Latest / Aggressive Negotiations: A Star Wars Podcast / Issue 355: Metamorphosis

Transcript

Issue 355: Metamorphosis · Aggressive Negotiations: A Star Wars Podcast

• 0:00
  I'm going to regret this. Welcome to the ned Palty. Hi, this
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  is Nick and Astasu, story editor on Star Wars, The Clone Wars and
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  Star Wars Bad Batch, and you are listening to aggressive negotiations. Indeed,
• 0:21
  welcome to aggressive Negotiations your Star Wars podcast here on the Nerd Party Network that
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  explores all of the different aspects angles, facets, and every other way you
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  want to say it about the deep, deep dive topics of Star Wars.
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  I am John Mills, and I am pleased to be joined this week as
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  usual by my esteemed friend and colleague, Jedi Master Matthew Rushing. Matt are
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  you ready to revisit a Beastie from the past in today's episode of the Bad
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  Batch as we continue our season two rewatch. You know, I just love
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  as we've been walking through this this series here in season two and just how
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  many of the episodes have allusions to favorite films and the genres that we all
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  love. And this one it does not leave you hanging. It gives you.
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  It gives you some of the same vibes that you loved in films like
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  Alien or Aliens or Promethe. Well not Prometheus, because that movie gave me,
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  Yeah, Alien Covenant better, So you know, it's it's it's just
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  again, It's it's one of those places where we've talked about multiple times here
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  on this show. But that was the beauty of the Clone Wars was picking
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  up that idea that we can do many different types of stories. And one
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  of the most outlandish stories John that we got in the Clone Wars had to
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  be the Zillobeast episode where we pulled out Filoni's love of Godzilla and had a
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  Godzilla monster basically running rampage all over chorus on it. And so I think
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  yes, and of course I think we both agree that they nailed that episode,
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  and so then to have that come back was genius because it was something
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  where at the very end of that episode there was the Stinger with Palpatine,
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  and I really really enjoy that. Here with the Bad Batch, we're picking
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  up that story and not only are we running with it, but this leads
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  us into a whole new direction to which we are like, this is the
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  episode where we meet our incredibly main villain for the series. This is where
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  we first go to Mount Tantis. You know, this is where all of
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  that track starts to get laid it's going to take us to the end of
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  the series, and so you know, to be able to have that all
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  happen here in this episode. Just a joy to re watch again. And
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  if anybody has any question what we're on is we're on the episode Metamorphosis from
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  season two of The Bad Batch. I share Matt's excitement with this because Matt,
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  like you said, this brings back Zillobeast where we had a Godzilla episode
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  basically of the Clone Wars, and this puts the Batch into alien territory.
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  There's even down to the noises and the drop downs and the jump scares and
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  all of those sorts of things. I mean, the gooey liquids on things,
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  yes, left everywhere, And like you said, I think let's just
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  go on and embrace it right away. The idea of how Palpatine was constructing
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  this from before even becoming Supreme Chancellor and then Emperor, that this was all
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  in motion, and since this goes back to from before he was emperor,
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  it shows that he had all like there was never any escape from Palpatine.
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  He was in inevitability to take everything over and you know we can we can
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  table sort of the idea of like talking about how no matter what, he
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  was setting up the Sith for success and why he was reticent to do what
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  Sith should have done, and you know he takes a shortcut with Douku all
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  of that stuff. But like in terms of meeting Hemlock, that is the
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  cap or to the episode. But let's rewind it. When you saw that
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  we had zil Obese Junior, what was your reaction like the first time you
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  saw you saw this episode and he saw Zillobiest Junior, what was your reaction
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  like? Because mine might not be what you expect, but I'm curious to
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  know, like, how did you take that when you first saw it on
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  screen? I mean, yeah, I would I would say utter delight and
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  glee for me when I realized that that's what we were doing in this episode,
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  you know, the first drop down moment and you're like, oh,
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  that's what that has to be the same thing, right, And then of
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  course the realization, you know, as it grows, that it is.
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  And I was just so excited that we weren't going to leave that, you
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  know, a dangling thread from the Clone Wars that we were going to pick
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  up on that. And then now retrospectively seeing how they use that to tie
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  in everything else that this series is, you know, just full steam ahead
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  now on season three. It's great. It's great. So you said that
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  it wasn't necessarily what i'd expect. Whatever, what for you? What was
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  it? I will be completely honest that when Little Zillobe's junior showed up,
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  it was weird because I refuse to believe what I was seeing for a second
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  where I was like, no, that can't be like I thought it was
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  just like a coincidence of design. I was like, no, can't be.
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  And it wasn't until I saw the thing eat Wreckers Staff where I went,
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  oh, my gosh, it really is like it was one of delight.
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  But it was a delayed reaction because I'm so used to franchises refusing to
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  quote unquote give that connection to a previous sort of thing, right right,
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  It's viewed as ghosh in some franchises, Oh well, no, we'll do
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  something like that, but not the thing from then and to tie it together
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  like that and do exactly what a sequel series or movie should do, which
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  is expand the universe and carry on and then give the longtime fans a little
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  nugget. If you've never watched Clone Wars, you can still plug into this
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  because they give you the information where it's like, oh my gosh, this
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  is a thing it ran while on Chorussant and oh my gosh, Palpatine was
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  doing this before he even became emperor. But if we've seen it, it's
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  that love mark that says the universe, like the universe we created before,
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  didn't go away. This is the same universe we were in. And so
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  that that was sort of like my delayed reaction because I'm just not used to
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  franchises being that thoughtful. Is that the right word? That thoughtful about those
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  of us who have been there for a while. Yeah, I mean you
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  think back actually too when the next generation started at Star Trek, right,
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  and they didn't want and Roddenberry did not want to touch anything from the original
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  series, you know, and that loosened up over time. But that's one
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  of those places where that absolutely happened, and so we as fans kind of
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  came to expect that they, you know, these things would shy away from
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  And I think that's the beauty of when of Star Wars in general, is
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  that Or was never afraid to have these things connect. In fact, that's
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  what it was all about, because it was one interconnected story. And I
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  think, you know, Filoni absolutely learned that that when you can bring in
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  something that has already been utilized or used or hinted at, go ahead and
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  do that because it's okay, it's okay to do that, and it makes
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  for a much more fun story to be able to watch, you know.
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  And I mean, but I think that's the thing that also makes this episode
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  so interesting, because you know, it picks up where we left off basically
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  from the last episode where they've escaped that planet, and now the repercussions with
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  Sid are happening. You can see that it has progressed that not only are
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  we not trusting Sid, but we're fine. We're trying to find a way
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  to escape under Sid's thumb now and to me, then the way that she's
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  dealing with the clones makes things feel even more foreboding for them when Tech suggests
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  maybe we can find a diplomatic way out of this. We do this one
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  last job and then we can get out, you know. And of course,
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  you know, like Michael Corleone, they'll find that every time I think
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  I'm out, they keep pulling me back in, and so I that that's
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  another place where this series is starting to slowly pick up in some ways in
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  serialization of itself. And even though the episodes are still like this is one
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  I could just pop in at any point, it does make for a joyful
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  experience of watching more quickly if you were to watch three, four or five
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  episodes at a time, it really plays together so well. Well, I
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  would say that I'm glad you point out the Sid thing because Rhea Peerlman's vocal
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  performance here, or how she's directed, how she performs it, there's more,
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  there's a more sinister edge to Sid's yes moment here that really is like
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  she suddenly seems a little more and I think that there's even some careful choices
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  with camera positioning and also her eyes and her body movements. Really, all
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  of a sudden, Sid is no longer this sort of quasi comical, you
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  know, low level crime boss or not even crime boss, but like low
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  level thug sort of thing. Now Sid really is becoming sort of scary.
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  Yes, that might seem like it's overstating it, but like really, in
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  that moment, it's it's unsettling, and Tech is the one who puts the
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  cherry on top, saying maybe there's a diplomatic way out of this. Like
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  but also there's still humor in that moment because one of the things I keyed
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  on the first time I watch it and when I watch it this time is
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  I love how you know, I'll give you thirty percent. That's our standard
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  thing, thirty five percent. And if you if you pay attention to Wreckor
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  he perks up, he's like, yeah, that's a great like he has
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  a smile, He's like, yeah, that's a great deal. And it's
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  just like fine, forty percent and Wreckers are ready to say okay, and
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  it's like it's Hunter and Tech that are like no, no, no,
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  no, no no, we got to have a real, real like that's
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  our usual percentage basically. But that but that's the beautiful thing is that that's
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  a character moment that you get if you're paying attention. Yes, and it's
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  just on the side of the screen records right to just shake you know,
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  he's like Kramer negotiating over the coffee burn right or the cigarettes. He just
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  he'll go right in and shake the hand immediately sort of thing. Because that's
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  not Wreckers he's not the brains the operation sort of thing. Yeah, so
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  yeah, I really like that you point out sid because that is a very,
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  very worthwhile sort of thing to dwell on here, because, like you
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  said, this is a turning point. Hemlock coming in, everything starts to
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  feel a little what's the word I'm looking for. It feels a little more
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  foreboding than before. I think the interesting thing about Hemlock as a character,
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  and I'd be interested to know, you know, from the animator's perspectives,
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  the writer's perspective, if you know, somebody like a Hannibal was a inspiration
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  for him, because just the way he speaks, it's so calm and so
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  creepy, you know, and the things that he's doing are so evil,
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  right, they're Hannibal level type of evil. In fact, you know,
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  even at the beginning of the episode, you know, we get a little
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  bit of a taste of exactly what he's trying to do and what Palpatine wants
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  of him, when Naalasa says, you know, I know what the Emperor
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  wants and I don't want to be a part of it, and you start
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  to get this subtle picture of of course it's by the end of the episode
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  when they say the best way to control Nalissa is with the young girl,
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  and it's like, oh, okay, somehow she means something to all this.
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  So yeah, them bringing in Hemlock lets you know that everything in this
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  series is changing. Again. We've talked about that a bunch in this season,
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  but this season is continually kind of slowly citing sliding into a different level
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  of hell for these characters. And I really appreciate again by bringing him in,
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  you ramp everything up. You not only ramp everything up for the Batch,
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  but you ramp everything up for the galaxy itself and what the Empire is
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  doing behind the scenes. Well, there's also I think with Hemlock there's a
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  there's a he's a a less honorable Thron, if that makes sense. Yeahrawn,
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  Ye, Thrawn is evil. Thron is a bad guy, but I
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  can respect him. I don't agree with him and how he gets to certain
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  things, but I'm like, okay, I can I can sort of figure
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  out how thought Thron is coming at things. Hemlock's unsettling because his delivery is
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  similar to Thron's. But there's something And I'll give the animators, I'll give
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  the editors everything that the the credit for the way they light his eyes,
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  the way that they you know, they make him look very like the way
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  that they did with the Emperor, to evoke the old school you know,
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  film noir, you know, the the light highlights my eyes sort of thing,
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  so the rest of my face is shadowy. It's very un settling to
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  look at. But he has this menace about him that maybe it's maybe it's
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  my old school fanboy sort of thing that Thron never strikes me as menacing in
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  this same way, mainly because I just I think he's a delight, you
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  know, like I don't root for Thron, but at the same time,
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  Braun gives me that sort of like little jolt ors. Hemlock is, like
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  you said, that's that Hannibal Hannibal Lecter type of character. Is like,
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  eh, I don't want to spend a lot of time with this guy.
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  He's kind of freaking me out here. Well, I think it's because Thron
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  is after something, right, you know, he is after something that means
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  something to him, that's important to him. He has a code, you
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  know, and I think that's what makes him interesting, whereas Hemlock is the
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  completely a moral character who delight in creating these aberrations of evil, right that
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  that's who this character is. He he's so evil that he delights in evil,
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  and that's what makes him terrifying. And again, I think you know
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  the thought process that the Empire is doing these experiments on something like the Zillobast,
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  that they've already upgraded this Syllo beast, and that's why the blasters had
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  no effect on it. You know that they've already been working on this is
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  very terrifying. And then the fact that you have the last Comino ins here
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  on this planet that we don't have a name for yet, we don't know
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  where this is, and they're working on something that terrifies Nallaissa is just great.
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  It's such good setup for the series. Well, it escalates Palpatine.
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  It makes Palpatine more frightening because much like over time, when you grow up
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  and you watch Star Wars repeatedly and Luke always blows up the Death Star,
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  the true horror of what the Death Star is sort of gets lost on you
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  over time. Brass tacks right there, the Death Star just becomes a cool
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  thing. It's like, oh, it can blow up planets, and it's
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  like that's a really massively terrifying sort of instrument when you really think about it
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  for a second, and then having these programs actually elevates how terrifying the Death
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  Star is, where you go, oh, oh, wait a minute,
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  no, the Palpatine isn't a mustache twirling villain. He's pure evil. Like
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  these are people who are working for him. They're delivering these things to him
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  because they view him as giving something back to them that they want. And
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  it's that makes the all of these characters even more intriguing, and it makes
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  vaderah more terrifying because it's like, oh, wow, Anakin, you really
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  cast in with a bad crowd here, Like, wow, you're It makes
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  Vader evil again instead of an antihero sort of thing. Makes Vader truly evil
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  in this phase, just by having people like Hemlock and or the storyline,
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  but additionally with the Empire. I really thought about it this time as I
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  was watching it, because it's I think in this episode it's the easiest thing
• 18:44
  to sleep on, but it is a very important accent point. Is the
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  townsfolk who were witnesses to this. There's no oh yes, there's no official
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  denial, there's no cover story these people are disappeared. Oh yeah, their
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  only crime is living where a thing happened that the Empire doesn't want people knowing
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  about. Yes. And what's interesting is the leader of the commandos that goes
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  in and gets all of the people. A lot of credit to the way
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  they animate it in the shot selection because you see him sag a little bit
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  and you can it gives enough room for you to look at it and say
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  to yourself, he is he experiencing some sort of regret right now or some
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  sort of like what's going on? Which, then, not to foreshadow too
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  much, ties into something that happens in the third season where the leader of
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  a commando squad has a moment to ask himself what are we doing here?
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  Like, well, why are we doing this? And so I think that's
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  maybe I'm reading too much into the moment, but I just see that horrible
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  thing happening, and it's like that that's the true evil of something like the
• 20:07
  Empire. It's easy for us to be like, oh, well, the
• 20:08
  Republic was also disorganized, and the Republic also abused their power. The Republic
• 20:12
  was also corrupt. Yeah, but so far as I know, the Republic
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  didn't send troops out to disappear a town because they saw something. You know,
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  like there's a core difference right there. That's a very important difference.
• 20:27
  No, I think you're one hundred percent right in that, and I'm very
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  glad that you brought it up, because it's something that I thought about as
• 20:37
  I was watching the episode, which was, you know, they're going to
• 20:48
  blame what happened on Jetta to the Senate as a mining accident, and then
• 20:56
  we're going to get you know, of course in in Star Wars, where
• 21:02
  the Senate has finally officially been disbanded, and you know what my guess is
• 21:07
  is that between what happens on Jetta and then that happening there, there have
• 21:15
  been too many senators raising alarms and the Emperor is like, you know what,
• 21:22
  I don't need to deal with this anymore. I got a planet destroying
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  machine. I'm just gonna put the governors in charge. I don't need the
• 21:29
  Senate anymore. And so you see these ways in which the Empire is doing
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  these things, and here, like you said, this is a remote system.
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  It seems like it's not in the way of anything. And so to
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  disappear the people on this planet will mean nothing to no one other than the
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  people that were there, and so the fact that they're already taking these measures
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  is terrifying. It's it's the same kind of thing where, you know,
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  there was the mining accident that happened on and Or's planet that he was originally
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  from Canari, and it destroyed the entire planet like it ruined it for life,
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  and so you know, and nobody cared, and so this is just
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  one more place where the insidious nature of the Empire is creeping in, slowly
• 22:30
  but surely everywhere. And all of these episodes in this season have really been
• 22:36
  about building to that, right, to getting us to a place where are
• 22:42
  good people going to do nothing or are they going to do something? Yeah?
• 22:49
  You know, it's actually it's it's interesting too in the sense that this
• 22:53
  is where bad Batch continues to set itself apart. It would be too easy
• 22:59
  for a show like this simply to say, ah, you know, it's
• 23:02
  the A team but with clones and we'll just tell a different story every week.
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  Instead, this show has the courage to start stitching things together and say,
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  no, you know what, we're part of a larger hole. And
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  what it reminds me of in all honesty is sort of what happened with Rebels,
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  only there seems to be a little more intent from the outset with the
• 23:22
  bad Batch, almost like you know, everybody, everybody took a lesson to
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  heart from Rebels, because Rebels started out as sort of like that episodic We're
• 23:30
  just gonna have a different adventure every season, and this is blah blahble and
• 23:33
  then it ties into the larger narrative. I think bad Batch ties in earlier
• 23:38
  and I know this is a really tortured way to get around to it,
• 23:41
  but basically from the beginning, but now it ramps it up even more.
• 23:48
  At this point in the second season, bad Batch has embraced being part of
• 23:53
  that larger narrative instead of just saying, look, we know you want some
• 23:57
  Star Wars, so we're just going to give you a show. Oh and
• 24:00
  you're going to have adventures every week and here you go. You you know
• 24:03
  how many franchises do we know where they basically say here you go fans,
• 24:07
  yeah, yeah, yeah, we know you like the armor and stuff like
• 24:08
  that. Well, we'll just keep churning this out till people stop watching it.
• 24:11
  Instead, there's a sense of intent and purpose to the bad batch,
• 24:15
  right, So that makes you excited for every week. No, I mean,
• 24:19
  I think you're completely right in that. I think to kind of call
• 24:25
  out, and not in a bad way, but just to say, yeah,
• 24:27
  I think that's kind of where Rebels started. And it was not on
• 24:34
  the intent of the creators. It was basically the intent of Disney, right.
• 24:41
  They just wanted something as quickly as possible out there, and instead of
• 24:45
  getting caught in that, you know, somebody like Filony intentionally persevered to make
• 24:56
  sure that it was a show that mattered in the end. And I think
• 25:00
  that's the thing that's the difference, Right, you're intentionally making sure that you're
• 25:06
  not losing yourself and just doing something to do something. Yeah, just like
• 25:14
  there's a reason for people to reach out to you online and maybe you can
• 25:17
  tell them where they can find you. Well, you can find me all
• 25:18
  over social media under the name Matt Rushing zero two. You can also find
• 25:22
  me here on the network on a show called owl Post. I did that
• 25:26
  with Drea Kaufman. We talked about every single chapter of the Harry Potter series,
• 25:30
  one chapter a time. You can also find me over on the TFM
• 25:34
  network talking about a bunch of different things. One is in the six or
• 25:38
  two Club, where I'm talking about lots of franchises that we love. John
• 25:42
  Mills is a frequent guest there, so I hope you'll enjoy listening to us
• 25:47
  there. You can also find me doing literary tracks, the or Warp five,
• 25:51
  the Artificial Tango, and Saddle Up. But John, I know that
• 25:56
  there are a lot of different ways that people can connect with you, and
• 26:00
  so if they wanted to do that, where would they find you? Well,
• 26:03
  gosh, you can find me is Cassel Junkie on your social network of
• 26:06
  choice. Primarily I hang out on Twitter and you can find me here on
• 26:08
  the network, co hosting a show called house Lights, a film director podcast
• 26:12
  where we get into all sorts of silly discussions about serious directors. But you
• 26:18
  know, Matt, honestly, I think I need to put some Zillobese repellent
• 26:23
  over back on the temple just to protect us there. So I think it's
• 26:27
  time to close these negotiations, John, negotiations are closed. Join the Revolution,
• 26:37
  Join the Nerd Party.