More of the Same

Star Wars: Rebels

2014-8

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Pros: Some Good Characters and Arcs

Cons: Overly Dependent on Fanservice, Bland Protagonist, Uninspired Premise, Some Logical Flaws

         After Disney bought Star Wars, it created a new show that reflected its current lack of inspiration.  I would have liked standalone show about Darth Vader’s doing his thing in the interim (Genndy Tartakovsky’s minimalist style would work well), but instead we got a show about a group of plucky rebels, because we’ve had nothing like that before.  Middling producer Simon Kinberg teamed up with Dave Filoni (and Greg Weisman for the first season), and the result was not as creative or complex as The Clone Wars.  Then again, it’s premise is substantially more limiting.

          Our protagonist is Ezra Bridger (Taylor Gray), a force sensitive youth from the industrial planet Lothal.  His parents were imprisoned by Imperials, which is a pretty typical backstory.  He’s headstrong and impulsive, mostly maintaining these traits throughout the series.  I don’t find him a particularly compelling character.  His Jedi mentor Kanan Jarrus (Freddie Prinze, Jr.) plays the straight man role of Phoenix Squadron, and he has some amusingly deadpan moments.  The leader of the cell and Kanan’s love interest is crack Twi’Lek pilot Hera Syndulla (Vanessa Marshall).  Her abrasive pet astromech droid Chopper (Dave Filoni) isn’t terribly appealing most of the time but does have a nice history revealed in Season 3 (he momentarily pays homage to the crashed Y-Wing Hera pulled him from by her ancestral house).  Zeb (Steven Blum) is the alien muscle of the group.  He’s a gruff character and has the gruff cockney accent to go with it.  He's competent but gets the occasional description of being too impulsive for leadership.  The Informed Brute.  The group’s gun-toting Mandalorian tomboy, Sabine Wren (Tiya Sircar), has a penchant for graffiti art.  Naturally, they operate from an ersatz Millennium Falcon, though not the first in the franchise.  I like the symmetrical design of the craft, but Group of Eccentrics on Rugged Starship is getting old. 

         Original enemies of the show include Imperial Agent Kallus (David Oyelowo), who acts as the show’s most constant antagonist, and the Inquisitors, force-sensitives who serve as Imperial enforcers.  The first season focuses on The Grand Inquisitor (Jason Isaacs), while subsequent seasons involve lower ranking members (Philip Anthony Rodriguez, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Robbie Daymond).  Imperial officers include the ambitious but incompetent Admiral Konstantine (Dee Bradley Baker) and Governor Pryce (Mary Elizabeth McGlynn).  A short, interesting twist is a civilian governor, Minister Maketh Tua (Kath Soucie), an example of a person trying to do right within the Empire’s system.  Popular for her domestic policies, her inability to deal with the insurgency on Lothal drives her to appeal to the Rebels, knowing how brutal the Empire can be for perceived failure.  

       Unfortunately, much of the appeal of this show is based on fanservice involving pre-existing characters.  After a short appearance by Tarkin (Stephen Stanton), the second season focuses on Darth Vader (James Earl Jones) as a primary threat.  He’s generally a clever and potent villain, especially when he coldly plans a false flag incident at Tua’s expense, but one moment does him decidedly dirty.  When Admiral Konstantine accidentally catches Vader’s TIE in a tractor beam, he openly acknowledges his own responsibility while announcing his plan to frame a hapless underling for it when Vader comes looking for answers.  Not only does Vader possess limited powers of telepathy, he loathes officers like Konstantine and would have no respect for his attempt to pass the buck.  Not to mention the entire room of witnesses who have no reason not to speak up.

       In the third season, the focus shifts to Grand Admiral Thrawn (Lars Mikkelsen).  Between the nice, creepy monotone and a great leitmotif, the man is good at making mildly intelligent deductions sound like the height of brilliance.  Still, I find him underwhelming as a villain.  My theory is that Vader is a smart, aggressive strategist and this is harder to fake by writers than an intelligent, passive strategist, and therefore he was forsaken in favor of Thrown.  Unfortunately, the trick doesn’t work, and the latter comes off like a complacent buffoon, confusing lack of concern for a sense of control.  This failure to take problems seriously can often result in hotter head's becoming frustrated and do unwitting damage.  This is apparent in political policy as well as Admiral Konstantine’s rash action during the final season’s battle that results in his demise and a Rebel advantage.  During this battle Thrawn’s foolishness even allows Hera to score a defeat against the Empire’s top ace (Mario Vernazza), destroying hims, a cruiser and a Star Destroyer.  The battle ends in a blatant Diabolus ex Machina in which the Rebel attackers are trounced offscreen by the apparently more competent second wave of Imperial defense.  The show is resolved by Ezra’s summoning some hyperspace whales that were only briefly seen once in a previous episode.

        Not to pander too much to Legends, because after reading the first book of the Thrawn Trilogy, I’m not terribly impressed with the original version of the character, either  He strikes me as a great example of a lazily written tactical genius, guessing things that no one could without access to the author’s POV.  If Canon Thrawn is the “This Is Fine” Dog, then Legends Thrawn is this, but unironically.  He’s also a blatant Liberal Arts Wish Fulfilment character, as he can apparently defeat a society’s military tactics simply by studying their art.  While I believe you can infer things about individual artists, I don’t see how this can be applied collectively, especially considering that artists are often separate from soldiers.  In fact, the one time he couldn’t figure out a civilization’s art, he simply quit and obliterated them from space because he is a genius.  He also calmly murders some tractor beam operator for not accounting for Luke’s trick just to teach a junior officer an erroneous lesson in responsibility.  Oh, also Rukh's in the show, too.  He's voiced by Warwick Davis.     

          Other characters brought back from better Star Wars include Ahsoka Tano (Ashley Eckstein), Captain Rex (Dee Bradley Baker), and Kalani (Gregg Berger).  Darth Maul (Sam Witwer) comes back to manipulate Ezra and eventually have a satisfying final face-off with Obi-wan Kenobi (Stephen Stanton).  Jim Cummings also returns as Hondo Ohnaka, whose charm repeatedly dupes the clueless young man multiple times.  At least the little fool resists a typical Comforting Fantasy offer from Sheev (Sam Witwer, Ian McDiarmid).  

         There’s even a great deal of blatant fanservice concerning fighters.  An arc revolves around the development of the TIE Defender under Thrawn’s supervision.  The show also has another word-building bugbear of mine, the proto-A-Wings, which date back to the 80’s.  I personally prefer both fighters as having been developed in the interim between Empire and Jedi.  We also have an origin story for the B-Wing which explains both its name and odd shape.  Another episode involves the stealing of a squadron of Y-Wings, which Thrawn of course shrugs off.  But, wait, no X-Wing boosting?

         However, there is one aspect of the show that’s consistently compelling: Sabine Wren.  At first glance she’s a generic strong female, but she ends up having satisfying arcs in which she struggles with her divided loyalties between the Rebels and her Mandalorian tribe.  At one point she confronts a huge mistake from her past that causes major consequences for her and her loved ones.  

So naturally I granted her the boon of drawing her as a fat dragoness.

 Not to say she’s the only original character who ever has a glimmer of complexity.  Kanan has a decent subplot in Season 3 in which he interacts with a mysterious being named The Bendu (Tom Baker) and Kallus eventually becomes a good guy.  Unfortunately, in the final season of the show, Kanan is guided by some Cheesy Force Wolves that remind me that the deep dives into the zen mysticism of the Force often result in the most boring parts of the franchise.

           As for the visuals, the show had a smaller budget than TCW, and it shows.  The animation is good, but there’s not as much detail.  There are many textures that were not meant to be seen as close as they are and they resemble chalk lines.  There are some nice stylizations meant to invoke concept art, like Vader’s mask.  The show also includes a lot of concepts from the original trilogy’s production.  Most noticeable of these is the AT-DP.  Unfortunately this vehicle, as well as the TIE fighters and Star Destroyers, suffer from awkward proportions.  Of course, 2D was too much to hope for.

          Star Wars: Rebels isn’t bad, but it’s not too good, either.  A testament to Disney War’s lack of daring, it sticks to a simple premise and a protagonist so uninteresting I didn’t even mention him in more than ten sentences.  Other cast members include Keone Young, Matthew Wood, Clancy Brown, Phil LaMarr, Greg Ellis, Genevieve O’Reilly, Corey Buron, Brent Spiner, Dante Basco, Michael Bell, Gina Torres, Forest Whitaker, James Hong, Matt Lanter, Frank Oz, Billy Dee Williams, Malcom McDowell, Tom Kane, Ben Diskin, and Paul Reubens.