Timothy Zahn - Blog Posts

Tales of the Empire review, the problem with Filoni

Spoilers for "The Path of Anger" below

So, to start off with the obvious, Dave Filoni has never read a single Cannon Thrawn novel. The timeline of events in this episode made no sense for the timeline of the novels. Thrawn was an admiral, yet he was already accompanied by Rukh and Pallean, whom he wouldn't even MEET until he reached grand admiral status. At this point in the Cannon novels, he would have been accompanied by Eli Vanto, not Pallean. In fact, he wouldn't even meet Pallean until the events of Treason. The choice by Folini to overhaul this story erases the conical nature of the "Cannon" Thrawn novels.

Before I get into my real point on the problem with how Filoni writes, I'll give my review of the episode as a whole. It was fine, not much to write home about. The animation was beautiful as to be expected, and very expressive. The writing was... just ok. The empire was depicted as cartoonishly evil, though it is a cartoon so, maybe that's justified. For a short that was supposed to teach us more about Morgan and her motivations, I feel like we didn't learn much about her that we didn't already know? She's good with ship design, she wants revenge and power, etc. Nothing new. Personally, I found the pacing of the episode to be quite boring, it was very slow despite the short runtime. Overall, I don't know if I would recommend it, though I thought the episodes following Barris were quite enjoyable.

Now for the real problem I have with these episodes: Filoni's insistence on his own version of cannon at the cost of others' work. I don't deny Filoni is a good writer and director, Rebels is one of my favorite shows of all time! But he's been on this power trip after being essentially being handed the reigns to Star Wars. There was a period where Star Wars was a collaborative effort between a ton of creatives working on something they loved, the second golden age, that made it into a beloved franchise for a new generation. But now it's just Filoni, and he decides what part of other creative works he'll pick and choose to tell his own story. I feel so bad for Zhan. He created this beloved character, and wrote AMAZING NOVELS, only to have his incredibly complex character be forced into a 2d stereotype. Filoni needs to do better because if he keeps going down the path of writing he has been Star Wars is going to be a shell of its former glory.

Excerpt from The Last Command by Timothy Zahn (1993):

 “But…It was so artistically done.”

Thrawn’s last line starts with the word “but,” almost as if under normal circumstances he would be furious that his plans had unraveled so spectacularly and without him knowing it. Instead, he says “but,” and he says it calmly, with a smile on his face. He can’t be mad, because to him, his opponent beat him with the same level of attention he put into his plans. Because it was masterful and because even he could not have predicted the genius of turning the Noghri against him and then silently infiltrating Wayland.

The irony here is that our heroes actually didn’t put that much thought into his defeat specifically. I would argue that Thrawn’s true opponent was Leia, as it was her skill in politics, negotiation and empathy that both turned the Noghri against Thrawn and got Mara Jade to reveal the location of Wayland. In a way, it was Leia’s art that Thrawn didn’t account for.

This line alone also makes me ask – what does Thrawn really care about? Looking only at Zahn’s Thrawn Trilogy and no other material, it is clear that Thrawn likes to win. He also likes to prove his worth, becoming one of the few high ranking, non-human imperial officials. But more than that, Thrawn loves art and psychology. He craves knowledge, surrounding himself by other cultures’ art in order to learn, to improve and to win.

So, did Thrawn really care about the Empire at all? What was his true motivation? There is little evidence in the trilogy to suggest that Thrawn cares a lot about ruling the galaxy or in reviving the Empire. In fact, Pellaeon even states at one point that Thrawn has created a new empire, different than the one before, with his ingenuity and proportional punishments for failure. So why is he doing it? Truthfully, I don’t think this question really answered in the trilogy, leaving it up to the readers to decide. But from his last line as he dies, I’d hazard to say Thrawn doesn’t care about the empire or superiority or anything of the sort. He cares only about the art of war. To him, war is a chessboard, a game for him to play. Sure, he loves to win but he can appreciate when he loses. And that is why he can’t be mad at his defeat. Because it was so artistically done.