Star Wars Rebels Season Three (spoilers)
- Thread starter Reverend
- Start date
I disagree. Although Clone Wars is my favorite cartoon, I think Rebels really upped their game this season. I don't think they're "average shows with occasional flashes of excellence." I don't think it should be dismissed because it's an animated series. More people are likely to see it then read the books or the comics.
Well if you watch the trailer, he might get his sight back, there are some scenes where he isn't wearing it.
They are! People have said this a couple times already, I know have. Zahn is writing a new Thrawn book for next April and Ahsoka is getting her own as well.
There is no way the books are ever going to be even close to Rebels or any other future shows in the canon. I don't know the ratings, but just going by the way these things usually work, the shows will be watched by at least a million or two people probably, while the books are only read by a few thousand. The books are a way to fill in gaps, and explore side stories, while the shows and movies are the core story. I think at this point the comics are probably even more important to the canon than the novels are.
EDIT: Zeb and Sabine are awesome.
Yeah, I know they're not adapting a specific story, I just meant that they appear taking his personality and stuff pretty much directly from the books.Indeed I did. Rectified.
Well it's not really an adaptation on anything that existed before, rather they're porting a character into a new story. If it was a direct adaptation it'd be the whole 'Outbound Flight' thing which I don't see them doing. What's important to me though is that they get the core of the character right, which they certainly seem to have done. Honestly, Thrawn works much better without all that convoluted back story about crazy Jedi clones, distant alien threats and racist Palpatine playing favourites.
If they're just taking his core character traits and just have him be from a semi-obscure world of the old Republic who rose through the ranks in the Clone Wars, I'd be perfectly fine with it.
OK, I have to admit, I did forget about a lot of what you talk about there. It's actually one of the few SW books I've read twice, but that was mainly just because I read it a second time to remind myself of it before one of the other books using stuff from it came out, not because I really wanted to read it again.It's bonkers and more than a little creepy. I mean the idea that Han could win a whole planet in a card game and then decide the best way to deal with Leia considering an arranged marriage (side note: Leia considered going through with an arranged marriage) is to *forcibly abduct* her and take her to said planet is just awful on so many levels. Also, it's a planet inhabited by force wielding Amazons that ride on Rancors and treat men as slaves and yet these are the good guys because the baddies are exactly the same, they just have an evil sounding name.
Also-also by an astonishing co-incidence Yoda also once visited this planet. Because this explains how Luke is there and also not bashing Han over the head for kidnapping his sister.
Then there's the Hapes who are so OP, they could apparently wipe out the whole Imperial Remnant within the year if they felt like it (where were these guys when planets were being blown up? Also, why would Palpatine tolerate such a massive threat having free reign in the galaxy?) But they don't because Prince No-Brain instead married the Rancor lady with no concept on indoor plumbing, thus dooming the galaxy to endless Imperial remnant merry-go-round plots, Solo twin kidnappings and the horror's of KJA's writing skills.
My personal favourite though is how the main antagonist (an utterly ridiculous cartoon character of a villain that make Skeleton look like he totally has his shit together) manages to get his massive indestructible ship destroyed *twice*. No, not two different ships, the same ship twice in the same book because apparently by the end the author had forgotten how the book started. I can only assume the editor's brain was too numbed by the terrible prose for this to register.
Other than that (and the painful 3PO song and dance number) it was quite enjoyable...
EDIT 2:
Filoni has addressed how they plan to approach Thrawn.
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Well, I come in as an old EU fan, where the books were right below the movies as THE canon, so that's what I'll always go with. It helps that the best stories SW stories (in my opinion) are told in book form anyway. When it comes to Zeb and Sabine, I hate comedy relief, so Zeb drove me mad (not as much as Chopper, but still bad). He's just the stupid muscle who gets into "hilarious" arguments with Aladdin and Chopper. I never found him very interesting, even when they gave him "generic tragic backstory #45678F" to try to make him less of a bland "angry muscle" character.
As for Sabine, I loathe the fake Mandalorians of the new canon, so I hate Sabine on an almost subconscious level. As a character she's a bit bland and gives a bad name to mandalorians, although not nearly as bad a name as the fake racist/pacifist mandalorians of TCW cartoon. Take away her helmet and armor plates and stop mentioning mandalorians in connection to her, and she'd be a bit bland but not terrible character. As a "mandalorian", I hate her on principle. If she was just an unconnected character, she'd be ok, just like Hera and Kanan.
You have to love the generic corporate speak Filoni is so good at. Make sure to not tick off the hardcore nerds too much while giving nothing away but not saying anything you can't go back on immediately. They're just as likely to make Thrawn into their version of the weekly bumbling villain who always loses as they are to make him any kind of threat to the main characters. I hope the book doesn't have to follow or be held back by the cartoon.
Can you think of a particular example where they have failed to do this in the past and it wasn't a substantial improvement over the original material?
Probably the only notable one is Vos who was a much darker, more serious, borderline renegade character in the comics, but characterised as more of a lighthearted, cheerful maverick in TCW. However, as the 'Dark Disciple' book showed, they had plans that would have given him an arc that would have ended with him in a very similar place as his comic book incarnation. So there's that.
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You know, "Batman: The Animated Series" took aspects and combined them, changed them, etc., and it's widly hailed as the best interpretation of on-screen Batman ever. Two character created for the show have gone on to popularity in the comics and film, as well as a third character which I think was also created for the show, moving on to other Batman projects. Even the Mr. Freeze background story was adopted. When your franchise is a loose amalgation of things, if a series wants to combine or even change little things or ad whole new elements and it improves it, go for it.
I was hoping Kanan would remain in that Jedi Temple guard mask -- it looked good on him. I just kind of hate those eyes drawn on his new mask. And while I can accept him getting his vision back in some fantastical way, I was kind of hoping he'd be bereft of it longer, putting more onus upon Ezra and forcing him to not only grow up more quickly but take on responsiblities which had prior to been Kanan's.
I was hoping Kanan would remain in that Jedi Temple guard mask -- it looked good on him. I just kind of hate those eyes drawn on his new mask. And while I can accept him getting his vision back in some fantastical way, I was kind of hoping he'd be bereft of it longer, putting more onus upon Ezra and forcing him to not only grow up more quickly but take on responsiblities which had prior to been Kanan's.
Zahn said he loved what they've done with him on Rebels.
I like Zahn as an author, but that doesn't mean much. He obviously still wants to write Star Wars books, so he's not going to say anything too bad about Rebels. Now, its totally possible he does like what they did. But, I'm just saying that his opinion on the matter doesn't really matter to me. Whether he just doesn't want to piss off people who pay him to write books, or he really likes what Rebels is doing doesn't matter to me. The creator of a character can do stupid things with the characters they create, or support other people doing stupid things (see George Lucas for a good example of that). I hope Zahn is happy and puts out a great Thrawn book. But, his opinion on Rebels and what they're doing to Thrawn is meaningless to me, even as a fan of all of Zahn's SW work.
IIRC Filloni said they considered keeping the old guard mask but it just didn't look practical for day-to-day use. For one thing, it covers his mouth.
As for the painted eyes: the idea there is that they felt that they needed some sort of reference point so the audience could at least get a sense where he might be "looking" and those specific markings are meant to convey that he's become closer to Rex.
where can you find old episodes?
I don't remember Vos, but I was a little disappointed that we lost the good witches on Dathomir.
Oh god, Dathomir got gutted by TCW writers. not quite as badly as the Mandalorians, but still really badly. The screwed up part is that the original Nightsisters would have worked perfectly fine in that role, without changing anything about the planet or its people. I mean, they would have made the Nightsisters a bit more powerful, but I think they actually would have been more interesting then what they went with in TCW.
Did we? It's a big planet and all we saw was the Night Sister clan and their single village on Night Brothers. There could be thousands of small Dathomiri groups out there in the wilderness, none of whom had anything to do with the events depicted in TCW.
Even if we did, so what? It was a horribly cliched concept with little to no appreciable difference between the "good" witches and the "evil" night sisters. So again I say, name one instance where they changed something that *wasn't* a substantive improvement.
I'd argue that loosing poorly conceived material is no loss at all. Indeed, it's a net gain.
I honestly haven't read the books in while, so I really don't remember enough specifics of the books to judge what crossover elements were better where.
I just remembered that I did catch a reference that implied there were other groups of witches on Dathomir when I watched Witches of the Mist a few days ago. It wasn't clear if they were good or bad though.
I know a lot of people were pissed they changed the Mandalorians, but I haven't read any of Karen Traviss's books to know which is better. From the bits I've heard the Traviss Mandalorians did sound like a generic Klingon-ripoff, warrior culture, so I'm thinking there's a pretty good chance the canon version is probably better. It also gave us Satine and her relationship with Obi-Wan, which is probably enough to make up for the negative elements in the change.
I just remembered that I did catch a reference that implied there were other groups of witches on Dathomir when I watched Witches of the Mist a few days ago. It wasn't clear if they were good or bad though.
I know a lot of people were pissed they changed the Mandalorians, but I haven't read any of Karen Traviss's books to know which is better. From the bits I've heard the Traviss Mandalorians did sound like a generic Klingon-ripoff, warrior culture, so I'm thinking there's a pretty good chance the canon version is probably better. It also gave us Satine and her relationship with Obi-Wan, which is probably enough to make up for the negative elements in the change.
^There really wasn't that much to the original Dathomir witches to begin with. They were basically a stock fantasy cliche, Amazon inspired warrior woman culture right down to the wearing of leather bikinis and treating men as slaves and breeders. As if inverted gender roles were somehow clever and original in and of itself. Nothing was "lost", they just took a poorly executed concept and made it 5000% more interesting.
As I previously elaborated 'Courtship' was a weird, not terribly well written book riddled with plot holes, one dimensional characterisations across the board, a needlessly complicated nonsensical plot and the narrative attention span of a concussed squirrel.
Again, with the Mandalorians they took a concept that, while it had some interesting world building elements regarding the ethos and culture, it made no damn sense in the context of the Star Wars universe and just came across as an overly fetishistic love letter to space Vikings/Spartans. What really rubbed a lot of fans the wrong way though, is that the author in question had such an attachment to them that she felt the need to negatively portray Jedi as petty and stupid in order to make her version on Mandos look better.
What Lucas did with that idea was again a MASSIVE improvement. Making the Mandalorians pacifists didn't erase all that warrior culture tosh, it put it in context. All that stuff was still there, but they showed the logical end point of a culture dedicated to fighting everything that moves for the sheer challenge and glory of it.
That is an ecologically devastated world and a population so sick to death of ruling the warrior clans' constant warfare that they overthrew and exiled them like they extremist thugs they were.
So are you *really* disappointed that they made something worse that you thought was already great, or is it really just that "they didn't do a thing exactly as I've seen it done before" regardless of quality? Because I can't see how the latter is a terribly valid complaint. If it's the former, then by all means, enlighten me to the merits of the planet of space vikings and the planet of the magical space dominatrixes.
As I previously elaborated 'Courtship' was a weird, not terribly well written book riddled with plot holes, one dimensional characterisations across the board, a needlessly complicated nonsensical plot and the narrative attention span of a concussed squirrel.
Again, with the Mandalorians they took a concept that, while it had some interesting world building elements regarding the ethos and culture, it made no damn sense in the context of the Star Wars universe and just came across as an overly fetishistic love letter to space Vikings/Spartans. What really rubbed a lot of fans the wrong way though, is that the author in question had such an attachment to them that she felt the need to negatively portray Jedi as petty and stupid in order to make her version on Mandos look better.
What Lucas did with that idea was again a MASSIVE improvement. Making the Mandalorians pacifists didn't erase all that warrior culture tosh, it put it in context. All that stuff was still there, but they showed the logical end point of a culture dedicated to fighting everything that moves for the sheer challenge and glory of it.
That is an ecologically devastated world and a population so sick to death of ruling the warrior clans' constant warfare that they overthrew and exiled them like they extremist thugs they were.
So are you *really* disappointed that they made something worse that you thought was already great, or is it really just that "they didn't do a thing exactly as I've seen it done before" regardless of quality? Because I can't see how the latter is a terribly valid complaint. If it's the former, then by all means, enlighten me to the merits of the planet of space vikings and the planet of the magical space dominatrixes.
I absolutely prefer TCW's Mandalorians over the EU ones. And @Reverend is right, the Space Viking Mandos still exist--they're just a marginalized group of extremists with no real power, as they should be. A people whose world has been devastated by millennia of seeking battle for glory's sake finally realizing the error of their ways and rejecting such a foolhardy way of life and trying to rebuild their planet and culture is so much more interesting.
I was surprised, if pleasantly so, that they are bringing Thrawn in as the big bad. I personally hope they play him more, kind of like Kingpin in the new Daredevil series-a slow unveiling of the character, rather than a rapid one. Which, given the way Rebels is progressing so far, is possible.
Also, if Thrawn ever gets in to the live action films, am I the only one who wants to see Benedict Cumberbatch in the role?
Also, if Thrawn ever gets in to the live action films, am I the only one who wants to see Benedict Cumberbatch in the role?
My read on it was that only a small percentage of the culture were actual warriors, but the rest were everyday workers, farmers, builders and craftspersons and those eventually revolted and exiled the remaining hardliners. My reasoning is that you physically can't have a culture that's entirely dedicated to fighting in the way it was depicted in the EU. It's a fantasy. Somebody has to till the fields, cook the meals and clean up the blood stains.
That means the noble and glorious Mandalorian warriors either used a *lot* of droid labour (of which there is little to no indication), kept slaves to do that work, or they had a rigid caste system where the warrior clans basically lorded it over everyone else doing the actual work.
Probably a combination of the latter two. What's very telling is Vizla's attitude towards the villagers Death Watch were squatting with. They treated them like slaves. Things to be used and discarded. Apply that to a planet wide culture and all of a sudden the Mandalorians don't seem so honourable.
A good real world parallel would be the Shogunate's dominance of medieval Japan (a topic Lucas is clearly well read on.) A bunch of regional lords who usurped the power of the Emperor, reducing him to a figurehead while they become warlords and proceed to wage war on one-another for the next several centuries before the whole system just collapses in on itself. Through all of which it was the common peasants who suffered the consequences as one side or another fought over and destroyed the land they had to scratch a living on.
Anyone who's seen Kurosawa's 'Seven Samurai' and were paying attention should know that in that movie, the Samurai culture was far from romanticised. Quite the contrary they were depicted as being little better than the bandits that plagued the villagers. Often worse.
It's not hard to see a parallel with Mandalore, with the New Mandalorian pacifist movement being roughly akin to the Meiji Restoration in the late 1800's. The difference is that instead of emerging as a modernised nation (only to become an imperialist state), Mandalore fell right back into civil war and was promptly swallowed up and subjugated by a much larger Empire.
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