New Star Wars cartoon - SW Rebels - is quite good!

[Dominic]

Like I said, SW no longer has enough of my trust to get me to "take the time" to watch the episode. The preview did not sell me. Maybe the Gillen written "Darth Vader" series will do it. Maybe not. I dunno.


As for Order 66, the Jedi would only have had so much warning. And, seeing a disaster coming is not the same as being able to do something about it. The point is that most of the Jedi were supposed to be dead.

Are your neighbors running freedom-fighter missions all over the country? Are they doing anything to garner attention whatsoever which would increase the odds of running into them? Not likely. This wasn't coincidence, this was the events of the story being noteworthy. Nobody wants to read a book where nothing happens for 5 years until at the end the events finally start happening. A led to B which led to C. There were coincidences like Mara Jade being on that crew and having a beef with Luke, but the way the story got from Thrawn's rise to Luke's encounter with Krarde was more organic than you give it credit for.

The point is that they just happened to run in to each other.....

[JediTricks]

Star Wars and I are done, so I'll take JT's word that the show's all right and call it good. However. Regarding Order 66. That irritated the hell out of me because, like, aren't the Jedi supposed to be badass psychic space ninja knights? With reflexes that let them block laser blasts and all? Sure, they were surprised and all, but if each Jedi is supposed to be as tough or tougher than Obi-Wan, I would think the survival rate would have been a lot higher.

Order 66 was basically Lucas had written himself into a corner with the prequels, he had this vague statement previously that the Jedi were hunted down and wiped out by the Empire, but then didn't do any foundation for that in the prequels and just went the easy route. Order 66 is basically the droid control ship of Episode I, knock out that one target and all the dominoes fall. The Jedi aren't infallible, they're sorcerer warrior monks but they aren't perfect, and there aren't that many of them. So what Lucas did was, instead of staying true to the original message he had created in the '70s writing the backstory to Star Wars, he created this line about the Dark Side limiting the Jedi connection to the Force and then could put their trust into these troops they don't have reason to trust so they could be stabbed in the back when the troops have a switch flipped so they go from "good" to "evil" faster than the Jedi could sense. It's sloppy and rube goldbergian.

Even though I'm done with Star Wars, I did watch the Phineas and Ferb Star Wars special, and ended up really digging that. Anyone check that show out?

I did watch that, I haven't watched P&F in a while because my niece outgrew it, but this felt about that level. It was fun and pretty well-produced, but there was a slight feeling for me of them doing it not out of passion the way Family Guy did their Star Wars crossovers, but because of corporate synergy.

As for Order 66, the Jedi would only have had so much warning. And, seeing a disaster coming is not the same as being able to do something about it. The point is that most of the Jedi were supposed to be dead.

The Jedi should have been able to see the future, they should have some sense of a big thing like that, however Episode 2 dropped in a cheap line about their connection to the Force being clouded. Had Lucas taken more time to tell a story properly, he would have had Palpatine slowly change the minds of the Republic's citizens to turn against the Jedi, and that negative energy weakened the Jedi connection to the Force - this is something some EU during Ep 2 supported but Lucas didn't bother including.

Are your neighbors running freedom-fighter missions all over the country? Are they doing anything to garner attention whatsoever which would increase the odds of running into them? Not likely. This wasn't coincidence, this was the events of the story being noteworthy. Nobody wants to read a book where nothing happens for 5 years until at the end the events finally start happening. A led to B which led to C. There were coincidences like Mara Jade being on that crew and having a beef with Luke, but the way the story got from Thrawn's rise to Luke's encounter with Krarde was more organic than you give it credit for.

The point is that they just happened to run in to each other.....

Yes, Mara and Luke eventually run into each other coincidentally because Mara had become aimless after the death of her master and fell in with Karrde's pirates. That was a coincidence, not a whole story of coincidences the way you sold it.

[JediTricks]

Star Wars Rebels premieres tomorrow on Disney Channel at 9pm, I hope you guys will check it out and enjoy it and come back and tell me everything you thought sucked. (Because you don't spend a bunch of time griping over stuff you don't care about.)

[Shockwave]

Star Wars Rebels premieres tomorrow on Disney Channel at 9pm, I hope you guys will check it out and enjoy it and come back and tell me everything you thought sucked. (Because you don't spend a bunch of time griping over stuff you don't care about.)

I'll give it a chance at the very least.

Actually, this thread is a perfect example of why spoilers don't bother me. If you look back through the last few pages, there are two very different tellings of the story so far. I plan to just watch the show and make up my own mind. And, AoE is another good example, I had written it off completely based on the statutory rape thing and "Transformium" but having actually watched it I found that I enjoyed it much more than I ever expected to. It just goes to show that you really can't rely on other people's perceptions to determine if you like something or not.

[JediTricks]

I'll give it a chance at the very least.

Actually, this thread is a perfect example of why spoilers don't bother me. If you look back through the last few pages, there are two very different tellings of the story so far. I plan to just watch the show and make up my own mind. And, AoE is another good example, I had written it off completely based on the statutory rape thing and "Transformium" but having actually watched it I found that I enjoyed it much more than I ever expected to. It just goes to show that you really can't rely on other people's perceptions to determine if you like something or not.

That's cool, I look forward to hearing your opinion on it.

Interesting take on spoilers. I actually had more spoilers in my original review and cut them because there are more things in Rebels than I wanted to give away, I didn't want to ruin those stories, just give you an idea of what to expect. Prowl's take on the characters is wildly different from my own, I see his point- there is some "made by committee" feeling to the loglines on Sabine (the Mandalorian graffiti artist) and Kanan (the gunslingin' ex-Jedi) - but having seen Dave Filoni and Greg Weisman succeed at storytelling no matter the odds, I had faith and was rewarded with richer characters than their mere surface reads. Meanwhile, with AOE, I didn't watch it not because of the story so much as because I know I don't like Bay's way of telling stories, so there's no way I won't be more bothered than entertained, so there's no spoiler about that movie which could make OR break me.

[Shockwave]

Weisman is writing this? My interest level just spiked considerably. I love his work on Gargoyles, both the show and the comic, damn shame how Disney fucked that over.

For Age of Extinction, I think for me it's what I call the "Alien vs. Predator" effect. I know AVP is generally regarded as the standard by which all bad in measure, and I had heard as such before I saw it. And I didn't really think it was that terrible. Probably because I was expecting two hours of cringe worthy. Same with AoE, I was expecting non stop "ugh" and was pleasantly surprised.

[JediTricks]

Weisman is writing this? My interest level just spiked considerably. I love his work on Gargoyles, both the show and the comic, damn shame how Disney fucked that over.

For Age of Extinction, I think for me it's what I call the "Alien vs. Predator" effect. I know AVP is generally regarded as the standard by which all bad in measure, and I had heard as such before I saw it. And I didn't really think it was that terrible. Probably because I was expecting two hours of cringe worthy. Same with AoE, I was expecting non stop "ugh" and was pleasantly surprised.

Weisman is exec-producing it, so he's basically overseeing writing alongside Dave Filoni and Simon Kinberg (the show has 3 exec producers), and I don't know if he's penned any episodes by himself yet.

AVP just looked exploitative of its audience, it knew it didn't need to care about true Alien fans, so it went a lazier route and went for a casual audience - when you do that, you're "bad" in that you're not trying very hard, but then you get into a totally different realm of execution anyway because now the expectations are lower. It's not like Alien or Predator franchises were somehow massively above AVP either, there's a false sense of superiority about those pre-AVP films as if they're high art when they're at best competent action sci-fi flicks and they don't always reach their best. That said, I caught a few minutes of AVP on TV a few weeks ago and it really did have that cheaper feeling about it, the production and acting in the scene felt halfway between regular cinematic movies and Syfy's non-Saturday movies.

I still feel like Transformers the franchise is above the Bay movies though, like there's a misunderstanding on what stories and characters should exist in Transformers from Bay's perspective that allows him to paint everything in those films with his very specific paintbrush. Essentially, these films would basically be what you'd get with Michael Bay's The Godfather or Ghostbusters or Raiders of the Lost Ark or Citizen Kane or Gremlins or Star Wars or Close Encounters of the Third Kind or The Matrix, his storytelling style colors the stories he tells to the point that he loses sight of the actual kernels of the story, which is why he's better at creating his own material than adapting someone else's.

[Shockwave]

Well I finally saw it last night and so far I like it. I do see the beginning of Disney borrowing from it's other properties though. My first impression was Space Aladin in Space Agrabah, but that's more of an observation, it didn't really annoy me or anything. As for surviving Jedi, in the original trilogy, Obi Wan tells Luke that the Jedi are all but extinct, implying that there are still some out there but very few left. Rebels does contradict Episode III though in that Obi-Wan says to Anakin "it was said that you would bring balance to the Force", which if it's implied that only he and Yoda survived then that would be balance: Two Jedi and two sith. Two light and two dark. Having said that, this also builds off of something in Episode III: Obi-Wan's warning beakon. He changed the beakon to warn any remaining Jedi away from the Jedi Temple so, it does stand to reason that a few Jedi may have received the message and laid low. As for some of the cringe worthy moments mentioned in this thread:

"What happened out there?"
"He did"

Not exactly how I expected that to play out. Just from Prowl's comments, I expected Space Aladdin to do something spectacular and for whoever replied to be saying "he did" as if the kid was the new bad ass. But, that isn't what happens at all. The guy was actually annoyed because the kid had actually got in the way. Again, this just goes to show how one person's interpretation can be completely different from another for having watched the same thing.

I also liked the music. It was reminiscent of and even used some of the original music from the original trilogy while also being new and different but with that same feel. It was blened quite nicely. Everything had a look and feel and sound of something taking place during the original Star Wars and that's really what I'd want out of this.

Overall I have to say that if this is what Disney has intended for the SW franchise, then I'm in. New shows and new stories with that feeling like they fit in the original setting, coupled with the plans they have for the renovations at Disneyland make me glad that Lucas handed it over to them. I like this and I'm looking forward to more.

[JediTricks]

The 2nd episode of Rebels is free on iTunes right now: https://itunes.apple.com/us/tv-season/d ... d920938545
I really liked this episode, I smiled and even laughed a lot, but still got into the action and the Star Warsiness (there's a lot of little nods, including Paul Reubens as the RX pilot droid, reprising the character from Star Tours). The last act is a bit reminiscent of the pilot, but Zeb as a character gets to shine and there's a punchier ending, so it ends up working overall for me.

Rebels does contradict Episode III though in that Obi-Wan says to Anakin "it was said that you would bring balance to the Force", which if it's implied that only he and Yoda survived then that would be balance: Two Jedi and two sith. Two light and two dark.

George Lucas claims that the Force is in balance when the Dark Side has no Sith Lords at all, the number of Jedi is irrelevant, the Sith Lords were using it negatively which caused the imbalance. That's why the Jedi were able to see value in the prophecy of the one who would bring balance to the Force, otherwise they wouldn't have allowed Anakin to continue being a Jedi after Qui-Gon died (and perhaps would have killed Anakin right then and there). Why he called it "balance" then I dunno, just one more annoying stupid thing he put into the prequels that made not enough sense.

Glad you liked it Shockwave. You're the 3rd person I've seen call out that Aladdin connection, I guess because Ezra was surviving on his own on a beige planet by being a clever thief, but that definitely doesn't stick around, and I suspect it was more a coincidence than anything. I look forward to finding out what Filoni says about that when it gets around more.

I also liked the music. It was reminiscent of and even used some of the original music from the original trilogy while also being new and different but with that same feel. It was blened quite nicely. Everything had a look and feel and sound of something taking place during the original Star Wars and that's really what I'd want out of this.

I swear, if the prequels had used more OT music or music that sounded like the OT, I think I would have liked them 25% more easily. Hearing that classic-style music here definitely helps a lot, and the new music fits well, I wonder if they'll do a soundtrack by the end of the season.

Overall I have to say that if this is what Disney has intended for the SW franchise, then I'm in. New shows and new stories with that feeling like they fit in the original setting, coupled with the plans they have for the renovations at Disneyland make me glad that Lucas handed it over to them. I like this and I'm looking forward to more.

Well put!

[Shockwave]

Huh, well that's interesting. I would have thought 2 on each side would be more balanced, but hey, I'm not a Jedi so what do I know? As for the Aladding thing, some of that was the beggining, but mostly it's his look. He really just looks like Space Aladdin.