn’t exactly impressed with the product and did some work to increase the horror tone, which was more in-line with the original vision of writer/director Josh Boone.

Still, at this point the film had not been fully edited, and Boone was busy working on a Steven King adaptation, so he brought on editor Andrew Buckland to finish the film. The film was set to be released in March 2020 but a little thing known as COVID-19 saw it delayed yet again to August. Even then, this was Disney knowing this wasn’t going to be successful and cutting their losses.

And they may have been right, the film got a pretty bad 35% Rating on Rotten Tomatoes and whilst it may have more outside of a pandemic, it made only $47m on it’s near $80m budget. Don’t think it would’ve been that successful either way, so let’s take a look and see what I thought…

A Strange Halloween - Addams Family Values

A family of quite a disturbing design,

Perturbing, cooky and hardly benign,

But their status quo is about to change,

A baby can make things really deranged

Their family values are put to test

As they show their worst and their best

The Addams’ family film yet to be seen

Will be covered next on a Strange Halloween

This took a trip to a second-hand store to get a copy of, it was Netflix last year but no such luck this year  just the original and the animated one (note: it came back onto Netflix just days after I initially wrote this review - talk about bad timing).

Anyway, Addams Family Values is the sequel to the 1991 film. It released in 1993, I don’t have a lot to say about its production, only that regrettably the signs of Raul Julia’s ill health that would eventually lead to his death had already begun to show at this point. The film had a $47m budget, hoping to capture the same success the first one had but it wasn’t to be, the film floundered making only $48.1m back at the box office. That said, the critical rating was slightly higher than its predecessor. Did the film work for me, well let’s take a look?