Author: Ben Wahrman

Rebels Revisited: Looking Ahead to Season Two

Posted on June 17, 2015by , and

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Any look ahead at Season 2 of Star Wars Rebels must first reflect on what’s come before, and who can forget the end of Season 1, when the Empire Base Delta Zeroed the hell out of Lothal once and for—oh, wait, no, that didn’t happen (yet). Whoops. In reality, Kanan was rescued, the Inquisitor went swimming in a fireball, and Ahsoka Tano showed up to see our heroes safely away from the Empire’s clutches.

There have been two previews for next season so far, the one linked above and the three-minute trailer that premiered at Celebration Anaheim. The hour-premiere, “The Siege of Lothal” airs this Saturday, and whatever the state of the planet at the end of the titular siege, it appears that the Ghost crew, with Ahsoka in tow, will be spending a good chunk of the season out in the rest of the galaxy, evading Darth Vader and/or sparing Lothal from further Imperial attention. Read More

The Pitch: Rebels Season Two Cameos

Posted on June 12, 2015by , , , and Not A Committee

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David: Oh hello, Mistah Filoni. Good morning. Nice, uh, hat you got there. Thanks for this chance, by the way! I’m pitching a light-hearted and completely not meta episode that I’m calling for now “It Rhymes, Like Poetry”. Good, huh?

So, picture this… Cold open! The Ghost crew are escaping a massive cloud of TIE fighters and the ship is in pretty bad shape. Zeb is complaining about doing yet another dangerous job for Vizago instead of sticking it to the Empire, and when things look dire Hera jumps to lightspeed!

Our heroes get to the world of Pantora, where they deliver their load to some funny looking dealer, but they have to wait at least one day until the Ghost is repaired. The kids (Sabine, Ezra and Zeb) decide to head to the city. Pantora is nothing like it was in that animatic from Clone Wars. It’s become very industrial and it’s full of merchandise vending machines, and people trying to sell you things everywhere and… well, it’s all very crazy and, uhm, satirical, for the grown ups in the audience, you know. Read More

Vader’s Vilest Villainy: The Best of the Dark Lord

Posted on April 8, 2015by

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There is no point to underselling just how important Darth Vader has been and is to the Star Wars franchise. He gave fans someone to boo (or cheer for), an iconic villain who is instantly recognizable, formidable, effective and intimidating. Anakin Skywalker’s past gives him backstory and depth, but it is Vader, with his raspy automated breathing, melodramatic deeper-than-deep voice, and grotesque-like helmeted visage that is the face of a franchise and one of the most venerated film characters of a generation. He is the third greatest cinema villain of all time according to the American Film Institute, behind only Hannibal Lecter and Norman Bates. It is small wonder that rumors about a film or project revolving around Vader have been swirling ever since Disney purchased Lucasfilm. When you have a character with that sort of impact, reputation and familiarity, not using them in some way would be far crazier than leaving them be.

While the prospect of a Vader-centric spin-off film is neither here nor there, using him in novels and comics is far from forbidden now and was hardly restricted before (unless you wanted to bring him back to life). Before the prequel trilogy, Vader was an indomitable force who could not be corrupted, turned aside or defeated in battle, the Empire’s foremost military commander. After his past as Skywalker came into better light, searching through his inner space and figuring out his thoughts and feelings became more of the norm, while still leaving him a formidable and deadly martial threat. But which of his appearances were the best (outside of those on film, of course)? Read More

A Cynical Response: The Possibilities of “Rogue One”

Posted on March 25, 2015by

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When the title of the first Star Wars spin-off film, Rogue One, was announced, the conclusions jumped to by many people were so astronomically large that they could be measured in parsecs. It’s the Star Wars version of Top Gun! It’s all about Rogue Squadron’s formation! Felicity Jones is Wedge’s daughter! Denis Lawson may be coming back! There had better be a dedication to Aaron Allston!

Let’s slow that roll down and reexamine what the announcement told us. Right now, we know nothing about Rogue One except for a title, its director, the writer, one actress, and the film’s production posse. Everything that is being inferred springs from established lore, books, video games and magazine articles, 99% of which do not exist in canon anymore. The only reason people even remember the name Rogue Squadron (aside from it sounding cool) is because of these materials, it certainly is not at all emphasized or fleshed out in the movies. Read More

Where there’s Smoke: The End of the Beginning

Posted on March 6, 2015by and

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Ben: When Star Wars Rebels started, we were privy to a very small knot of rebellious souls. A former Jedi turned drunken gunslinger, a Lasat with a chip on his shoulder and temper to match, a Mandalorian who loved to paint as much as fight, a street-rat orphan who stole for a living and a cranky patchwork astromech droid, all held together by a Twi’lek pilot who kept them pointed at the Empire instead of each other. The season went on; we got to see more of their personalities and hints of backstory, and caught occasional glimpses of a wider picture, of a bigger plan than just the group on Lothal. It wasn’t until the finale of the first season, however, that we finally saw what that meant.

We had hints from the beginning that the Lothal rebellion was just one of many in existence. Agent Kallus’ report to the Inquisitor at the end of the show’s pilot told us as much. The segmentation of the organization, keeping each cell separate with as little knowledge as possible of the others, is intelligent strategy taken from real-life resistance groups, such as the French Resistance in World War II. You cannot betray what you do not know. While Lothal seems a rather unimportant backwater world, the Empire is there, and that is (seemingly) enough for Hera. But this would be far from a normal cell, and their impact would be far larger than Hera would ever have guessed at the beginning. Read More