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Star Wars Rebels Discussion Thread


Mara Jade Skywalker
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The show premieres next Friday on Disney Channel, but you can watch it now if your cable company provides access to Watch Disney XD (or you borrow someone else's access *cough* thanks mom *cough*).

 

I watched it last night and wow, okay, I'm hooked. I thought the first episode was really solid. I liked all the characters, and can't really pinpoint a favorite yet. While the stormtroopers were kind of incompetent, I thought Agent Kallus was very effective as the "everyday" bad guy. And I'm looking forward to seeing The Inquisitor, although his lightsaber is going to annoy me.

 

Random thoughts:

 

  • Agent Kallus's mutton chops are a thing of glory.
  • Chopper is hilarious.
  • I liked Zeb a lot more than I thought I would.
  • Same goes for Kanan.
  • Love Hera and her flying.
  • I love that Kanan and Hera are in an established relationship. For once we'll get to see an established mature relationship portrayed onscreen!
  • That anti-gravity scene was great. Loved seeing that used a diversionary tactic.
  • Ezra is still Aladdin.
  • Sabine asking about the explosion was kind of adorable. Funny that even though she's only 16, they don't play up her being a kid like they do Ezra.
  • Kanan using his lightsaber, and the "everyone's about to find out my secret" line, was awesome. I'm so glad he didn't use the lightsaber in A New Dawn and saved the reveal for the show.
  • Loved hearing James Arnold Taylor as Obi-Wan again.
  • The Wookiees looked terrible. The animation as a whole wasn't that great. Hopefully it'll improve.
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Yeah, that part seemed a bit rushed. They mentioned it on the bridge that the ship had cloaked its way in or something, but it was a weak explanation.

 

But the show overall I thought was a great start. The wookiees were awful, as Mara mentioned. I liked all of the characters more than I thought I would. Particularly Zebs tough guy act.

 

My understanding is that we'll mostly be following these characters around each week instead of what the Clone Wars did and change it up every few episodes? If so, I am completely down with that. I would love a nice in depth character study this time around. I already like and am invested in the characters.

 

The animation wasn't as great as I'd like, the zip sync in particular seemed like it was a little weird for me. Some plain textures and what not, but the Clone Wars improved dramatically over the course of it's run, so I'm giving Rebels a lot of slack.

 

And the Ezra = Aladdin comparison is fantastic. :thumbsup:

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My understanding is that we'll mostly be following these characters around each week instead of what the Clone Wars did and change it up every few episodes? If so, I am completely down with that. I would love a nice in depth character study this time around. I already like and am invested in the characters.

Yes, that is the plan! And after seeing the second episode I can say that yes, it works.

 

The next episode, "Droids in Distress," is available on the Watch Disney XD service again. And it's basically calmed all my worries about the show. I was worried about using Threepio and Artoo so early, but it wasn't hamfisted and seeing Artoo and Chopper sass each other was great. Also...

 

 

Bail Organa's cameo at the end was AMAZING and makes me think that he's going around, trying to find all these local Rebel cells in order to create the Rebel Alliance. Which is exactly what I want to see and goes with what we know already about the history of the Rebellion.

 

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It wasn't too bad. Felt a lot like someone just grabbed a random copy of Star Wars Adventure Journal or something from Wizards of the Coast and turned it into a show.

Liked the design work on the holocron and Ezra's wristmounted energy slingshot thingy.

  • Ezra is still Aladdin.

And the Ezra = Aladdin comparison is fantastic. :thumbsup:


The bad guys LITERALLY call him street rat.

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I waited till after we watched the special to click on this thread, and yeah, the blatant Ezra/Aladdin thing was SO distracting, I started humming "One Jump Ahead" during one chase scene.

 

I'd agree all those Wookiees with Lego hair were an unfortunate cost-cutting move, too. The animation in general never jumped out at me. Clone Wars was at least good for the occasional moments of "Whoa!"

 

No complaints about the characters themselves, though I kinda rolled my eyes when, after telling us over and over again for decades that basically all the Jedi except Obi-Wan and Yoda were hunted to extinction prior to ANH, the show's big idea for working around that historical limitation seems simply to declare, "NUH-UH! NYAAAH! #notalljedi" That feels like a cheat.

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I don't think the Purge is a limitation. I could be wrong, but I assumed that this was taking place well before ANH and the remaining Jedi are still being hunted.

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Far as we know from the movies, the only surviving Jedi were Obi-Wan and Yoda. Thanks to their special heritage, Luke and Leia's survival were key to the Jedi comeback. Not just anyone could do it. They and they alone were a Big Deal. No one else could've made the difference that they did.

 

Clone Wars could've posed a problem with Ahsoka. I think most of us assumed someday her absence from the OT would be explained away with her death scene. Instead they took a different route and had her quitting the Jedi. In the long term, it means she probably grew up bitter and resentful about the years wasted in training, and who knows if she swore off using her powers or just kept them buried until they atrophied away. Ultimately she was written out in such a way that, for better or for worse, the integrity of the OT remained in good standing by the time Clone Wars abruptly ended.

 

With Kanan, they've stuck their foot in that door again. By weaseling out of that intrinsic OT premise and undermining the inherent tragedy that made Luke uniquely useful, they've decided, "Sure, there can be other Jedi", and now there's nothing stopping them from introducing other new, magically surviving Jedi by the dozens. And with each new Jedi they retroactively add to canon, they're also gonna have to explain why they never mattered in the grand scheme, and why they stayed unimportant all through the OT. By making what's essentially a cheesy fanfic kind of move, they've given future writers the option to whine, "Hey, I wanna introduce my cool new Jedi into canon, too! Kanan's creator got to have a new Jedi! Why can't I?" And then the entire writers' room will be like, "LET'S ALL MAKE NEW JEDI!"

 

Fast-forward to the events of ANH plus post-Abrams retcons, and now the only remaining Jedi are Kenobi, Yoda, the still-unknowing Skywalker twins, and about 50-100 other random canon Jedi introduced in Rebels, Marvel's upcoming comics, and whatever new novels and other media spinoffs are in the pipeline. Sooner or later, anyone who wants to reconcile all of this will be hard pressed to explain why none of these 50-100 other shiny new Jedi, most of whom will have been conceived as super awesome undefeated champions, didn't go take out Vader themselves.

 

...

 

It reminds me of the story of Krypton. For the longest time, Superman was the only known survivor, the "Last Son of Krypton", as he was called time and again. He had weight as an orphan and as the last of his species. Then we learned Supergirl lived, because duplicate rocket. And three Phantom Zone villains lived, because Phantom Zone. Then there were more Phantom Zone villains, because it was a big place and we didn't look closely last time. Then Krypto the Super-Dog lived somehow. And if Krypto lived, there's no reason why Streaky the Super-Cat didn't also live. Seems fair, one Kryptonian pet each. Oh, and we forgot to mention the Bottle City of Kandor. So there's another, what, million-plus survivors? Two million? Eight? And this isn't even counting all the other one-off Silver Age Kryptonian characters I'd have to go look up and add here.

 

Over the decades that whole "Last Son of Krypton" tagline ended up having a metric ton of unwieldy qualifying footnotes appended to it. Amazing Heroes reviewer R.A. Jones put it best when recapping this annoying story gimmick: "Let's face it, the only people who really died when Krypton exploded were Jor-El and Lara."

 

...

 

My point: when writers go to a lot of trouble to establish that a specific characteristic (one that's foundational to your story, if not to your entire historical timeline) is possessed by "only" a very, very select few individuals, the more that premise is betrayed, the more meaningless the previously established events retroactively become.

 

If Kanan alone has a fantastic story reason for living as long as he has, and Lucasfilm Licensing never grants this same exception to any other writer ever again, it could conceivably work. If he's the first in an entire army of Secret Sneaky Survivalist Jedi...then someday someone will do the maths and realize the infamous massacre of "Order 66" was severely sensationalized and only really saw about fifteen or twenty casualties, tops.

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I agree it feels a bit weird and that they are trying to shoehorn in a jedi because hey Star Wars needs Jedi, I guess?

 

But to think that the force just magically stopped manifesting itself in everybody in the universe because the Jedi Order went away is crazy. I'd like to think that the force was there long before the Jedi were.

 

So to say there are probably lots of force sensitive people around with no idea what they have or how to use it is completely plausible. Which is where they are going with Ezra, I think.

 

But the stinking point here, which is what I think you're getting at, is how does Kanan know how to fight, how to even use the force, where did he get a lightsaber etc etc. All of that stuff needs a big explanation. But I'm willing to hear them out but it better be air tight because it's a slippery slope.

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Six - you need to sit down with your wife and have a long chat about EU Jedi surviving the purge. :p (One of my biggest gripes about the Legacy comics is all the prequel Jedi suddenly hanging around. WHERE WERE YOU DURING THE GALACTIC CIVIL WAR???)

 

Anyway...

 

I'm okay with Jedi surviving Order 66. That's why Vader and the Inquisitors were around, after all, to hunt down the survivors. Palpatine knew Order 66 wouldn't get rid of all of them.

 

I am NOT okay with Jedi surviving the Purge into the Original Trilogy. Dave Filoni says they are cognizant of Luke's role as the "new hope" and they're not going to undermine that.

 

However, the only way I can see this happening is if Kanan dies, preferably by Vader's hand. I'm praying for this to be the series finale.

 

The rest of the Ghost's crew can make their way into the Alliance proper. I can see Hera running shipments, and Zeb and Sabine being in the commando forces. Ezra can go either way, but if he's hanging around during the OT, there's no reason why he and Luke shouldn't have met. So Ezra probably needs to die, too. The Inquisitor can have him. :p

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But the stinking point here, which is what I think you're getting at, is how does Kanan know how to fight, how to even use the force, where did he get a lightsaber etc etc. All of that stuff needs a big explanation. But I'm willing to hear them out but it better be air tight because it's a slippery slope.

Oh, we know all this already. :) His backstory is covered in A New Dawn, and they'll go into it on the show (there's a clip of him and the Inquisitor from a future episode floating around).

 

 

He was a Jedi. He was around 13 during Order 66 and died when Depa Billaba helped save him. It's not clear whether they were at the Temple or somewhere else. The book insinuates she was his master. After that he traveled around from planet to planet, denying the Force, until he met Hera and went with her on the Ghost.)

 

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I get your point, Six, but there's a distinction to be made:

 

If all of the Jedi are dead by the time of the OT, we still have time for the Jedi to die. Obi-Wan sent out a message specifically telling the Jedi to hide, so you have to assume that at least some managed to do so. Then they have to be hunted. We're still within the established timeline between trilogies, so the argument that this means that Jedi survived all the way to the OT doesn't make any sense.

 

Can you help me understand your point?

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But the stinking point here, which is what I think you're getting at, is how does Kanan know how to fight, how to even use the force, where did he get a lightsaber etc etc. All of that stuff needs a big explanation. But I'm willing to hear them out but it better be air tight because it's a slippery slope.

Exactly! Sure, the Force and Force-sensitive folks won't be going anywhere, but they won't amount to much if no one trains them or calls them to serve that higher Jedi purpose. Far as the Sith are concerned, they're effectively neutralized and not a problem.

 

Kanan has definitely been an accredited Jedi at some point, so I'm likewise curious to know what kind of backstory they have in mind for him.

 

Oh, we know all this already. :) His backstory is covered in A New Dawn, and they'll go into it on the show (there's a clip of him and the Inquisitor from a future episode floating around).

Did not know this. At all. I should hope they do cover it in-series, because if I have to read the books or follow Star Wars news sites or consult a wiki after every episode to appreciate the show, I'm out.

 

I am NOT okay with Jedi surviving the Purge into the Original Trilogy. Dave Filoni says they are cognizant of Luke's role as the "new hope" and they're not going to undermine that.

EXACTLY THIS. I'm glad Dave Filoni gets me, at least. I was under the apparently mistaken impression that Order 66 wasn't a long, dragged-out process, but more of a competently chillingly managed, efficient, expedient event. So now I'm curious to know how long it took before Kenobi, Yoda, and the Skywalker Babies became the official Final Four.

 

We need a red shot-clock in the corner during every episode reading "[n] JEDI STILL ALIVE" that counts backwards as we watch them all slowly being butchered one by one over the course of the series. That'd be helpful for context.

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LOL.

 

This is how I distinguish them: Order 66 = the one event during RotS, in which the vast majority of the Jedi were killed; vs. the Jedi Purge = hunting down the survivors and anyone else who exhibits Force sensitivity to either kill or recruit.

 

 

 

Droids in Distress, the second episode is currently free on Itunes. Go watch it now (and then come talk to me about that cameo).

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Curious about the connection between Rebels and the movies. I understand that this series is cannon, and it takes place between the OT and the PT. But will it connect to the ST in any way? I'm wondering if there will be any connection where during the ST we will see a character or have a story arc referenced.

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