Star Wars Rebels - Season 1 DVD Review

Buzz Bumble

Furry Ewok
From the New Zealand entertainment and news website Stuff.co.nz ...


DVD Review: Star Wars Rebels: Complete Season One
So this is how Star Wars looks under Disney. Rebels comes closer to the original Star Wars trilogy of the 1970s and 1980s than any other filmed Star Wars since.

The Star Wars Rebels animated television series is the first filmed Star Wars to be released with the Disney logo on it since saga creator George Lucas announced his retirement in 2012 and sold his production company to Disney for $4 billion.

It's obvious that the production team, headed by Dave Filoni of Star Wars: The Clone Wars fame, were not only inspired by episodes IV, V and VI of the saga but have drawn on many pre-production sketches from that series' concept artist Ralph McQuarrie for its cast.

The first season is set 14 years after Chancellor Palpatine declared himself Emperor, massacring Republic guardians the Jedi in the process. It follows the adventures, over 15 half hour episodes, of a band of rebels doing their bit to be the thorn in the side of the Empire on the planet Lothal.

Rebels' producers drew on Luke Skywalker for their protagonist, Ezra Bridger, a Force sensitive orphan with a yearning for adventure. He finds it when he meets Kanan Jarrus, a witty gunslinger and secret Jedi cut from the same cloth as Han Solo. He even has a hulking sidekick, Zeb Orrelios, based on McQuarrie's earliest concept for Chewbacca. Their Astromech droid, C1-10P or Chopper, also comes from an early McQuarrie concept for R2-D2 and is basically a squatter version with more attitude. Hera Syndulla, owner and pilot of a Millennium Falcon like freighter the Ghost, possesses piloting skills not unlike Solo's. And the final member of the crew is Mandalorian warrior Sabine Wren, who wears a pink and red version of the armour worn by bounty hunter Boba Fett.

The Empire's occupation force comprises an Imperial Inquisitor, agent and legions of Imperial Stormtroopers all equipped with the best Imperial ground vehicles ranging from speeder bikes to walkers with backup in obit from Imperial Star Destroyers.

And if that doesn't feel enough like Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope enough, the series' Kevin Kiner was tasked with a score that just about always reuses elements of John Williams' epic music from the original trilogy.

Because of the timing of its setting the writers are able to occasionally use characters from The Clone Wars as well as the upcoming trilogy.

Star Wars hasn't been as fun in years.

If Star Wars: Rebels is anything to go by Episode VII: The Force Awakens, to be released in December, will be a treat.

The Force is strong with this one.


Again, like the pilot movie, there doesn't seem to be a Blu-ray version being released for some strange reason.
 

Borsk

Administrator
Staff member
I still prefer The Clone Wars. Rebels panders a bit too much to children.
 
Top