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(Upbeat suspenseful music plays)
What's up guys, Helen here.
Now, if you're a fan of the MCU, Star Wars,
Game of Thrones, Lost, and so on,
you may have a mortal enemy.
Spoilers.
And I get it.
Everyone wants to be taken off guard
when we learned that Darth Vader is Luke's daddy,
and to revel in that surprising surge of emotions
- No,
I,
am your father.
- And at least one person is going to angrily comment
that I've spoiled empire strikes back for them.
And you know what?
I'm not sorry, because if we turn our attention
to the Star Wars universe, there's a surprising lesson
we can glean.
Spoilers aren't as evil as you think.
I might dare say that sometimes they're even good
and can make a viewing experience better.
- If one is to understand the great mystery
one must study all its aspects
not just the dogmatic narrow view of the Jedi.
- And if you want proof
we can turn to the excellent animated series, Clone Wars
which fills in the gaps
between episodes two and three of the prequel trilogy.
So let us explain why spoilers are actually your friend
in this Wisecrack edition on Clone Wars.
And yes, obviously spoilers ahead for all
of the Star Wars films and Clone Wars, and also Lost?
But before we get into it,
I want to give a shout out to this
weeks sponsor Attest.
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Now back to the show.
And now a quick recap, sandwiched between episodes two
and three Clone Wars follows Anakin, Obi-Wan, and the crew
as they fend off the growing separatist threat.
And while you might be skeptical
of a series where we already know what happens.
Spoilers, the Republic falls, Anakin turns
to the dark side, and all the Jedi get murdered.
Clone Wars, like other prequels,
leans into its spoiled ending.
In doing so,
the show totally inverts what many believe makes
for good storytelling.
To understand why we need to lay
down some lessons from storytelling one-o'-one.
While it might seem obvious to some, when we watch TV
we're not engaged in a purely intellectual activity.
Sure, our brains are working,
but they're working in a very particular way.
According to playwright, David Mamet, this is
because storytelling is not the communication of ideas
but rather the inculcation
in the audience of the instincts of the hunt.
And while it might seem ridiculous to compare me on my couch
to a hunter gatherer, Mamet's point actually makes sense.
As the images flash across my screen, my brain
is subconsciously piecing together everything I've seen
in an attempt to figure out what happens next.
This kind of engagement
with the story is what screenwriting guru
Robert McKee calls, narrative drive.
And it lies at the heart of dramatic writing.
It's the reason why you can't put a good book down.
And it's the reason why the writer
of this script binged three seasons
of Castlevania in a single night.
And don't worry if we promise he's okay.
He just wanted to know what we all want to
know what happens next, but how can a show
like Clone Wars create a sense of narrative drive
if we already know the ending? I mean, really,
would you suffer through six seasons of loss?
If you knew that the survivors of oceanic flight eight
15 were dead all along or something?
I mean, I don't know, honestly, I didn't really get it
but in the case of Clone Wars, I, 100% know how
the larger story goes down because I've seen episode three
and have critical thinking skills.
Chancellor Palpatine turns out to be Darth Sidious,
executes the infamous order
66 to massacre all the Jedi, and convinces
Anakin Skywalker to crossover to the dark side.
- Good, Anakin good, ha ha ha,
kill him.
In other words, it ends pretty horribly for all our heroes.
So in theory,
Clone Wars should possess zero narrative drive
and the story should fall flat.
But the reality is way more complicated.
- I don't understand. You've all been deceived.
- Clone Wars doesn't make us wonder what will happen next.
Rather, it makes us wonder how we'll get to the end
we already know.
And in the process it uses some pretty
cool tricks pulled straight from classic tragedy.
Now it might seem strange
to a culture that's hell bent on avoiding spoilers
but the ancient Greeks didn't necessarily believe
that knowing the ending
of the story could ruin the viewing experience.
This is probably because most great tragedies centered
on well-known mythic heroes whose plights were
common knowledge.
Sure. Killing your dad and making love
to your mom is bound to shock audiences in any time period.
But for the ancient Greeks
the story of Oedipus was old hat incest stuff.
Audiences at the time wouldn't have been necessarily riveted
by the twist and turns of the plot.
Instead, these plays relied heavily
on a literary device called dramatic irony
in which the audience knows something that the
heroes don't.
Like if there was a scary person
behind me and you knew, but I didn't know.
And I made a joke about how safe and alone I was.
Dramatic irony is when Oedipus spends much
of the play, Oedipus Rex, searching for the dude who
murdered the king and brought disaster upon Thebes.
Unaware that it was him all along.
But the audience knows the truth.
And as such Oedipus is feudal actions throughout the play
around some deeply felt pity.
And also you just want to shake them for being so silly.
In fact, the act of seeing the inevitable play out in front
of their eyes, allowed the Greeks to vicariously experience.
All these emotions seen on stage something Aristotle
called catharsis.
Importantly, none of this is too different from how
audiences today view reboots.
or new Star Wars franchises.
After all we know how episodes one through three were
going to turn out,
largely because we know how episodes four through six went,
and sure we might've been caught off guard, occasionally.
- Now this is pod racing.
- But, we knew Anakin's fate from the start.
- No.
- Watching these films
wasn't about the destination,
it was about the journey man.
And this is where Clone Wars really excels to
see what I mean.
Let's look at one of the series
most memorable arcs involving the infamous order
66 to kill all Jedi.
While Jedi Knights lead a clone army charge
against the separatists.
One of the troopers
under their command, Tup, begins to act, well, strange.
Essentially the poor guy's brain begins to
malfunction causing him to act
on order 66 before Palpatine has actually
given the go-ahead to do a low key Jedi genocide.
Of course, we, as the audience know
that's where all this is headed,
but our heroes haven't the slightest clue.
We know more than they do, which creates dramatic irony.
They think Tup has simply been infected with the virus.
It's not until his friend Fives gets involved
that any of them begin to learn the truth
- An implant?
You mean this isn't an accident.
Someone did this to Tup?
- Precisely.
- But because we know the end
we know that five's journey to expose the truth
will ultimately fail.
And our Jedi friends are super screwed.
We're not sucked in wondering how Fives will pull
off a triumph and victory.
Rather, we're just sitting
with the grim knowledge that he's just
taken another step closer to inevitable downfall.
And it's a downright gut wrenching process when
Palpatine frames him.
- He tried to kill me.
- Even the ending is an emotional rollercoaster
in which a frenzied Fives tries to explain to Anakin
what's happening only to come off as a lunatic.
- Well, that's a sinister plot
in the works against the Jedi.
I have proof of it.
I can prove that everything that I know is true
beyond a shadow of a doubt.
- And that's the tragedy of it because Fives was right
but this isn't the only time to show employs dramatic irony.
Consider the general Krell arc.
After Anakin is summoned back to Coruscant
at the request of Palpatine,
- The council has ordered you back to
Coruscant, effective immediately.
- What,
why?
- I'm afraid the request was made by the supreme chancellor.
- General Krell takes over his command.
Except the planet they're fighting on is pretty much
like Australia at night, everything is dark
and all the animals would kill you, but Krell being very
not chill.
Keep sending his men on suicide mission
after suicide mission.
Meanwhile, the clones are understandably saying seriously
what the?
I mean, Krell kind of sucks at his job
- Krell may do things differently
but he is effective in getting them done.
He's a recognized war hero.
- He may have had some victories
but have you seen his casually numbers?
More troopers have been killed
under his command than anyone else
- But we, the audience know exactly what's going on here.
The separatists in the Republic are both secretly controlled
by chancellor Palpatine and the Sith and general Krell is
clearly in league with them.
And more importantly, dramatic irony, colors
everything we see in this arc while war films frequently
criticized senseless violence.
The critique here is dialed up to a 10.
Men are literally dying for no reason
finding an engineered war,
that culminates in clones killing clones.
- Show them you're not the enemy.
They're clones.
- And we, the audience are horrifically dragged along
for the ride.
Now it's actually interesting to bring up war films
as a genre because they employ many of the same
narrative tricks as Clone Wars.
That's because even if your only exposure
to 20th century history was Call of Duty, you probably know
that Hitler died.
And the allies prevailed in World War II.
Wait, is that a spoiler?
Instead of brewing tension over the overall outcome,
these films focus
on the smaller often tragic stories of people swept up
in these larger than life conflicts, whether
it's John Miller from Saving Private Ryan or Tom Blake
from 1917, these films ask us to care about the little guy,
as he struggles in a war
he has little power to change, and it's the same
in Clone Wars over and over again, the show asks us to
empathize and not with the figures leading the
Republic's wars, but the clones who were caught up
in this struggle.
Fives, for example, frequently
questions is placed in the struggle for one
by asserting his individuality.
He rejects the prevailing view that clones
are simply cogs and the republics war machine
- Master Jedi.
We must terminate this trooper immediately.
- I am not a piece of hardware,
I'm a living being.
- But he also questions.
The very notion
that any individual should sacrifice themselves
for a larger cause.
- I'm sorry.
I cannot just follow orders when I know they're wrong.
Especially when lives are at stake.
- But these questions are rendered
even more potent and tragic
by our own knowledge that none of it ultimately matters.
The war is for nothing.
And the clones will all become brainwashed Jedi
murdering tools, but this dramatic irony extends well
beyond the new side characters.
It also re-contextualizes the way we see some
of our iconic main characters.
Now, despite being the best
of the prequels episode three is not a perfect film.
- Unlimited
power.
- Anakin's fall from grace,
Wasn't exactly handled well.
Even with all the foreshadowing.
He goes from loving husband
to child murdering jealous bastard all in the space
of 45 minutes.
But Clone Wars decides to work backwards from this ending.
Painstakingly showing us how
Anakin was always one bad day away from the dark side.
For example, when Padme tries to broker
an understanding what the banking clan, which
by the way is just Switzerland.
She has to work with her former fling Rush Clovis,
but Anakin is none too happy about the situation
and orders Padme to stop seeing him.
- As your husband.
I demand
that you tell the chancellors, that you're stepping down.
- Eventually this jealousy metastasizes
into Anakin trying to kill Clovis in a fit of rage.
While this all makes for some great TV,
it also massages Anakin's rough character transformation.
In episode three, after watching seven seasons of Anakin
as an abusive controlling husband,
we understand the logic behind moments like this,
- You turned her against me.
- Of course, it goes without saying,
that dramatic irony doesn't filter
down into every single aspect of the show.
There were some characters whose fate is not predestined
by episode three.
And this is part of the delicate dance of Clone Wars,
balancing the stories of our tragic heroes
with some traditional heroes as well.
Take Anakin Padawan, Ahsoka for example.
When we're first introduced to her,
Ahsoka is a wild card whose story we don't know.
So when she gets framed for blowing up a Jedi temple
we're on the edge of our seats
wondering whether or not she's going to be executed
- You've already made your decision haven't you?
This meeting is just a formality.
- Heck at one point, Ahsoka is left
stuck in a ship full of clones after order 66 is issued.
And we have no idea
whether she'll make it out alive.
In effect, Clone Wars can have its cake and eat it too.
It can pull from both dramatic irony
and more traditional forms of drama to create a layered
and truly engaging narrative.
in the process, it strives for a greatness that only
the original trilogy has reached before.
But why is this?
How can a low budget animated TV show hit such highs?
While the more recent multi-million dollar
trilogies have arguably failed?
We think the answer lies
in the show's fundamental understanding
of its own smallness.
Whereas the trilogies always work on this epic scale
greatly realigning the power balance
of the universe with each film.
Clone Wars is different,
because the ending has already been written.
The show doesn't concern itself
with trying to tip the scales in the fight between good
and evil.
Instead in dramatize is the little things
like the friendships between characters.
- We're always on the run, living hand to mouth
never sure what the next day would bring.
- Sounds romantic.
- Or even just the dying words of a simple clone.
- This is the end.
Forget the mission.
Oh the nightmare,
I'm,
free.
- In doing so, Clone Wars feels less like the history epic
of its cinematic counterparts and more
like an intimate glimpse into the real lives
of people living in a galaxy far, far away.
And this is why if a movie
or show gets bad after it's spoiler,
it's probably not that good to begin with.
Even if you're precious about your first watch
being spoiler free, you've probably returned
to certain films or TV shows time and time again
despite knowing how they end.
The added knowledge,
and the dramatic irony, it can bring, can add more depth
or humor to a storyline.
Clone Wars is better because we know how things shake out
not in spite of it.
But what do you guys think?
Are we crushing on Clone Wars a little too hard?
or are spoilers occasionally a saving grace?
Let us know in the comments.
Huge thanks to our patrons for all your support.
Hit that subscribe button like you're a mindless clone,
and don't forget to ring that bell.
And as always, thanks for watching, peace.
- Ha ha ha
Oh god, you really hit me.
- I'm sorry.
- You really slapped me, ow.
- I'm so sorry.
- Ow.
I was trying to do a joke.
- Is it bleeding, is it bleeding?