Rebels: 1x03-04
Sep. 10th, 2021 07:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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tori_reviewsStar Wars Rebels: 1x03 – Fighter Flight
That was…okay. It probably should have been the second episode instead of the show being so quick to throw in the Skywalker droids, as this one was about team building and such, but as a story it’s fine.
If I thought this was all the show was going to be, I wouldn’t be sold on it, because it’s very much a small stakes and kid friendly cartoon. But this has the distinct feel of showing us how things work for these people when things are more or less going their way. And I expect we’ll get at least a couple more episodes with these sorts of stakes before we get back to heavier stuff. We need character episodes for Sabine, Hera, and Kanan, the latter two maybe together or not (and maybe Chopper, it will probably insist on doing something with the droid; maybe it will be Chopper and Sabine). Plus there are other dynamics we should explore so that the whole crew feels like a family instead of just pieces of one.
In a couple ways, this episode is very reminiscent of the shorts that preceded the full episodes. There’s a definite echo of Zeb’s mini-story in what he gets up to here, and it went back to me not really liking Sabine. Not that she has a character to dislike yet, she’s mostly just there so far, but what little we are getting is kind of annoying. And I really don’t approve of us getting her from Ezra’s perspective like this. It doesn’t paint either of them in a good light, as it keeps Sabine such a flat character and has Ezra crushing on her without a deeper reason behind it than her boring surface level.
I’m not sure what to make of the show more or less explicitly casting the crew as ‘the kids’ and ‘the parents.’ I don’t mind it in concept, but paired with this episode being so kidified, so far it kind of annoys me. Because I find the ‘parents’ to be much more interesting characters, but if the show wants to be so kiddy then it’s not going to focus where I want it to. I don’t know that I expect that to always be the case; like I said this feels like a come-down after the large scope of the pilot (the droid episode being an oddity that doesn’t quite fit) where they want to assure kids that this isn’t going to be too adult of a show. That’s not exactly encouraging on its own, but I’m not quite ready to be discouraged by it since this sort of feels like it’s defining the lower edge of what they’ll be doing.
Again, could be wrong, it certainly can get worse from here, and if it’s consistently even at this quality I don’t know how long I’ll have it in me to stick with it. But I’m still with it so far. I’m not sure what I’ll do this time if it starts bugging me as this seems more stand-alone episodes than being able to group them together as arcs. So hopefully I won’t need to find out any time soon.
Star Wars Rebels: 1x04 – Rise of the Old Masters
I’m feeling a little mixed on this one, but in a way where I like most of what this show aims to be except one huge problem. It’s not a problem they can’t correct, it’s arguably a problem that also showed up in the early episodes of TCW and was one they actually got over.
Ezra annoys me. I know his character type isn’t meant for me, the show is aimed at teens and tweens and sometimes younger, and Ezra is meant to be their protagonist; but I seem to be way too old for that at this point.
Am I supposed to think Ezra’s an idiot in this one for his attitude? Because it’s obvious to me from the moment Kanan wants to have Luminara train Ezra that it’s about Kanan’s doubts of his ability to be a master. Not that he doesn’t want to be, but that he’s somewhat the blind leading the blind here (and yes I am aware that in the future that’s going to be an ironic way to say it). Kanan would likely have still been a padawan or very new knight himself when the Order fell, he’s certainly never trained anyone before. Finding an old master who was actually a Jedi master and had experience at training people and who would remember a lot more of what the Jedi were than Kanan does, would be a godsend for him. It would mean he wasn’t alone, that the weight of the future wasn’t solely on him, that preserving the past wasn’t all on him; and yes, he thinks it would be better for Ezra (he is however Better than Ezra…does anyone actually get my jokes?).
The first scene is setting this up perfectly. That Kanan is repeating lessons he remembers, kind of understands, but doesn’t know how to teach. I actually had a whole piece in mind for the way that scene was treating that old line of Yoda in terms of lore, but by the end it’s not about the lore, it’s about the characters (ding ding, you know that thing that I found lacking in so much of TCW) and what it says about them.
Anyway, it makes me very unsympathetic to Ezra, and frustrated that we’re not telling this story from Kanan’s point of view, because there’s a lot more material to explore through Kanan than we get with Ezra.
I also had a bit of brewing rant about it being super convenient that Luminara somehow survived, but that ended up not being the case. The show doesn’t really dwell on how horrific what the Empire/Inquisitor is doing is, which I think is once more a problem with me not being the target demographic. If this was Kanan’s story, then we might be able to explore how someone who has a connection to Luminara (faint though it is) feels about what they find.
I feel like the other three characters basically don’t get much to do in this one, and I’m mixed on that. I get that being only a half-hour show there isn’t time to have that many character arcs going on. And the focus is, if not exactly where it should be, someplace it’s well suited for the plot so that it does give us some character arc at least.
Basically I kind of feel about Ezra the way I do about Skye on AoS (and I do specifically mean Skye, I just don’t like Daisy). It’s not that they’re bad characters, it’s just I think everyone else is probably more interesting except this proxy character is hogging the spotlight and keeping us from seeing the interesting bits of the others.
The plot is kind of bare bones, but they’re decent bones, they just don’t put the skin on them that I’d like.
~~~
Look, maybe I’m especially sympathetic to Kanan here, because this is actually kind of a dynamic we had going in our old Star Wars game. Of the three Jedi-adjacent characters, one had been raised within the Order but was still a (fairly young) padawan when the Order fell, and he had the most proper education at it. Another had been trained by a Jedi…well he might have been a Master but probably a knight, who escaped the Purge and found a young kid on an outer world who was Force sensitive who he ended up training. The third (being me) was more of a Jedi fangirl, raised on the noble stories of what the Jedi once were and yet never exposed to the realities of what it was to be a Jedi (as stated before, she followed something like the shiny side of the Force that calls it the Dark Side when people deny love and connection to others, because all evil stems from lack of care for others).
Oddly enough, I kind of think that would make Kanan the perfect teacher for these characters. He remembers enough of how it was to have plenty to teach them; but he’s been out in the world and lived a life like theirs so isn’t so bound by the old way of things that they’d feel at odds with him.
That was…okay. It probably should have been the second episode instead of the show being so quick to throw in the Skywalker droids, as this one was about team building and such, but as a story it’s fine.
If I thought this was all the show was going to be, I wouldn’t be sold on it, because it’s very much a small stakes and kid friendly cartoon. But this has the distinct feel of showing us how things work for these people when things are more or less going their way. And I expect we’ll get at least a couple more episodes with these sorts of stakes before we get back to heavier stuff. We need character episodes for Sabine, Hera, and Kanan, the latter two maybe together or not (and maybe Chopper, it will probably insist on doing something with the droid; maybe it will be Chopper and Sabine). Plus there are other dynamics we should explore so that the whole crew feels like a family instead of just pieces of one.
In a couple ways, this episode is very reminiscent of the shorts that preceded the full episodes. There’s a definite echo of Zeb’s mini-story in what he gets up to here, and it went back to me not really liking Sabine. Not that she has a character to dislike yet, she’s mostly just there so far, but what little we are getting is kind of annoying. And I really don’t approve of us getting her from Ezra’s perspective like this. It doesn’t paint either of them in a good light, as it keeps Sabine such a flat character and has Ezra crushing on her without a deeper reason behind it than her boring surface level.
I’m not sure what to make of the show more or less explicitly casting the crew as ‘the kids’ and ‘the parents.’ I don’t mind it in concept, but paired with this episode being so kidified, so far it kind of annoys me. Because I find the ‘parents’ to be much more interesting characters, but if the show wants to be so kiddy then it’s not going to focus where I want it to. I don’t know that I expect that to always be the case; like I said this feels like a come-down after the large scope of the pilot (the droid episode being an oddity that doesn’t quite fit) where they want to assure kids that this isn’t going to be too adult of a show. That’s not exactly encouraging on its own, but I’m not quite ready to be discouraged by it since this sort of feels like it’s defining the lower edge of what they’ll be doing.
Again, could be wrong, it certainly can get worse from here, and if it’s consistently even at this quality I don’t know how long I’ll have it in me to stick with it. But I’m still with it so far. I’m not sure what I’ll do this time if it starts bugging me as this seems more stand-alone episodes than being able to group them together as arcs. So hopefully I won’t need to find out any time soon.
Star Wars Rebels: 1x04 – Rise of the Old Masters
I’m feeling a little mixed on this one, but in a way where I like most of what this show aims to be except one huge problem. It’s not a problem they can’t correct, it’s arguably a problem that also showed up in the early episodes of TCW and was one they actually got over.
Ezra annoys me. I know his character type isn’t meant for me, the show is aimed at teens and tweens and sometimes younger, and Ezra is meant to be their protagonist; but I seem to be way too old for that at this point.
Am I supposed to think Ezra’s an idiot in this one for his attitude? Because it’s obvious to me from the moment Kanan wants to have Luminara train Ezra that it’s about Kanan’s doubts of his ability to be a master. Not that he doesn’t want to be, but that he’s somewhat the blind leading the blind here (and yes I am aware that in the future that’s going to be an ironic way to say it). Kanan would likely have still been a padawan or very new knight himself when the Order fell, he’s certainly never trained anyone before. Finding an old master who was actually a Jedi master and had experience at training people and who would remember a lot more of what the Jedi were than Kanan does, would be a godsend for him. It would mean he wasn’t alone, that the weight of the future wasn’t solely on him, that preserving the past wasn’t all on him; and yes, he thinks it would be better for Ezra (he is however Better than Ezra…does anyone actually get my jokes?).
The first scene is setting this up perfectly. That Kanan is repeating lessons he remembers, kind of understands, but doesn’t know how to teach. I actually had a whole piece in mind for the way that scene was treating that old line of Yoda in terms of lore, but by the end it’s not about the lore, it’s about the characters (ding ding, you know that thing that I found lacking in so much of TCW) and what it says about them.
Anyway, it makes me very unsympathetic to Ezra, and frustrated that we’re not telling this story from Kanan’s point of view, because there’s a lot more material to explore through Kanan than we get with Ezra.
I also had a bit of brewing rant about it being super convenient that Luminara somehow survived, but that ended up not being the case. The show doesn’t really dwell on how horrific what the Empire/Inquisitor is doing is, which I think is once more a problem with me not being the target demographic. If this was Kanan’s story, then we might be able to explore how someone who has a connection to Luminara (faint though it is) feels about what they find.
I feel like the other three characters basically don’t get much to do in this one, and I’m mixed on that. I get that being only a half-hour show there isn’t time to have that many character arcs going on. And the focus is, if not exactly where it should be, someplace it’s well suited for the plot so that it does give us some character arc at least.
Basically I kind of feel about Ezra the way I do about Skye on AoS (and I do specifically mean Skye, I just don’t like Daisy). It’s not that they’re bad characters, it’s just I think everyone else is probably more interesting except this proxy character is hogging the spotlight and keeping us from seeing the interesting bits of the others.
The plot is kind of bare bones, but they’re decent bones, they just don’t put the skin on them that I’d like.
~~~
Look, maybe I’m especially sympathetic to Kanan here, because this is actually kind of a dynamic we had going in our old Star Wars game. Of the three Jedi-adjacent characters, one had been raised within the Order but was still a (fairly young) padawan when the Order fell, and he had the most proper education at it. Another had been trained by a Jedi…well he might have been a Master but probably a knight, who escaped the Purge and found a young kid on an outer world who was Force sensitive who he ended up training. The third (being me) was more of a Jedi fangirl, raised on the noble stories of what the Jedi once were and yet never exposed to the realities of what it was to be a Jedi (as stated before, she followed something like the shiny side of the Force that calls it the Dark Side when people deny love and connection to others, because all evil stems from lack of care for others).
Oddly enough, I kind of think that would make Kanan the perfect teacher for these characters. He remembers enough of how it was to have plenty to teach them; but he’s been out in the world and lived a life like theirs so isn’t so bound by the old way of things that they’d feel at odds with him.
