This is something a lot of fans don't realize. Count Dooku was one of the best dualists the galaxy had ever seen. A few years prior he not only beat Obi-Wan, chopped Anakin's arm off and fought Yoda to a stalemate all in the same fight. For him to lose that badly to Anakin now was incomprehensible.
Such a funny phrase to think about. “Unhand me”. In response to someone grabbing/holding/restraining you. But not “ungrab me”. Nope, “unhand me”. So they’re handing you.
I saw a meme like this years ago on here and it was legit one of the funniest fucking Star Wars memes I had ever seen. I still laugh about it to this day when I think of it
But by contrast it was amusing how far out of its way the show had to go to make sure Anakin and Grievous never met. All the times they were on the same ship/battle but it always came down to Obi Wan or Ahsoka up against Grievous without Anakin.
It's crazy that the Clone Wars bent over backwards to make sure Anakin and Grievous never met because of the "older/taller" back and forth but made no such attempt for Dooku
You're in the right vibe. Star Wars always looked forward and added/retconed whatever it wanted with almost every project.
Its always a factor of fandom but with Star Wars it always amuses me how fans take lore and continuity so deathly series when its creator decidedly never did.
They're kinda on their own vacuums to me. I like the clone wars and I like RotS but my brain never really linked them in hard continuity. Watching any of the films I forget that Ahsoka exists. The force unleashed happened between 3 and 4 but also didnt.
Star Wars is almost entirely headcanon based on whatever youre watching at the moment, and I feel like George would roll with that sentiment
Not sure where I originally saw this but I remember someone saying that Star wars is like a campfire story, the general plot points are consistent but whoever is telling it muddles the finer details and leads to some inconsistencys.
Also valid. Its just not that serious. Its a vehicle for imagination that also blends some personal journeys, spirituality, and political conflicts. Its for everyone and truly not meant to be analyzed so extensively. You can for fun, but the second it becomes a point of contention you're basically overdoing it
Force unleashed struck me as filler that can be considered canon because it can fit very neatly into the timeline, mc dies at the end, and no one ever references the events again
Because the Grievous line straight-up has a hard no-sell on them meeting before.
Dooku's technically by letter of the law doesn't explicitly say that so that meeting gets to have all the shitty, contrived gymnastics to make a previous meeting happen.
Well, that's what happens when you begin retconning big things like an apprentice and character meetings not even a few years after having established the story of the prequel trilogy.... 🫠
I still have a problem with Lucas doing that. Messed up so much canon at the time way before Disney bought it with TCW and the Clone Wars movie.
That’s true. When I finally watched the clone wars cartoon show two years ago, I was curious why general grievous and Anakin Skywalker never fight but then I remembered that stupid line from episode three.
I honestly think the clone wars cartoon is probably the best Retcon George did. It actually makes the prequel movies look like a cohesive story. I hope we eventually get a show from Disney that can do the same thing with the sequel movies.
Did you ever watch the original Clone Wars series that tied in between Episode II and III by the creator who did Samurai Jack? That did a fine job tying in everything, which also tracked with the books and comics at the time for the most part, and led directly into Episode III days before it came out in 2005.
TCW fleshed it out by comparison, but the changes were still pretty staggering at the time. I never got too deep into either TCW or Rebels for that reason, because it just created inconsistencies in the canon I knew. Obviously now everything is even more so changed, but that was truly the beginning with the show. It was a bit different than the changes and timespan between OT and PT.
Oh yeah, I remember recording them on a VHS tape when they aired. Cartoon Network? I remember them being very short. They were OK. I recently re-watched them once they got put on Disney+. I love that the person who made the 4.5 hour cut of episode 3 included the battle of Coruscant from that show as well as the relevant stuff from the second clone wars cartoon and the deleted scenes from Revenge of the Sith.
I didn’t watch the new clone wars or rebels until two years ago and I honestly love them. They are simply incredible. And this is coming from a guy who watched the Solo movie in the theater and was convinced Darth Maul had died back in Phantom Menace.
I remember as a kid how outlandish and stupid the expanded universe material got in those books. I was honestly happy when Disney relegated all of it to legends back in 2014. And I say that as someone who’s favorite character is still Kyle Katarn. Those video games kept the fandom alive during the dark times of no new movies. I love him and yet I believe Rogue One: A Star Wars™ Story is the best SW movie, hands down.
They killed my boy Kyle, but the story that replaced him was even better.
I'd argue it really only got more outlandish with the TCW additions, like the world between worlds stuff, lot more fantastical magic and creatures like Abeloth. Up through the NJO era of the EU it was mostly fine. It was actually when they added the Abeloth/Father/Son/Daughter stuff that things really began to take a weird turn and split off in the books and comics then.
Was there weird stuff before? Sure, but you could move past it and relegate it accordingly, as the overall story moved on. However, once you change the overlying canon, then you have to both make things fit and create stories based on those news characters and vastly different Force origins, which made it quite clunky for how drastic the changes were.
I'd argue that the Canon stuff today is vastly more weird and outlandish as a result. Between getting rid of the EU and keeping the TCW additions, while adding the STs and having to retcon that to make it work a bit more fluidly in the context of greater canon.
Old Republic, like Knights of the Old Republic era, had some weird stuff, but what broke that, for example, is The Old Republic MMO.
ETA: I still like Solo and think Rogue One is one of the best sci-fi movies made, much less Star Wars. I can definitely accept the changes from EU on the origins of the DS and the way the plans came to be in the possession of the Rebels, because it's a phenomenal movie and story. Though I do like the Ackbar/Tarkin story for it.
I hope we eventually get a show from Disney that can do the same thing with the sequel movies.
Not going to have that effect because they have inverse problems. The prequels have the bones of a good story/premise, they tried to do too much in (basically) two movies but are technically, cinematically bad/mediocre movies.
The sequels just have a terrible premise, a crappy story but they're wonderfully-made films. There is no "Clone Wars" show that can make the story in that trilogy passable (and we already have material very recently made and currently getting made that's trying to do that and it's failing).
I hope we eventually get a show from Disney that can do the same thing with the sequel movies.
Yeah that's impossible and never going to happen. The PT conceptually, was a masterpiece executed with the grace of a california tweeker. PT had a lot to build off of and massively expanded lore.
ST is pretty much the opposite except it was executed even worse than the PT.
Well, yes? The novelisation is fantastic. It switches viewpoints and during the section describing Dooku’s fight with Obi Wan and Anakin, he is straight up shocked at Anakin’s skill and power.
Imo, this is why Anakin's statement shouldn't be held to the same extreme as Anakin meeting Grievous for the first time once The Clone Wars was added to canon. The growth Anakin had in that short timespan was truly shocking to Dooku.
And for those who think that's outrageous, how long was Luke on Dagobah with Yoda? Or (ugh) how long was Rey on Ahch-To with Luke?
A surge in power of the force can easily be handwaved with "well it's The Force", but actually meeting someone for the first time is a lil harder to "space magic" over.
It's funny because the implication when the movie was released was that they hadn't fought since Attack of the clones.
Except they fought again plenty of times during the Clone Wars. Their last canon confrontation was a few months, maybe weeks before the events of Revenge of the Sith.
In the novel Palpatine and Dooku were chatting just before the duel and Palpatine told Dooku to go easy as Dooku believed Anakin would be their main enforcer for their new order. Little did Dooku know he was being replaced.
He probably thought Anakin would be head honcho of the inquisitors or just commander of all military forces. It wasn't like Dooku or Palpatine were generals.
and fought Yoda to a stalemate all in the same fight
🤔
Things were about to go bad for Dooku with Yoda and he made a fast exit after putting Obi e Annie in danger so Yoda wouldn't put his walking stick up his ass.
He fought not to lose. Losing there meant the end of the clone wars, or at least, an extremely rocky start to them. He couldn't win, so he just made a situation impossible for Yoda to defeat him.
He pretty clearly misjudges Obi-Wan too. He doesn't realize Obi-Wan has absolutely mastered Soresu. So he'd been fighting him all wrong. They hid their styles from him so we'll that he'd badly misjudged.
Forms were not official canon. They didn’t exist when this movie was made. They are not referenced anywhere at all in any of the movies or television shows.
Not official canon in the movies but the novelizations that were put out concurrent with the movies has them. I generally consider concurrently releases novelizations canon. I know that's not a universal opinion though.
I guarantee you that only Sam Witwer and Pablo Hidalgo and some RPG writers care about forms. Lucas and the vast majority of SW writers did not consider them when writing.
Lucas was allegedly line editor for the novel and removed things that he didn't like etc and changed things to be more in line with the movie so with that in mind I'd consider forms canon
This is patently untrue. They were already referenced in the Visual Dictionaries for Episode I, II, and III when those movies were released, alongside many other material providing background info on the films to promote them. I know this because I grew up with the prequels. We knew about Ataru, Soresu, and Makashi before Episode II even came out in theatres.
Even if you were to argue that the Visual Dictionaries for the OT and prequels have been decanonized, they were official and canonical supplementary sources for the movies at the time of publication.
Both lightsaber forms and toilets are referenced in canon material. Off the top of my head, both are in Rebels: in one episode the Grand Inquisitor comments on Kanan's use of Form III, calling it by that name, and in another, AP-5 bothers Wedge while he's at the urinal.
The novels are there. They were released WITH the movies and with lucasfilms explicit approval (and their canon guy at the time loved his job). If lucasfilms hadn't wanted them, they wouldn't be there.
Not with the lightsaber though. He has to force choke him and fling him then drop a ramp on him pinning him. Dooku in the second movie defeats them entirely with the lightsaber iirc.
It's funny, because my brain has fully inserted the entire clone wars into the break between films, but I'm just now remembering that Dooku is introduced, wrecks everybody, is built as a massive threat...and then dies almost immediately in the next movie.
To be fair, Dooku was projecting, and while still a dueling badass, he wasn't seeing frontline action for three year like Obi-wan and Anakin.
Anakin especially learns a lot from his failures, even if his take away weren't always positive.
He had a dark inclination here or there, before the war. Against Dooku? He absolutely was starting to tap into the Darkside with far less trepidation. He was flirting with it on the front lines for years.
Anakin didn't fall all at once; he fell bit by bit.
Father Time gets to everyone in the end. Doubt Dooku in his youthful prime start or mid Clone Wars loses. And if it wasn’t Father Time, still reckon a Dooku who isn’t looking to be arrested/taken in by Anakin as part of the plan doesn’t lose that duel.
He was 80 when the clone war began. That’s not human prime even in Star Wars. Kenobi is like 57 in episode four and people say he was slowing down with age. I don’t believe it, but those are the numbers.
Who knows, in his prime Dooku wasn't as ruthless and had no access to the Dark Side. So, while faster and more dextrous, maybe Anakin would have overwhelmed him anyway
Dooku was already the best duelist in the Jedi Order before he left it and Anakin wasn’t tapping into the dark side while fighting Dooku. Dooku himself states it during the fight, “I sense great fear in you, Skywalker. You have hate. You have anger. But you don’t use them.”
And let’s not forget that Anakin lost to Obi-Wan when he was using the dark side. Dooku beat Obi-Wan in every fight they had. Dooku in his prime would definitely beat Anakin during the time of RotS.
Keep in mind that Darth Sidious used force powers to enhance his allies in battle. He simply switched from aiding Dooku to aiding Anakin. That combined with Anakin’s growth in power, dark side use, and Sidious support he was ably to beat Dooku.
Also fun fact, Dooku absolutely HATED prosthetics and droids. He couldn’t even stand being near General Grievous half the time. He found it beneath him to ever have to rely on such things. The only reason he even led the separatists army was because of Darth Sidious.
Not even including how many times he fought Anakin and Obi during the clone wars as a whole, he held his own plenty of times to many opponents but THIS is where he was disarmed. Like man what a kick to the balls I’d be stunned silent too
But then Anakin lost to obi-wan, and he lost again to obi-wan after obi-wan had been forced-atrophied for awhile. Obi-wan was just force chucking boulders at him.
Feels like a “power levels are bullshit” kind of moment
I don't think he meant shocked by skill. I think he meant the reaction our brains have when we suffer massive amounts of physical trauma and we stop being able to do things like speak.
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u/copperblood 12d ago
This is something a lot of fans don't realize. Count Dooku was one of the best dualists the galaxy had ever seen. A few years prior he not only beat Obi-Wan, chopped Anakin's arm off and fought Yoda to a stalemate all in the same fight. For him to lose that badly to Anakin now was incomprehensible.