Star Wars Rebels

Since 1983, before my birth, there have been a lot of movies and TV shows with the title of “Star Wars”, but none of them have felt like “Star Wars”. Rebels does feel like "Star Wars" and it proves that there is a formula for a Star Wars movie. The formula was long forgot by its creator, but the Disney company has rediscovered that formula. Not every fan will be able to tell you why this feels like Star Wars and the prequels did not, but I am going to attempt to do this.

Point 1: Cinema

It is obvious that "Rebels" isn’t simply an average kids television show. The thing feels cinematic. It isn’t just that the music and sounds are lifted right from the original trilogy, or that you have those neat “Star Wars” transitions that wipe and swipe across the screen. The camera angles feel real. It is well paced. There are quiet moments that are well juxtaposed with the action, (which feels liked the action right out of "Raiders of the Lost Ark" or "A New Hope"). I don’t know when Lucas or Spielberg forgot how to make these kinds of movies, but someone has remembered.

Point 2: Weight

         Everything in Star Wars Rebels has weight. There are tons of little moments that prove this. The first time we see a walker on screen it creaks and squeaks and appears high above the viewer. And you get this chill down your spine. This small shot is a “set-up” for episode 2. When we see these walkers again. In the “Droids” episode there are two of them! And they are hard to defeat. The characters have to work together and come up with an interesting solution to take down the walkers. It’s like the Hoth battle in Empire Strikes Back. 

If this were the prequels or “The Clone Wars” there might be 700 walkers and some Jedi would use the force to knock them all over or some clone trooper would throw a bomb and they would all blow up. But when things are so easily defeated the threat is eliminated and the thing doesn’t feel “cool” anymore. That’s why I don’t care about any of the droids or ships from the prequel trilogy: everything just blows up. There are like one-million things on the screen constantly exploding and nothing has weight.

Point 3: Characters and Plot

There is a main protagonist in this show and his name is Space Aladdin. There are also five other lead characters: Samurai-Jedi, Pilot-Oola, Sexy Boba-Fett, Aussie-Chewbacca, and Grumpy-Orange-R2-D2. The episodes of this show follow this rag-tag band of out-laws as they steal from the empire and sell to low-life criminals. This show is basically "Firefly".

That’s pretty much the plot. It’s simple. Can you please describe the main characters and plot of the Star Wars prequels? Is there a main character in the prequels? Is it Anakin? He’s barely in the first film. It can’t be Anakin, he’s the bad guy. Maybe it’s Obi-wan. Is there a main plot? If there is one, it’s certainly not a simple one. 

I feel like “Clone Wars” yearns for a main character and plot even more than the prequels. If the main characters are Anakin and Asoka, how come they aren’t in half the episodes?

The characters in Rebels feel real. They aren’t just stiff puppets. There are moments when they are lounging around the ship. They are slouched over or have there arms slung over a chair and you think “Hey, that’s how real people lounge around”. Compare this to how stiff every character looks in any prequel “dialogue” scene.

These small subtleties make the characters feel human. They are more than marionettes that are just there to take part in the action or carry-out the plot. The characters do and say things that feel organic. The dialogue in this show is decent and borderline clever.

Point 4: There are no lessons

Every “Clone Wars” episode would start with a quote, which told us what lesson we were suppose to learn from the episode. Then things would explode and a million blaster shots would be fired and at the end of it all, the characters would basically talk about how they learned some kind of lesson.

There are no fracking lessons in “Rebels”. If there are “lessons” they are much harder to put your finger on. You have to really think about it and even after that, there are no easy answers.

One example is the character Zeb. His species is endangered because the Empire freaking killed them all. If this were “Clone Wars” you might have Padme on the screen saying something like “Genocide is wrong!” and then she would address the senate and they would be outraged but some crooked senator would make some sly deal because he was evil.

Rebels is different. First of all it doesn’t make a blanket statement, like “Genocide is wrong!” It focuses on a character who has been torn apart by genocide and shows us how he is feeling about it. But this isn’t some little helpless alien that we should feel sorry for, this is a big rude brute that we aren’t sure if we have warmed up to yet, and the fact that his race has been extinguished and that he is emotional about it, helps us feel something for him. There is no doubt the Empire is evil here, but it’s not just to be evil. If I were the Empire I might take down this guys species too. They seem ornery and dangerous.

Nitpicky?

Some people might say that I am being nitpicky. But really they are just accusing me of having tastes and standards. Someone who likes beer will talk about the subtleties of the taste, how the flavors are well balanced or how much the malts are roasted. If you give them a Bud Light and they don’t like it and you accuse them of being too picky, then you are being a douche-bag, not them. This is how many fans (and casual viewers) feel about the prequel trilogy and Clone Wars- That it’s Bud Light and they at least wanted a Leinenkugel. Lucas forgot how to make good beer a long time ago, but Disney- Disney has been brewing good beer for children for generations! Hmmm…. my metaphor kind of got away there.