The picture above is likely one of the solely pictures of Ahsoka Tano in the sixth episode of Star Wars: Ahsoka. After this week’s installment’s opening scene, Rosario Dawson is rarely seen once more. The different characters point out Ahsoka a handful of occasions, however past exchanging a couple strains of dialogue together with her droid Huyang, she is a whole non-factor on this episode.
That follows Episode 5 of Ahsoka, “Shadow Warrior,” during which most of the collection’ predominant characters aside from Ahsoka have been absent. In that installment, Ahsoka is transported to a mysterious dimension the place she encounters her outdated (and lifeless) former Jedi Master, Anakin Skywalker. Although “Shadow Warrior” included a few cutaways to Hera’s seek for Ahsoka, what was going on with the remainder of the forged — together with Sabine Wren, Baylan Skoll, Shin Hati, and Morgan Elsbeth — was left completely unknown.
In a vacuum, these have been among the many stronger episodes of Ahsoka to this point. But that’s a part of the issue; every particular person episode feels prefer it exists in a vacuum, separate and distinct from the others within the collection. Even when fascinating issues occur on Ahsoka — and this episode featured tons of enjoyable, quirky Star Wars textural particulars just like the graveyard of area whale bones and the large canine alien known as a “howler” that Sabine strikes up a friendship with — the present itself is so glacially paced that it’s unattainable to get invested in its story. And a lot of the pacing points, not solely on Ahsoka however a number of different latest Star Wars Disney+ collection, have shared this similar problem: A weird and baffling lack of cross-cutting and parallel enhancing.
READ MORE: Star Wars: Ahsoka Is Focused on the Wrong Character
Cross-cutting is likely one of the oldest movie enhancing strategies. It was pioneered by silent filmmakers like D.W. Griffith, who acknowledged that chopping between two totally different actions going down in two separate places created the impression within the viewers’s thoughts that the 2 separate sequences have been occurring concurrently (i.e. they have been occurring “parallel” to 1 one other).
Early movie pioneers additionally acknowledged that chopping forwards and backwards between two parallel incidents was a nice technique to generate rigidity and suspense. Instead of simply exhibiting, say, a lady being tied to a practice monitor by a mustache-twirling villain, you chop from the lady being tied to the tracks to the practice conductor asleep on the controls to the hero racing on horseback to the rescue. Will the lady break away? Will the conductor get up in time to hit the brakes? Will the hero make it to the lady earlier than the practice? Cross-cutting retains you invested in all of these questions, and retains you engaged in all three sequences.
This type of enhancing not solely enhances plot, it could actually deepen a movie’s themes and concepts, by creating connections between characters, locations, and ideas through juxtaposition. In the hypothetical instance of the stereotypical silent film plot of a damsel tied to coach tracks: Imagine if the hero racing to the rescue had been a practice conductor however was fired from his job for protesting his employer’s poor work circumstances. Cutting from him to the practice conductor asleep on the wheel would emphasize the dichotomy between the hero’s courageous deeds and the railroad firm’s negligent enterprise practices. These are fundamental ideas, however they’ve labored their near-subliminal magic on audiences for over 100 years.
But for causes I can’t perceive, the Disney+ Star Wars collection appear more and more uninterested on this elementary storytelling approach. Think of The Book of Boba Fett, the place all the present and its ongoing plot about Boba Fett’s rise to energy on Tatooine was interrupted for a whole episode the place the Mandalorian, Din Djarin, instantly turned the main target as he tracked down his Mandalorian sect, fought over the Darksaber, and debated whether or not to retrieve his former companion Grogu from the Jedi Temple the place he was studying the methods of the Force. Book of Boba Fett didn’t add Mando to its mixture of ongoing tales; it briefly changed its ongoing mixture of tales with Mando’s when he confirmed up. (Boba Fett actor Temuera Morrison later stated it was “painful” to look at his character get sidelined on his personal present.)
Mando’s subplot on The Book of Boba Fett was particularly unusual as a result of it appeared purposefully designed to keep away from much more cross-cutting on The Mandalorian Season 3. That present’s second season finale left ended with a main cliffhanger: Grogu leaves Mando to coach with Luke Skywalker on the Jedi Temple. The Mandalorian Season 3 may have then adopted Mando and Grogu in parallel for a whereas, chopping between their separate lives to point out why they wanted one another, resulting in an emotional, eventual reunion. Instead, it shortly introduced them again collectively on The Book of Boba Fett, earlier than Season 3 even started.
These reveals’ frustratingly straight-forward plot constructions are notably unusual given the truth that nice parallel enhancing has been a part of Star Wars’ core DNA for many years. Think of The Empire Strikes Back, the place the narrative splinters the core group of heroes and sends them off on separate quests; Luke and R2-D2 go to Dagobah to coach with Yoda, whereas Han, Leia, Chewbacca, and C-3PO should escape Imperial forces and journey to Cloud City for refuge.
Empire repeatedly bounces forwards and backwards between the 2 parallel tales; Luke and his coaching, Han and Leia on the run, falling in love. As Darth Vader closes in on Han and Leia, the chopping will increase and so does the stress: Will Luke depart his Jedi coaching prematurely simply to assist his associates? Will he make it again in time to save lots of them in any respect? Now think about how the film would play out with out cross-cutting; if Empire had adopted solely Luke and Yoda for half-hour, after which lower over to Han and Leia for the subsequent half-hour.
If you rearranged The Empire Strikes Back in that means, it will nonetheless comprise all the identical scenes, all the identical witty dialogue, all the identical memorable character beats. But the drama, the anxiousness, the suspense could be dissipated. It could be a completely totally different and distinctly inferior expertise.
The folks making these Star Wars reveals are proficient, skilled artists; they usually beforehand made the excellent early seasons of The Mandalorian. So I’ve to imagine solely exhibiting Ahsoka one week after which solely exhibiting Sabine the subsequent is a deliberate stylistic selection — only one whose objective I can’t discern.
When The Mandalorian Season 3 concluded, I wrote a piece about how the season wasn’t essentially unhealthy, nevertheless it was dominated by inventive selections that I discovered weird and complicated — and with solely two episodes left of Ahsoka, I really feel a lot the identical means. There are elements of this present which might be actually spectacular; the manufacturing and character design are beautiful, and I’m intrigued by its coven of evil Force witches, even when I largely don’t perceive the place they got here from or what they need.
And but as soon as once more, my predominant response to a Star Wars present, week after week, is bewilderment. Ahsoka episodes are usually solely 30-40 minutes, and but with out cross-cutting they usually really feel twice that size. These enhancing ideas should not novel; cross-cutting was invented a very long time in the past. Just not, apparently, in a galaxy far, distant.
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