Full Series Rebels 4.09 - Rebel Assault - Discussion Thread (Spoilers Allowed)

Who knew that Dave Filoni shouting a bunch of obscenities into the microphone and scrambling them up would end up being an interesting character? The animators do a good job with him too, he probably emotes more than R2.

 

One with rather disproportionate casualties, given the loss of an entire capital ship--seriously, that bit was just ridiculous, apparently Imperial warships go haywire or fall apart if you just boot them hard enough...what is this, the Enterprise-D?

It's not necessarily that, it's just that it rather diminishes an iconic ship here when it's happened almost every episode...

 

Stormtroopers are iconic. Doesn't mean we should suddenly be presenting them as formidable.

 

Well it would be nice, and make it so that Obi Wan actually knew what he was taking about. But seriously, Star Destroyers have been shown as formidable and scary since literally the first minute of the franchise. Never in the OT were they so casually dispatched, and even Rogue One had their destruction as a great achievement for the rebellion. Be better if that was reflected here (since they have the smaller Imperial cruisers to be disposable).

 

To be fair, Obi-Wan's been out of the action for twenty years. Obviously the "stormtroopers" he's referring to are the clone troopers that he once fought side by side with, which he thinks the Empire still employs. Those guys were extremely accurate, they wiped out ten thousand Jedi in one day. The non-clone stormtroopers are pretty much jokes. Like the TIE Fighters, their purpose is to overwhelm the enemy with sheer numbers. You never see that in Rebels because of budgetary limitations, so the Rebels always end up fighting a single squad of stormtroopers and exchanging long, inaccurate volleys of blasterfire.

 

Stormtroopers were always, more or less, presented as conscripts. The old clone program proved to be too expensive for the Empire, so it was slowly phrased out with all the financing going into the Death Star.

 

We don't actually know how many Star Destroyers the Empire has.

In Legends, the number was 25,000, however this was not confirmed so far in the new continuity.

And judging by the way they've been represented so far, I think the number in the current continuity is much more smaller.

 

Actually, the 25,000 number has been re-canonized by Disney.

 

Source?

 

they were pretty casually dispatched in RoTJ during the Death Star II assault and that one during ESB by the Hoth Ion cannon. In most scenes during the OT they were chasing the Millennium Falcon (and failing rather badly)
The only Star Destroyers that seem effective in Canon are ones commanded by exceptional characters like Thrawn and Vader. In the end ships and soldiers are only as effective as the story demands.

 

Interesting.

Wonder if this got approved by the Story Group or somehow escaped their notice.

 

Likely the latter but it's One Canon now. Pablo's definitely not omniscient despite what some people think.

 

25K ISD-I and ISD-IIs?? now how many Tectors, or old Vics or Gladiators, etc...still in service?? Battlecruisers?? IIRC...there were a Dozen Executors.

 

I think there's like one that explodes in the background at Endor, and at least there that's a major fleet battle where you expect such things. The Ion Cannon likewise is the major trump card for the rebels to help them get away, and is built up accordingly ("stand by ion control"). Likewise, with the Falcon, at least they scored hits on it and forced Han to improvize.

Point is, they were never dispatched in the rather looney tunes way they were here, where Hera basically destroys one completely by accident.

 

Not to mention that we'd be cycling through a LOT of main cast members if Stormtroopers had the competence people seem to demand. How fun would that be?

 

Stormtroopers managed to take out a couple of main characters in Rogue One and it was fine. But seriously, I don't think anyone at this point seriously demands stormtroopers to be Delta Force level--just not complete Keystone Kops. I think struggling with a wild cat is a teeny bit of a step too far. Going back to R1, that had the right balance IMO--stormtroopers got taken out by elite main characters who used skill, positioning, and the right weaponry, but still, as in some scenes, were able to pose a threat to and take out rebel commandos. Even Rebels actually did it relatively right a couple of times, like in the Occupation episode, so if it was more like in there I'd not have much complaint.

 

Thrawn continues to be as incompetent as usual. He said he wouldn't let the rebels through the blockade, but then most of the fleet makes it into atmosphere anyway. Rukh isn’t much use, either. Sure, he brought back one of the X-Wing pilots, but any regular trooper should be able to do that. Rukh, a trained assassin, could barely stand against Hera, a pilot with little hand-to-hand combat experience.

I found the space battle scene extremely boring. It was predictable which characters were going to die, and which ones would be safe, and you know the rebels are going to make it through, so there’s no real threat or tension in that scene. Just more of the rebels destroying everything in their path while the Empire barely seems to be able to take on a small fleet of X-Wings, despite all their ships in their blockade.

I’m guessing Hera will be rescued in the next episode or two, so there’s no real threat with her capture, either. And how come she was some sort of super fighter all of a sudden? We’ve never seen her fight before, but all of a sudden she’s some kind of martial fighter expert. Where did that come from?

Mart’s voice was weird; it was abruptly deeper. I would have had more respect for the show if they had killed him off, but it was pretty predictable that he was going to live.

There was little to no character interaction, except between Kanan and Ezra and Kanan and the wolves, which I found extremely disappointing. The problem with Rebels is that it is way too plot driven, and this episode especially suffered from that. I liked that Ezra was supportive of Kanan, but I felt like the Ghost crew should’ve all gone to rescue Hera instead of just Kanan. They’re a family; one of these days maybe they’ll try acting like one.

Kanan was truly the only good part of this episode. I liked his reluctance to leave Hera behind and his decision finally to go after her; I only wish he would have done it in the speeder bike scene and just taken off on his speeder heading towards the city until waiting and then decide to go back, but whatever.

The Empire was just embarrassing in their incompetence in this episode. The rebels blew up all their anti-aircraft guns with no problem. Seriously? There wasn't even a single guard around the turrets?

Also, it was kind of annoying we didn’t even see Hera promoted to general. Kind of made it seem like it wasn’t a big deal. Maybe it’s not, but I think it should have been addressed in the show.

 

Actually I thought the part with the TIE Defender dogfight was pretty cool. We had the familiar old X-wings facing off against the new model of TIEs. Okay, so I yeah the TIE Defender is something familiar to those of us who played the old simulator games, but I don't think we've ever seen these two ships fighting it out from the third-person view. Usually in the games you'd be sitting in the cockpit of your X-wing, and there would be the TIE Defender on your screen, but not both of you at once.

 

You can't really call that a dogfight. The plot bias was so heavily on Hera's side it wasn't even funny.
1.She took out two tie interceptors simultaneously. C3PO would be able to tell you the odds of that happening. And it would be completely down to luck not skill as Hera has to be firing at them well inside her lasers convergence range.

2.The animators clearly had no idea what a fighter pilot in a cockpit does or would look like in a fight. Hera's constant two handed gun-like grip on the flight stick and her head forward "aiming" posture look ridiculous. She looks like someone playing a gun arcade game. None of the shown stick movements corresponded with the maneuvers that they resulted. Zero throttle useage through the whole scene. Hera's cobra maneuver (becoming a cliche) achieved by just yanking back on the stick?

3.No starfighter defence lasers? Thrawn then orders turbo lasers to fire at them? And instantly hits two fighters? And doesn't vaporize both? That's like a WWII battleship firing its main cannons at two fighters, getting lucky with a quadrillion to one chance two hits, but only doing the damage of a .303 machinegun bullet.

4.Magnetic enemy ships. Why must we constantly have ships crashing into each other like dominoes? It's so cheap.
The arquitans cruiser gets heavily damaged and disabled by the tie defender crash. Using Star Wars space physics it should just stop, but no, here it has to accelerate towards the nearest Star destroyer which just sits there waiting for the collision.

Seriously the stuff in the TIE Fighter fan anime is a far better representation of a Star Wars space battle, using the correct weapons for each job, detailed cockpit controls and actual throttle use. The animation of Rebels is easily capable of doing this, they just need someone with a little knowledge of air combat.

 

Let's get you on the animation team, then. Show them how it's done.

 

Rebels cannot be fixed. It is time to start over.

 

I think it's a great show that got even better over time just like TCW did. Even Ezra became more likable for me, it took a while to get there but that's the point. Where's the fun in characters who can do anything right on the first try? Better to have them progressively grow as characters if you ask me and Hera has been established as a great pilot, I can't see her going down that easily. Plus it's not like the attack succeeded, most of her pilots died during the attack but I don't think it's unlikely that she couldn't use her skills to survive.

 

Hush, no positivity is allowed here.

 

I do not like some stuff this show does, but I know that it is aimed mostly at kids, so I go in with those expectations. I still enjoy the show, and for the most part it is good (I have said elsewhere that there have been some episodes or scenes that insult the viewers intelligence, even a child's intelligence.)

Having said that, I do not get what people do not like about this episode. It was fantastic, absolutely one of my favourite in the series. Even if I did not go in expecting this to be a young kids show, I still think I would have liked the episode a lot. I am excited to see how this arc ends. (I just now discovered the piggy emoji and I love it.)