Former Canadian TV Executive Paul Chato Roasts ‘Ahsoka’: “Looks Like Star Wars Drained Of All Excitement, Danger, Emotion, Camaraderie”

John F. Trent |

Aug 23, 2023

Former Canadian TV executive did not hold back his thoughts about the recently released episode of Star Wars: Ahsoka. He blasted the series as something that “looks like Star Wars drained of all excitement, danger, emotion, camaraderie.”

Chato shared his thoughts on his YouTube channel, where he prefaced the interview noting he would not be looking at the series from a canon perspective given Disney has made it clear they do not care.

He said, “I’m going to go clean sheet. The canon has been so busted in this dumpster fire called Disney Star Wars that I really don’t care anymore. If Disney doesn’t care about any rules then why should I?”

Beginning his review, Chato shares the positives, “The thing looks and feels like Star Wars, but without the horrific puppetry from Season three of Mando. It had a bright, colorful look which I appreciated. The special effects were convincing.”

He adds, “Rosario Dawson … she looks great and clearly fills the screen with her presence. But she delivers a very flat performance. In fact, all the female characters are dull and uninteresting.”

From there, Chato excoriates the show for having female characters pretending to be males. “Women can’t do gravitas the way male actors can. Oh, unless you are Betty Davis after smoking a pack of Marlboros and downing a bottle of bourbon. Certainly, the pipes have something to do with it. And the larger presence does also.”

“But, here’s the thing, when women try to imitate male badass they just look boring ass,” he shared. “They do this stern thing. Replace Dawson and [Mary Elizabeth] Winstead, who plays General Syndulla with Clint Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef this thing would rock.”

“All the women here are boring including baddie Shin Hati played by Ivanna Sakhno who is dwarfed by Ray Stevenson playing Baylan Skoll. Every time he sends her off to kill people it looks like he’s letting a chihuahua off its leash. You go girl,” he mocked.

“Female badassery is best when it’s, ‘Don’t you touch my children, b****es!’ Women do mama bear really well. Lack of emotion does not make things more dramatic,” he finished his mini rant.

After his rant, Chato shared that he enjoyed the series avoided a ton of exposition to get viewers caught up on the backstory of the various characters from Star Wars Rebels and Star Wars: The Clone Wars.

However, he was still unimpressed with the plot summarizing it, “The show starts with good people doing the stupidest thing possible and letting bad people on their massive ship, letting themselves get killed. The bad people break out another bad person out of her cell. Then we go to a planet where Ahsoka does some Indiana Jones nonsense, gets a thing, fights droids who want the thing, then inexplicably the droids blow themselves up with tiny explosive devices that inexplicably are capable of leveling the surface of a planet.”

“The thing continues a map that everybody wants,” he continued.

Chato then turned his attention to Sabine Wren, “The setup of Sabine Wren as the rebel without applause was comical. She’s not at a ceremony to unveil a thing. Oh yea, she’s badass on that speeder running away from that ceremony. Woo hoo! That’s super badass because it’s accompanied by badass music.”

“But it gets worse,” Chato laments. “You know that thing that Ahsoka got that the bad people wanted? Well, it’s a map thing. The map thing requires badass Wren to decipher it because… It provides the location of Grand Admiral Thrawn. … And no one in the show tells me anything useful about Thrawn anyway. All I know is that they thought he was dead and the First Order want him back. And if they find him it will be glorious and a quick return to Empire rule through the First Order crushing the New Republic upstarts.”

He then criticized the brief characterization the show does give for Thrawn, “Thrawn is made out to be some all-powerful character. Superhero movies are collpasing under the weight of this galactic super bad person nonsense. Why not Star Wars?”

Next, Chato takes issue with the fact that First Order or Empire’s abundance of resources despite being a defeated organization that is supposed to be on its back foot. He notes that they actually have plenty of resources and are able build a “giant piece of machinery in space, a ring thingy.”

After sharing his ideas on what Lucasfilm should have explored following the destruction of the second Death Star, he returned to his criticism of the show noting the Imperial or First Order forces stole a clandestine hyper drive on a scrap yard planet, “Where was the facility’s security? Not even a mall cop? How come only Syndulla went after the wayward hyperdrive? Has the New Republic utterly lost control of this facility that repurposed Empire space junk.

He then criticized the depiction of Force users and Jedi, “This was more stupid as was the excess use of lightsabers and the Force when they were or not Jedi. I don’t get it anymore. Suddenly everyone in Disney Star Wars is a Force user. In the original Star Wars that was something exceedingly special. When everyone is special no one is special.”

“And not a single blaster blast. Pew Pew. Can get past someone with a lightsaber with even a scratch. Nope. 100% deflection rate. The fighting set pieces were all fine except Wren gets run through by Shin, who chooses not to use her Force powers. But Wren survives. She makes a miraculous recovery. The only serious aftermath was the scar above her bikini line. Without serious injuries it all becomes very Mary Sueish,” he observed.

Chato then concluded, “Ahsoka looks like Star Wars drained of all excitement, danger, emotion camaraderie, but it has lightsabers. And the screaming harpies who love girl power will love it.”

Chato is not alone in his review of Ahsoka, YouTuber Script Trooper in his review of the first episode asserted, “It’s already started out just kind of bad like what they usually do.”

He also went on to point out how the New Republic leaders make dumb mistakes at the beginning of the episode, “He calls their bluff by allowing them onto the ship. If he think they’re bluffing then why would he allow them on the ship? If he thinks they’re bluffing then he’s saying there’s a possibility that they’re not bluffing. This isn’t poker. This is people’s lives. No military would operate like this.”

He also criticized the duel between Shin Hati and Sabine Wren stating, “This is right there with their worst possible stuff that they’ve done. The thing is that most of the stuff that’s really bad in this episode would have just been cleared up with omission. Just take it out.”

Script Trooper would later question, “How do you write the exact same total [crap] that you wrote last time that did so poorly? … It’s so dumb.”

YouTuber Raging Ryno also reviewed the first episode saying, “It’s one of those things where’s sort of fine on the surface, I guess, if you’re just wanting flashy s**t like Star Wars references and Rebels references.”

Ryno would also heavily criticize the fight between Sabine Wren and Shin Hati noting, “They’ve taken away how deadly a lightsaber can be and should be, and is. In real Star Wars [Sabine Wren] is dead. Dead. But I very much doubt that they’re going to actually kill her in the very first episode.

He later stated, “There are a lot of problems with it. A lot of problems. I will say even the explosion at the very beginning when Ahsoka’s fighting those droids. F***ing like a nuclear bomb goes off from three droids self-destructing.”

What do you make of these reviews of Ahsoka?

NEXT: Dave Filoni Confirms Sabine Wren Will Be Ahsoka Tano’s Apprentice In ‘Star Wars: Ahsoka’

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