Star Wars: The Clone Wars "A War on Two Fronts"

Exactly a week after the episode airs, I finally am doing my review for A War on Two fronts. Blame the slowness of StarWars.com in putting up the guide images for that, they only put it up when I had no time to do this review, but better late than never!

To start off, we were introduced to two new characters in this episode, Saw and Steela Gerrera. Saw I think I will get to like perhaps, but I can already tell I dislike Steela. I understand they wanted to throw someone else into the mix between Ahsoka Tano and Lux Bonteri, but she's an adult and easily from watching the interactions just too old for Lux. The love triangle between Ahsoka, Lux & Steela was intriguing to watch though, but the execution could have been better. My hope at some point in the arc is we see Ahsoka forced to tap into the Dark Side and to slay Steela, which I think would be a perfect ending for the arc, and add a twist for Ahsoka's character.

The training scenes were pretty decent in my opinion. I didn't hate them like other people I know did. The one with the tanks was a bit silly, I will admit, but watching the interaction between Lux & Saw was interesting to watch. I really liked the training scene with the Destroyer Droids though. After all, the Jedi and Clones make it look so easy whenever we've seen them use detonators or droid poppers against Destroyers, so I didn't think others would actually have trouble with it, or that it wasn't plain easy like the Jedi make it look to do it. But as we saw, both Saw and Steela missed, although Saw eventually got it while Steela just got frustrated. While I dislike the character of Captain Rex, he definitely had his purpose in this episode, rather annoyingly for me, same goes for Anakin Skywalker.  I really liked the music they used in this scene. It fit quite well in my opinion, especially the part where Ahsoka walks over to talk to Steela.

The brief battle at the end was pretty good. The brief talking scene between Anakin & Obi-Wan Kenobi was unnecessary, as was Obi-Wan's appearance in this episode. It was good to see Saw and Lux put their differences aside to take out that AAT though, and the fighting was pretty well done. I honestly wasn't too impressed with how easily they got into the city afterwards though. I understand they had to get into the city before the next episode, and that Battle Droids are stupid of course, but it just felt way too obvious a tactic and it was more by luck than anything that they got in.

My verdict: I enjoyed this episode, the idea of Anakin training Rebels was simplistic but interesting to watch, and I look forward to seeing what happens between Ahsoka and Lux in the remainder of the arc. However, there were a few plot-holes and pointless scenes in this episode, and it was nowhere near as good as Revival. Rating: 7.5/10

My Thoughts on Invasion Belfast V

As most of you know, I was at the event called Invasion Belfast last weekend. This was its fifth time in Belfast, but my first at the Belfast one. I'd been to two Invasion's in Dublin, the city where I live, before, but this was my first Belfast one, and I definitely am happy I changed my mind as I originally wasn't going to go. Let me try and run through what I liked best at the event. I hope I remember everything after waiting almost a week to do this post!

First off is the costumed characters. Most were great, and above are just two examples of two of them. A 212th Attack Battalion Clone and a Clone Captain Rex, and the interesting thing is that the guy who made the Rex costume did it realistic style, rather than animated, and still came out great! Let me just briefly say, I posted a ton of costumed characters that would be there on my SeparatistDestroyers group before the event, around 16 costumes in all. I didn't see all of the ones I posted, but there were also some that hadn't been posted on the Invasion Belfast page! Off the top of my head there were Darth Revan, Gamorrean Guard, a female Rebel Pilot and a Clone Commander that hadn't been posted before. Almost all of the costumes were so cool and it was great to see ones I had seen pictures of online in person, and I did get several pictures with costumed characters. Only one I didn't get which I would have liked to would be the one costuming as Maris Brood from The Force Unleashed, but I'm not too disappointed about that, as I do still have some really cool photos, including Darth Revan trying to slice my head off!

One of the things I was looking forward to was seeing artist William Sliney's work and his workshop, so I took a ton of pictures of his art! He's very popular in Ireland as far as artists go, not sure how well known he is elsewhere though but his work is definitely incredible. The above Boba image just highlights the quality of his art. Will's workshop was fun as well, even though I can tell you personally I am probably one of the worst artists ever! LOL! We had to draw Yoda & Darth Vader in the workshop, even though for the 2nd one Will allowed a group vote to see which the popular choice was, which turned out to be Vader, even though I stood up for the Wolfpack and voted for "Clone Commander Wolffe". My Dad's work was excellent though, and I asked Will to sign them, which he did, for free! So that was pretty cool.

The props were really well detailed as well. I even got to use one of the Snowtrooper cannons in The Empire Strikes Back, which was awesome. There was a lot of Endor props as well, which had a very dark feel to them.

I also got to talk to 3 of the cast members present at the event! Surprised you may be to hear this, but I chose to talk to the three Original Trilogy actors! And as I've mentioned before, Jeremy Bulloch and Tim Rose both remembered my name, so wasn't I pleasantly surprised and happy! I also talked to Anthony Forrest and got a picture with him and one with Jeremy, though Anthony didn't remember my name, but hey ho, I was surprised even those two knew my name, especially as I knew Tim's agent read my email but I was surprised to hear Tim himself had read it too! I also did get videos recorded with both of them, in which they both did a great bit of un-planned acting at the end of both! Unfortunately, I've had problems uploading them and I really hope I can get the problem fixed, as I really want to get those videos up. Jeremy and myself had a brief conversation afterwards about my channel that went something like this, though I'm not too sure of the exact words used by both of us:
Jeremy: "So, are you hoping to be the best reviewer?"
Me: Hopefully, with a lot of effort..."

Last up were the two main panels, which I both really enjoyed. The Actors Q&A was a great bit of fun and a good laugh, especially when Jerome Blake did the Brian Blessed impression. There was an awkward moment though when the woman organiser asked if anyone had questions and no one answered for two minutes so the actors just continued what they were discussing. Lastly was the quiz from Following the Nerd,  in which I got a carded Vintage Collection Darth Maul as a prize, so hopefully I will get Ray Park and/or Sam Witwer to sign it someday! Funny story: The quiz was so easy for me personally, and I got dis-qualified for consistently getting my answers right (oi... I was showing my pride for Star Wars. :P) and so I whispered a few answers in my Dad's ear until he got dis-qualified too! Afterwards I went and talked to one of the Following the Nerd people, and some of you may not know this, but back when Stephen Stanton (Captain Tarkin on The Clone Wars) first became really well-known because of Tarkin, he mentioned MY name on a Following the Nerd podcast, and that person I talked to was one of the two hosts that day, so that was really cool and exciting to learn that...

Verdict: For all my criticism, this event was MUCH better than I expected it would be. I still have to admit though, the cast selection still let me down a bit, but the politeness and generosity of the cast they did have made up for that a lot, and the events were just so cool, as were the costumes and props and all! Verdict: 9/10 PS: Not as good as this year's Invasion Dublin though!